Michio Kaku is a physicist who by now has made a number of notable claims to fame, based on popularizations such as his book 'Hyperspace', as well as appearing on assorted network interviews the past few years in association with events such as the BP oil disaster, and the Japanese tsunami and its impact on Fukuyama nuclear plants.
Anyway, in a weekend Wall Street Journal interview (p. A11, March 10-11) Kaku delivers a number of stirring prophecies - for lack of a better term- that boggle the mind. One such prediction: we will have computer chips in everything, from clothing, to furniture, to cars to most appliances .....even pets. The word "computer" will actually become defunct because so much stuff will have computer chips it will no longer be necessary to discriminate one unique object that computes from all else. (Even "DNA chips" will be inside our toilet which can instantly analyze stools and urine to let us know if cancer is lurking.)
The technological power moreover will be so vast by the year 2100, that our grand kids will seem to us like "Greek gods". Almost everyone will also have hand held devices that can translate any language in seconds. One imagines Kaku also foresees stupendous advances in physics, biology, chemistry etc. but he doesn't specify many beyond perhaps discovering the Higgs boson using the current large hadron collider. Perhaps the years of budget cuts have tempered his expectations in the pure science sphere.
(My own take is that if there's one defined advance that we need to achieve, it's being able to knock out or divert a large planet-killing asteroid from impacting the Earth - such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. I don't necessarily expect colonies on Mars, but I do expect this - if we plan to remain on this world, and not spread ourselves outward.)
Anyway, how realistic are Kaku's ideas? That depends on what you know (or don't know) and how well you understand the extent to which abundant, cheap and useful energy underlies the sort of advances he prognosticates. What we know is that large quantities of energy (and water) are required to manufacture computer chips to an acceptable level of quality - and we are rapidly running short of both cheap, useful energy and water.
Let's take water first. In ‘The State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it is noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025. As they note (p. 47):
"When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”
As it is, most nations in the 3rd world are now in this predicament or soon will be by the year 2020. It's particularly bad in the most rapidly growing nations of sub-Sahara Africa. Climate change -global warming has definitely played a role ...as it continues to do so in the U.S. (Mainly in the West and Southwest).
The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.
In terms of energy, and what exactly the source is that provides for the manufacture of all our computer chips now - that's easy! It's OIL! The planet was endowed originally with ~ 3,000 billion barrels of oil – of which we’ve consumed one third and another one sixth of relatively cheap oil remains after Peak Oil - which occurred in 2005. It is true that there's about another third of “break-even” oil (costs as much to access as it delivers), after which one -sixth of very expensive oil remains (costs much more to reach it than it deliver in energy - say like deep sea deposits which will effectively take 3 gals consumed for each gallon produced).
At the heart of these considerations is the net energy (cf. Weisz, in Physics Today, July, 2004, p. 51)
Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]
In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0
Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it.
For the last 700 billion barrels,
Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q
since the rate of energy production (Q (PR)) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” T.
This is why oil shale and natural gas drilling, fracking are wastes of time and energy - because they do not deliver NET energy value, they deliver lost energy quotas that multiply over time. Think about it: If it takes 1.01 gallons of cheap, high EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) oil to produce 1.0 gallon of low EROEI shale oil, then you are sacrificing your most useful energy for less useful. You are, as we would say in Barbados, "batting on a losing wicket". The reason the oil shale humpers and their ilk can make their bald claims is that no one ever calls them out on the TOTAL energy costs used for extraction (including the energy costs to make the equipment that extracts), including transport!
Moreover, this is a game that can go on only so long, before the losses exceed the benefits and drive producers away! This is exactly what's occurred already in many oil shale drilling and gas fracking states as the market costs of those commodities have plunged in relation to the costs of their production. Well, why is this? It's because the REAL market costs are too low because they're put in competition with the remaining stores of high EROEI oil rather than the actual energy costs to produce them! If the latter were used, the oil from shale would be 2-3x the regular oil costs.
