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 . p270 [[ | ]]
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 . p273 [[ | ]]		  . much speculative ... blather? ... about distant future
  . My take "we haven't seen farther than future beings, because we haven't stood on their shoulders yet" Speculating on what they will see and do based on incomplete 21st century technology is wanking
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 . p274 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle | Landauer limit ]] ... evasion?  . p274 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle | Landauer limit ]] ... evasion if species smart enough? BS

Caleb Scharf

The Ascent of Information

2021 003.54 SCH Tigard Library

I wanted to like this book. Rather than surprising, it was prolix and sometimes inaccurate.

  • p37 planetwide rate of energy production, early 1800s 100 GW, year 2000 "in excess of a fearsome" 17 TW

    • Source https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

      • Shows US power consumption decreasing by 1% in 2019; efficiency is improving, and digital controls help with tht
    • The earth absorbs and re-emits perhaps 1 kW/m2 solar, the sun-facing disk is about 1e14 m2, so the Earth radiates perhaps P=1e17 W at a top-of-stratosphere temperature of 200K or so. Emission is proportional to T^4, the derivative ΔT/ΔP ≈ T/4P ≈ 200/4E17 = 5E-16, so the heating from the "fearsome 17TW" is 5E-16*1.7E13 = 0.0085 Kelvins.
    • The actual "fearsome" question is how the energy is created; CO₂ from carbon combustion adds perhaps 3000x long term global heating compared to the technically-useful energy produced. Nuclear would be vastly safer, especially if the fuel was decommissioned weapon fissionables intentionally adulterated with U238 or Pu240.
    • hence ... fooey

  • p37 47 GW for computation ... growing by 40% per year
    • Source: Nature 561 9/2018 163-166 doi:10.1038/d41586-01-06610-y

    • https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y

    • shows graph from Anders implying data center energy (eyeball) 670 TWh/y (76 GW) in 2020, 2980 TWh/y (340 GW) in 2030, 4.44X growth, 16% growth per year.
    • the Green Growth graph shows ICT purchased half of corporate renewable energy (2GW) in 2016.
    • HOWEVER, the last actual datapoint was 2017, so everything after that is P.O.M.A. ... Pulled Out of My Ass
    • This text quote is more accurate: "Last year’s IEA report estimated that although data-centre workloads will shoot up — tripling 2014 levels by 2020 — efficiency gains mean that their electricity demand might sneak up only by 3%"
      • 3% in 6 years is 0.5% per year, not 16%.

Here's the cited Anders article: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117

  • Figure one shows (expected) total consumer device power usage dropping from 1050 TWH/year in 2010 to 670 TWH/year in 2030, or 120 GW to 76 GW. Customers want battery life, not hand heaters.

What the graphs are actually measuring is the rapid globalization of internet access, combined with the rapid drop of energy per customer as electronic efficiency increases. Most of the world has some form of internet access in 2020; unless we train ants to use "smart" phones, we are approaching peak power, not exponential runaway.

Scharf (last edited 2025-07-15 04:45:01 by KeithLofstrom)