Many people are hoping for wind and solar PV to transform grid electricity in a favorable way. Is this really possible? Is it really feasible for intermittent renewables to generate a large share of grid electricity? The answer increasingly looks as if it is, “No, the costs are too great, and the return on investment would be way too low.” We are already encountering major grid problems, even with low penetrations of intermittent renewable electricity: US, 5.4% of 2015 electricity consumption; China, 3.9%; Germany, 19.5%; Australia, 6.6%.
In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today. There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.
Leaders around the world have demanded that their countries switch to renewable energy, without ever taking a very close look at what the costs and benefits were likely to be. A few simple calculations were made, such as “Life Cycle Assessment” and “Energy Returned on Energy Invested.” These calculations miss the fact that the intermittent energy being returned is of very much lower quality than is needed to operate the electric grid. They also miss the point that timing and the cost of capital are very important, as is the impact on the pricing of other energy products. This is basically another example of a problem I wrote about earlier, Overly Simple Energy-Economy Models Give Misleading Answers.
Let’s look at some of the issues that we are encountering, as we attempt to add intermittent renewable energy to the electric grid.
Issue 1. Grid issues become a problem at low levels of intermittent electricity penetration.
In 2015, wind and solar PV amounted to only 12.2% of total electricity consumed in Hawaii, based on EIA data. Even at this low level, Hawaii is encountering sufficiently serious grid problems that it has needed to stop net metering (giving homeowners credit for the retail cost of electricity, when electricity is sold to the grid) and phase out subsidies.
Figure 1. Hawaii Electricity Production, based on EIA data. Other Disp. electricity is the sum of various other non-intermittent electricity sources, including geothermal and biomass burned as fuel.
Hawaii consists of a chain of islands, so it cannot import electricity from elsewhere. This is what I mean by “Generation = Consumption.” There is, of course, some transmission line loss with all electrical generation, so generation and consumption are, in fact, slightly different.
The situation is not too different in California. The main difference is that California can import non-intermittent (also called “dispatchable”) electricity from elsewhere. It is really the ratio of intermittent electricity to total electricity that is important, when it comes to balancing. California is running into grid issues at a similar level of intermittent electricity penetration (wind + solar PV) as Hawaii–about 12.3% of electricity consumed in 2015, compared to 12.2% for Hawaii.
Figure 2. California electricity consumption, based on EIA data. Other Disp. is the sum of other non-intermittent sources, including geothermal and biomass burned for electricity generation.
Even with growing wind and solar production, California is increasingly dependent on non-intermittent electricity imported from other states.
Issue 2. The apparent “lid” on intermittent electricity at 10% to 15% of total electricity consumption is caused by limits on operating reserves.
Electric grids are set up with “operating reserves” that allow the electric grid to maintain stability, even if a large unit, such as a nuclear power plant, goes offline. These operating reserves typically handle fluctuations of 10% to 15% in the electricity supply.
If additional adjustment is needed, it is possible to take some commercial facilities offline, based on agreements offering lower rates for interruptible supply. It is also possible for certain kinds of power plants, particularly hydroelectric and natural gas “peaker plants,” to ramp production up or down quickly. Combined cycle natural gas plants also provide reasonably fast response.
In theory, changes can be made to the system to allow the system to be more flexible. One such change is adding more long distance transmission, so that the variable electricity can be distributed over a wider area. This way the 10% to 15% operational reserve “cap” applies more broadly. Another approach is adding energy storage, so that excess electricity can be stored until needed later. A third approach is using a “smart grid” to make changes, such as turning off all air conditioners and hot water heaters when electricity supply is inadequate. All of these changes tend to be slow to implement and high in cost, relative to the amount of intermittent electricity that can be added because of their implementation.
Issue 3. When there is no other workaround for excess intermittent electricity, it must be curtailed–that is, dumped rather than added to the grid.
Overproduction without grid capacity was a significant problem in Texas in 2009, causing about 17% of wind energy to be curtailed in 2009. At that time, wind energy amounted to about 5.0% of Texas’s total electricity consumption. The problem has mostly been fixed, thanks to a series of grid upgrades allowing wind energy to flow better from western Texas to eastern Texas.
Figure 3. Texas electricity net generation based on EIA data. The Texas grid is separate, so there is no imported or exported electricity.
In 2015, total intermittent electricity from wind and solar amounted to only 10.1% of Texas electricity. Solar has never been large enough to be visible on the chart–only 0.1% of consumption in 2015. The total amount of intermittent electricity consumed in Texas is only now beginning to reach the likely 10% to 15% limit of operational reserves. Thus, it is “behind” Hawaii and California in reaching intermittent electricity limits.
Based on the modeling of the company that oversees the California electric grid, electricity curtailment in California is expected to be significant by 2024, if the 40% California Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is followed, and changes are not made to fix the problem.
Issue 4. When all costs are included, including grid costs and indirect costs, such as the need for additional storage, the cost of intermittent renewables tends to be very high.
In Europe, there is at least a reasonable attempt to charge electricity costs back to consumers. In the United States, renewable energy costs are mostly hidden, rather than charged back to consumers. This is easy to do, because their usage is still low.
Euan Mearns finds that in Europe, the greater the proportion of wind and solar electricity included in total generation, the higher electricity prices are for consumers.
Figure 5. Figure by Euan Mearns showing relationship between installed wind + solar capacity and European electricity rates. Source Energy Matters.
The five countries shown in red have all had financial difficulties. High electricity prices may have contributed to their problems.
The United States is not shown on this chart, since it is not part of Europe. If it were, it would be a bit below, and to the right of, Czech Republic and Romania.
Issue 5. The amount that electrical utilities are willing to pay for intermittent electricity is very low.
The big question is, “How much value does adding intermittent electricity add to the electrical grid?” Clearly, adding intermittent electricity allows a utility to reduce the amount of fossil fuel energy that it might otherwise purchase. In some cases, the addition of solar electricity slightly reduces the amount of new generation needed. This reduction occurs because of the tendency of solar to offer supply when the usage of air conditioners is high on summer afternoons. Of course, in advanced countries, the general tendency of electricity usage is down, thanks to more efficient light bulbs and less usage by computer screens and TV monitors.
At the same time, the addition of intermittent electricity adds a series of other costs:
- Many more hook-ups to generation devices are needed. Homes now need two-way connections, instead of one-way connections. Someone needs to service these connections and check for problems.
- Besides intermittency problems, the mix of active and reactive power may be wrong. The generation sources may cause frequency deviations larger than permitted by regulations.
- More long-distance electricity transmission lines are needed, so that the new electricity can be distributed over a wide enough area that it doesn’t cause oversupply problems when little electricity is needed (such as weekends in the spring and fall).
- As electricity is transported over longer distances, there is more loss in transport.
- To mitigate some of these problems, there is a need for electricity storage. This adds two kinds of costs: (1) Cost for the storage device, and (2) Loss of electricity in the process.
- As I will discuss later, intermittent energy tends to lead to very low wholesale electricity prices. Other electricity providers need to be compensated for the effects these low prices cause; otherwise they will leave the market.
To sum up, when intermittent electricity is added to the electric grid, the primary savings are fuel savings. At the same time, significant costs of many different types are added, acting to offset these savings. In fact, it is not even clear that when a comparison is made, the benefits of adding intermittent electricity are greater than the costs involved.
According to the EIA’s 2015 Wind Technologies Market Report, the major way intermittent electricity is sold to electric utilities is as part of long term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), typically lasting for 20 years. Utilities buy PPAs as a way of hedging against the possibility that natural gas prices will rise in the future. The report indicates that the recent selling price for PPAs is about $25 to $28 per MWh (Figure 6). This is equivalent to 2.5 to 2.8 cents per kWh, which is very inexpensive.
Figure 6. EIA exhibit showing the median and mean cost of wind PPAs compared to EIA’s forecast price of natural gas, from 2015 Wind Technologies Market Report.
In effect, what utilities are trying to do is hedge against rising fuel prices of whatever kind they choose to purchase. They may even be able to afford to make other costly changes, such as more transmission lines and energy storage, so that more intermittent electricity can be accommodated.
Issue 6. When intermittent electricity is sold in competitive electricity markets (as it is in California, Texas, and Europe), it frequently leads to negative wholesale electricity prices. It also shaves the peaks off high prices at times of high demand.
In states and countries that use competitive pricing (rather than utility pricing, used in some states), the wholesale price of electricity price varies from minute to minute, depending on the balance between supply and demand. When there is an excess of intermittent electricity, wholesale prices often become negative. Figure 7 shows a chart by a representative of the company that oversees the California electric grid.
Figure 7. Exhibit showing problem of negative electricity prices in California, from a presentation at the 2016 EIA Annual Conference.
Clearly, the number of negative price spikes increases, as the proportion of intermittent electricity increases. A similar problem with negative prices has been reported in Texas and in Europe.
When solar energy is included in the mix of intermittent fuels, it also tends to reduce peak afternoon prices. Of course, these minute-by-minute prices don’t really flow back to the ultimate consumers, so it doesn’t affect their demand. Instead, these low prices simply lead to lower funds available to other electricity producers, most of whom cannot quickly modify electricity generation.
To illustrate the problem that arises, Figure 8, prepared by consultant Paul-Frederik Bach, shows a comparison of Germany’s average wholesale electricity prices (dotted line) with residential electricity prices for a number of European countries. Clearly, wholesale electricity prices have been trending downward, while residential electricity prices have been rising. In fact, if prices for nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired electricity had been fair prices for these other providers, residential electricity prices would have trended upward even more quickly than shown in the graph!
Figure 8. Residential Electricity Prices in Europe, together with Germany spot wholesale price, from http://pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/references/pfb_towards_50_pct_wind_in_denmark_2016_03_30.pdf
Note that the recent average wholesale electricity price is about 30 euros per MWh, which is equivalent to 3.0 cents per kWh. In US dollars this would equate to $36 per MWh, or 3.6 cents per kWh. These prices are higher than prices paid by PPAs for intermittent electricity ($25 to $28 per MWh), but not a whole lot higher.
The problem we encounter is that prices in the $36 MWh range are too low for almost every kind of energy generation. Figure 9 from Bloomberg is from 2013, so is not entirely up to date, but gives an idea of the basic problem.
Figure 9. Global leveled cost of energy production by Bloomberg.
A price of $36 per MWh is way down at the bottom of the chart, between 0 and 50. Pretty much no energy source can be profitable at such a level. Too much investment is required, relative to the amount of energy produced. We reach a situation where nearly every kind of electricity provider needs subsidies. If they cannot receive subsidies, many of them will close, leaving the market with only a small amount of unreliable intermittent electricity, and little back-up capability.
This same problem with falling wholesale prices, and a need for subsidies for other energy producers, has been noted in California and Texas. The Wall Street Journal ran an article earlier this week about low electricity prices in Texas, without realizing that this was a problem caused by wind energy, not a desirable result!
Issue 7. Other parts of the world are also having problems with intermittent electricity.
Germany is known as a world leader in intermittent electricity generation. Its intermittent generation hit 12.2% of total generation in 2012. As you will recall, this is the level where California and Hawaii started to reach grid problems. By 2015, its intermittent electricity amounted to 19.5% of total electricity generated.
Figure 10. German electricity generated, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016.
Needless to say, such high intermittent electricity generation leads to frequent spikes in generation. Germany chose to solve this problem by dumping its excess electricity supply on the European Union electric grid. Poland, Czech Republic, and Netherlands complained to the European Union. As a result, the European Union mandated that from 2017 onward, all European Union countries (not just Germany) can no longer use feed-in tariffs. Doing so provides too much of an advantage to intermittent electricity providers. Instead, EU members must use market-responsive auctioning, known as “feed-in premiums.” Germany legislated changes that went even beyond the minimum changes required by the European Union. Dörte Fouquet, Director of the European Renewable Energy Federation, says that the German adjustments will “decimate the industry.”
In Australia, one recent headline was Australia Considers Banning Wind Power Because It’s Causing Blackouts. The problem seems to be in South Australia, where the last coal-fired power plants are closing because subsidized wind is leading to low wholesale electricity prices. Australia, as a whole, does not have a high intermittent electricity penetration ratio (6.6% of 2015 electricity consumption), but grid limitations mean that South Australia is disproportionately affected.
China has halted the approval of new wind turbine installations in North China because it does not have grid capacity to transport intermittent electricity to more populated areas. Also, most of China’s electricity production is from coal, and it is difficult to use coal to balance with wind and solar because coal-fired plants can only be ramped up slowly. China’s total use of wind and solar is not very high (3.9% of consumption in 2015), but it is already encountering major difficulties in grid integration.