“Peak Oil’ is somewhat misleading a term, since it suggests a specific date of peak production (e.g. 2005). In more practical terms – what it means is that if 2005 was the year of global peak oil production then the worldwide oil production in 2025 will be the SAME as in 1980 demanding that Q(net) > 0. Also, it means that 2040 will be the same as 1965, and 2060 will be the same as 1945, and 2100 will be the same as 1905! All this while the population is expected to reach 9 billion or more in the SAME PERIOD!
In effect, the total available and accessible energy density (marked by the source with the biggest 'bang for the buck', e.g. oil) is continually decreasing. Thus, Kaku's projections of the "Greek god" status for kids living in 2100 are predicated on energy stores barely equal to the oil we had available in 1905 and could actually get out of the ground then. Precisely for this reason, one will really have a vast energy-unsupportable population, that may well add up to 10 billion or more!
That is, nearly 10-11 billion people exist as net energy sinks not sources, and based on this no civilization can survive. What one gets then is not some utopia like Michio Kaku envisages, but the nightmare world of "Panem" the horrific nation depicted in the 'Hunger Games' in which the population must be endlessly culled by bloodsport games and people exist perpetually on the margins of hunger and disease. How can it be otherwise? The reason the utopians' nonsense usually prevails is first, most Americans are diehard, unchecked optimists at heart, and second, most of the utopians (or unabashed optimists) have never processed fully the concept of net energy! Which is why I always suggest blog readers avail themselves of the site:
http://www.dieoff.org/
and pay attention to the links at the right, going through them in the order shown.
What about developing solar, geothermal, wind or all together to replace fossil-fuel based energy and allow us to make our endless computer chips? Valiant thought, but it crashes and burns. The fact is neither solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, methyl hydrates or anything else can save us (since they lack the requisite energy density) unless we ALSO cut global population down to 2 billion or less. We cannot keep gobbling finite energy stores at the rate we are (increasing the "gobble rate" by 1-2% per year) as we increase the number of "gobblers" too!
A reality check appears in The Physicist's Desk Reference, in the section on 'Energy Supply', there is a table (C., p. 187) for future projections of energy supply. The information is divided into categories of energy for categories of energy demand (I, II, III, IV) where I is 'very aggressive', II is 'aggressive, III is 'moderate', IV is 'unchanged' . The only double-digit exajoule energy source contributors for IV are: oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear. Oil shale is at 1/10 of nuclear and, solar is at 2/3 of oil shale .
In terms of Kaku's world in 2100, the reality of the U.S. of A. will actually be more in tune with the "Panem" depicted in Suzanne Collins' dystopic tale, than any kind of utopian, fairy vision with every citizen instantly blinking eyes to compute on a global network and living endlessly via "synthetic organs".
What about technology itself, might that not usher in Kaku's glorious world and spare us from a 2100 version of "Panem"? After all, maybe technology or some hitherto unthought of device or series of them will make energy access more efficient or abundant?
According to energy specialist Matt Savinar (Life after the Oil Crash, p. 33):
"The idea that technologically derived increases in energy efficiency will solve this for us is fundamentally flawed: technology uses energy; it doesn’t produce it. Here in the 21st century, we have a shortage of energy, not technology. The shortage of energy was caused primarily by the introduction of new technologies such as the internal combustion engine. The shortage is therefore unlikely to be solved by the introduction of even more technology.
More technology will simply allow us to use more energy, which will make us more dependent on technology, which will make us more dependent on energy. As the supply of energy dwindles, the technology on which we have become dependent will no longer function To illustrate: what do you think would happen if the average fuel efficiency of every vehicle on the road today was magically raised to 200 miles per gallon?
It doesn’t take a psychic to accurately predict how we would react to this “miracle.” We would continue to build our homes farther and farther away from our jobs and grow our food farther and farther away from our stores. In other words, we would increase our dependency on cheap energy. This would temporarily delay the crisis while reinforcing the underlying problem, which is a dual dependence on cheap energy and high technology. The more dependent we are on cheap energy when the day of reckoning arrives, the more painful it is going to be, the more people are going to die, and the longer it will take us to recover from the aftermath.
