Hot, crowded, and running out of fuel: Earth of 2050 a scary place

When someone suggests energy, fuel, fresh water are in danger of "running out", you should ask them to sketch what they think the supply curve is for those resources. They have something in common: a horizontal asymptote. With energy, it's a virtually inifinite supply at a price somewhere between 1-2x coal (nuclear fission) to a conservative 4-8x (solar) -- this for existing technology, today. For water, such an asymptote is desalination cost somewhere around 1-2x treated tap water. Similar stories for fuel -- EVs are one asymptote. In the left corner there's a short slope with a cheap, very limited resource (coal, petroleum, groundwater); then at a slightly higher price you have an infinite supply. I interpret this as saying, in the <i>worst case</i>, developed countries' crisis amounts to trivial negative economic adjustements ("trivial" compared to, e.g. everything else that happens through 2050...); and in the <i>expected case</i>, pretty unremarkable technology gains combine with massive economic growth give you far more, for far less. (The "optimistic" case is singularitarian...)

Completely wrong:<p><i>The 80-percent increase predicted by 2050 translates to a total global energy consumption of 900 exajoules (EJ) per year (in other words 9 x 10^20 joules)—65 times the annual energy consumption of the US in 2009.</i><p>2008 primary energy consumption was about 100 quads [a] [1] in the US (~100 EJ), compared to 500 quads [1] for the world (or, ~20%). 900 EJ/year would be around 9 times the current US energy intensity.<p>I'm pretty sure about the etiology of this error: (1/65th) of 900 EJ/year is the US electricity intensity, about 4,000 TWh(elec.)/year [2]. They're mixing different energy statistics (apples &#38; oranges). Primary energy measures the heat energy of the fuel input in power generation, not the output (e.g. 3 joules coal =&#62; 1 joule electricity; primary energy is the 3 J). It also measures non-electricity energy uses (like oil for fuel or natural gas for heat), which put together are even bigger than power generation [3].<p>[a] (a "quad" is short for "quadrillion btu [british thermal unit]", which coincidentally is about the same as 1 exajoule)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm" rel="nofollow">http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1" rel="nofollow">http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/</a>

I want to live next door to a Thorium power plant. I'd be perfectly safe because I know that it would just decompress and stop fissioning, but the land prices would be amazing. And while everyone else is dying and other nonsense I'd have electricity to last me a millennium.<p>I easily see us using thorium powered desalination plants. Or my favorite, drop a giant turbine in the gulf stream and use that to power the East Coast + desalinate water to sell as a commodity.

In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus predicted food shortages as population grows geometrically and food arithmetically. but here we are today with plenty of food :) in fact we have so much more that it causes us health problems...<p>I think these predictions overlook technological advancements just like Malthus did.

Energy and water consumption projections seem to just take current per capita consumption rates and raise them against projected population growth. Then they ask the question of "how will energy producers cope with these demands?" and start guessing at which technology will swoop in to save the day. But that doesn't appear to be how things work in the world.<p>I imagine a lot of us on HN live in a world where you can blast your AC all day and leave all your faucets running with no repercussions beyond a cheap marginal bill.<p>Isn't it more likely that we'll encounter the economics of scarcity and an adaptive market instead of one day turning on our faucet and nothing comes out because, dang, we've run out?<p>I hear stories of parts of America fighting over water access, but aren't they really just fighting over a supply that still lets people run their faucets all day?<p>Perhaps, as the water supply becomes more and more jeopardized, it will stop being practically free. Like every other market in the world, its price will reflect and dictate nominal availability. And the introduction of new technologies will come, like most markets, when the price of water/energy hits a tipping point. In other words, if we start running out of fossil fuels, won't that just jack up the price until alternatives become cheaper? And the higher price of energy will mean we may have to be more deliberate about saving energy, for once?

That's a little more than the UN medium estimate of world population, but the absolute number of people doesn't seem like a huge problem. That's only 30% more than today. We have plenty of coal to get at least the electricity, and although oil might be a problem, I imagine that we can substantially reduce our consumption of that if governments get serious about pricing in externalities.<p>The global warming aspect is very concerning though.

