The Eternal Return all over again, from about 3 years ago. I thought this horse had been beaten to death. — BC

Flogged to death is hardly a valid critique on a philosophy forum. If it weren't for rehashing Ancient Greek guys' musings, you'd have nothing to talk about. The boulder would return to the bottom of the hill and stay there! Because the universe is entropic - it requires the constant expenditure of effort/energy just to stand still.

There's no one, single alternative. — BC

I disagree, and more significantly, Nasa/Sandia Labs research disagrees with that assertion. There is a silver bullet - we can plug into the planet and power everything a hundred times over with constant clean energy from high temperature geothermal. In my view, it's the next logical step in a long series of energy revolutions in human history; from eating meat, discovering fire, the agricultural revolution, the discovery of fossil fuels, the industrial revolution - at each stage, the application of technology yielding more energy for less effort.

Wall Street investment funds, capitalists ad nauseam) prefer to keep the profits and the doomed future they know. — BC

I'm not sure that's true, but it is closer to the question I'm trying to get to grips with. Sure, we can suppose a right wing conspiracy of governments, financial markets and fossil fuel companies keep new entrants - namely Magma Energy, out of the market, but why have left wing environmentalists not demanded Magma Energy these past 40 years?

Arguably, Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons suggests capitalists; acting only in their rational self interest would exploit the common resource that is Magma Energy to the maximum degree; providing the world with abundant clean energy to power a prosperous AND sustainable future.

But more puzzling still is why left winged environmentalists have not demanded the development and application of Magma Energy technology at any time in the past 40 years? How have they convinced everyone we need to ...

...and REDUCE CONSUMPTION. — BC

...when it should be obvious that the resources available to a future powered by Magma Energy, would be as great again, as fossil fuels were an advantage over firewood and whale oil. Resources, including environmental resources - are not a finite amount being used up, but are a function of the energy available to produce them, and Earth is a big ball of molten rock!

You're focusing on the most expensive and least likely to be scalable in all areas. Why? — Benkei

The short answer is, to solve the climate and ecological crisis.

A longer answer would reference the sheer scale of the energy available from UDGS; according to Nasa/Sandia Labs estimates - a minimum of 90 times current global energy demand just from the US alone. Remember, this is from 1982:

"The current magma energy project is assessing the engineering feasibility of extracting thermal energy directly from crustal magma bodies. The estimated size of the U.S. resource (50,000 to 500,000 quads) suggests a considerable potential impact on future power generation. In a previous seven-year study, we concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept."

Current global energy demand is approximately 600 quads, so we'd barely need to scratch the surface of the energy available from UDGS to meet global energy demand carbon free forever. Crack this nut, and humankind is set. We can desalinate sea water to irrigate wastelands for agriculture and habitation - rather than burn the forest and deplete and pollute the rivers. We can recycle all our waste. We can extract carbon from the air.

Think in terms of the Kardashev scale! I want us to be a Type 1 civilisation. Why do you want a Type 0.35 civilisation?

"Hey boss, we've melted another Tokomak - and they're $20bn a piece. You've got to do better!"

Don't worry about it. There's no amount of money the government won't throw at fusion, even though it hasn't produced a single erg of surplus energy in the past 50 years!

Thanks again for the information. EGS is one approach, a technology akin to fracking for geothermal heat - but Nasa/Sandia Labs Magma Energy Project findings from 1982, are more consistent with mention of Ultra deep geothermal systems.

According to the IEA:
Sustainable Development scenario, global geothermal power is expected to triple from 92 TWh in 2019 to 282 TWh in 2030, but still remaining less than 1% of global energy demand in 2030.

Novel technologies, not yet commercially available, allow for the production of geothermal energy from
deep-seated or low permeability resources. They include, among others:

• Ultra deep geothermal systems - characterised by typical drill depths of more than 5km and extremely
high temperatures reaching 500 °C. Under such conditions, water becomes supercritical;

Supercritical geothermal systems - characterised by very high temperatures and water (or other fluids)
in supercritical state (at least 374°C and 221 bar). Due to their operating temperatures, they have very
high productivity and their operation is technologically challenging (corrosive fluids, etc.);

A materials science problem with an answer:

P91 and P92 are advanced grades of Cr-Mo-V steels developed for high-temperature applications in power plants for applications like steam pipes and superheater components. They are designed to withstand high temperatures and pressures, specifically in the range of 580–650°C.

