That drive from Albany to Cooperstown is progressively more depressing first as small dairy was destroyed by deregulation and later as agricultural policy put everyone out of business unless you grow corn or flowers or farm tourism.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/arable-l...
They didn't mention it because it's impractically high right now. As an experiment this is interesting but it's nowhere near cost effective yet.
Anyone ran the numbers on how long uranium would last running sun-less agriculture for a few billion people?
When fusion arrives in the next 40 years: "Lithium from sea water would last 60 million years, however, and a more complicated fusion process using only deuterium would have fuel for 150 billion years." [calculated at 1995 global power output]
One thing people don't get is we only need a tiny fraction of net positive output due to the insanely large amount of fuel available to us. 2-3% positive output is all we're talking about and it'll be able to economically replace most other energy sources (though it will take time to ramp up of course.)
Basically it's just a matter of time and continued advances in material sciences. Purity of materials and perfection of manufacturing are the primary barriers. Operational consistency a secondary one (and continued improvement in microcontroller tech and data analysis/AI/etc. will help here.)
One example, in focus fusion, the current progress has definitely been incremental but basically every step of the way the progress has been hindered by exactly the same problem: the materials and apparatus have to be nearly perfect to increase plasma duration sufficiently; to avoid contamination of the self-sustaining plasmoid. And indeed, the progress on that end has been continuous. Once it's proven it will be a matter of perfecting the manufacturing process and automations/etc. to ensure that degree of material quality and device engineering and voila we'll have cheap scalable power.
Based on what I've been watching for the last 15 years, I think within 40 years is quite reasonable. In fact, I think it would not be a surprised to see consistent 0.5% net positive or better in the next 5-10 years, whether it is focus fusion or tokamak or whatever.
TL;DR: Fusion is a 100% sound energy generation avenue that is simply waiting for its "welding" moment. By which I refer to the point where gas production became suddenly economically viable due to the invention of welding (which was motivated at least partly by the desire to improve gasoline production.)
Right now human civilization is running off something like 18TW of energy.
If you add in 2000 kilocalories per day for 7.8 billion people, you add another 750 GW; if you add in a factor of 10 for biological & technological inefficiencies on actually turning electricity into edible calories, you're up to 7.5TW.
As long as you don't throw another factor of 10 on top of that -- imagine growing all food indoors, and then feeding it to cows, before subsisting entirely on beef -- you're probably looking at an amount of energy comparable to that used by humans currently.
Obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense to just switch over to indoor agriculture when there's free sunlight outside, but if we were to do so, the energy demands are probably on a scale comparable to what we're working with already.
So you're probably only halving or so the runway of available uranium.
What about recycling for wind/solar?
Edit: Got the dates wrong.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
Sure, this can be used used land not suitable for agriculture. I only see this really being helpful in cities that have old industrial buildings that are sitting vacant (reuse existing infrastructure and reduce transportation).
I think you're arguing too strongly from reductionist economic theories. I already am willing to pay significantly higher prices for brie over US cheese blocks, and I pay over the odds for tomatoes I like.
In Food economics, competition is not solely driven by price basically.
For example, why is organic farming not the predominant method?
The first comment on the articles page was addressing some of that impact.
Does it feed insects and birds and support biodiversity? Does it sequester carbon in the soil, making below-ground life healthy, increasing access of plants to nutrients, and hence produce healthier food? Does it help water infiltrate into the ground, this replenishing ground water and aquifers? Does convert sunlight into latent heat via plant transpiration, and thus support the Small Water Cycles that cool the surface of the earth and convey water (via rain) downwind to drier land? Does it engage the senses with beautiful sights and smells? Does it engage humans in an honest day's work, making them proud contributors to society?
To maximize the efficiency for indoor farming, you have to install these systems in the most arid or hostile locations where nothing has been grown before. For example, California or pacific north west doesn’t need this.
We can do better with crop rotation and crop diversity in most parts of the world where we grow food and it can be done in an environmentally friendly way.
Your fear is a century late. Really, all of civilized history late. The very clear trend of civilization is loss of agricultural jobs.
An observation from the article also could be answered: what areal space is required to generate the power?
Neither of these are meant to be thunderclap proof-it-fails critique, they're just interesting.
In food miles, freshness and lack of need for water, fertiliser and pesticides its winning hands down for feeding its urban population surrounding it. Repurposed brownfield site, existing buildings would also reduce impact.
I fear a loss of jobs and richness in ag. Supporting towns. Jobs are empowering, even crap ag. jobs but a reality here is that farming is overwhelmingly industrialised and jobs are either kept in the family or massively exploitative piece rate so this isn't a killer argument against either, but I do worry the rural area depopulation is a continuing trend.