Links for 2012-04-26

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Well, here it is: Why am I showing you this? Mostly because its rather striking, partly because it forms part of the things Piketty got wrong thread, but mostly for the relevance to the "infinite growth on a finite planet" type argument. Many people will tell you that infinite "growth" on a finite…
Back in late July, I got email from a writer for Physics World magazine (which is sort of the UK equivalent of Physics Today), asking my opinion on a few questions relating to particle physics funding. The basis for asking me (as opposed to, you know, a particle physicist) was presumably a post…
I really liked Asher Miller's HuffPo article on an assessment of clean energy's scalability by three mostly conservative think-tanks. There are so many analyses done out there that simply work from the assumption that magic technology fairies will erase time and depletion and make it possible for…
Part two of our crackpot's babblings are actually more interesting in their way, because they touch on a fascinating mathematical issue, which, unfortunately, Mr. Brookfield is compeletely unable to understand: the Poincare recurrence theorem. Brookfield argues that the second law of…

That article on exponential growth was amusing, mainly because the author doesn't get the point that energy consumption will have to level off. But then I first heard this point made by Al Bartlett (U of Colorado) over three decades ago. The original article by the physicist was quite good.

[That the graph suggests energy use might have already started to level off in the US is rather interesting and thought provoking.]

By CCPhysicist (not verified) on 27 Apr 2012 #permalink