Issue 8. The amount of subsidies provided to intermittent electricity is very high.
The renewable energy program in the United States consists of overlapping local, state, and federal programs. It includes mandates, feed-in tariffs, exemption from taxes, production tax credits, and other devices. This combination of approaches makes it virtually impossible to figure out the amount of the subsidy by adding up the pieces. We are pretty certain, however, that the amount is high. According to the National Wind Watch Organization,
At the federal level, the production or investment tax credit and double-declining accelerated depreciation can pay for two-thirds of a wind power project. Additional state incentives, such as guaranteed markets and exemption from property taxes, can pay for another 10%.
If we believe this statement, the developer only pays about 23% of the cost of a wind energy project.
The US Energy Information Administration prepared an estimate of certain types of subsidies (those provided by the federal government and targeted particularly at energy) for the year 2013. These amounted to a total of $11.3 billion for wind and solar combined. About 183.3 terawatts of wind and solar energy was sold during 2013, at a wholesale price of about 2.8 cents per kWh, leading to a total selling price of $5.1 billion dollars. If we add the wholesale price of $5.1 billion to the subsidy of $11.3 billion, we get a total of $16.4 billion paid to developers or used in special grid expansion programs. This subsidy amounts to 69% of the estimated total cost. Any subsidy from states, or from other government programs, would be in addition to the amount from this calculation.
Paul-Frederik Bach shows a calculation of wind energy subsidies in Denmark, comparing the prices paid under the Public Service Obligation (PSO) system to the market price for wind. His calculations show that both the percentage and dollar amount of subsidies have been rising. In 2015, subsidies amounted to 66% of the total PSO cost.
Figure 11. Amount of subsidy for wind energy in Netherlands, as calculated by comparing paid for wind under PSO with market value of wind energy. Exhibit from http://www.pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/references/pfb_towards_50_pct_wind_in_denmark_2016_03_30.pdf
In a sense, these calculations do not show the full amount of subsidy. If renewables are to replace fossil fuels, they must pay taxes to governments, just as fossil fuel providers do now. Energy providers are supposed to provide “net energy” to the system. The way that they share this net energy with governments is by paying taxes of various kinds–income taxes, property taxes, and special taxes associated with extraction. If intermittent renewables are to replace fossil fuels, they need to provide tax revenue as well. Current subsidy calculations don’t consider the high taxes paid by fossil fuel providers, and the need to replace these taxes, if governments are to have adequate revenue.
Also, the amount and percentage of required subsidy for intermittent renewables can be expected to rise over time, as more areas exceed the limits of their operating reserves, and need to build long distance transmission to spread intermittent electricity over a larger area. This seems to be happening in Europe now. In 2015, the revenue generated by the wholesale price of intermittent electricity amounted to about 13.1 billion euros, according to my calculations. In order to expand further, policy advisor Daniel Genz with Vattenfall indicates that grids across Europe will need to be upgraded, at a cost of between 100 and 400 billion euros. In other words, grid expenditures will be needed that amount to between 7.6 and 30.5 times wholesale revenues received from intermittent electricity in 2015. Most of this will likely need to come from additional subsidies, because there is no possibility that the return on this investment can be very high.
There is also the problem of the low profit levels for all of the other electricity providers, when intermittent renewables are allowed to sell their electricity whenever it becomes available. One potential solution is huge subsidies for other providers. Another is buying a lot of energy storage, so that energy from peaks can be saved and used when supply is low. A third solution is requiring that renewable energy providers curtail their production when it is not needed. Any of these solutions is likely to require subsidies.
Conclusion
We already seem to be reaching limits with respect to intermittent electricity supply. The US Energy Information Administration may be reaching the same conclusion. It chose Steve Kean from Kinder Morgan (a pipeline company) as its keynote speaker at its July 2016 Annual Conference. He made the following statements about renewable energy.
Figure 12. Excerpt from Keynote Address slide at US Energy Administration Conference by Steve Kean of Kinder Morgan.
This view is very similar to mine. Few people have stopped to realize that intermittent electricity isn’t worth very much. It may even have negative value, when the cost of all of the adjustments needed to make it useful are considered.
Energy products are very different in “quality.” Intermittent electricity is of exceptionally low quality. The costs that intermittent electricity impose on the system need to be paid by someone else. This is a huge problem, especially as penetration levels start exceeding the 10% to 15% level that can be handled by operating reserves, and much more costly adjustments must be made to accommodate this energy. Even if wind turbines and solar panels could be produced for $0, it seems likely that the costs of working around the problems caused by intermittent electricity would be greater than the compensation that can be obtained to fix those problems.
The situation is a little like adding a large number of drunk drivers, or of self-driving cars that don’t really work as planned, to a highway system. In theory, other drivers can learn to accommodate them, if enough extra lanes are added, and the concentration of the poorly operating vehicles is kept low enough. But a person needs to understand exactly what the situation is, and understand the cost of all of the adjustments that need to be made, before agreeing to allow the highway system to add more poorly behaving vehicles.
In An Updated Version of the Peak Oil Story, I talked about the fact that instead of oil “running out,” it is becoming too expensive for our economy to accommodate. The economy does not perform well when the cost of energy products is very high. The situation with new electricity generation is similar. We need electricity products to be well-behaved (not act like drunk drivers) and low in cost, if they are to be successful in growing the economy. If we continue to add large amounts of intermittent electricity to the electric grid without paying attention to these problems, we run the risk of bringing the whole system down.
Gale,
I work in the renewables industry – tidal and wave – the former of which is predictable, and whilst I get the general message in your article, what you don’t explain is what the alternative is.
The issue is surely clear. Fossil fuels are running out, quite soon if you take the Hubbert’s Peak or Senica Curve view (which I do) or later if you take the economists’ view that scarcity will trigger recovery of the more costly fields. So what will replace them? The only options are nuclear and renewables, and even these will struggle in air and road transportation, and construction.
What renewables surely do do, even though intermittent, is to reduce the rate at which we consume the remaining fossil fuels – even more so, if we can improve storage – and this in turn allows us to use the remaining fossil fuels for longer and in a much more intelligent way. In particular, it should allow us to use the remaining fossil fuels – particularly the remaining crude oil – to invest better in a post fossil fuels energy infrastructure.
Sorry, the crucial point Gail and others make is that renewables are in the real world performing only as “also runs” or “side kicks” meaning a parallel system – they don’t replace much (10-15% tops) because the stability of the grid (and the overall legacy infrastructure sucking e-juice) needs traditional base load sources..
In terms of transportation. We have got rail and containers (rivers in some places), which is good enough, and for the last mile trucking can be adopted to LPG/NG, also the Scandinavians have advanced testing program of trolley trucks on normal wheels, so it only takes refitting desirable portions of highways and the trolley trucking fleet.
This is not problem.
People are the problem with their biases/greed/turfs etc… as always..
It really doesn’t work this way. We can’t scale back to a smaller amount, because the problem is much more basic. Our problem is that workers at the bottom of the hierarchy (lesser skilled, non-managerial) can’t afford the output of the economy. It is the lack of ability to afford goods like homes and cars that causes commodity prices to drop too low. With too low prices, companies producing all kinds of commodities go out of business. More and more people and businesses have trouble repaying debt with interest. Banks go bankrupt. The crash is really a financial crash, on the too low side.
We can see this with oil — with prices below break-even the industry is losing billions each quarter…
If we ‘scale back’ that = less demand for oil = oil prices collapsing even further = bankruptcy of the oil industry = the lights go out and the party is over.
“It is the lack of ability to afford goods like homes and cars that causes commodity prices to drop too low. ”
Oy. Cars and homes again. The scourge of the devil. Will they ever go away?!
Only if use walking as transportation and build homes with available materials that we can easily gather with our hands.
Rock houses last for centuries as opposed to wooden ones. Unfortunately we’re too busy learning how to use iPads to bother with trivial things like gardening or building stuff.
rerun the flintstones while we still have teevee
I have off-grid solar and fully intend to be one of the last humans playing a Playstation or watching The Matrix. If I could do that even one full year after a fast collapse scenario I would consider myself winning at life.
Look at getting a solar powered disco ball and stereo — for the party of course
Don’t forget the battery if you want to dance at night, and who doesn’t? It’ll be sure to attract more zombies from a further distance if they see a disco ball at night.
I hope you have at least a years worth of FOOD on hand while your playing games because once the grid collapses & the trucks stop bringing in your food, you’ll get awfully HUNGRY!
Solar panels & wind turbines will do nothing to ease the food shortage, provide energy for transportation or support manufacturing with energy & raw material now obtained from OIL.
I have to laugh at those folks who believe that just because their “off the grid” everything will be just hunky dory!
What about food & water? solar panels & wind turbines provide none of that either.
Where in my statement did I say that everything is going to be awesome because I have off-grid solar? I fully understand that “renewable” energy doesn’t truly exist. I also don’t plan on making it very long after collapse, regardless of how much prepping is done.
I have well over a years worth of food stocked up, a large garden, guns/ammo, rainwater catchment, a woodstove, and on and on. When collapse hits though I have absolutely no delusional thoughts that everything will be “hunky dory.”
Doomsday Prepper Tip of the Day:
Watch all episodes of at least twice
https://images6.alphacoders.com/439/439732.jpg
In a finite world, one will inevitably reach the point where there is no “next”, no “replacement”. That’s the nature of finitude, and that’s where we’re at.
Everyone may have to accept the possibility that there is no viable alternative. Just because we want and need an alternative doesn’t mean it exists.
working in the industry i would have thought you would have grasped the fundamentals of resource acquisition and usage by now
past a certain point, scarcity cannot trigger recoveries of hydrocarbon resources, because the recovery process itself requires energy input at an ever increasing rate. As the two factors approach parity—civilisation as we know it is over.
A……The calorific value of a barrel of oil is fixed.
B……the caloriific value of the energy required to get hold of it is variable
One of my civilisation laws:
If A is greater than B by a factor of at least 12, we can live (just)
If it drops below that, and continues to fall, we die.
How will we die? By fighting over what’s left, in a state of denial until all access to worthwhile oil supplies becomes impossible.
And no, the USA will not become self sufficient in oil or anything else except political hot air.
Failing oil supplies will result in civil unrest. (already there are 50million on food aid)
feel free to add your own guesses when that figure hits 100m
The issue is sort of related to what you are talking about, but I am not convinced that the statement, “If A is greater than B by a factor of at least 12, we can live (just).”
We have a system that cannot shrink, because as we build our networked system, the support structure we need for lower levels are pulled away. Also, we need increased concentrations of energy to make our networked system work. These concentrations pull energy away from other parts of the system, and cause it to fail. Needless to say, the financial system fails as well, when the system attempts to shrink.
I know that there are Peer Reviewed papers that say something close to what you are saying. What I am saying is that whether or not it is peer reviewed, it is really not correct. It is the inability of our system to shrink, and the constantly rising need for growing (net) energy that is the problem. This energy must be of precisely the right kinds to operate our current devices.
“What renewables surely do do, even though intermittent, is to reduce the rate at which we consume the remaining fossil fuels –”
Are you certain that renewables result in a net extension of fossil fuels? Counting the amount invested in creating the renewables, the factory that makes those renewables, the energy and materials used to extract the energy and materials? The maintenance of the systems? The storage to make the intermittent power dispatchable, or the cost of having a fossil fuel back-up system in addition to the renewables?
I’ve explained in another post — because renewables have no nett energy return i.e. the amount of energy used to manufacture, transport and maintain them … is more than the energy that you get out of them…. they waste fossil fuels.
What we should be doing is – instead of burning coal to make solar panels — and getting less energy out than we put in — is burning the coal directly to produce electricity.
The really sad thing about solar panels is that we need to burn massive amounts of coal now — in order to drip it out over the life span of the solar systems….
So we are roaring the coal-fired plants in China to make all these solar panels….
When you see those clouds of smog in China …. remember — one of the causes is ‘clean – renewable’ energy
https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2013/02/Beijing-smog-air-quality.jpg.653x0_q80_crop-smart.jpg
The same goes for all forms of alternative energy.
I am afraid the situation is “game over” for us humans (or at least most of us), if we don’t have suitable widely available cheap-to-produce substitutes. The people who survive will fall back to a much lower level of living. I am afraid this lower level will be hunter-gathering, because we don’t have the base set up for any intermediate civilization, such as one in which horses are used for labor. There may be some farmers/agricultural people who live a few years using tools they have saved, but in the long run, I expect that farming will die out, unless people can replace their tools and put together the whole civilization that goes with farming. The people who are best adapted to hunter-gathering are people who are now hunter-gatherers.
