[antisthenes]

The reason this kind of analysis is irrelevant is that human civilization has only been exploiting oil since ~ early 1900s.

Sure, fossil fuels in the form of coal has been exploited before, but nothing on the scale of coal/gas/oil use that started after the Great Depression and ramped up to peak per capita consumption circa 1970s if memory serves.

So you always have to look at that historic period discounting that, and the massive population growth that came with it.

Tech advancements are slowing down and so is population growth.

[JumpCrisscross]

> human civilization has only been exploiting oil since ~ early 1900s.

Solar is within oil's error bars on a cost per kWh basis. Sure, there are kinks in storage and transport to work out. But the fundamental cost of energy doesn't look likely to change in the coming century.

[antisthenes]

What I meant is that oil enabled fundamentally new things like personal car transportation, plastics, space age materials and cheap and convenient gas heating.

Solar can still provide all of that, but it's not a revolution, just a substitute.

[guhidalg]

Does that cost include the externalities of how the oil actually used? I don't believe solar (+ all the other renewables) is equivalent to drilling for oil, piping it thousands of miles, refining it, then burning it somewhere. Happy to be proven wrong but this doesn't pass my smell test.

[sauwan]

>Tech advancements are slowing down

Are they? I think they've been slow for maybe the last 20 years, but it seems like the advances in things like AI and Genomics are rapidly accelerating and may lead to growth like we haven't seen in several decades...

[bigger_cheese]

I was 18 in 2003 so I can remember the tech of that era vividly.

I got my first mobile phone in 2002. Mobile phones had been around for a while but at least in Australia phone plans were very expensive and it was not really affordable for my parents to pay for a phone for me while I was in High school.

A few of my friends had phones towards the end of High School (maybe 40% of people had a phone by end of school) but mostly you would call people's land lines to get in touch with them. The most popular phone at the time was the Nokia "Brick phones" like the 3210.

My first phone was a Motorola I can't remember the model but it was absolutely privative compared to modern day phones - it had a monochrome screen, no camera or anything like that. About the only cool feature was it had was a polyphonic ringtone which was pretty advanced for the time. A Few years later (2005ish) I upgraded my handset to a "flip phone" which had color screen and a camera (but camera quality was shocking everything just a mess of pixels).

I want to say it was maybe 2007 or 2008 when I started to get data (i.e. internet) on my phone it was really slow (and expensive) but I remember looking up a train timetable on my phone and thinking it was revolutionary, having the internet in your pocket genuinely felt game changing.

I purchased a computer with money I saved up working over the summer before I started Uni. It was a Pentium 4 with a 2 ghz Clock speed. It ran Windows XP (Cheaper lower end computers at the time had Windows Millennium Edition, which was complete garbage). It had a 19 inch CRT monitor which weighed a tonne. "Flat panel" LCD screens were available but were very expensive.

ADSL internet had just started coming out in Australia, before that it was 56k dial up or cable (which was extremely expensive I only knew one person with cable internet). I used to play games like Starcraft and Diablo 2 over dial up around this time period, if my Mum picked up the phone to make a call the internet would drop out.

DVD's were relatively new technology. I got the Collectors Edition DVD of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift, it is still one of my prized possessions.

If my 18 year old self was to look around my home today he would be in awe of how much the technology has changed.

[awb]

> I think they've been slow for maybe the last 20 years

Really? 20 years is the difference between a generation being raised pre/post:

* smart phones

* streaming services (endless free content)

* massive computing storage / processing upgrades

* mass adoption of eCommerce

* video calling

* ubiquitous social networking

* EVs

* mRNA vaccines

* Mars exploration

* LHC

* 3D printing

It amazes me to look back at 2003 and see how far we’ve come.

[ClumsyPilot]

Between 1940s to 1980s we went from a disconnected world to spaceflight, moon landings and global commercial aviation. Radar was invented, the atom was split, nuclear weapons shook the world. Television appeared

What have you got to place against that, smartphones? Streaming, seruously?