Consequently, increases in fuel efficiency and technology are more likely to make our situation worse, not better."
The bottom line here is that in all Kaku's marvelous visions, the one down factor he didn't correct for is the increasing global population, which is not only an endless drain on finite resources but an incessant source of global pollution. This increasing population consumes billions of hectares of potable water each year even as it pollutes an equal amount in its industrial processes. It also gobbles up non-renewable sources of cheaper and efficient modes of energy such as oil, even as it increases demand on the same stores by never-ending increase in human numbers.
This is a math game that simply can't work, and if Kaku really wants to see the world he envisions, he needs to show us how to pare human numbers down to no more than two billion - without invoking any horrific scenarios like novel viruses for which there is no immunity or antibiotics ceasing effectiveness.
Anyway, in a weekend Wall Street Journal interview (p. A11, March 10-11) Kaku delivers a number of stirring prophecies - for lack of a better term- that boggle the mind. One such prediction: we will have computer chips in everything, from clothing, to furniture, to cars to most appliances .....even pets. The word "computer" will actually become defunct because so much stuff will have computer chips it will no longer be necessary to discriminate one unique object that computes from all else. (Even "DNA chips" will be inside our toilet which can instantly analyze stools and urine to let us know if cancer is lurking.)
The technological power moreover will be so vast by the year 2100, that our grand kids will seem to us like "Greek gods". Almost everyone will also have hand held devices that can translate any language in seconds. One imagines Kaku also foresees stupendous advances in physics, biology, chemistry etc. but he doesn't specify many beyond perhaps discovering the Higgs boson using the current large hadron collider. Perhaps the years of budget cuts have tempered his expectations in the pure science sphere.
(My own take is that if there's one defined advance that we need to achieve, it's being able to knock out or divert a large planet-killing asteroid from impacting the Earth - such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. I don't necessarily expect colonies on Mars, but I do expect this - if we plan to remain on this world, and not spread ourselves outward.)
Anyway, how realistic are Kaku's ideas? That depends on what you know (or don't know) and how well you understand the extent to which abundant, cheap and useful energy underlies the sort of advances he prognosticates. What we know is that large quantities of energy (and water) are required to manufacture computer chips to an acceptable level of quality - and we are rapidly running short of both cheap, useful energy and water.
Let's take water first. In ‘The State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it is noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025. As they note (p. 47):
"When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”
As it is, most nations in the 3rd world are now in this predicament or soon will be by the year 2020. It's particularly bad in the most rapidly growing nations of sub-Sahara Africa. Climate change -global warming has definitely played a role ...as it continues to do so in the U.S. (Mainly in the West and Southwest).
The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.
In terms of energy, and what exactly the source is that provides for the manufacture of all our computer chips now - that's easy! It's OIL! The planet was endowed originally with ~ 3,000 billion barrels of oil – of which we’ve consumed one third and another one sixth of relatively cheap oil remains after Peak Oil - which occurred in 2005. It is true that there's about another third of “break-even” oil (costs as much to access as it delivers), after which one -sixth of very expensive oil remains (costs much more to reach it than it deliver in energy - say like deep sea deposits which will effectively take 3 gals consumed for each gallon produced).
At the heart of these considerations is the net energy (cf. Weisz, in Physics Today, July, 2004, p. 51)
Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]
In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0
Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it.
For the last 700 billion barrels,
Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q
since the rate of energy production (Q (PR)) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” T.
This is why oil shale and natural gas drilling, fracking are wastes of time and energy - because they do not deliver NET energy value, they deliver lost energy quotas that multiply over time. Think about it: If it takes 1.01 gallons of cheap, high EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) oil to produce 1.0 gallon of low EROEI shale oil, then you are sacrificing your most useful energy for less useful. You are, as we would say in Barbados, "batting on a losing wicket". The reason the oil shale humpers and their ilk can make their bald claims is that no one ever calls them out on the TOTAL energy costs used for extraction (including the energy costs to make the equipment that extracts), including transport!