Gail… might you be interested in endorsing and being the ‘face’ of http://www.huntergathercourses.com…. This is a very lucrative position.
I keep getting server not found or if I just search for “huntergathercourses” I get “no results found for huntergathercourses” instantly. looks suspicious!
Aside from that, what will still be alive to eat after we collapse? Humans are omnivorous, we can eat just about anything, so what will there be left to eat other than each other?
I would expect all domesticated animals to have been eaten as well as all domesticated seeds, most wildlife will be gone except perhaps for rats, mice & small reptiles. Then there will be a much more hostile climate that we might not be able to survive.
Kinda hard to “hunt & gather” under such conditions eh, “Fast Eddy”?
Better to “Party like it’s 1999” while we still can, times are a changin faster & sooner than expected.
Hmmm … I will check with my tech team and get the site back online….
I don’t think that they would want me. Younger and male would help a lot.
This seems to be thinking way too far ahead. The big mystery for me is the next 3 to 5 years. And I think it’s overlooked how gradually (and misleadingly) the system is collapsing now. Just shopping today, I perceive that the price of meat has doubled in the last 5 years. It’s misleading, though, for prices come down often enough to fool the public into thinking BAU continues normally. Even Michelle Bachman claims that there will not be another presidential election. That there will be another Olympics is questionable. When we don’t know how all this will play out, how can we be jumping 100 years ahead?
anything bachmann says has to be taken with the entire output of your local saltmine
however—if the economic crash is severe enough, then civil unrest is inevitable.
that means martial law and suspension of democratic process—so whoever is in office at the time will eith take dictatorial powers, or a dictator will grab power—almost certainly in the guise of a theocracy —(purely as a temporary measure of course)
I think multicultural places like Australia, Sweden or Canada, with weak national cohesiveness will likely disintegrate as soon as the sh#t really hits it…depopulation from starvation, disease, violence and pestilence will be so swift and severe that they will more resemble those in the movie “I Am Legend”, but without any of the cutesiness.
Martial law is only applicable for
1) places with few firearms
2) compliant population
3) Places that are not interconnected financially or a cog in the world supply chain
4) Martial law destroys confidence. No confidence, financial systems collapses.
Agree – when the authorities are forced to go to a hard version of martial law… all is lost… total collapse will occur within weeks….
Things will move quickly… once they get underway.
“Martial law is only applicable for”
Martial Law is a temporary measure. The long term version is a Police State. Places that meet your requirements of low firearms, compliant population, etc, sounds like Singapore and Hong Kong, which seem to have very low crime, which are financial hubs.
Having soldiers manning checkpoints throughout an area all the time is a massive waste of resources. Having cameras, civilians reporting their neighbors, and a relatively small but effective police force seems like an optimization on the problem. Of course, such a state can only exist with steady surpluses.
Yeah, I’m sure this lady knows everything…
http://a.fod4.com/images/user_photos/1223370/b33c91edfd04d27775a78d606ac83f86_original.jpg
The native amerikkkans didn’t have metal tools, the horse & ox, hybrid seeds, artificial fertilizers, pesticides or fossil fuels but they did have agriculture, they developed new sources of food from wild plants without GMO, that’s how we got maize, beans, potatoes, coca, coco, vanilla, squash, sweet potatoes, cotton & wild rice. They did have some other domesticated plants as well but after the European invasion, they were lost.
Agriculture will probably not die after our collapse but our “modern” high energy form of agriculture will.
The BIG question is, can domesticated plants, animals & us survive climate change?
If the greenhouse effect gets as bad as it was at the end of the Permian period, then no, neither we or our food plants will survive, it will be a hot, microbial world.
JM asked:
“Here is a blunt question: Is the B-2 Stealth Bomber actually useful or not (or is it easily knocked out of the sky)?”
Oh, yes, it is very useful. The B-2’s have flown many bombing missions. Due to its low observable a design it is not easily detected, and to my knowledge, none have been lost in combat.
According to the wikipedia article, a missile has never been fired at it. And I believe its combat missions have been limited to engagements with weak defenses. So its hard to tell if it actually is effective or not than say a B-52.
Same goes with the synthetic fuel mystery based on:
High temperature solid fuel uranium nuclear reactors, fresh water and the dilute carbon (or whatever other carbon source including coal, seawater) in the air. I don’t care about economics, does it work at all in generating a few thousand barrels a day at one plant site?
Synthetic fuel involving nukes is a real mystery. Nobody seems to know much about whether a high temp nuke is an effective source of process heat or not.
Who have they actually had to fight against? The Taliban, Al Qaida and ISIS? Lol…
Here is a blunt question: Is the B-2 Stealth Bomber actually useful or not (or is it easily knocked out of the sky)?
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Some tidbits :
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
The list above shows the number of jobs by category. It is only for USA, which is good enough to be used as an example. Please sort by EMPLOYMENT so that the most employees are listed on the top. The first one will be Office and Administrative Support Occupations with more than 21m workers.
As you browser through the list, practically all of them are not related to food production.
In response of Zantel (page 9) when he said that we should not be extrapolating the use of energy in the new ear (i.e. low energy era) and the number of planes will be less.
I think everyone agrees that jobs are required in order to feed hungry stomachs. Government handouts to everyone does not work; therefore, no jobs, no food.
Have a look at the table above and be honest to yourself, how many jobs will disappear if the number of planes are cut into half of existing number?
Where are all the people going to work? Retraining ? for what job and in what field? Everyone becomes paper pushers? Telepresence? Conference calls? If it is that effective, we would not have low cost carriers popping up in the world.
Tourism industry will be dead. How many are involved in tourism? Check out
https://www.statista.com/topics/962/global-tourism/
So, how are all the people in that industry survive? In my line of work, my clients must take a plane and come over and meet up. It cannot be done via conference call or whatever virtual reality there is.
Sad to say that we are too interconnected
People don’t realize that if the travel agents don’t buy computers or printers, the local computer shops can close down due to slow sales and it will also affect the local department stores as consumers dropped as well. There will be a tipping point where many will not have enough money to feed themselves. So, I have no idea how a reduction of number of planes flying people around work.
We need a ever rising growth. If we have slow growth, it will stall and collapse. That is the feature of the system that we are current living in.
If anyone has missed this previously…
You won’t like downsizing
http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
Good article!
https://ampersandprojectblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/inspiration-the-in-breath/
This definitely puts me in mind of the Twilight Zone. I know this blogger and her project, which I imagine she sees as a formula for saving the world. Or maybe she doesn’t think the world even needs to be saved.
All the study, all the work, all the growth. As she adds on more and more, won’t all this accretion become her enslaver?
She’s “off-grid,” with the pride that off-grid people display. She’s appreciative of some guerilla art I did in a garden she runs, but only because I did it quietly, without notice. She might not have been supportive had I made a proposal to do it. She has to be surprised. I often feel that I’m talking to a wall, and that she can’t SEE very far. Maybe that’s why she is so delighted with her paradise that exists in a tiny bubble in the hills. Hers is a syndrome that depresses me. But has she done and does she know stuff that’s of vital importance for all? Yes indeed. Every thing she does can be useful, but, IMO, only with a different mental map of the world.
I wonder how she plans to get replacement parts for her bicycle. Or a replacement for the road, for that matter. Off grid seems to still mean quite dependent on our current way of life.
Plus the social upheaval all around–mayhem based on the mainstream being much less self-sufficient than she. As you say, she’s living on the mercy of the system. Implying vast privilege on one side and super privation on the other. It’s not understanding this, or acting with this in mind, that irritates me. Being so damn self satisfied…
I agree! Our system is designed to keep growing. The whole system of building capital goods needs to be financed by debt (or sale of stock) because capital goods are sold, before benefit is gained from their operation. Intermittent renewables are sold based on what they “might” do over the next 20 years, if everything works as planned. Generally, interest must be paid as well. Keeping the whole system going (and growing) requires debt.
The banks are the big thing connecting all industries. If the banks fail, it is very hard to pay employees. It is hard to keep the whole system going. Governments are likely to collapse.
Re: Power Satellites discussions
The United States is reduced to begging rides aboard Russian rockets to send astronauts to the International Space Station and then returning to Earth in the Russian capsule.
The Saturn V, the heaviest lift rocket ever to reach operational status, was retired over three decades ago. Each Saturn V launch cost ~$1.3 trillion in 2014 $US. The Space Shuttle is also retired. The reusable Space Shuttle launches were also horrendously expensive.
The whole idea of building satellites with massive photovoltaic solar cell arrays and sending them into geosynchronous orbit to capture sunshine to be beamed back to Earth as microwaves seems like a wild goose chase.
No one has payload shroud larger in diameter than 5 meters. That means very complicated engineering just to be able to stow and unfold arrays. Or to not unfold as happened with SkyLab. That’s a massive capital investment to build self-assembling in space (?) satellite modules and launchers and producing fuel and oxidizer to capture sunlight that falls on the Earth every day.
People do not understand that space vehicles are vastly more complicated and unforgiving than airplanes. We have been experimenting with space planes since the early 1960’s like the X-15 that was dropped from a B-52 mothership. The transition from X-15 and DynaSoar to the Space Shuttle required massive dedicated strap-on solid rocket boosters, an external liquid fuel and oxidizer tank and three immensely powerful throttleable rocket engines. The cost and complexity increased exponentially. Unfortunately the demonstrated operational reliability was orders of magnitude less than design requirements.
I just cannot see the United States Congress and the American People approving, say, a ten-year long multi-trillion dollar engineering, test & evaluation program to develop very heavy lift boosters. That’s not including production costs. They’ll ask the same question I have: “Why go to space to capture sunlight that already freely shines down on us everyday?” It is just not going to happen.
“Re: Power Satellites discussions”
Gregg, you are an engineer.
The current discussion is about the problems of integrating intermittent power into the grid. Power satellites at least solve the intermittency problem.
It’s always possible to make assumption that make any proposal impossible. The last time Boeing looked into the cost of power satellites (2009) the number came out about 60 times too expensive.
We need a reasonable estimation of what a power satellite would mass. The work Boeing did back in the 70 gave us a 10 kg/kW mass, or for a 5 GWe system, it took 50,000 tons in space. The 5 GW (on the ground) is due to the physics of microwave transmission and the frequency. 2.45 GHz is the one more often used.
Over the years the mass been cut down, but not a lot. The Japanese use a figure of 7 kg/kW, I think a thermal design that uses light radiators will come in at 6.5 kg/kW. That’s still 32,500 tons. And forget large payload shrouds, these things have to be constructed in space. Sunlight in space is 1.368 GW per square km. You have to feed 10 GW to the transmitter to get 5 GW on earth, so using a 40% efficient conversion you need 18 square km of sunlight intercept area. No way something like that can be unfolded.
If you work levelized cost of electricity backwards, for 3 cents a kWh (no fuel, serious amount of maintenance) the maximum capital expense is around $2400/kW. The three cent per kWh figure is low enough to capture market share from coal in India. The cost of a 10 km diameter rectenna come in at $200 per kW (one of them is a billion dollar project). The estimated parts cost for the space generation is $900/kW. That leaves $1300/kW for the transport cost or $200/kg–to GEO.
That’s your target cost for power satellites to make economic sense. It’s a 100 to one reduction over the cost to lift communication satellites to GEO.
Does it make physics sense? The energy cost for lifting a kg from Earth surface to GEO is around 15 kWh/kg, at 3 cents a kWh, less than half a dollar per kg. Alas, we don’t have and are unlikely to ever have a moving cable space elevator to get this efficiency.
I agree with you that rockets, even ones that can be reused a few times are unlikely to come close to the required cost number. They might get it down to $2000/kg, but that lift cost makes power from space completely uneconomical.
The only current hope to get the cost down in this range is from Reaction Engines, a UK company which has figured out a design which they think is a SSTO. Not sure how to post the cost vs launch rate graph, but it is slide 19 here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5iotdmmTJQsek9TNHhkeUI4UDlRQlNyVUNMclhJYkpxa3Jz/view?usp=sharing
At very high flight rates, the cost per kg goes slightly under $100/kg. That’s *still* not enough. To keep the reaction mass down for the LEO to GEO run, you need 20 km/s electric arcjets. To power those, you need 1/10th scale power satellites dedicated to propulsion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEkZkINrJaA
If you can find holes in the logic or math, please let me know.
Wikipedia says,
This seems to be far cheaper than what you are saying: “Each Saturn V launch cost ~$1.3 trillion in 2014 $US.”
Dear Gregg Armstrong;
Good analysis, inevitable conclusion.