[awb]

40s-80s is a 40y gap vs. 02-23 is a 20y gap.

The last 20 years have been more revolutionary from a digital / social / information perspective. A person in a remote village in a foreign country can now use StarLink to access the world’s information on Wikipedia. They can learn any new skill on YouTube. And they can work for a large US tech company via Slack / Skype, or open up a small business on Shopify and accept money instantly in any currency. Translation across any two languages can be done instantly via smartphone. It’s transforming cultures, countries and the global marketplace.

It doesn’t have the visual of a moon landing, but it’s still incredible and has more practical implications for a larger number of people.

I don’t think we’ll really start to see how massive the impact is until another 20 years when we look back and see the ripple effects of this digital connection we’re creating throughout the world.

[nostromo]

Compare 1940 to 1960, 1960 to 1980, 1980 to 2000 -- then compare 2000 to 2020.

2000 to 2020 is the least impressive 20 year period by a long shot.

[icedchai]

I would agree. 2000-2020 feels more evolutionary, not revolutionary. I grew up in the 80's and 90's, so perhaps my own perspective is warped.

[kgwgk]

> massive computing storage / processing upgrades

I feel that the improvement in the previous 20 years was much more massive.

Forty years ago PCs had been introduced quite recently and an internal disk was still a non-standard option.

Ditto for “smart phones”. Forty years ago 1G telephony was not yet available in the US, nevermind how dumb and bulky those phones were.

[bumby]

Some of these are really just older tech advancements that have become more mainstream. E.g., Mars exploration is older than 20 years, 3D printing took off in part when decades old patents expired, rna vaccines date back 30+ years etc. etc.

[cmrdporcupine]

Sure, but it begs the question what happens when fossil fuel exploitation inevitably is curtailed drastically; either early by necessity because of reasonable legislation, or a bit later because of a stronger ecological collapse or depletion.

Solar, wind, or whatever Future Tech is unlikely to have the same direct mine->refine->commodity->sell->use cycle on which a lot of this edifice is built.

This could be quite relevant for current generations before they retire, but even more so for my children's generation.

You can already see the political fallout with various ugly regimes in various petro-states starting to panic. Wait until people's 401Ks start to explode.

[ant6n]

> Solar, wind, or whatever Future Tech is unlikely to have the same direct mine->refine->commodity->sell->use cycle on which a lot of this edifice is built

What’s that mean? Solar is providing energy at similar costs.

[cmrdporcupine]

It's providing energy with fewer intermediaries soaking up profits along the way, and can be done "anywhere" the sun shines instead of where resource deposits are concentrated. Entire political classes will be (and are) mobilized to push against this. There is a lot to lose for a lot of people.

That and a huge % of the stock market's value right now is built up of energy companies. Especially here in Canada.

[ant6n]

So we’ll spread out energy production to more smaller actors, and it will be more interesting how energy is used. That could rejuvenate markets, let old fossil giants die.

Trudeau should rejoin the Paris Accords and move to the secondary and tertiary sectors (or as Mulcair put, get rid of Dutch Disease), or Canada (and everybody else) will be fucked.

[cmrdporcupine]

Perhaps you're misreading me as thinking the collapse of fossil fuel energy sector would be a bad thing? It wouldn't be, in the bigger picture.

But there's still boatloads of people over-invested in it who are going to be in for a rude awakening if humanity actually gets its shit together.

[eatsyourtacos]

>Wait until people's 401Ks start to explode

Maybe we shouldn't have moved to such a completely moronic system them which shifts all the risk to the individual and just "hope" they magically make money on something they have no control over.

It all works until it doesn't.

[astrange]

We didn't, we have Social Security. You don't have to contribute to a 401k. And you can keep it all in a money market fund if you want; it'll still be tax advantaged.

[cmrdporcupine]

Sure, I completely agree with you. No argument there.