I take your point, but I also think that all the other stuff can improve, too. Fertilizer use peaked in the US in 2013, and better land use practices are trying to use less water and less fertilizer and allow less erosion.

None of this is by any means guaranteed to get better, but it’s also not inevitable that it will get worse. The work needs to be done.

Your thesis doesn’t match up with this chart:

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

We’re working to decarbonize the highest categories on that list, with rapid adoption of solar/wind, some potential for more nuclear and geothermal in the medium term, and maybe even fusion in the long term.

Then, while decarbonizing electricity, we’re electrifying heating for homes, water, cooking, and we’re electrifying transportation.

US carbon emissions per capita peaked in the 70’s, and peaked as a whole in the 2000’s. US carbon emissions per capita still greatly exceed those of other rich nations.

It’s very much possible to have modern first world living standards, even with significant reductions in our resource use and net emissions. We just need to line up the incentives (aka pricing) with what is good for the Earth. And we’re already doing that in many of the heaviest polluting sectors.

We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term.

That’s not necessarily true. How much of our overall greenhouse emissions come from which sector?

From this chart, decarbonizing electricity and transport will go a long, long way, and decarbonizing manufacturing and construction could also give some room to reduce overall emissions by more than the entire agricultural sector produces.

And it’s not just some kind of pipe dream. We’re doing real work at decarbonizing electricity, heat, transport, shipping, construction, etc., as the prices of low or zero emissions options start to outcompete the higher emission options for many applications.

Plus if the data center boom crashes as a bubble, a lot of the infrastructure investment into increasing energy production and distribution with both high carbon and low carbon sources will at least have financed a lot of low carbon energy and the potential for curtailing the least carbon efficient generation methods.

I think you have to look at the actual orders of magnitude difference in raising the temperature of water versus air. The Arizona story you linked is about a study that found up to +4°F (+2.2°C) temperatures in air.

The same amount of heat, spread across the same volume of water moving at the same speeds, would only raise that water by 1/830 as much, for a +0.0048°F (+0.0027°C) 1/3300 as much, for a +0.0012°F/+0.00067°C temperature change across the same area/volume.

(I got to 830 by taking the specific heat of dry air of approx 1 J/g K at room temperature and regular atmospheric pressure and 1.22 kg/m^3, versus water’s 4.184 J/g K and 1000 kg/m^3).

(Edit: I fucked my math. Water has approximately 3300 times the heat capacity as air, per unit volume, and I just looked it up directly).

The higher conductivity of water might be offset by the higher convection potential of air (because air responds to temperature changes with differences in density/pressure, which creates wind in itself), so that the heat will spread through either medium relatively quickly and therefore dissipate very quickly with distance to the source.

I just don’t see a world where a data center raises the water by even 1°C, even locally.

The plants on the lakes so monitor the water temp so they don’t affect the ecosystem during the warmer seasons still.

Yeah, but look at the magnitudes of the heat units involved. Modern nuclear plants generate 0.6-4.5 GW at around 30% thermal efficiency (so they generate between 2-15GW of heat). These underwater data centers are looking at 25 MW (0.025 GW) while surrounded by water in 5 of the 6 3-dimensional directions.

There is some risk to local ecosystems, but we’re literally talking 2 or more orders of magnitude difference compared to nuclear plants or other thermal plants.

But that’s true no matter where you put the data center. If you have to dump the waste heat somewhere, the high density and specific heat of water is a better heatsink than the air around us.

This page says the ocean is about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons, which is about 1.3 x 10^21 liters, and each liter is a kg of water (yeah, yeah, the dissolved salt adds some mass but I don’t think it adds sufficient thermal mass to make a difference). It takes 4.184 kilojoules to raise 1kg of liquid water 1°C, and 1 joule is 2.778 x 10^-4 wh.

So that’s 1.55 x 10^18 watt hours, or 1,550,000 TWh.

Global electricity consumption is about 30,000 TWh per year, so if you use the entire world’s electricity consumption for 51 years you’d raise the oceans’ temperature by 1°C.

Or if you take global data center power capacity of about 125 GW, and ran them at full power 24/7, you’d be producing about 10.8 TWh per day or 3944 TWh per year. It’d take about 393 years of the world’s data centers to raise the ocean by 1°C.

Just goes to show that much more of the energy heating up our world and our oceans is coming from the sun heating up the planet and the planet failing to radiate it out past our greenhouse blanket, not from the actual heating of our atmosphere from our own energy sources.

GFCI doesn’t protect against arcs, so AFCI would be necessary to protect against arcing causing fires.

The danger with outdoor outlets is short circuiting (like when water drips onto a live wire), so GFCI is almost always required of outdoor outlets. Generally, outdoor outlets also require covers that keep the receptacle dry, at least when not in use (and more modern code generally requires it have an “in-use” cover that can stay on even when something is plugged in).

But having GFCI isn’t the same as AFCI, so arc fires can still theoretically happen.

So what makes you think the people eating these things are only eating them for health reasons?

Taste: it’s actually really hard to taste just as good as normal meat, as meat is not only meat but also fat, tissue and blood.

One thing I’d push back on is the idea that meat has one single flavor. It’s entirely possible that we’ll be able to replicate many different types of sausages and meatballs and ground meats, things like imitation crab or meatloaf or chicken nuggets, while still struggling to mimic whole muscle cuts. Or it may be easy to mimic certain types of flavors like meat-based soups and sauces, or poached/braised meats, while not quite getting there on grilled or roasted meats.

