{"id":2371,"date":"2011-02-23T00:03:32","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T05:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/in-20-years-well-be-meeting-all-of-our-energy-needs-with-solar-ray-kurzweil.html"},"modified":"2011-02-23T00:03:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T05:03:32","slug":"in-20-years-well-be-meeting-all-of-our-energy-needs-with-solar-ray-kurzweil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/in-20-years-well-be-meeting-all-of-our-energy-needs-with-solar-ray-kurzweil.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;In 20 years we\u2019ll be meeting all of our energy needs with solar&#8221; &#8211;Ray Kurzweil"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/need-to-know\/environment\/futurist-ray-kurzweil-isnt-worried-about-climate-change\/7389\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/www.singularity.com\/images\/Rayheadshot.jpg\"><\/a>\nThe man who knows more about doubling rates than anyone else in the world\n(he accurately predicted computers winning at chess and the Internet,\nincluding the correct dates),\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/need-to-know\/environment\/futurist-ray-kurzweil-isnt-worried-about-climate-change\/7389\/\">\nRay Kurzweil, interviewed by Lauren Feeney<\/a> on PBS:\n<blockquote>\nOne of my primary theses is that information technologies grow\nexponentially in capability and power and bandwidth and so on. If you\nbuy an iPhone today, it\u2019s twice as good as two years ago for half that\ncost. That is happening with solar energy \u2014 it is doubling every two\nyears. And it didn\u2019t start two years ago, it started 20 years ago. Every\ntwo years we have twice as much solar energy in the world.\n<\/blockquote>\nThink about how fast the Internet has grown in the 21st century.\nThat&#8217;s what he&#8217;s talking about: from unknown to TV news anchors\nto facilitating multiple revolutions in weeks. He continues:\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\nToday, solar is still more expensive than fossil fuels, and in most\nsituations it still needs subsidies or special circumstances, but the\ncosts are coming down rapidly \u2014 we are only a few years away from\nparity. And then it\u2019s going to keep coming down, and people will be\ngravitating towards solar, even if they don\u2019t care at all about the\nenvironment, because of the economics.\n<p>\nSo right now it\u2019s at half a percent of the world\u2019s energy. People tend\nto dismiss technologies when they are half a percent of the solution. But\ndoubling every two years means it\u2019s only eight more doublings before\nit meets a hundred percent of the world\u2019s energy needs. So that\u2019s\n16 years. We will increase our use of electricity during that period,\nso add another couple of doublings: In 20 years we\u2019ll be meeting all\nof our energy needs with solar, based on this trend which has already\nbeen under way for 20 years.\n<p>\nPeople say we\u2019re running out of energy. That\u2019s only true if we stick\nwith these old 19th century technologies. We are awash in energy from\nthe sunlight.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo why bother with burning forests for energy?\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man who knows more about doubling rates than anyone else in the world (he accurately predicted computers winning at chess and the Internet, including the correct dates), Ray Kurzweil, interviewed by Lauren Feeney on PBS: One of my primary theses is that information technologies grow exponentially in capability and power and bandwidth and so [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,21,24],"tags":[8738,425,8709,8782,4934,8714],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-planning","category-solar","tag-biomass","tag-future","tag-history","tag-oil","tag-ray-kurzweil","tag-solar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Cf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}