A human can produce about 50-100 watts of motive energy.
Fire allows the energy in wood to be used for light, heat and the processing of food
Agriculture allows for a society to convert more solar energy to calories per square meter of land and lets them begin the building of citie
Beasts of burden allow humans to carry greater loads overland, wheeled vehicles enhance said capacity
Sails allows large cargos to be moved comparatively easily by utilizing wind power
Water wheels and windmills allow wind and water to be used for a variety of industrial applications in substitute for human muscle (turning a huge millstone rather than relying on handmills)
Steam power allows fire to be put to industrial purposes on a regular basis without being dependant on rivers or wind conditions
Electricity allows an easy means of transfering energy over long distances and putting it to use
Computerization and robotics allows complex processes to be done with minimal human involvement
The important fact about a civilization is how good is it at utilizing energy. Everything else is squabbling over pennies.
>>296849
This is also why guns replaced all those swords and shit.
>>296849
As a physicist I strongly agree with this statement. Keeping track of energy is like all we do.
>>297143
Keep up the good work
And soon we will have Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs).
>>297618
Hopefully those will turn out well
>>298112
World governments and globalist multinational corperations would never allow common people to be energy independent
>>298189
Actually it's more to the effect of "energy independence while living at a first world standard of living is impossible for most people".
What are you going to do, build a steam engine? Give everyone their own wind turbine? There are practical considerations which you have frankly ignored.
>>298647
No, it is entirely reasonable. Think about how few fractions of an acre you now need, even with just modern technology, to feed an individual for a year assuming good climate.
Even now, nuclear fission and a bit of proper urban planning can give everyone infinite income in terms of all needs being satisfied and all practical future needs also being satisfied.
Then, add fusion and quantum mechanics and aeroponics and fish farms and genetic engineering and energy- and transportation-efficient urban design, plus bioreactors and cermets and nanocomposites and micro-modified materials like artificial kabi- I mean artificial nacre- and more and more. Really, as an engineer, it is very obvious that human stupidity had been the only thing holding us back for the past fifty years.
Two cases for illustration:
1. NYC, in the 70s, tried to integrate black and white housing by creating complexes of mixed middle class and lower class apartments. Old white people didn't like this, sued, lost, and moved out. The emigrating American Jews were replaced with immigrating Russian Jews, and so on with the rest of the 10% or so of the population that was frantically racist. I think my number is off, because it was enough to doom the project, but immigrants saved the day. The project was a success, and the black lower class is no longer a black lower class constrained to three projects. Why not, then, repeat this process? External aggravators. The legal suit was not going to happen until an asshole decided to get rich and famous off of the situation. He turned a grudgingly accepting population into a racuously crude one. Thus, the project was such a difficulty and required a cost-benefit analysis over such a long generational timescale that it was severely underfunded and future projects were canceled for fear if political losses at the state level.
>>300240
2. The American Revolution ran the same way, although the external aggravators were American elite ot self-made men.
Honestly, it is not other humans that hurts us, but the fact that our countrymen can be so easily swayed to self-destruction in the face of well-argued and sometimes even obvious benefit to themselves and the greater whole without any compromise necessary.
Nuclear fission? Scientists cannot be trusted to handle the waste!
Nuclear fusion? Load of crock spouted by scientists who vainly seek more patronage from the high and mighty middle class who happens to come from the south.
Antimatter? What's that, science fiction?
>>300288
Aeroponics and hydroponics and a 20 million dollar investment into my city? No, how about 1.5 million dollar investment into protecting our pristine countryside and placing recently developed farmland into trust so that it can only ever practically (subsidized) be used for a single-unit-high grid of cabbage!
The last example happened in my retsrded town. Predictably, the engineers, whose taxes make up 60% of the budget, stopped associating with the townspeople.
What is more important is to investigate my silly examples and realize, in each instance of the archetype of each case, something like this happens:
>We'd like to give you 1.5 million dollars for you to use your land to promote an imaginary rural aesthetic.
>B-but I'm planning to sell my land....
>To your kids?
>Yup!
>We'll run them out of business unless you comply. *explains how*
>O-okay, fine....
>Don't forget to vet this prewritten article for the local paper and endorse me in the next election.
I shit you not. And this is a city that is known for being low on the corruption and crime scale, it's like mini-Japan, except the technologically advanced Japanese farmers were all kicked out in WW2, easily verified and documented.
So if you again wonder why scientists have started to shun the patent system, it's because the (white) population has willingly voted for a return to feudalism. And if you hear the excuse, "We don't want the Chinese to copy our materials science secrets," then they are lying in a very polite manner.
Recommended reading:
"City for Sale" and also old and musty company histories in public libraries, typically of companies engaged in heavy industry. Link these to the phonebook-like directories and "encyclopedias of contacts" of the time period. Then go to the high school year books and census to infer immigration rates, as well as county housing documentation and GIS data combined with parcel/lot histories. Why: learn about the migration patterns of native-born Americans.
