Energy Policy

The Reign of Error

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Some of us think humankind will be running low on exploitable fossil fuels in the first half of the 21st century. Resource depletion can change climate change scenarios significantly. I’ll briefly present my version of that story here, my confidence buoyed by the knowledge that such a narrative can not possibly be less reasonable than positions staked out in the global warming debate.

The end of the Information Age

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Prophets of an indefinite expansion of today’s “information society” too often forget that information doesn’t exist by itself; it requires a physical substrate, and if that goes away, so does the information. As the age of cheap energy comes to an end, relying on a substrate as energy-intensive as the internet may be a risky bet.