Or we could reclaim eroded soil from rivers (e.g. where they are depositing it into the oceans).
Nitrogen is extracted from the air using natural gas, but can also be extracted using solar power with efficiency losses of 1%.
Thanks for citing me! To clarify, it’s only about 1% of the land area taken up by the solar energy to make the nitrogen fertilizer—the losses in going from solar energy to nitrogen fertilizer are much more than 1%.
There are moderately more expensive alternatives and we would switch to those once we started to experience scarcity.
Since doing that podcast, I have found that if we had to meet the current demand for gold and silver from common rock, it might take more than our entire economy to do it. Now as you say, we could substitute, e.g. another metal as a store of value, jewelry substitution, etc. But gold is used in computers because of its resistance to corrosion, which may be hard to substitute for. So it could be a drag on the economy (though I agree, not an existential risk).
They don’t translate into a threat to civilization much the way earthquakes aren’t a threat to civilization or an existential risk factor.
That’s generally true, though it has been pointed out that an earthquake could cause a lab leak of an engineered pathogen.
Or we could reclaim eroded soil from rivers (e.g. where they are depositing it into the oceans).
Thanks for citing me! To clarify, it’s only about 1% of the land area taken up by the solar energy to make the nitrogen fertilizer—the losses in going from solar energy to nitrogen fertilizer are much more than 1%.
Since doing that podcast, I have found that if we had to meet the current demand for gold and silver from common rock, it might take more than our entire economy to do it. Now as you say, we could substitute, e.g. another metal as a store of value, jewelry substitution, etc. But gold is used in computers because of its resistance to corrosion, which may be hard to substitute for. So it could be a drag on the economy (though I agree, not an existential risk).
That’s generally true, though it has been pointed out that an earthquake could cause a lab leak of an engineered pathogen.