Moreover, this is a game that can go on only so long, before the losses exceed the benefits and drive producers away! This is exactly what's occurred already in many oil shale drilling and gas fracking states as the market costs of those commodities have plunged in relation to the costs of their production. Well, why is this? It's because the REAL market costs are too low because they're put in competition with the remaining stores of high EROEI oil rather than the actual energy costs to produce them! If the latter were used, the oil from shale would be 2-3x the regular oil costs.
“Peak Oil’ is somewhat misleading a term, since it suggests a specific date of peak production (e.g. 2005). In more practical terms – what it means is that if 2005 was the year of global peak oil production then the worldwide oil production in 2025 will be the SAME as in 1980 demanding that Q(net) > 0. Also, it means that 2040 will be the same as 1965, and 2060 will be the same as 1945, and 2100 will be the same as 1905! All this while the population is expected to reach 9 billion or more in the SAME PERIOD!
In effect, the total available and accessible energy density (marked by the source with the biggest 'bang for the buck', e.g. oil) is continually decreasing. Thus, Kaku's projections of the "Greek god" status for kids living in 2100 are predicated on energy stores barely equal to the oil we had available in 1905 and could actually get out of the ground then. Precisely for this reason, one will really have a vast energy-unsupportable population, that may well add up to 10 billion or more!
That is, nearly 10-11 billion people exist as net energy sinks not sources, and based on this no civilization can survive. What one gets then is not some utopia like Michio Kaku envisages, but the nightmare world of "Panem" the horrific nation depicted in the 'Hunger Games' in which the population must be endlessly culled by bloodsport games and people exist perpetually on the margins of hunger and disease. How can it be otherwise? The reason the utopians' nonsense usually prevails is first, most Americans are diehard, unchecked optimists at heart, and second, most of the utopians (or unabashed optimists) have never processed fully the concept of net energy! Which is why I always suggest blog readers avail themselves of the site:
http://www.dieoff.org/
and pay attention to the links at the right, going through them in the order shown.
What about developing solar, geothermal, wind or all together to replace fossil-fuel based energy and allow us to make our endless computer chips? Valiant thought, but it crashes and burns. The fact is neither solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, methyl hydrates or anything else can save us (since they lack the requisite energy density) unless we ALSO cut global population down to 2 billion or less. We cannot keep gobbling finite energy stores at the rate we are (increasing the "gobble rate" by 1-2% per year) as we increase the number of "gobblers" too!
A reality check appears in The Physicist's Desk Reference, in the section on 'Energy Supply', there is a table (C., p. 187) for future projections of energy supply. The information is divided into categories of energy for categories of energy demand (I, II, III, IV) where I is 'very aggressive', II is 'aggressive, III is 'moderate', IV is 'unchanged' . The only double-digit exajoule energy source contributors for IV are: oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear. Oil shale is at 1/10 of nuclear and, solar is at 2/3 of oil shale .
In terms of Kaku's world in 2100, the reality of the U.S. of A. will actually be more in tune with the "Panem" depicted in Suzanne Collins' dystopic tale, than any kind of utopian, fairy vision with every citizen instantly blinking eyes to compute on a global network and living endlessly via "synthetic organs".
What about technology itself, might that not usher in Kaku's glorious world and spare us from a 2100 version of "Panem"? After all, maybe technology or some hitherto unthought of device or series of them will make energy access more efficient or abundant?
According to energy specialist Matt Savinar (Life after the Oil Crash, p. 33):
"The idea that technologically derived increases in energy efficiency will solve this for us is fundamentally flawed: technology uses energy; it doesn’t produce it. Here in the 21st century, we have a shortage of energy, not technology. The shortage of energy was caused primarily by the introduction of new technologies such as the internal combustion engine. The shortage is therefore unlikely to be solved by the introduction of even more technology.
More technology will simply allow us to use more energy, which will make us more dependent on technology, which will make us more dependent on energy. As the supply of energy dwindles, the technology on which we have become dependent will no longer function To illustrate: what do you think would happen if the average fuel efficiency of every vehicle on the road today was magically raised to 200 miles per gallon?