Good Job,
Pintada
Nice article, especially its conclusion
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-18/another-market-descends-chaos-it%E2%80%99s-madness-market-makes-major-moves-no-reason
I’m relieved to see here we still only do this:
“For nearly a century, meatpackers and producers would haul animals to stockyards and auction barns, to physically buy and sell thousands of cattle almost daily for cash.”
Capitalism — on a finite planet — was always doomed to fail.
We would have overshot and crashed, sooner or later. Look at how steadily the population climbed over the aeons. Steadily ratcheting higher as we switched our livelihoods from hunter-gathering, to agriculture, empire-building and colonisation all in response to our success in eliminating the equilibrium that sustained us in the past. Capitalism is just overshoot in overdrive, fuelled by cheap fossil fuels.
As a species we are servants to entropy it seems. It was our job to merely release all the backed energy that had accumulated over time…
Energy and Human Evolution
Hi,
Good article, interesting comments. When I moved to South Australia 10 years ago solar (and wind) was all the rage. I considered getting solar to lower my electricity costs but I had a feeling that the generous subsidies and tariffs would not last. Without doing much research I came to the conclusion that the technology was too new and I felt it was suspect although I loved the idea of “renewable” and “energy independence” I wondered what the long term consequences would be.
Well, now we know (for South Australia at least) – electricity prices have soared for normal (non renewable users) and because of the “low quality” electricity the biggest miner here (Rio Tinto) threatened to shut its business because the KWH price spiked too such an extent (some huge increase can’t remember exactly) – the state had to use emergency measures (gas turbines electric stations I think) on intermittent days – and yet they are closing the coal fired station at Whyalla???? You couldn’t make it up. Anyway, now they are talking about expanding the “state inter-connector” so that we can draw from other states on low renewable days. We now have the highest electric and gas prices in Australia (and water after building desalination plant that is moth-balled because it is not used). Have these people got s*** for brains? My next job today is to pay my $440 quarterly electric bill. More and more people here are being cut off for non payment. This is what they want. Only the privileged will be able to afford to live……the rest will be debt slaves back to the stone age. Anyway, Gail, look at South Australia a brilliant study in human stupidity. As Einstein said, “the only two things that are infinite are the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former”.
This is yet another example of how people who base their decisions on Koombaya get hammered by facts and logic.
Attention Koombaya Singers…. Kool-Aid Drinkers and Hopium Sniffers….. here are the consequences of ignoring reality… giant solar debacles across the world.
Who are these idiots officials who make these decisions? Did the Germans not realize that the sun does not always shine? Likewise in Australia…
What were they thinking — could it have been ‘ah not a problem – we will go without electricity at those times….’
Surely even a 6 year old could have figured out that intermittent power means operating two generating systems — that this would drive costs up dramatically.
Seriously — WTF?
I have not heard of any of these fools heads rolling…. no doubt they refuse to accept that they *&^ed up … and they continue to sit at the organic coffee shop sipping low fat lattes and complaining about global warming … and thinking up new stupid ideas to drive their nations into bankruptcy…
Seriously, FE, you are among the most venal hypocrites imaginable.
Judgment Day is at hand.
+++++++++
I’m Lovin It! when my posts elicit an explosion of vitriol and insults…. I am right now rejoicing as I read your comments….
I am sure you are thinking — Fast Eddy is crazy — he likes to be insulted?
The thing is….. when someone resorts to this sort of base behaviour…. it is like saying ‘Fast Eddy – you are absolutely right — I am completely wrong — but rather than admit I am wrong — I will insult you’
Bravo…. BRAVO! Encore….
https://stayfreshentgroupdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/lighters.jpg
“Only the privileged will be able to afford to live……the rest will be debt slaves back to the stone age”
Just like that. Perhaps we’d found near collapse better, but it will be long, long, long
We never really left the stone age.
We use more stone these days than at any time in history or pre-history.
Mostly we grind it up to make gravel or cement.
The builders of the Pyramids, Stonehenge and Machu Picchu have nothing on us.
++++++
Right, we just added more materials/complexity. And look at Inca’s megalithic fortresses, you can’t insert a needle between two 3 tons perfectly shaped rocks. Those neolithic craftmen were muy more skillful than us
Concrete has a short lifespan. I have finished this book a few years back – https://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Planet-Fascinating-Man-Made-Material/dp/1616144815
After reading this, you will realize that how short-size homo sapiens are.
Sadly not on Audible…
Do you mean concrete with rebar or concrete in general?
“Do you mean concrete with rebar or concrete in general?”
I don’t think the rebar is the issue. I think whether or not the concrete is waterproof is the big factor in longevity. The Mayans and Romans both made waterproof cements, and there are structures over a thousand years old that remain intact. Not as good as interlocking granite blocks, however.
“Do you mean concrete with rebar or concrete in general?”
Practices have changed in the last ten or 20 years. Look into epoxy-coated rebar.
concrete with rebar. The rebar expanded when corrosion sets in, thus, destroying the whole structure. Without the rebar, concrete is liquid rock. However, which building or structure do we have that has not rebar?
“concrete with rebar. The rebar expanded when corrosion sets in, thus, destroying the whole structure. ”
The trick, as the ancient Greeks figured out, is to plate the iron with lead. Probably against a million environmental regulations, even though the lead seems to stay inside the building for thousands of years no problem.
However, which building or structure do we have that has not rebar?
Some old (ancient) roman stuff probably 🙂
Its with all shortcuts…. there are certain drawbacks…. and today I have the feeling that everyone does things in a way that the problems are thought to be passed down the line or the next greater fool.
the Pantheon in Rome—google it
Concrete roof, still standing after 2000 years.
You walk in there and words become superfluous.
@hkeithson
“Practices have changed in the last ten or 20 years. Look into epoxy-coated rebar.”
All building projects I#ve passt in the last years have used pre-rusted rebar (brown, oxidized “rust” cover)… and as I unserstand the coated rebar is much more expensive… who cares? After 20 years the building is sold to the next investor… if the developer doesn’t do it earlier.
Sinfce basically no one build for a hundred years… nothing matter… expect some shaved of “costs” NOW 😉
“The builders of the Pyramids, Stonehenge and Machu Picchu have nothing on us.”
If Quantity > Quality, then sure. I wonder how much modern stuff will leave ruins 4000 years from now.
try breaking up stones using just bigger stones
Hi,
Am I becoming a conspiracy nut? I increasingly wonder if this is all done on purpose or if we have reached maximum stupidity? There must be some smart people around who have figured out that exponential growth on a finite planet is impossible. These smart people would know that the only way forward is to control populations and lower living standards for the many but keep a few places on the gravy train for the elite. As such all these modern agenda’s – Global warming, cultural Marxism (divide and rule), disintegration of community and family, globalism, centralization of power, death of freedom and concentration of wealth by bankster scum fit the agenda perfectly. Am I a conspiracy nut? Don’t know but as a Senior Chemist (industrial) who has been unemployed for 10 years I have prepared myself as best I can – no mortgage, cash and PM. Got my pension out the UK last year and was the first expat to fight and win against HMRC.gov. to extract my pension. Saved myself 150k by transferring pension before Brexit. Not bad for someone who has no idea about finances and is risk averse. Am I a conspiracy nut job? Don’t know but I read alternative media and every step I have taken so far (operating on gut instinct) has been right (so far). My gut tells me that it is going to be bad….very bad….and coming soon. So, wish you all the best….and this “too old” (56) who has been raging and ranting at the world hopes that you will all be OK. Don’t want to see anyone suffering.
be reassured—that everyone at every level (except for jesusfreaks and other oddballs) is aware that infinite growth is impossible.They are addicted to hopium, while denying they are, just like the rest of us.
The billionaire industrialist or national leader must repeat the mantra—that %growth will go on into infinity.—even though they know it can’t.
If you can’t dig your growth factor out of your own ground, you must acquire someone else’s.
If they didn’t their lives would disintegrate.
So we all pretend to admire the emperor’s new clothes, (as well as our own) and hope against hope that it’s someone else who gets left nekkid.
That is where the concept of thorium and solar panels and mining asteroids comes in…..
It soothes the animal… much as stroking a stricken dog’s head will calm him….
‘There must be some smart people around who have figured out that exponential growth on a finite planet is impossible. These smart people would know that the only way forward is to control populations and lower living standards’
There are smart people who understand the situation – many of them are employed by the central banks and are working furiously to keep BAU from collapsing….
These smart people also understand that the only way forward is to ensure the population grows…. because that contributes to economic growth …. they also understand that we must burn more carbon every year than the last… because carbon burning and economy growth are 1:1 correlated.
They also understand that we cannot lower living standards. That would lead to a deflationary death spiral/.
See http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
“These smart people also understand that the only way forward is to ensure the population grows…. because that contributes to economic growth”
Is that really the case (the italics) when resources are already being extracted at a maximum rate? Is it not better to have the resources shared between fewer people so that those people can afford the outputs of BAU rather than having a greater number of poorer people among whom nobody is able to afford anything?
Just asking. I don’t know the answer myself.
More people does tend to go hand in hand with more resource extraction. Of course, in some timeframes, this may mean cutting down the trees to have enough energy to keep people from starving and freezing. I expect this tendency adds to the pressure to have a very “pointed” collapse, not a Hubbert curve.
‘when resources are already being extracted at a maximum rate?’
What is the maximum rate? Was it the rate of extraction while China was pouring more concrete in a few years than the States did in a century? Is the the rate now?
I would suggest that there is no maximum rate — all that matters is that next year we extract and use more resources than the year before …. because if we do not then we are not growing… and not growing results in the end of more http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
There always seems to be hope that somehow, “Technology will save us.” We have gotten through bad times before (wars, for example), and things turned out all right. If we discovered penicillin, certainly we can figure out a way around this problem. Except hat the problem is much more intractable.
This time it’s very very different, we didn’t have 7.5 billion humans alive, we didn’t have such poor remaining resources, we didn’t have so many people who believed in things that are impossible like high tech “renewable” energy devices that can take over for oil, people actually believe we can just stop using oil & continue on as is with “clean, green” energy!
They are in for a very rude awakening!
We seem to be caught in anvils of disasters coming at us from all sides, the foundation is overpopulation, then declining resources, pollution, rising greenhouse gases that may have already set off a run away greenhouse we can no longer control that will collapse our agricultural systems resulting in the migration of billions of desperate people followed by chaos.
I see no way we can transition smoothly into a lower energy living arrangement with 7.5 billion people & the kind of “leadership” we have been getting.
If climate change gets as bad as some climate experts believe, we are cooked as a species.
As Kevin Hester likes to say, “brace for impact!”
I am afraid you are right!
This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving.
++++++++
You may well be a conspiracy nut, but I wouldn’t worry about that. Absolutely all the best people these days are.
I’m sorry but exactly what part about the CO2 skyrocketing and oceans rapidly warming is a global agenda? And you claim to be a chemist at that, lmfao.
Thanks for Writing. Part of then problem is that the generous solar and wind subsidies and intermittent nature of these resources makes rates too low for coal producers. It also makes rates too low for other “usual” energy producers. This is why electricity from coal is closing–smart planning! Other places aren’t quite as far along as South Australia in this regard.
Putting in the long-distance transmission wires is expensive. It likely will increase rates for a wider area. Whether or not it will reduce rates for you remains to be seen. The longer transmission lines will lead to more line loss as well.
Graham Palmer wrote a book called “Energy in Australia” that talks about the stupidity of solar PV, but explains it in such fancy terms that only a close reader will figure out what he is saying. In his final chapter, he could have pointed out these issues, but didn’t–perhaps he was concerned that what he was saying would be perceived as being too negative by someone–the publisher (Springer) or reviewers.
As far as I can tell, the calculation does not include the energy used in making and operating the inverter. The result would be even worse, if this were included.
There was a comment re: how solar helps us slow the burning of fossil fuels…
As we can see solar is basically a battery — we burn a tonne of fossil fuels to make the battery… and we get slightly more than a tonne worth of energy from the battery over 30 years…
That assumes a 30 year life span —- no bloody way a solar system will last 30 years…
So we are going to get less energy out than we put in.
Which of course means that adopting solar power will accelerate the burning of fossil fuels…. it adds a huge drag to growth… and it will exacerbate AGW …
In short — the reality of solar energy is the total opposite of what most people believe it is.
And anyone working in the renewable energy industry needs to understand that they are complicit in ruining the planet….
Ethically a job in this industry would rank right up there with tobacco sales person.
Yes, this is a concept I’ve integrated into my thinking fairly recently. I’ve concluded we’ll see even more resources and effort pouring into renewables, probably first under subsidized market economics and later in command economy format. It’s really a win-win for TPTB: creating much needed demand for fossil fuels in the midst of demand destruction, while at the same time addressing the political and cultural calls to “do something.”