>>300311
To relate this back to energy utilization, just consider that we waste a lot of energy in heat, thereby precluding some types of extremely heavy industries that an (again, practically) unlimited power source would permit due to the thermal limits on any zone of habitation. Example: using laser with clever phasing and agri techniwues, you can, on one acre, yield 60% of crop per solar thermal budget with perfect solar panels (100% efficiency), easily implying that you, of course, cannot stack aeroponic facilities arbitrarily high. To free energy, well, some quick math would tell you to redesign your transportation system.
To cut to the chase, you easily double your thermal budget with more efficient cars, which sounds retarded but is what the math comes out to. How do you do this? Well, we return to the original point, which is that we can't, because there will always be at least one external force that will fuck up any plan promoting greater energy independence.
Sorry for the roundabout logic, but I wanted to drop hints for further investigation by readers.
tl;dr traditional republican democracy leads to the tyranny of the almost negligible minority, with all tbe puns that suggests. I suggest a direct democracy containing many delegated democracies of specialists. Thoughts?
>>300288
Wait, I forgot my favorite one:
>High-powered kilometre-wavelength radio (to communicate with probably nuclear submarines)?
>No, [our financial sponsor, mother] Russia wants us to protest loudly because it will mess with psychic waves (and nematodes).
I am okay with sacrificing a few nematodes, given that this project I an referencing wasn't going to threaten the wildlife at all, not even the nematodes, and if it did, it would have been a tiny slice of a massive and homogenous forest! So safe project either way, dead or untouched local wildlife!
But Muh Gloree!
>>298189
No one said anything about everyone having their own LFTRs. The very idea is absurd.
>>301320
What is absurd about making it an expectation that fifth graders understand how fusion reactors work?
When I was growing up, the community wanted everyone to know how human waste recycling was done. Now it is at least common knowledge as to where one would start tgeir research if they wanted to pursue that either as a career or for their own ends.
Bioreactors are more complicated and potentially more dangerous than a fusion engine. Same with poorly thought-ot agriculture, which, for example, is why common people don't h have agricultural knowledge: so folks like Monsanto can roll up in their Secret Service-esque vans and bully everyone into cooperation (which is what happens and it does fail to convince companies with something of a private or collaborative brain trust, eg Californian companies in recent decades).
The vans are real, btw. This world is quite retarded.
>>302702
Who is talking bout fusion reactors?
Relevant?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM1IyIyr-Zc
>>296849
You can't say
>The important fact about a civilization is how good is it at utilizing energy.
without
>The important fact about a civilization is how good is it
>>300346
>Thoughts?
Yes, seek medical help as you obviously have schizophrenia. Rambling and paranoia are serious signs.
>ayy possible nuclear power design is just like that one time niggers tried to move in hundred years ago
>throwing sciency sounding buzzwords aroung
>>305073
40wats.jpeg.png.webm.gif
I design this stuff. It's not even complicated. Doing the analysis of a plant can be, but providing the greenhouse is easy except for biological contamination, which is not rocket science.
Why not ask questions questioning the technical feasibility of my ideas rather than making an unsubstantiated assumption.
This is the second time someone acts like a retard in my presence. To receive your daily serving of served, go see one of the Kuomintang threads from a few days ago.
>>305091
If you read plant as nuclear plant, gently punch yourselves.
>>305091
You are literally an old man yelling at the clouds. You give two examples, NYC housing and revolutionary war, as examples how humans are shit ergo some(?) point about how multinationals will never allow people to be free.
>Then, add fusion and quantum mechanics and aeroponics and fish farms and genetic engineering and energy- and transportation-efficient urban design, plus bioreactors and cermets and nanocomposites and micro-modified materials like artificial kabi- I mean artificial nacre- and more and more. Really, as an engineer, it is very obvious that human stupidity had been the only thing holding us back for the past fifty years.
Are you just randomly typing out this shit? You sound like (even more) mentally challenged Ray Kurzweil. These are just random buzzwords m8.
Are you perchance that schizo guy who occasionally posts on /biz/ claiming he made a reactor that uses air to produce and abundance of energy but is too afraid because muh big oil will kill him?
>>305122
>mfw the only way to rebuke you is to give you detailed plans to manufacture a feasible nuclear fusion power source.
I expected better from you.
>>305122
As an aside, there is an air engine. It uses a lithium-based ceramic (Is it similar to sapphire chemically, I cannot remember) in a magnesium ceramic shell. The engine runs at high temperatures in the scenario of a car engine, dictating the need for a frame sorta like a ceramic that is somewhat flexible. The idea is to take in air, zap little streams of it, then nitrogen ionizes. You lose energy there. However, you then feed this to the ceramic cstalyst, causing two separate reactions that I cannot remember. You then have one product, similar to the catalyst, and a second product, similar to... H2N something I cannot recall. These are forced to react with the aid of a clever mechanical delivery/sorting mechanism and another laser or laser sequence. Then you get catalyst and water and one more thing as the result.