Meanwhile, I can also see a world where lab-grown meat is cost competitive with more expensive meats, like beef or lamb or lobster, while not being able to compete with cheaper meats like chicken.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing substitution. Sometimes imperfect substitutes can partially replace something and reduce overall demand while the original item still remains available in smaller volumes.

a weird path to take

Is the idea of eating food for enjoyment so foreign to you that you wouldn’t understand why we eat foods for reasons other than absolute minimum nutritional needs?

The lightest EVs are still kinda heavy. The Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are nearly 4000 lbs, significantly more than a Honda Civic (high 2000’s or low 3000’s) comparable to a BMW M3, a much larger vehicle.

Plus some of the faster tire wear comes from the fact that EVs have such high torque from a stop. It’s great for the driver experience, but tough on the tires.

This is actually one of the principles that is causing building codes to start accommodating load bearing timber in tall buildings. Even though wood is combustible, wood beams that are thick enough can withstand fire for long periods of time. They’re still working out what the different tests and standards should be, but some jurisdictions have approved timber skyscrapers.

I remember road trips in the summer, in the 90’s, where you’d just see a bunch of bugs splatter on your windshield, and where you’d have to periodically scrub them off with windshield scrubbers.

Now, 25+ years later, I almost never see bugs on bumpers and hoods and side mirrors. Certainly not to the same degree.

And I can believe that computer aided design helped make all cars much more aerodynamic so that fewer bugs would actually be hit and more would slip into the airflow around the car, but the sheer magnitude of the dropoff makes it totally obvious that there are just fewer insects around.

For the hallway picture, each blue line corresponds with what should be a parallel line, along edges of square tiles or the corner of the floor and the two walls.

For the dinosaur doll, each white dot connects a feature on the dinosaur to that feature’s reflection.

For the shadows, each white dot connects a corner of the object to the corner of the shadow.

I think each of these lines is meticulously chosen.

Let’s also assume the heat capacity of the hot dog is about 3000 J/kg*K

So the specific heat of water at those temperatures is 4184 J/kg K, and those food court hot dogs are probably about the same as Kirkland dinner franks, which have about 73g of water, 31 g of fat (specific heat of about 2300 J/ kg K), 16g of protein (1500 J/kg K), and 3g of sugars/carbs (1200 J/kg K), and let’s say negligible ash, so we’re left with a weighted average of about 3280 J/kg K.

That’s within 10% of your assumed value, so I think I just wasted my time trying to check your assumption, which was pretty close to my number that took a lot more work.

But fundamentally there is less energy storage in a charged sodium atom than a charged lithium atom so it seems sodium batteries must always be bigger and heavier than equivalent-capacity lithium batteries.

Well the battery chemistry will always include much more than just the loose charge carrier of Na+ or Li+ or whatever cation floating around. It’s always a suitable cathode material made from other elements, too. Lithium ion batteries in cars today have cathodes mostly of high performance lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides (NMC) or cheaper/more stable lithium iron phosphate (LFP).

The dominant sodium ion chemistry hitting mass production now uses Prussian Blue Analogues for the cathode (made from a 3d matrix out of sodium, plus a metal like iron/manganese/nickel, plus cyanide made from carbon and nitrogen).

Plus even separately from the raw chemistry of the battery, built in mechanisms for durability or longevity or charge cycles or thermal management or safety or other material properties may change the overall weight of the battery for any particular performance characteristics.

In the end, the performance of the entire battery is what matters, and lithium’s head start in less weight per cation may one day be overcome if the overall materials involved can be lighter in some as-yet commercialized sodium ion chemistry.

Land mammals seem to converge into anteaters

Hold on, let’s give it some time to see if sea mammals will, too.

You got it all wrong.

An American oil company is going to have absurd windfall profits this year, because the global price for oil has skyrocketed while American production hasn’t gone down at all. So that CEO is warning everyone that he’s gonna have an extraordinarily large bonus this year.

I think you’re mixing things up, where you assume that the past is part of an inevitable exponential growth in our future.

There are two exponential curves happening, neither of which is inevitably going to continue:

1. Global human population growth has historically been exponential across many periods of history. There are signs that this is slowing down and might reach a period of zero or negative growth, almost purely off of social changes.
2. Per capital consumption of resources has been growing exponentially since the industrial revolution. But when you dig in, that’s largely only true of certain resources, and some rich populations have reversed growth for certain resources (coal in the West, beef in the United States). This is where the fight is, and where we can work to reverse the trendline for fossil fuels generally.

Humanity doubled each 43±6 years

From this source , that really has only happened twice (48 years from 2b to 4b, and then 47 years from 4b to 8b). Before that, it was much slower (about 120 years from 1b to 2b). And might not happen again, where I doubt the world will ever see 16 billion living people on the planet, and where projections for 50 years from now are around 10 billion, with a peak and decline shortly after that.

The main work that needs to be done is on stopping the exponential growth in consumption of physical resources per capita, or the exponential growth in environmental damage per capita. And we’re working on it: recycling loops of our raw materials like steel or lithium batteries or glass or copper, pursuing zero emissions energy sources, switching certain land use and ocean extraction to be sustainable indefinitely. There’s a lot more to do, and we haven’t been successful on every front, but the fight is winnable and losing isn’t inevitable.