Totally delusional…
There is no need for more fossil fuels, because customers are broke. They’ve been so far a long time. Which is the reason for all the money printing and other “high finance” shenanigans over the past 8 years – to stop the bottom from finally falling out of the bag. That’s why the price of oil is where it is right now – because peeps are BROKE. Actually, it should be far lower, if not for all the central bank manipulation.
+++++
Solar is a battery that is very expensive to build, and may not function very long. It is a little like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter, and getting fewer back in the end than were put in. It is made using fossil fuels, and financed using debt.
But after winter comes spring.
Probably without people. Of if with people, living in a very different manner than now.
Reblogged this on citizenpoweralliance.
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The Houthis in Yemen (who are supported by Iran) have now targeted Saudi ARAMCO facilities with ballistic missiles twice within a week. The situation in the Middle East doesn’t seem to get any better, on the contrary, the situation seems to be getting worse. The Middle East is perhaps not in a total collapse, but some nations in the region seems to be collapsing faster than others.
A total collapse of the region into an all out war which would end the flow of oil from the region might not lead to a total collapse of the global economy, but it would at least lead to sever damage of the global system.
Good maneuver warfare, hit the soft underbelly.
You are right. We depend on the Middle East for a lot of oil. If things get a lot worse there, we have a problem.
The middle east can be go up in flames… riots… chaos….. we already have seen such a situation in Iraq….
Did that affect the oil fields?
Nope.
Entire countries could descend into total mayhem — and the US military could continue to easily defend oil production facilities….
The opposition that they face would be nothing more than an armed rabble…. that would be incinerated if they were to come anywhere near critical facilities.
ISIS is no threat whatsoever. It is a relatively small organization that could be destroyed easily if the US took the gloves off and decided to deal with it. In reality what damage does ISIS inflict? They cut a few heads off here and there…. they have only small arms…. they are not a potent military force….
Of course it is a US creation … a foreign policy tool…
Recall Rumsfeld or was it Cheney stating some years ago that these terrorists are no real threat… that they were expected blow-back from US policies in the ME….
He was right — they are nothing. They are a flea on the elephants back.
The oil will continue to flow out of the middle east…. no matter what. If necessary the US would destroy the entire region except for oil production facilities….
There is too much at stake.
Very perceptive comments.
Reminds me of a scene from Three Days of the Condor:
Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?
Are you crazy?
Am l?
Look, Turner– Do we have plans?
No. Absolutely not.
We have games. That’s all.
We play games– What if?
How many men?
What would it take?
Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime?
That’s what we’re paid to do.
Walk on.
Go on.
So Atwood just took the games too seriously.
He was really going to do it, wasn’t he? A renegade operation.
Atwood knew they would never authorize it, not with the heat on the company.
What if there hadn’t been any heat?
Suppose I hadn’t stumbled on their plan?
Different ballgame.
Fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan.
The plan was all right. The plan would’ve worked.
Boy, what is it with you people?
You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
No. It’s simple economics.
Today it’s oil, right?
In or years– food, plutonium, and maybe even sooner.
What do you think the people are going to want us to do then?
Ask them.
Now now. Then. Ask them when they’re running out.
Ask them when there’s no heat and they’re cold.
Ask them when their engines stop.
Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry.
Want to know something?
They won’t want us to ask them.
They’ll want us to get it for them.
Ask them.
Now now. Then. Ask them when they’re running out.
Ask them when there’s no heat and they’re cold.
Ask them when their engines stop.
Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry.
Want to know something?
They won’t want us to ask them.
They’ll want us to get it for them.
Every Koomayaista out there — needs to read that a few times… and think about it… that is a great truth.
We live as we do in the affluent countries — because we have won – we have defeated – we have taken — in a world where there is not enough to go around – a world that is adding 90 million people per year – a world where those we have taken from would gladly slit our throats and take what we have for themselves.
Solar serves the oil industry.
GlassPoint Empowers Oman’s Young Talent During Summer Internship Program
MUSCAT, Oman
September 1, 2016
GlassPoint Solar’s Muscat office recently bid a fond farewell to its group of summer interns. The program provided talented Omani students with firsthand experience in a global work environment and an opportunity to learn from GlassPoint’s team of international experts.
Five university students from environmental, accounting, and a range of engineering disciplines, were able to gain valuable knowledge about GlassPoint’s innovative solar technology and be a part of its historical project Miraah, which is being built with Petroleum Development Oman (PDO).
Hani Al Khusaibi, GlassPoint’s Human Resources Manager, Middle East, said, “GlassPoint is committed to supporting the development of Oman’s next generation of innovators by providing unique opportunities to develop their technical and interpersonal skills. We welcome the Sultanate’s future engineers and thought leaders to the world of solar and are excited to provide them with a glimpse of what life is like when renewable and conventional energy work together.”
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GlassPoint is committed to hiring and developing Omani youth to help achieve its vision of creating a world-class solar industry in Oman. The company’s goal is to develop greater expertise across solar technology innovation, project deployment and other support services. These skills will help diversify the economy and create a positive long-term impact on Oman and its people.
About GlassPoint Solar
GlassPoint Solar is the leading supplier of solar to the oil and gas industry. The global oil and gas industry consumes an amount of energy equal to 10% of its own production, making it one of the biggest markets for renewable energy. Operating worldwide from the Middle East to California, GlassPoint’s enclosed trough technology delivers the lowest cost energy to power oilfield operations. By harnessing sunshine, instead of burning natural gas or other fuels, GlassPoint helps oil producers reduce operating expenses while significantly cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
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GlassPoint established its regional headquarters in the Sultanate of Oman in early 2012. The company’s major shareholders include Royal Dutch Shell and State General Reserve Fund (SGRF), the largest sovereign wealth fund in Oman. For more information, visit GlassPoint.com.
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I found this interesting: “The global oil and gas industry consumes an amount of energy equal to 10% of its own production”
EROEI <10 then… big time… as this is only energy.. not other resources and probably not the energy as delivered to the customer…
Somehow I have the feeling that some ETPeee-Model may not as far of than many think. At least it skips standard EROEI calculating methods that do net include so many things…
I found this interesting: “The global oil and gas industry consumes an amount of energy equal to 10% of its own production”
EROEI <10 then… big time… as this is only energy.. not other resources and probably not the energy as delivered to the customer…
saudi consumes about a third of its own production just to stay alive in their desrt kingdom
Just to stay alive… If you include air conditioning open galleries…
however you phrase it—it is their expectation of ”life”
they will not revert willingly to what was 100 years ago, anymore than we will
“expectations”, “willingly”, words that lose ground by the day
I looked at the latest BP numbers to see what I could see. In 2014 and 2015, Saudi Arabia consumed nearly 40% of the energy resources they produced. This amounted to 100% of the natural gas they produced, and nearly 30% of the oil they produced.
This is what they produced in 2015:
Oil 568.5 Million tons oil equivalent
Natural Gas 95.8 MTOE
Renewables 0.1 MTOE
Total Production 664.4 MTOE
Total consumed was divided as follows:
Oil 168.1
Natural Gas 95.8
Renewables 0.1
Total Consumption 264.0
thanks Gail—that’s brought me up to date
That proportion is constantly increasing too, practically no one grasps the importance of their closing vice
Jeffrey Brown’s ELM – Export Land Model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model
Theory ahead of its time. He was ridiculed in some sites. I think he has “disappeared” from the peak oil scene. Have not seen his writings for some time…
When oil prices are low, then his theory doesn’t work as well for countries that have economies that do other things than produce oil. For example, Russia’s, Venezuela’s, Iran’s, and Canada’s own use of oil are all down in 2015, even though they are all oil exporters. Also, our problem now is an oversupply of exports, not an undersupply of exports.
Jeffery Brown is still around and commenting on one Googlegroup that I am on. He generally talks about other topics than Export Land Model.
I received the message below from someone who’s been on a trip to the island of Kauai (to the west of Oahu, in Hawaii), & to Honolulu.
In 2014, Kauai was making a big push to run their power grid completely off “renewable energy” (mainly solar PV) — according to the graph about Hawaiian electricity generation in Gail’s post , it doesn’t look like Hawaii-as-a-test-case-for-renewables is getting much of anywhere.
I don’t know of anywhere on Earth where they’ve gotten the power grid functioning even mainly on “renewable energy” — and, they’d have to do much more than that, to make the whole system work with it (Kauai was, of course, importing the batteries, solar panels, etc.); and, you’ve also got to power the ships, planes, & vehicles, plus, replace all the mainly-coal-source energy used to smelt the metals, etc.
David,
There is a lot of solar here in Hawaii. Much more than I’ve seen in California. The problem with regular electricity is that it costs a huge amount of money. There’s a couple that are living in an apartment that are getting a $700-$800 a month bill for electricity. There’s only the two of them. They only have a one bedroom apartment. I could not find out any additional information, but they do have solar farms on the island of Kawai [I think he means Kauai].
Thanks
Getting the power grid running on renewable energy.
Iceland? ~75% Hydro; ~23% Geothermal??
There’s a bunch of other places including some that run on close to stone age technology. And some villages that are 100% solar+battery.
BTW the excess energy in Iceland is used to make aluminium, (and bitcoin).
Renewable electricity yes, random and intermittent, no.
“I don’t know of anywhere on Earth where they’ve gotten the power grid functioning even mainly on “renewable energy””
Venezuela was running something like 65% of their electricity from their main hydro-dam. Unfortunately, the prolonged drought from the El Nino cycle left them with outages. I suspect you might mean Solar PVC and windmills, excluding hydroelectricity.
Hydroelectricity is in an entirely different category than wind and solar PV. When there is not a problem with droughts, it is one of the most easily regulated sources of electricity supply we have.
I am not sure what the question is. Is the very high electricity bill an indication of the high electricity bills when renewable energy is used to generate electricity?
I know that there are quite a few people with their own backup battery systems, using solar power in Hawaii. This can provide a certain amount of electricity, but it would be hard to run a business operated by off-grid electricity–too little and too high priced.
Earlier this year when I was in Hawaii I was told coal from Australia is one of the fuels used to generate their electrical power costing them approximately 50 cents per kWh. This price alone is enough to incentivize locals to try solar. For comparison in Canada I pay 8 cents per kWh which makes my solar battery system look pretty stupid but then again I know that grid is probably in its last decade of service!
Sungr wrote:
Many people are hoping for wind and solar PV to transform grid electricity in a favorable way. Is this really possible? Is it really feasible for intermittent renewables to generate a large share of grid electricity? The answer increasingly looks as if it is, “No, the costs are too great, and the return on investment […]”
How would anyone operate a factory using low-quality, random, intermittent electricity? How would the employees even know when to show up for work? Would employees have to live on site to use any electricity whenever available? How would that be paid for? Would the employees be paid during power outages? If so, from what revenue stream?
Would in-process work be ruined? Would scrap and rework rates and costs soar?
Sudden power outages may be very dangerous. How many employees might be killed annually due to sudden power outages? Will that be socially acceptable or will workers revolt?
Computerized equipment may have to reinitialize and recalibrate after power outages. Sudden spikes may damage equipment. Rapid power cycling may damage equipment. Are factories equipped for low quality electricity supplies?
Some good thinking. But I am not the author…..
In the case of a factory operation which is forced to accomodate less than reliable renewable supplies. Probably the human labor force would be tasked to perform more and more of the operations, substituting human toil and ingenuity for the boundless energy paramters of our present FF system. Of course, the going gets harder and harder as more and more standardized tasks are not possible and supply lines dwindle or collapse all together.
Under collapse circumstances, the former factory employees might be ecstatic to be kept on the meager payroll just to have the barest remants of a regular job and access to a dwindling supply of industrial products. And they may battle each other for these jobs.
After all, specialized jobs in an energy saturated society are all they know how to do by this point.
Gregg,
I get the intermittancy shortcomings of electricity, but is that what makes it low quality electricity? My very small solar setup uses a pure sine wave inverter which I thought made my AC output identical to commercial grade electricity suitable for electronics. Maybe I am mistaken here.
Unless you work in a manufacturing facility before, you will not know about this. Any form of manufacturing-related machine needs a consistent voltage or current. If there is a spike (just milliseconds), it will cause the machine to trip and takes a long time or expensive (change parts) to start up. Some parts needs to be change each time there is an electrical trip and these parts may be manufactured on the other side of the globe. You cannot fabricate them as you don’t know the contents/materials or IP (i.e. programs in the chips or integrated circuits).
I worked in manufacturing facility and we are very sensitive to light flickering. Even I out of that field, I still look out to the lights when there is a small flicker. This small flicker caused so much headache (I am an engineer) for my team over the years.
