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Limits On Growth of Energy Use and Economies
snoop.daub writes "Dr. Tom Murphy, professor of astrophysics at UCSD, has a new blog called 'Do The Math,' and the first few posts are doozies. In the first, he shows the impossibility of continued exponential growth in energy use. Even if a new, 'free' energy source is developed, thermodynamic limits on efficiency mean that the heat associated with converting this energy into useful work will increase the temperature of the earth to unbearable levels within 300 years. In the second, he extends the argument to economic growth. The timescales there are faster, only 50-100 years. Fascinating stuff. Time to stop breeding, folks, or to get our butts into space."
The yeast in the bottle of grape juice said the same thing too.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The difference is that his statement is based on natural laws, rather than assumptions about the source of the energy. Unless the fundamental laws of thermodynamics turn out to be wildly incorrect, his statement will stand.
Denying this by claiming that technology will always improve is like denying that there's an end to Moore's law. Yes, we've been able to find ways to keep it going so far. But by 2150, some quick math says that transistors would need to be smaller than the Planck length. It requires some serious magical thinking to believe that not only will we reach that target, but that we'll be able to keep making them even smaller than that!