Why Earth 2050 is going to be an awesome place:<p>1) Hot: shoot a tiny amount of sulfur dioxide into the arctic atmosphere, planet cools. See also #3.<p>2) Crowded: current upward global health trends will halt population growth naturally, and more people isn't necessarily bad anyway. Malthus was wrong to just consider resource consumption and ignore the benefits people provide to society. When you only have 100 people, they all have to look for food full time. When you have 7 billion, you get to siphon some off as scientific researchers and medical professionals, who pay back to others far more than they eat. (Lowly gas station attendants likely pay back more value than the raw resource cost it takes to sustain them too, but let's start with the low hanging fruit...)<p>3) Fuel: Solar's price is halving exponentially. 3b) Water: We're not really running out of low salinity water; we couldn't drain any of the world's large lakes if we tried. It's just a purification or transport issue. Limitless energy solves both.<p>Most importantly: technology is going to be so cool!<p>Heralds of optimism / references:<p>1) Caldeira.* <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-07/ff_geoengineering?currentPage=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-07/ff_g...</a><p>2) Rosling. <a href="http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth...</a><p>3) Kurzweil. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbOyw3CT6A" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbOyw3CT6A</a> 3b) Kamen. <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/colbert-and-kam/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/colbert-and-kam/</a><p>* Caveat, Caldeira doesn't advocate the sulfur dioxide solution as a first stop for combating global warming, his research just confirms it would be worth using as a backstop.

Are there any interesting advances in desalination technology on the horizon? Access to fresh water is already a critical health issue and it will become more challenging with population growth and global warming.

I checked the other commments here before looking for the full report "OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction"<p><a href="http://www.oecd.org/document/11/0,3746,en_2649_37465_49036555_1_1_1_37465,00.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.oecd.org/document/11/0,3746,en_2649_37465_4903655...</a><p>by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Executive Summary of the report<p><a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/oecd-environmental-outlook-to-2050/executive-summary_env_outlook-2012-3-en" rel="nofollow">http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/oecd-environmental-...</a><p>sums up the future challenges: "Over the last four decades, human endeavour has unleashed unprecedented economic growth in the pursuit of higher living standards. While the world’s population has increased by over 3 billion people since 1970, the size of the world economy has more than tripled. While this growth has pulled millions out of poverty, it has been unevenly distributed and incurred significant cost to the environment. Natural assets have been and continue to be depleted, with the services they deliver already compromised by environmental pollution. Providing for a further 2 billion people by 2050 and improving the living standards for all will challenge our ability to manage and restore those natural assets on which all life depends. Failure to do so will have serious consequences, especially for the poor, and ultimately undermine the growth and human development of future generations." In other words, a disastrous future is not a certainty, but a risk, and planning to minimize the risk is worthwhile. The long-term human trend, meanwhile, has been improving living conditions for people all over the world, ever since the ideas of science and personal freedom and democratic limited government have spread around the world.<p><a href="http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/readers-digest.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/readers-digest.aspx</a><p>AFTER EDIT: Do any of you remember reading the book The Population Bomb (1968) by Paul Ehrlich in your youth? I was amazed last week to discover a friend a bit younger than I am (born in the 1960s, a few years before the book was published) had never heard of the book. I've been seeing gloom-and-doom predictions for my whole life, and so far there is still a lot of petroleum, lifespans are going up and health is improving all over the world except in pathological countries like Russia, and most of the disasters predicted during my youth have failed to occur.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Predictions" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Predictions</a>