Don I have one of those modified sine wave inverters and my electric motors don’t like it. A 1 hp electric motor that should theoretically use 746 watts uses close to 1500 watts.
I can tell you it does not compare to grid supplied AC current
Intermittency is part of what makes electricity low quality.
Also, the inverter doesn’t do the full job of conversion under the best of circumstances. The biggest issue is something called reactive power. I understand that reactive power was the reason for the 2003 North American blackout.
This is an article talking about Reactive Power:
http://www.sma.de/en/partners/knowledgebase/sma-shifts-the-phase.html
This is an article talking about some of the changes needed to upgrade inverters.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/next-generation-grid-connected-inverter-controls-and-capabilities
There is also something called Phase Imbalance.
There is also an issue of how fast changes in output ramp up and down. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/64093.pdf
The Wikipedia article about solar PV lists these issues with respect to grid connection:
Sorry–I am not personally an expert on this. I know that there are a bunch of things that go wrong.
You can pump water with intermittent energy, and you can do desalination of water supply with intermittent electricity. But most things you very definitely need electricity always on, and always doing exactly what it is supposed to do, or there is a problem. You are right in intermittent electricity not working for most things.
In my brief visit to India, the house I saw with intermittent electricity had no refrigerator, because it made no sense to refrigerate food part of the time. It did have a television set, however, and a pedal (non-electric) sewing machine.
This is all pretty silly. In comparison to manufacturing equipment, power buffering and line conditioning equipment is cheap (and the latter is already nearly ubiqitous). Whether that means enough of a battery system to cover 10 min or 6 hours of operations would depend on the application. High energy operations within the plant could be restricted to high availability times and those outputs could be stored and processed/utilized/integrated in low availability times. If our society can continue to provide high quality weather services, such availability can be predicted very accurately 12-24 hours in advance. This is sufficient to notify supplementary workers whether they are wanted.
Some applications that require high levels of energy and cannot tolerate long periods of low availability will be in places of high availability like near geothermal or hydro plants. They generally are there currently because of the cheap energy anyway. Even these consumers could be engineered to be much smarter with electricity (for instance, a steel furnace could maintain temp with much lower energy needs than to smelt ore and form steel).
What our society needs is time to re-orient demand and this happens best without government intervention on the supply side. Instead society should ramp up taxes on use, starting with pollution taxes (and perhaps CO2 taxes) and then eventually adding in nonrenewable depletion taxes. If the US government announced electricity and gas/diesel prices in most of the country were set to triple over the next 15 years (like Germany achieved in half the time), both businesses and residents would start to improve efficiency, reduce usage, and build out infrastructure needed to deal with cheap but intermittent power sources. Niagara falls (on both sides of the border) would not operate as a regular producer of energy but as a giant battery, providing six months of (high value) backup for their customers, who get their other six months worth of energy from intermittent sources. The same would be true of the NW and the area surrounding Hoover Dam. There’s no reason why solar farms couldn’t operate in the desert all along those HVDC lines with the dam adjusting as backup.
So what about other parts of the country without access to hydro? Those with nuclear will be fine because already built nuclear has a very low operating profile (so taxes consist mostly of the dirtyness of uranium extraction). Other locations will lose some manufacturing and populations that cannot otherwise adapt, even as more capable grids connect and sell them electricity (at high profit) when their renewable sources are operating at nadir. Here though, smart grids, electric cars, and localized RE will flourish. People will opt for more HVAC when it’s cheap and less when it’s expensive (we’re talking 5c/kwh for utility scale RE vs 15c/kwh NG and 30c/kwh coal). Their EVs will arbitrage as well and can even supply some energy to households or the grid when expensive enough. Fleets of autonomous EVs will effectively shave peaks and troughs with simple charging stations co-located with solar&wind farms or at least HVDC substations. Deliveries (whether EV trucks/rail/cars) can also be time-shifted, but so can almost all economic activity. People will visit relatives 200mi away when they have excess cheap energy to burn.
Tax credits and other current subsidies for renewables can be removed once externalities are internalized. If we want, we can use revenues to support financing of renewable, smart grid systems, EVs, bicycle paths, and transit to accelerate the transition that would happen anyway. But, assuming we have 30+ years of BAU-lite to transform, I would rather not subsidize them at all and instead use the revenues to pare down debt (along with reductions if gov’t in general).
Obviously we’re talking significant changes in our way of life, particularly much less energy consumed per capital and a deflationary spiral with lots of uncertainty during the unwinding. But this is already baked into the cake and if we are to have any hope in overcoming it we must start ASAP.
one quote if i may from above:
……..If the US government announced electricity and gas/diesel prices in most of the country were set to triple over the next 15 years……..
that would see that government out of office in very short order
the points you make are laudable and worthwhile.
unfortunately untill a dictator comes to power, it is all wish politics, wish economics and wish science.
and when a dictator does take control, the entire system will be in such chaos that nothing will get done anyway.
I was following you avidly up until this point, where you lost me:
“There’s no reason why solar farms couldn’t operate in the desert all along those HVDC lines with the dam adjusting as backup.”
But I don’t mind the ending:
“Obviously we’re talking significant changes in our way of life, particularly much less energy consumed per capital and a deflationary spiral with lots of uncertainty during the unwinding.”
And there’s probably a long string of effects tied to deflation that I don’t understand.
meliorismnow, can I know if you have worked in a factory or involved in any engineering or other manufacturing facilities before? Do you have any hands-on experience in this area?
Nicole Foss has authored a new article at the Automatic Earth. She is addressing financial aspects of collapse and the consequences of negative interest rates etc.
Nicole Foss:
“As we saw in 2008, the transition from embracing risky prospects to avoiding them like the plague can be very rapid, changing the rules of the game very abruptly. ”
“in 2008, when interbank lending seized up due to the collapse of confidence in the banking sector. We have not seen this happen again yet, but it inevitably will as crisis conditions resume, and when it does it will illustrate vividly the limits of central bank power to control financial parameters. At that point, interest rates are very likely to spike in practice, with banks not trusting each other to repay even very short term loans, since they know what toxic debt is on their own books and rationally assume their potential counterparties are no better. ”
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/09/negative-interest-rates-and-the-war-on-cash-1/
There is one point that Gail made many times but they were missed out. In fact, I did it on page 3 but it was missed out with no one commenting on it. It is a very critical point that she made and I fully agree with her.
QUALITY OF ENERGY.
Many commenters, especially those from MSM-type thinking always use “equivalent” energy and that is a very wrong way to do calculations. That was one of the question that I posed to arnholloway (page 6) –
” Arn, does your power from solar panels will be used to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and combined with H2 (electrolysed from water) to form the oil that will be used to power the aeroplanes? You need planes in BAU, no questions asked. What does BAU stands for ? Business As Usual. There can never be a solar plane or any planes that is powered by batteries.
Let us say I use a lot of energy for my heating/cooling/transport/beauty/etc and the equivalent that I use is about 50,000 energy slaves working day and night for me. They is an EQUIVALENT.
If I have 50,000 energy slaves right now; at this present moment in time, will that help me in anything? What am I going to with the 50,000 people sitting in my backyard? How are they going to help me in my flight from Singapore to Hong Kong? There is just simply NO WAY these 50,000 people will do to help me fly. If I need farm hands, these 50,000 will help me work the farms, the mines, they can fan me but can get me to 10C in a warm summer day? No matter how much they fan me, it will never go down to 10C. However, with BAU, I just step into an industrial freezer, I will get to -10C if I want to. So, how would these energy slaves do to get me to 10C? No way. Same as flights, how are they going to get me flying in the air? Throw me up in the air?
“Equivalent energy” is pure propaganda.
Exactly, when the proponents of renewable energy calculates, they use equivalent energy. So, my point to arnholloway (see above) is that if you have all the “equivalent energy” installed using the best and most efficient wind turbine and PVs, how are you going to get me flying? How are you going to get me the Vaseline (petroleum jelly) that I use on my face? Does your “equivalent energy” from PV, wind turbine, thorium, space-based electricity help me ? how? energy-equivalent? So I use my “petroleum jelly”-equivalent cream on my face? (I am a guy not a lady by the way!)
So, are you going to go through the super in-efficient way of carbon capture (from atmosphere), electrolyse the seawater to get hydrogen? How much energy do you need to do that to combine them to make hydrocarbon). Will it not be cheaper just to drill for oil (oh, it is almost gone, sorry!)
He said that based on “equivalent energy”, we need only the size of California” to give us 12petawatts. That is why I said :
So… how many solar panels you need now to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere, electrolyse seawater so that you can get the hydrogen to form the oil that we need? Another 2 California-sized land filled with solar panels or solar devices? We need about 30billion barrel, scratch that, with electric cars, we need 10billion barrels per year for the plastics (for making solar panels as well), medicine, fertilizes, etc.
It is the quality of energy that is important but practically all the MSM-people just use “equivalent energy”.
Same goes for food – you need 2000 calories per day to survive. Do you plan to eat like 2kgs of squash per day just to get the calories? Are you going to munch the whole day like a panda (incidentally they munch the whole day as bamboo has lower energy value)? So, who is going to work on the farms? You may need high energy carbohydrates or even animal fat so that you can work your heart out at the field. I doubt after 2 days of eating squash only, you will not want another squash for the next 3 weeks. Furthermore, do you have the nutrients (minerals and energy) from just eating squash every day?
Unless we have “too cheap to meter” electricity, otherwise, most of the “experts” missed out the quality of energy; the concentration of energy; the ease of energy convertibility and the use of hydrocarbons (the molecules that we convert to form the feedstock for plastic, fertilizers, etc) in all the products that we use.
We are, at the end of the day, a bunch of hydrocarbons and some mineral molecules. Carbon-based lifeforms.
This is very much related to complexity and concentrations of energy. We discovered early on that having millions of hunter-gatherers left us without much capability for doing anything very advanced. What we needed was concentrations of energy, of the right type. In other words, we needed specially trained people, working in different fields. This could only happen through specialization and a networked system connecting all of the pieces. We needed special devices that did special things, and energy that worked exactly right with those devices. We needed debt to pay for this whole system, because the theoretical benefits would come well after the special devices were built.
EROEI calculations (or the equivalent) more or less work when there is no issue of capital devices being built, provided that differences in energy quality aren’t too great. Once we start getting into capital devices and energy quality difference, EROEI calculations can be very misleading.
“provided that differences in energy quality aren’t too great.”
The main energy input for building power satellites is from natural gas. A lot of NG is used to make electricity anyway. The energy payback time is around three months. if a power sat lasts 30 years, that’s more than 100 to one EROEI.
In moving to GEO, the advantage over ground is 5 times the sunlight in the best deserts. At 1.3 kW/m^2 the energy density is still low, but the amount of material needed to capture the sunlight is about 1% compared to on the ground.
Of course this is all tentative since not enough study has been done.
No. You are trying to extrapolate a oil world into a renewable world. You can interexchange some forms of energy into another, but sometimes has a advantage and anothers has a disadvantage.
For example, if you want the same airplains, you will need a fuel because energy density is critical on them. So you need to pay the “convert factor”. Turn electricity into fuel could be from 1:3 in some fuels like hydrogen up to 1:8 in some hydrocarbons.
But if a airplane became 1:3 penalized (in the best scenario) in the new scheme, others like train could become a advantage because all works (or could be work) with electricity. So a great part of the airplain consumption will change to rail or another efficient alternative in the new scheme.
The vision of “all or nothing” is wrong. Economy don’t work like that. If the prices changes you adapt to the new prices and ways of work. So the model will become more energy efficient through avoiding fossil bottlenecks as possible.
In fact, we said that we use 12-20 TW but this are fossil fuel numbers, most of them used in engines that loose a lot of energy as rejected heat.
The same works on a lot of things too. If home heating is more expensive, you will invest more on isolation. It will cost anyway, but insulation materials could be made on summer, when energy is cheaper and more abundant, while the maximum benefit occurs on winter. There is strategies to move “energy” from abundant moments into scarce ones because all that we do are energy in some way. Not all is about complex chemical batteries or electricity accumulation.
The world is constantly changing and this view about “if our current way of things don’t work then the system will collapse” is flawed. If current way of things don’t work, then we will adapt and change.
And the numbers here are normally extrapolation about current world into a renewable one with minor changes. It won’t be this way.
“And the numbers here are normally extrapolation about current world into a renewable one with minor changes. It won’t be this way.”
Well spoken.
It is good that you bring out that point but unfortunately, our JIT and supply chain does not work that way. A lot of parts, things, events or whatever has to happen quickly and they need to be transported by planes. FedEx does not work by sailboats and so are many suppliers to planes. There too many parts and service suppliers to the logistics companies, airplane companies and there are too many suppliers to these suppliers as well.