P92 is an improved version of P91, offering enhanced creep resistance and corrosion resistance due to its unique chemical composition, including 1.8% tungsten, 0.6% molybdenum, and 0.005% boron. While P92 is more expensive, it can be used with a thinner wall thickness compared to P91 for the same operating conditions.

As with most mass movements (ideological, religious, political or otherwise), it's the top that is utterly corrupt, because that's where power accumulates. — Tzeentch

You express some interesting ideas, but I still can't accept the idea that the reason Magma Energy has never been mentioned by the environmental movement, is that it's corrupt.

For the vast majority of people who take part, there's very little reward, and often substantial costs to doing so. There's no power to speak of. It would be a very strange psychopath who thought, I'm attracted to power - I know, I'll join the Green Party!

I'm sorry if this reply is less than adequate. I have to go now. I look forward to speaking with you all again soon. Like tomorrow, or maybe later today.

What in the actual !@#$ does that have to do with anything? You don't have to think you're going to die if you don't do something to realize it might be of benefit to society and help men live better lives. — Outlander

It "has to do" with the concept of Limits to Growth, and your assertion that it's true, and my argument that it's false. I'm saying that Nasa/Sandia Labs 1982 proof of Magma Energy should have refuted Meadows 1974, The Limits to Growth. Environmental debate should have been between continued use of fossil fuels and abundant clean energy from Magma. Not, as it currently is, between continued use of fossil fuels - and grim, green poverty veganism and wind. We should be looking toward a prosperous AND sustainable future - not either one or the other.

I don't know how monarchy got dragged into this; I said post industrial era. I have some ideas of what monarchy is - I live in England. To me, monarchy is the least worst answer to the Head of State problem, but that's not relevant to this discussion.

On self-control, restraint, and responsibility, I think governments and industry are better placed than I am to take effective action. What can I do? Go without? I'm doing a fair bit of that already!

What can they do? They can build a Magma Energy platform sufficient to global energy demand by 2050, looking toward clean energy abundance by the end of the century. Instead, they're fracking with one hand and carbon taxing with the other; while having us on with Limits to Growth as a reason we need to pay more, have less, stop this and tax that.

Hey Banno - how's tricks?

It is you who conflate two, or quite possibly more concepts inaccurately. Certainly, conservation of nature, or the management of land predates modern environmental movements, but the idea of sustainability in an ultimate sense; a sense that comes with the threat of human extinction - was not a concern until a post industrial era.

You can trace the modern environmental movement back to Grey Owl - who was in fact an Englishman named Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (September 18, 1888 – April 13, 1938). He pretended to be a ... native american ...for want of a better term.

"His views on wilderness conservation, expressed in numerous articles, books, lectures and films, reached audiences beyond the borders of Canada, bringing attention to the negative impact of exploiting nature and the urgent need to develop respect for the natural world."

I've also discussed Thomas Malthus on Population above, that was 1798. I don;t think you can go back further than that, and find the same concerns as those expressed in the modern environmental movement.

Meadows 1974, The Limits to Growth - is explicitly anti-capitalist, if not explicitly pro-Marxist.

Limits to Growth has been taken up by those of a Marxist persuasion, as a critique of capitalism. Unfortunately, it's come to be almost universally accepted. Indeed, you began stating the same idea as an absolute fact.

It has a basis in realizing that the physical world is finite — Outlander

That's wrong, if Nasa/Sandia Labs findings are right.

Presume as you would, but I find it difficult to imagine we can produce oil in far flung regions, transport, refine, transport it again, put it into oil drums, load them onto a ship, sail it across the ocean, take it off the ship onto at train, to distribute it by lorry to gas stations - so you can drive your car, but we can't get Magma Energy from where it's produced to where it's needed.

I don't buy that any more or less than you buy my doom monkey hypothesis!

Chop away then, but your instrument is blunt - unable to dissect my problem, it merely bangs and clatters.

My assertion that 'environmentalism is based in Marxism and anti-capitalist degrowth' is slightly inaccurate. I might have said 'environmental protest' instead; but I wasn't attempting to be exact. Merely to sketch a problem. Surely, you cannot deny that the environmental cause has been taken up by the radical left as a critique of capitalism? Or that their policy proscription is communistic in character??

