Brian Wang at Technology Universe 2022

I, Brian Wang, spoke at Technology Universe 2022 which was held in Portugal.

I discussed antiaging and aging reversal, which is shown in the video below. I think the most interesting projects and companies are Rejuvenate Bio and NewLimits. There are 171 companies working on aging damage repair and aging reversal.

My talk also discussed feeding everyone and China’s program to feed half of its population using greenhouses. China is building 2 Million hectares (20 billion square meters) of controlled environment greenhouses by 2025 and this will produce half of their vegetables and crop needs. Temperature, humidity, lighting would all be under controlled conditions. It would not matter if there were new extreme temperature swings outside or if there was drought. The needed food and water would be immune to any projected climate change over the next 500-1000 years.

Alibaba sells greenhouses for as little as 70 cents per square meter. The bulk, high volume cost to the manufacturer is about 50 cents per square meter. If installation labor costs are 50% of the 2 million hectare project then it would cost about $20 billion for the 2 million hectare project. $40 billion would be sufficient for China to make 40 billion square meters of climate-controlled greenhouses which could produce all vegetables and crops. It would cost $260 billion to make greenhouses for the food production of the entire world.

Indoor climate-controlled agriculture has almost no need for pesticides and uses 7% of the water. This would take up 3-5% of the total land area of open-air farming.

Making agriculture that feeds everyone but using 5% of the land means 90% of farm and ranchland can be used for forests. Those forests can have 2 mile wide fire fuel breaks to make it far easier to control wildfires. Tree wood is 50% CO2. Using 90% of farm and ranchland basically doubles the amount of forests and this could be done in 20-30 years. The trees pull the CO2 out of the air and doubling the world trees can store up to 3 trillion tons of CO2. We only need to remove 1 trillion tons and that would restore the atmosphere from 412 ppm back to 280 ppm. This would offset not just the annual CO2 emissions but ALL industrial age emissions. The rest of the economy can be left alone or modernized at an efficient and non-emergency pace. Making the Greenhouses and converting farmland could be done for less than $1 trillion for the world. Less than $1 per ton, which is far better than plans that would only solve US emission with costs over $100 trillion.

I talked about SpaceX reusable rockets. In the most recent SpaceX Starship presentation, Elon Musk stated that the SpaceX Starship can become lower cost than airplanes for long haul cargo delivery.

I have some detailed calculations. Starship will double the payload capacity. Full fueling costs are about the same for the 1200 tons of fuel for Starship versus 50,000 gallons of jet fuel for a long-range cargo plane for each flight. However, twice payload means half the cost. Non-fuel costs for the vehicles and the frequency of flights are hugely in Starship favor. Starship should have twice the payload. Starship starts off at half of the loaded cost per flight and four times cheaper per ton of payload and then will proceed to be ten to fifteen times cheaper. Plus they will have some initial new no competition markets for ultra-fast delivery.

There was also a panel discussion.

SOURCES- Technology Universe, Brian Wang

9 thoughts on “Brian Wang at Technology Universe 2022”

  1. I just have a passing acquaintance with Chinese history. All they'd be doing here is recreating what they used to do with rice.

  2. Meta VR has a chance if they

    • Focus away from VR headsets, to the screens we already have
    • Focus on memories and human connection – that's how Facebook succeeded
    • Make it as easy for users to create and share content as taking and uploading photos – difficult! But essential.
  3. A key point about China trying to centralize food production in this manner, is that it is an effort to gain even more leverage over their own population. Once they've centralized food production, they can crack down on any independent agriculture, and anybody who doesn't toe the line starves.

  4. In arid areas grasslands burned under the correct conditions, as American plains Indians did, incorporates charcoal into the soil, more or less permanently, as well as enhances grazing. Grasses grow at approximately 4 times the rate of trees in terms of dry mass per year, per square meter.

  5. wow! Brian, didn't know you came to Portugal. I'm Portuguese, been reading your blog for ages and love it! where did this event take place? don't tell me it was in the north, I would have loved to attend and meet you in person.

  6. Would these 2 mile wide firebreaks in the new forest be recently logged areas, so the location of the firebreaks would shift over decades?
    This would produce wood for construction & turning into liquid fuels. I don't expect such fuel production to be anywhere near as much as we currently get from petroleum, but when we shift as much transport as possible to electric via battery & overhead wires, there will still be need for some liquid fuels.

  7. Good for you, Mr. Wang.
    I am glad there are still wonderful people with optimism for our future.
    The world seems a very dark place right now.

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