Let's quickly hit the three points they covered, and one they didn't.<p>1) Hot. Current models predict that 2050 will be warmer, but not much warmer. I believe the current best guess is around 2 degrees C by 2050, which it certainly noticeable, but perhaps not best summed up as "hot". (For people not following this subject, physical observations have produced lower amounts of warming than the models expected; as a result the estimate of the climates sensitivity to CO2 has been revised downward.) Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that global warming is not real, and a big problem. But according to the IPCC models, it's also a very very <i>slooooow</i> problem. We shouldn't be complacent, but it's probably counter-productive to panic.<p>2) Crowded. Well, not really. We're talking about an overall increase of 1/3, which sounds a lot but keep in mind that this is just about as crowded as the world is ever projected to get. Further, the linked report says this will happen mostly via the less-crowded places getting more crowded, not increased crowding in the megacities. That's not so bad, really. I LIKE big cities, personally.<p>3) Running out of fuel. Again, this comes with a big caveat. We're suddenly finding huge amounts of fossil fuels - mostly gas, but also oil. (Or rather, we're figuring out ways of accessing the ones we already knew about. Remember that "reserves" are fossil fuels which are known, proven, economical to extract, and - in the US - legal to get to. A small rise in oil prices or - in the US - a change in law can lead to "reserves" multiplying without a single new survey.) We're really not going to "run out of fuel" by 2050, or even get close. Fuel may be significantly more expensive because what's left is hard to dig up, or we might decide to simply not dig some of it up (in order to fight global warming), but there's more than enough for the next few decades. And yes, that includes projections of increased Chinese consumption.<p>4) Richer. One of the reasons 2050 looks so hot, crowded, and out of fuel is because we have 38 years for small growth rates to compound. Small temperature changes can add up - but so does growth. We generally expect productivity to increase by at least 2% per year. If that continues then by 2050 we'll all be a little over twice as rich as we are now. True, it's not certain those trends will continue until 2050, but the same could be said of the first three trends too, and productivity growth looks like at least as good a bet to me.<p>In short, the world of 2050 looks like it'll be almost unnoticeable warmer, small cities will be more like the Bay Area or New York, fuel will be more expensive but plentiful, and we'll all be twice as rich (and with MUCH more awesome tech).<p>I'll take that deal. Got a time machine? :)<p>Edit: Water is a much more major problem, and deserves a lot more attention than it's getting. However as other commentators have pointed out, thorium reactors should allow us to just brute force it via desalination plants. Fingers crossed...

"...biofuels and renewable energy sources are all projected to increase steadily."<p>That was the only happy thought I took away from that article. At some point the world will just run out of fossil fuels. Regardless of which side of the fence you're on regarding global warming one thing is for certain, we need new forms of energy.

To think that the water I'm gonna drink today is the exact same water that soils, plants, animals have been drinking since the beginning of time, makes me feel connected...to dinosaurs! Our problem has never been quantity but recycling rate, and not realizing we are all in the same boat.

That article is like a giant danger sign saying, we should be putting our energy towards improving that 2050 picture.<p>At that point my kids will be a bit older than I am now, and considering the future for their own kids. How the hell will that feel, can you imagine??<p>This picture is also optimistic in that it seems to assume there was no massive war or plague.<p>What are we <i>doing</i>, if we arent focused on improving that bleak vision?

We'll just have to make a few adjustments (like shifting power generation to individual houses using solar, wind and other methods that will undoubtedly be affordable by then, if only because oil will be pretty expensive).<p>Myself, I'd like to build a house (out of containers, maybe) somewhere near a mountain, powered by wind+solar, with a satellite or long range WiFi connection to the Internet (aka the rest of the world). I'd be happy to retire this way, hiking in the summer and snowboarding during winter :-), growing food (including farm animals) on a patch of land and a hydroponic farm...<p>Also, make the images here your wallpapers - there's enough space and energy for everyone, even in 2050: <a href="http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127" rel="nofollow">http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127</a>

Context which I never see addressed: <a href="http://donath.org/Photos/TempChange.PNG" rel="nofollow">http://donath.org/Photos/TempChange.PNG</a>

The future will be nothing like the past.

From the article:<p>&#62; It predicts a world population of 9.2 billion people, generating a global GDP four times the size of today's<p>Global domestic product is currently $63T. 2050 GDP = 4 * $63 = $252T.<p>Current per capita GDP = $63 trillion divided by 6.8 billion = $9,264.70588<p>2050 per capita GDP = $252 trillion divided by 9.2 billion = $27,391.3043<p>So basically everyone will be 3 times richer, at a cost of "80% more energy" (less than 2 times the energy), which means energy efficiency will increase <i>dramatically</i>, probably due to the fact that we'll harness more solar and geo energy, which is delivered from the giant nuclear furnace in the sky, aka our sun.

"based on current global trends"<p>Interesting bit of science fiction, but current trends never continue like that.