I find it difficult to believe that the entire environmental movement, worldwide and top to bottom, is corrupt.
I am genuine in my environmental concerns, as I'm sure are other people.
Are you saying that everyone who is genuine is stupid, and the smart ones are corrupt?
If there's corruption money going around, where's my cut?
No-one's offered me sack loads of cash to stop talking about Magma Energy.
Yet no-one talks about it, 40 years after Nasa/Sandia Labs published their findings - offering the world near limitless clean energy.
If it were that simple, I wouldn't still be scratching my head!
There's a genuine mystery here.

I explained what Freud's death drive is above. "..a drive towards a return to the inorganic, a state of non-existence."

It's my last resort explanation of why we have not developed Magma Energy, 40 years after it was proven viable by Nasa/Sandia Labs. Maybe we don't want an answer, because subconsciously we yearn for all this to end.

I don't think the individual should be able to make that determination for the human species, because individuals pass away while the species is renewed in successive generations. You may be bored to death, but they will experience the world anew.

It could be something as simple as failure to appreciate that Magma Energy is a specific type of geothermal energy, operating at much higher temperatures than any other form of geothermal currently in use.

I don't think it's economics per se; at least not honest economics. It could be fossil fuel cartels are keeping new entrants out of the market, but that still doesn't explain environmentalists ignoring Magma Energy all this time. You see how I don;t have an answer that fits! That's what I'm getting at. I've considered flat earth and/or simulation theory - because this really doesn't make sense!

I'm still at a loss to understand your hostility.

Perhaps, mentioning farmland - you are referring, obliquely to Thomas Malthus, who in 1798, in his Essay On the Principles of Population, noted a disparity between the geometric rate of population growth (2,4,8,16,32 etc) and the arithmetic addition of agricultural land, one acre at a time. (1,2,3,4,5 etc.) He predicted people would necessarily starve. Only that didn't happen. People invented trains, tractors, refrigeration and fertilisers - multiplying food resources far ahead of population growth.
Similarly, I'm saying, we could apply Magma Energy technology, and overcome the supposed Limits to Growth bottleneck. You see Malthus was proven wrong by history, and so Meadows is wrong, and Limits to Growth is false!

I can assure you that I will engage honestly and to the best of my ability going forward. I'm open to learning what I'm clearly not getting.

I think it is true, that while right wing interests abdicated into climate denial - left wing interests promoted a limits to growth approach to climate change, manifesting today in wind, solar, carbon taxes, veganism, and degrowth policies demanded by environmental campaigners.

If I'm wrong, just explain why you think that.

However, the idea of "demonstrating the feasibility of practically limitless quantities" in 1982 as a single event by NASA/Sandia is an oversimplification. — Wayfarer

I was referring to publication of this paper in 1982:

"Status of the Magma Energy Project
Dunn, J. C. (Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM.)
Abstract
The current magma energy project is assessing the engineering feasibility of extracting thermal energy directly from crustal magma bodies. The estimated size of the U.S. resource (50,000 to 500,000 quads) suggests a considerable potential impact on future power generation. In a previous seven-year study, we concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept. Several concepts for drilling, energy extraction, and materials survivability were successfully demonstrated in Kilauea Iki lava lake, Hawaii."

50,000 quads - the minimum Nasa/Sandia estimate is available just from the US alone, is approximately 90 times current world energy demand.

The implication is, that we would barely need to scratch the surface of the energy available to meet global energy demand carbon free. And there would be massive potential for growth thereafter.

Today, geothermal provides less than 1% of global energy. My question is why?

So you are saying Limits to Growth is true? Because, to my way of thinking - resources are a function of the energy available to produce them, and Earth is a big ball of molten rock.

Had we developed the technology to extract practically limitless quantities of constant clean energy from high temperature geothermal, we could meet all our energy needs carbon free, plus, we could desalinate sea water to irrigate wastelands, and so protect forests and rivers from overuse. We can recycle all waste and capture carbon. We can mine the ocean floor for metals, and so on - such that I see no Limits to Growth in the foreseeable future. Do you? And if so, what are they?

Freud's Death Drive:
Freud's death drive, proposed in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," is a drive towards a return to the inorganic, a state of non-existence. It is seen as a force that can manifest as aggression, self-destruction, and a compulsion to repeat traumatic experiences.

Schopenhauer's Pessimism:
Schopenhauer's philosophy is rooted in a pessimistic view of life, arguing that existence is inherently fraught with suffering and that the will to live is a source of suffering. According to Schopenhauer, the "will" is a driving force that leads to dissatisfaction and ultimately, the realization that life is a tragic farce.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Edmund Burke, Speech to the Electors of Bristol. (3 Nov. 1774).

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