In many countries, tourism is a major part of the economy and there are many supporting industries like hotels, laundry and the supplier supplying the industrial washing machines, etc.
You scenario will have too many companies being shut down and too many people unemployed. I know in my place, without planes (easy and cheap access to planes), at least 30% of the people will be unemployed. With 30% unemployed, the local shops selling local products will also suffer as there will be fewer people with money to spend.
So, how would you want to settle the employed due to high cost of flight or anything that is high cost due to shortages or substitution?
Factories and other services/facilities are catered for economies of scale. You cannot run an oil refinery with 30% of oil being fed through as it will be too expensive or the pipes are too big for the small volume of oil.
The hotel staff or the people who works at the travel agency cannot be working in a factory immediately. Training does not help and moreover the change will take too long.
Any comments much appreciated. Please put in reality rather than models or theory. Thank you.
It amazes me how people completely underestimate how fragile the system is..
I’ll post this again to save you having to explain over and over ..
p. 56 is a good starting point:
http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Trade_Off_Korowicz.pdf
First, I agree, quality of energy is very different, and equivalence is pretty useless.
However, let us try to take a look from the other side, how the technotopians view the future. The Technotopian future is the Resource Based Economy, The Venus Project. It is machines doing the work, things made locally using generic minerals that are cheap and abundant, with 3D Printing. No one travels in this future, as they can just use telepresence to experience vacations and communicate with people anywhere in the world, without leaving their home.
Since people do not need to work, and all their needs are locally produced from local materials by automation, they don’t need cars. Their more energy efficient homes need a tiny fraction of the heating and cooling energy we need now. So each person may only need 500 watts continuous to meet their needs, or perhaps much less.
Of course, this vision of the future is based on a few pending breakthroughs in technology, a massive change in the way people think, and collective ownership of all the resources and capital, along with a machine god or an infallible technocratic government.
The heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing.
That is really a page from science fiction. If it can happen, it needs to happen almost immediately. We are way way beyond the region of overshoot… we don’t have much time.
We’re 10 times into overshoot. I’d say time has well and truly run out. The only thing standing between us and the dustbin of history is the printing press. Keep ’em rolling!
This looks sustainable:
https://populationeducation.org/sites/default/files/resources/JCurve5_2014.pn
https://populationeducation.org/sites/default/files/resources/JCurve5_2014.png
CTG,
For once I don’t exactly agree with you.
Firstly, slaves are not energy by themselves, rather converters of chemical energy (food) into mechanical energy (muscle work). Incidentally, this energy-conversion happens with a loss (waste heat).
In my view, there are actually different types/forms of energy, as you say, each with its specific qualities and degree of concentration, but the issue is more one of conversion of one form into another, with its associated efficiency.
Efficiency is very high (i.e. waste heat is minimal) when you go from a highly concentrated high quality energy towards a lower type, and efficiency gets very low when you try to upgrade or concentrate the energy.
To pick up on your first example, we could imagine your 50.000 (well fed) guys growing palm-trees, extract oil from it, and work it into some kind of kerosene which could fill the tank of your plane. Likely not very efficient, but possible in theory.
That’s why it’s very important to start from the final use you want to make of the energy, in order to determine what type of energy is most suitable to start with, and avoid as many conversions as possible (i.e. lose a minimum quantity into waste heat).
The propaganda part in “equivalent energy” (1st law of TDs, after all!) is that they forget to tell you what percentage of this energy is lost into waste heat along the process because of all involved conversions (and, incidentally, also what amount of infrastructure, investment and resources are necessary to run the process).
We had the incredible luck (or curse) to find huge amounts of petroleum, top-quality energy especially suitable for transportation, which itself was especially suitable to develop our civilization of commodified goods. I doubt we can maintain it (BAU relies on rotary motion, as Norman says) with any other form of energy.
“I doubt we can maintain it (BAU relies on rotary motion, as Norman says) with any other form of energy.”
Because other forms of energy are less efficient and can’t produce as much?
The questions include how efficiency relates to the Jevons paradox: the more efficiency you have, the more energy you use.
Not only, Artleads,
Petroleum is highly concentrated and stores energy under liquid form, which is very convenient for handling, use in engines, etc.. therefore ideal for transports.
Transports are vital to our economy because of its specialization, which implies that things are produced en masse in dedicated locations, often distant to one another (even more since globalization), hence the need to move them constantly from one place to another (there may be a parallel with financial capital to be made here, but that’s another topic).
All our infrastructure is in fact built upon the assumption of availability of such a convenient energy source, concentrated and liquid, which moreover has to be cheap. We’d have the possibility to make substitutes, but at a much higher cost; that can’t work either.
And yes, petroleum is very “efficient”, that can explain its expansion and the total transformation of our world during the last century. I put “efficient” between quotes because efficiency is related to the way energy is used, not really to the quality of the energy source itself. For the energy source, we’d rather talk about concentration. With a highly concentrated energy form, one doesn’t even have to be very efficient to get high power in output (i.e. can afford to waste a big share of the input).
Agree with what you have said on “slaves”. I was more towards the “big picture” that I want to put across and I use that as an example. It just want to expand on the fact that practically everyone uses “equivalent” which will be pretty much meaningless when it comes to physics and energy. I have USD1m in my bank account and it is a claim on future energy which is “equivalent” to 50 USD20,000 cars that I can buy in future or equivalent to XXX amount of YYY things or services. So, how does that work out in the future claims? again equivalents?
I didn’t get the monetary aspect of your comment.
Money is a proxy for useable energy, a promise, not genuine energy.
Of course, your million dollars will be worthless as soon as BAU breaks up.
Sorry. The monetary aspects are not in the original comment. I used it to explain that my first comment was more on the macro side. Maybe I put it too big and too macro.
you are correct in every point
though the bit about the vaseline had us worried for a minute
Tim Groves wrote:
“Here’s some news that should assuage all FE’s fears about those pesky spent fuel rods. ”
“According to Asahi Shimbun: ”
“Highly radioactive waste from the decommissioning of nuclear reactors should be buried at depths beyond 70 meters for 100,000 years, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has decided.”
ROTFLMAO (rolling on the floor laughing my a** off). 70 meters is right in the water table in most parts of the world. That seems like a plan to thoroughly contaminate the world’s drinking water aquifers. Maybe Fast Eddy has been right all along.
But, there is reason for hope. The molten salt thorium reactors can supposedly burn up transuranic wastes. We just need a few hundred of them to process the last ~80 years massive backlog of high level nuclear wastes.
Thorium reactors are a constant like the speed of light– always 10 years in the future.
(ones that scale, and are commercially operable)
Perhaps because sodium “fast breeders” are good enough for now with the mixed oxide fuel (fresh U238, weapon grade plutonium, and spent fuel) with little waste as end product. As mentioned before, the Russians have apart from legacy research and smaller grid units also new ~ .8GWe power plant and actually building scaled up 1.2-1.6GWe designs of the same.. Mind you these are already commercial grade stuff feeding the electic grid, not experimentals.. The next step up under work for 2030-40 is in thorium fuel and or re-using spent fuel mixes with even higher content of the existing waste from old reactors..
Now, you can ask who is knocking on their door to get the incensed version of this stuff as fast as possible, no these are not west alliance countries.. instead they are building geared windmills and importing Chinese PV panels, lolz..
some say the west is in decay..
If you drill much deeper than 70 meters almost anywhere in Japan, you have a fair chance of hitting hot water and then you can open a spa resort. The water table is usually within a few meters of the surface and there’s plenty of rainfall to keep it replenished. If you want to bury nuclear waste, you have to worry about these things as well as volcanos and earthquakes.
If you were in Japan’s situation, you might be smarter to wait until some other country such as the US, Australia or Mongolia opens a disposal site and then pay them to store it for you. Or even better, send it to the far side of the moon…….
https://youtu.be/_Wr41gaM_ow
When collapse happen? This is a trick question. Let me just open up your mind a bit on this.
Future historian (oxymoron!) will say that the decline of homo sapiens happens when they discover fire and within a short span of 2 million years, they disappear without a trace. If someone looks at a shorter timeline, they will say that when agriculture starts, it is the start of the extinction process of homo sapiens. That is about 20,000 from the start until extinction.
If someone were to look at it differently, then he would say that when iron age starts as that is the time trees are gone to make iron tools and weapons. From there, about 3000 from the start to the end. That is the time when Romans fight with iron weapons.
Looking at it differently, some will say that it started during the Renaissance age when more trees were fell and many wealthy people live beyond their means and they become greedy. 600 years from the beginning to the end.
In a smaller perspective, some will say that it starts when people use fossil fuels like coal. So, maybe 300 years from start to end. If someone says it is the start of oil age, then it is 150 years. If someone says it is the start of Federal Reserves, then it is about 100 years. If it is Nixon’s closure of gold window, then it is about 40 years. If it is the abolishment of Glass-Steagle Act, then it is 20 years. If it is the 2008 crisis that struck a mortal blow to the entire fragile economic structure, then it is 7 years.
So, it actually depends on how people define collapse. Yoshua commented (page 7) that collapse is relative as some countries have already collapse, some levels (strata) of society has collapsed (poor people). For me, the collapse is also “relative on the time scale”
When we perish, do we leave a strata of “leftovers” in the soil? What do we see? Ashes only, not bones but our civilization. It would be iron rich and only probably a few milimeters thick. We have nothing to show. Concrete lasts not more than 200 years. Stones, probably more. So, can anyone take a guess what happened in that layer of 5mm thick black iron-rich ash? Why iron because we use a lot of iron (cars, rebars, etc).
Will any “future historians” be able to conclude what happened in that 3mm thick? Will they know that it was Ben Bernake or Alan Greenspan’s work that cause the collaps or was it homo sapien’s use of fire. They will then conclude that the living organism perished along with 98% of the entire earth’s lifeform. It was another extinction event. Root cause unknown but the weather can dramatically during that time. Perhaps, it was the weather change that cause the life form to go extinct.
“So let it be written. So let it be done.” and from there, it was known that the 6th great extinction was cause by climate change.
We know dinosaurs dies out between 65million plus minus 1 million years. Can one tell me with 100% conviction and certainty that dinosaurs are not intelligent beings and they are the ones who wipe themselves off the planet earth? We do not have the resolution to determine if that is the case. People may say that I am a “nutcase” but give what I say a great thought. It is an eye opener for me.
It is a matter how one can resolve the “collapse”. To me, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter if it happens now or a few years down ? No. Does it really matter to earth? No. We are already at the edge of the abyss in 2008 and TPTB pulled us back but we are rushing to the cliff again. This time, there will be nothing to pull us back.
Interesting thoughts, CTG.
the last 250 years have been our supernova
a brief flash of light and heat in the million years of our existence.
now we are due to fade back into a primeval darkness
Yes, past ~250yrs is my often cited time span as well, but if you look into demographics data, the peak of the peak which did us in was clearly the oil factor. The prior phases were more along the side of global-wise spread of info-knowledge as preparing the ground like biology-healthcare-sanitation (18-19th century), and obviously the whole coal techno revolution enchilada as the boosting rocket in the later part of 19th century..
oh absolutely—basically i was just generalizing
the widely accepted timeslot for the oil supernova is 1930–2030
(http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/olduvai.htm) —and other places.
but if you want a little light humour in all this doomerism: http://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/421396
dinosaurs were around for 1/200 m years or so
bacteria have been around for 2 bn years
we’ve been around for 1m years or so, and are about to bump ourselves off
on that basis where does supreme intellect lie?
There’s no such thing as supreme intellect in this world. We’re all a bunch of primates doing whatever it is we think we need to in order to survive. In our case it’s exploiting technology to extract fossil fuels while offing ourselves in the process.
You raise good points!
‘We know dinosaurs dies out between 65million plus minus 1 million years. Can one tell me with 100% conviction and certainty that dinosaurs are not intelligent beings and they are the ones who wipe themselves off the planet earth?’
Thought-provoking! An outstanding post.
Such long perspectives on human existence as given by CTG are – I find – a strange source of rational and imaginative pleasure, although the topic is a less than happy one.
When we go down, it will be, in a rather perverse way I admit, consoling to know the true reason: in the same way that it’s preferable to understand that a fatal illness comes from the action of a virus rather than imaging that a ‘devil’ has got into one or blaming one’s neighbour for casting a spell……
At the same time; I often wish I didn’t know all of this!
Unfortunately, there’s no “Agent Smith” to plug us back into the matrix, now that we’ve taken the red pill.
