Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Jim Burns <burns.87@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:41:10 -0400
Brian Davis wrote:
On Sep 29, 4:35 pm, Jim Burns <burns...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Will this new technology actually be more efficient? I have
to wonder.
You wonder if humans can design, from understanding first
principles, something better (in an efficiency sense) than
what has been cobbled together, warped, patched, and tinkered
with by the random process of mutation coupled with natural
selection? I'm pretty certain we can do better. The most
efficient photosynthesis I've ever found reference to is about
3% of the incident energy ends up locked in a usable form.
Meanwhile, really really simple PV arrays can manage 20% or
higher.
It seems to me that you are comparing apples and oranges
here: 3% "locked in a usable form" versus 20% as measured
at the photocell, energy out over energy in. A more useful
comparison would include the energy costs of production,
including the cost of running the humans running the factories,
the cost of turning the 3% or the 20% into food, the cost
of closing the cycle for all of the materials used,
whether silicon and dopants or CHON, and so on.
It may be that a massive re-design of the ecosystem could
be much more efficient than what we have, even when compared
on a whole-system basis, /or/ it may be that a lot of the
inefficiencies we see currently are close to inevitable
in any system that would do the same job (providing food
to 6+ billion people). /Maybe/ assuming those costs away
is like "designing" a transportation system using lots
of frictionless surfaces.
Evolution is not the best way to get an [efficient], working
design. It just happens to be the most commonly availible
one, and has a significant head start.
That significant head start is an important point. Put
your way, it sounds "unfair" to compare human designs
to natural selection. But the point is not to compare
design skill, but to compare results. Given the long
period of time that natural selection has been looking for
better solutions to the "make more living stuff" problem
(even if the search was badly done, compared to what humans
could do), there may not be any easy-to-find solutions that
haven't already been found (and then rapidly distributed
across the biome).
I was going to question whether we /needed/ a significantly
more efficient biome (in the food-out over sunlight-in sense),
given that we already have plenty of sunlight for our
forseeable food needs. (Generally what we lack is
something other than sunlight; water very often.)
I've changed my mind about that, though. "Forty acres
and a mule" used to be a promise of self-sufficiency at
one time. (At least, I think so: for ex-slaves after
the US Civil War? I may need help here.) What if
"forty acres and mule" were changed to "this patch of
sidewalk and a ten-cent nano-bot capsule"? Who, then,
on this planet could not afford to be self-sufficient?
I'd like to see that. I think that would make for very
interesting times.
And, you know? I wouldn't much care whether the over-all
system effiency was better than or even as good as
our current ecosystem.
Jim Burns
.
- References:
- What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Hardcowded
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Damien Valentine
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: James Nicoll
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Damien Valentine
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: James Nicoll
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Jim Burns
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
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- What would you do to save the environment?
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