This just happens to lead to a net gain in energy. It sure seems nonsense, but it made sense when I last read about it five years ago.
Look up a team in Japan at ITEC or some place that sounds similar. They work on "magnesium nitrogem air engines".
So you are an idiot. You encountered a shit poster who posed a factual device as fictional. By the power of suggestion, you assumed he was posing a fictional device as factual.
So, again, please come back with more interesting banter, and if I find you worthy, I will bestow you with knowledge of a greenhouse using RTGs that is surprisingly low-power. These are things I regularly come up with in my spare time, sometimes with math involved, so I pray you are not idiotically falling for someone else's psychological conditioning.
We are also proving my point the more we converse. My point, to rephrase it, is that, if you present someone with a "miracle" (fact that ought to be fiction), then they will believe you. If, on the other hand, you use THEORY that ought to be fiction, or Ishould say PHYSICAL MODELLING that ought to be fiction, then I by default must first deal with others' brainwashing.
>>305261
And pic related is obviously not the air engine in action....
That plane is theoretical, but will not be built. Why? We could give these as reasons which fall from the energy economics of is design:
>More efficient?
>Faster? Silent supersonic?
>Less required maintenance?
>More durable?
>More resistant to accidents?
>Theoretical underpinnings easily adaptable to various niches, thus warranting production of a proof of concept?
The proof of concept would test, for example:
>Passenger airliner breaks backward compatibility with existing airports?
>Breaks compatibility with existing supply chains and technical expertise?
>Needs new legal regulations?
The danger I speak of is putting the cart before the horse. A1980s Boeing redesign of the passenger airlinet broke compatibility with airport refueling, hangar, passenger loading, and other systems. This would have required a massive, but not that terrifying, investment to permit it's realistic usage. However, it promised something like 25% fuel efficiency savings and a simpler mechanical design. Was it built? I think so, but probably only because computational fluid dynamics was still immature. But no one bought it. Was the airline industry massively tinier than it is today? Yes. Was this expected? Yes. Was it acted upon? Only in the business interest of the generation in immediate command at that time. Why? Obvious.
Now there are national security and environmental concerns regarding how crappy our airline system is. Are fixes being implemented? Only at a bare minimum, and only because the horse now needs an articulated telescoping lens to see over the cart.
>>305214
Way to strawman.
>>305261
>gets no (you)
>hears "air generator"
>pulls out a random device and writes a wall of text so he'd prove a random person right and me wrong
Listen m8, the guy in question also claimed that it used car batteries and difference in air pressure (please do Google how you can create negligible amounts of energy this way so you can sure prove me wrong :^)) and his extensive knowledge of electricity that came from being a DJ and doing a lot of drugs in the 90s. He also claimed that his device created as much electricity as you need and most of the thread was paranoia that he was followed and that he'll be killed. He had no knowledge of basic scientific concepts and when ultimately /sci/ got in he was absolutely btfo.
>So, again, please come back with more interesting banter, and if I find you worthy, I will bestow you with knowledge of a greenhouse using RTGs that is surprisingly low-power.
Stick that /r9k/ PUA tier language up your piehole. Are you gonna neg me next or something, holy kek.
>We are also proving my point the more we converse. My point, to rephrase it, is that, if you present someone with a "miracle" (fact that ought to be fiction), then they will believe you. If, on the other hand, you use THEORY that ought to be fiction, or Ishould say PHYSICAL MODELLING that ought to be fiction, then I by default must first deal with others' brainwashing.
Oh, good, I'm getting baited.
>>305300
Oh, if you want a name to this, it is feature creep. Except more all-encompassing and with catastrophic species-scale consequences.
So I return to my original question. If the consumer does not take care of himself, family, or community with his vote, then why? If the fix is multigenerational educstion, then, knowing that the question precludes its own solution, does iour ethicsl responsibility become to take his vote away? And to what specific ends?
(Pointy ends are optional.)
>>305310
Read the rest. I'm not giving you fictional examples, it's just that I'm limited to 2000 characters while on a cell phone, so breaking down a sample municipalities path to going beyond energy independence is beyond my capabilities right now. Why not visit the website of a professor who teaches a thermal systems class for such explanations? Like I said, the nuclear plant is irrelevant. It, and all advanced modern technology, only serve to ignite imagination. With 1960s technology and without greenhouses we could have not even a want for energy, and I merely ask why our society instead went down a different path.
I'm not sure what is so goddamn complicated about lasers and potatos, though....
Yes, you can grow potatos in greenhouses, in case anyone was wondering....
.... Has anyone else here grown even a carrot?
>>305310
I read the rest of your post. I now realize you are a shitposting nitpicker. My error.
>>305337
dude just go talk to a psychiatrist pronto, I'm sure theyll help you out with your plans about greenhouses and growing carrots :^)