It doesn’t take a psychic to accurately predict how we would react to this “miracle.” We would continue to build our homes farther and farther away from our jobs and grow our food farther and farther away from our stores. In other words, we would increase our dependency on cheap energy. This would temporarily delay the crisis while reinforcing the underlying problem, which is a dual dependence on cheap energy and high technology. The more dependent we are on cheap energy when the day of reckoning arrives, the more painful it is going to be, the more people are going to die, and the longer it will take us to recover from the aftermath.
Consequently, increases in fuel efficiency and technology are more likely to make our situation worse, not better."
The bottom line here is that in all Kaku's marvelous visions, the one down factor he didn't correct for is the increasing global population, which is not only an endless drain on finite resources but an incessant source of global pollution. This increasing population consumes billions of hectares of potable water each year even as it pollutes an equal amount in its industrial processes. It also gobbles up non-renewable sources of cheaper and efficient modes of energy such as oil, even as it increases demand on the same stores by never-ending increase in human numbers.
This is a math game that simply can't work, and if Kaku really wants to see the world he envisions, he needs to show us how to pare human numbers down to no more than two billion - without invoking any horrific scenarios like novel viruses for which there is no immunity or antibiotics ceasing effectiveness.
4 comments:
I think it's unreasonable to expect anyone, even someone as brilliant as Kaku, to predict everything about the future perfectly. I'm assuming that the person who wrote the article you mention in the Wall Street Journal selected Kaku's most impressive and fantastic predictions.
In his book The Physics of the Future he makes a lot of predictions that seem reasonable and backed by real life examples of real technology. Some are mind boggling but others are more reasonable.
My point being that saying his future predictions are likely wrong is really a bit too generalized. Perhaps "some" in the title is more accurate?
An interesting post though, and well worth the read.
Jeremy Kaplan wrote:
"My point being that saying his future predictions are likely wrong is really a bit too generalized. Perhaps "some" in the title is more accurate?"
Of course, in the context of an entire book such as the one you cited, this is more than likely plausible.
My specific rejection of Kaku's predictions was based exclusively on the subset published in his WSJ article. To me, none of these referenced the low EROEI oil -energy in our future and hence - if these were referenced, his forecasts would have been more realistic, sober.
Thanks, btw, for noting the "interesting read".
Interesting indeed!
This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's story, "The Last Question" ( http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm ) in which he addresses the effects of entropy and an unsustainable population (over trillions of years, though).
So, true, we can only hope to harness enough energy to sustain our current population long enough to harness more energy in other means.
To me, though, Kaku's predictions of technology must also be taken into account with a multitude of other predictions as well, such as advancements in medicine, and the achievement of artificial intelligence (wherever that will take us). Savinar's idea of an ultimate decrease in energy will very possibly come true, but it remains to be seen if it is in our immediate future or not. It appears that even he doesn't try to predict when "Panem" will come about.
Thank you for the analysis!
I agree with my commenting predecessors that this was a very interesting read. I actually found your article through a google search I preformed due to my own doubts about Kaku's predicted future. I truly hope you don't mind me adding my reasons for doubting such a brilliant mind. I would also like to tip my hat to Kaku in respect and acknowledge that predicting the future is an extraordinarily difficult task.
Without further adieu, here are my issue's with Kaku's preposed future. His predictions, almost entirely, rest on the assumption that computer chips will continue decreasing in price and increasing in efficiency indefinitely at the same rate they have been. There are two problems I see with this assumption.
The more obvious and general problem with the foundation for his claims about the future is the unreliability of overextending predictions made from trending. Instead of going into detail about the fallacy that is being employed here, I'll simply point in the direction of the housing market and dutch tulips bubble bursts.
The pin that I see rearing and ready to burst this microchip advancement bubble is microchip itself. One of the main reasons the microchip has decreased in price and size so dramatically is the shift to the silicon chip. Which has gotten so small that they are running into numerous problems halting it's further miniaturization. So, until we have another leap forward in microchip design, I feel it to be dishonest to assume the microchip will continue along its path and the current rate of advancement.
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