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Lumifer comments on Open Thread April 16 - April 22, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You don't need ANY infrastructure to gather dry sticks in the forest and burn them. Guess that makes the energy density per unit of infrastructure infinite, then...
There are lots of energy gradients around. Imagine technology that allows you to sink a borehole into the mantle -- that's a nice energy gradient there, isn't it? Tides provide the energy gradient of megatons of ocean water moving. Or, let's say, technology provides a cheap and effective fusion reactor -- what's the energy gradient there?
You've been reading too much environmentalist propaganda which loves to extrapolate trends far into the future while making the hidden assumption that the level of technology will stay the same forever and ever.
Pretty much, until you need to invest in the societal costs to replant and regrow woods after you have cleared them, or you want more concentrated energy at which point you use a different source, or unless you value your time.
Yes. Some are easier to capture than others and some are denser than others. Fusion would be a great energy gradient if you can run it at rates massively exceeding those in stars, but everything I've seen suggests that the technology required for such a thing is either not forthcoming or if it is is so complicated that it's probably not worth the effort.
It won't but there are some things that technology doesn't change. To use the nuclear example, you always need to perform the same chemical and other steps to nuclear fuels which requires an extremely complicated underlying infrastructure and supply chain and concentrated capital for it. Technology isn't a genetic term for things-that-make-everything-easier, some things can be done and some things can't, and other things can be done but aren't worth the effort, and we will see what some of those boundaries are over time. I hope to at least make it to 2060, so I bet I will get to see the outcome of some of the experiments being performed!