Nice perspectives
Thanks CTG
http://www.askwhy.co.uk/books/wholiessleeping.htm
In 2015 the United States consumed about 9.16 million barrels of gasoline per day and 2.9 million barrels of distillate fuel per day. Federal fuel taxes are 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel fuel. That’s $7.728 per barrel gasoline and $10.248 per barrel diesel.
Not all gasoline or distillates are subject to taxation but, to make this calculation easier I’ll include all of it. In 2015 the Federal government received up to $70.788 million per day in gasoline taxes and $29.719 million per day in diesel fuel taxes. For the year that’s a total of $36.685 billion. That’s is not counting income taxes paid by energy corporations and their employees. And they do pay taxes.
The US EIA web site has very detailed yearly statistics on Federal government subsidies and taxes received by energy type (oil, coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, biomass, biofuel, solar thermal, photovoltaic solar and wind). [Photovoltaic solar net subsidies are astronomical per unit of energy.]
The fiscal year 2015 Federal budget was $3.8 trillion. So fuel taxes were not quite 1% the Federal government’s budget. It’s still a lot of money. All electric cars don’t pay any fuel taxes. In fact they and hybrids are heavily subsidized by gasoline and diesel fuel taxes!
State and local governments also tax fuel sales. They can’t print US dollars either or (legally) run deficits making them quite dependent on fuel taxes.
Gail is spot on when she writes that declining oil production dramatically reduce government revenues. It also reduces wages and taxes on labor income. Fuel taxes drop. Corporate income taxes drop. Subsidies for renewables skyrocket. It’s unsustainable.
Watch for the ramifications of the Hanjin Line bankruptcy. It might snowball into a major loss of trust in receiving full payments in international trade. This article by Mark St. Cyr is an interesting read.
The Fed Fiddles While The Free Market Burns
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-fed-fiddles-while-the-free-market-burns/
Here’s some news that should assuage all FE’s fears about those pesky spent fuel rods.
According to Asahi Shimbun:
Highly radioactive waste from the decommissioning of nuclear reactors should be buried at depths beyond 70 meters for 100,000 years, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has decided.
Under the decision made Aug. 31, nuclear waste that would mainly consist of the control rods used in nuclear reactors would be buried in areas where earthquakes and volcanoes pose a minimal threat.
Electric power companies would be responsible for managing the buried waste for periods between 300 and 400 years. The central government would then take over and restrict entry and digging in the burial sites for a period of 100,000 years.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201609020034.html
Even the Fuhrer only promised a thousand-year Reich, but the Japanese nuclear regulators are assuming the continuous existence of a 100,000-year state. Feel safer now?
The spent fuel rods can’t even be moved until they have been cooled (for years) and dry casked. Can’t see this happening everywhere in a collapse scenario. Given a typical spent fuel pool contains around as much radioactivity as would be released in a full scale nuclear war, it’s hard to imagine the spent fuel pools will not result in the extinction of all higher life forms (as FE suggests).
“Feel safer now?”
Not exactly. I’ll side with FE (a rare occurrence) for this one. And the above is the most extensive line of BS I’ve ever heard. I hope it was presented as a joke.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XvuM3DjvYf0&t=75
The Japanese authors are hung up on the long half-lives of the fuel in the rods. Hence, they throw out numbers like 100,000 years. It’s ludicrous to assume any humans or their civilizations will last that long to oversee their safe burial. The best we can hope for is a decent burial now in places where future species won’t get curious. If they do, the intense radiation exposure and toxicity will insure that they won’t continue the process.
It’s one of the greater booby traps we humans will leave behind, certainly one of the longest lived. BTW, if you wish to visit Tokyo, if might be wise to do that sooner than later.
“Under the decision made Aug. 31, nuclear waste that would mainly consist of the control rods used in nuclear reactors would be buried in areas where earthquakes and volcanoes pose a minimal threat.”
Control rods, not the fuel rods. Just a bunch of carbon-14 mostly.
Matt, control rods are so highly exposed to radiation that (as would happen to any object under this circumstance) they start irradiating, much like the fuel rods themselves
“The period in which electric power companies would manage the waste was set at between 300 and 400 years because a period of several tens of thousands of years is unrealistic”
You see, this guys are PROFESSIONALS (of course, one wonders what kind of stuff would be selling those companies once they dismantle the nukes, but, hey)
“Consideration is also being given to possible burial sites for nuclear waste with extremely high radiation levels”
So they got it, just have to dig in Fukushima. If they continue like this they will finally get kinda safe island in the end. Indeed, strain is a good teacher
“control rods are so highly exposed to radiation that (as would happen to any object under this circumstance) they start irradiating, much like the fuel rods themselves”
Sure, I suspect there is quite a lot of water, and if a plant is decommissioned, quite a lot of irradiated cement as well. My point was just that this proposal was not even for the spent fuel rods, just for control rods.
I think the current vision is that the spent fuel will eventually be reprocessed and used. It is like hoarding a bunch of toxic chemicals in your garage, in the hopes it may one day be worth money.
I think the current vision is that the spent fuel will eventually be reprocessed and used. It is like hoarding a bunch of toxic chemicals in your garage, in the hopes it may one day be worth money.
Yes, that’s my impression. One idea is that it can be reprocessed to form part of the initial feedstock for the next generation of even safer, even cleaner, better ‘n ever nuclear power that is on the drawing board gathering dust somewhere.
In Japan, the Grand Design was to commercialize fast breeder reactors that created more fuel than they consumed while providing electricity that was too cheap to meter. That dream proved to be well beyond the capabilities of late 20th century technology. From memory, the Monju FBR was designed to operate in such away that it needed to be controlled about 30 times as fast as a conventional uranium reactor. Also, it produced so much heat that the core needed to be cooled using liquid sodium. Not quite Star Trek but it was computer controlled and it needed a team of Scotties watching everything carefully to stop the thing from going off bang.
Fortunately, Monju’s cooling system sprang a leak in 1995 and filled the surrounding rooms with liquid sodium that soon cooled and became solid. I say fortunately because had the cooling system performed better, a much more dangerous malfunction could well have occurred.
‘It is like hoarding a bunch of toxic chemicals in your garage, in the hopes it may one day be worth money’ 🙂
If Tim’s venture pans out…. that lead box of spent fuel could be worth it’s weight in gold
I can imagine control rods and pipes being buried…
But L1 waste… the spent fuel…. I cannot imagine that can just be buried… it absolutely needs to be kept cool otherwise it blows it’s top….
Fast Eddy wrote:
“‘15000 kcal. 6 days of food’
Futility defined….
I made similar stark realizations… and I now grow food only because I like growing food.”
I’m too lazy to garden for a few thousand Calories. If I’m still alive after the collapse I’ll just go out and kill a pronghorn antelope once a week. 🙂
“If I’m still alive after the collapse I’ll just go out and kill a pronghorn antelope once a week. 🙂”
I was wondering how many pounds of meat you could get off a single pronghorn? Maybe 15-20lb?
In Sweden:
300k elks.
Average wt 300kg(?)
50% meat
1500kcal/kg meat
Pop 10M
Avg kcal need 2.5k/day
= food for 2.7 days (please verify calculations)
“I’ll just go out and kill a pronghorn antelope once a week.”
But of course that will only work if you’re the only one doing it. Otherwise you will run out of antelopes in a month. If not before.
Also, how much of that meat can you eat in a day, maybe two, without refrigeration? Maybe you have a family to help you.
“Also, how much of that meat can you eat in a day, maybe two, without refrigeration? ”
People have, for thousands of years, stored meat for months and years, without refrigeration. Salt it, smoke it, make pemmican out of it, you can even stick it in a cool, fast moving stream trapped under rocks and it will stay good for a while.
Thanks. As yummy as all that salt encrusted meat sounds, I think I’ll stay a vegan.
That will work great after the collapse.
Just get a crate of whatever McDonalds adds to their ‘food’ and sprinkle that on everything … it will last for years….
Pronghorn Antelopes are great fans of peak oil- when the quarrelsome ape can no longer race across the plains in 6,000lb SUVs and is back to survival hunting on foot. See here-
“The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, being built for maximum predator evasion through running. The top speed is very hard to measure accurately and varies between individuals; it can run 35 mph for 4 mi (56 km/h for 6 km), 42 mph for 1 mi (67 km/h for 1.6 km), and 55 mph for 0.5 mi (88.5 km/h for 0.8 km).”
“It is often cited as the second-fastest land animal, second only to the cheetah.[21] It can, however, sustain high speeds longer than cheetahs.[6] University of Idaho zoologist Compared to its body size, the pronghorn has a large windpipe, heart, and lungs to allow it to take in large amounts of air when running. Additionally, pronghorn hooves have two long, cushioned, pointed toes which help absorb shock when running at high speeds.”
So good luck with the Antelope hunting. And you better hope that they haven’t been feeding on sage.
http://www.nhptv.org/wild/images/pronghorn14.jpg
And still humans can run down antelopes with persistence hunting.
(No you don’t have to point out I can’t do it.)
In most places where there are large animals there would be more than enough ammo stock piled to wipe them out…
So I doubt we’ll get to the point of running them off of cliffs….
“I’m too lazy to garden for a few thousand Calories. If I’m still alive after the collapse I’ll just go out and kill a pronghorn antelope once a week. :)”
Hopefully, there are a few trillion antelope to feed the billions of people who think the same as you.
It won’t be long before all of the pronghorn antelope are gone.
Or … go for the more numerous big game…. 7.4 billion targets….
Interesting article / analysis (On-Topic!) at Energy Matters blog (Euan Mearns): UK Wind Constraint Payments: http://euanmearns.com/uk-wind-constraint-payments/ – about the payments the UK gives to the wind producers for not putting their wind-power to the grid (because it can’t handle it).
The total sum and percentage of the energy not being used grows bigger and bigger – and costs more and more reimbursement:
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ukwindconstrained.png
At that at the meagerly level of wind at the total electrical energy production. Sweet dreams “80” or even “100” % ‘renewable’ energy…..
Euan closes with: “Exporting surplus wind to Europe is a fantasy, not because we don’t have sufficient interconnectivity but because when it is windy in the UK it is also likely to be windy in Europe hence there will be no demand for our surplus. Atlantic depressions are continent sized. And UK hydro is woefully under-dimensioned to have capacity to balance UK wind output. UK hydro is instead used to provide some base load and some diurnal load-following capability.
Hence, the official narrative is simply fantastical rubbish. The reality is that on windy days in the UK wind producers are paid by you and I to not produce their heavily subsidised electricity.”
Thanks! Euan Mearns has a lot of good articles.
In the one you link to, he says, ” . . .we see that problems absorbing wind onto a balanced UK grid begin at 3% penetration. Below 3%, little wind is constrained on a monthly basis, above 3% in certain circumstances, some wind is constrained. Above 6% penetration some wind is always constrained on a monthly basis.”
It doesn’t take much wind to start causing problems in the UK. This is another example of the problems I show in my post.
FastEddy wrote:
“Nine years ago, I published one of the first papers that tried to provide a critical analysis of the biological principles underlying the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and its potential to improve rice production.”
Yes, in the engineering world this is the ‘unobtainium’ or FM (effin’ Magic) problem. If only we had magic. It’s also the same as trying to explain why the Laws of Thermodynamics makes you devote massive resources to capture the very diffuse energy of sunlight. Yeah, let’s cover all of Arizona and New Mexico with billions of solar panels and still require all of our conventional electrical power generation when the sun is not shining.
Did you know that every generation, beginning prior to World War 1, we have devoted immense resources to some aspect of biofuels? Beginning with a methanol plant in the mid-West before WW 1. Ours is the fourth generation to go down that road. Unsuccessfully, I might add. It always founders on thermodynamics.
Ford made his first cars to run on biofuel, for the simple reason that filling stations did not exist, but any blacksmith could make a still, and a few acres set aside to grow biofuel didn’t present a problem.Hence moonshine was one of the first viable motorfuels. Diesel also ran engines on peanut oil.
trouble is, moonshine has taken over our thinking in respect to fueling our transport systems.
hkeithhenson asked:
“Gregg, I know it’s not likely to happen again, but you know what engineers can do if they are well supported, i.e., the Manhattan project.”
“If the government (or several of them) decided power satellites were the way to go and went to Boeing, how long would do you think it would take for them to detail design something like Skylon and scale up to 25 a month?”
What have you got against molten salt thorium reactors if all you want is electricity? Seems like a gargantuan waste of resources to try to get electricity beamed from satellites to ground receiving antennae.
In my opinion, the entire idea of power satellites and the attendant very heavy lift launch requirements are realistically far beyond current human capabilities. That’s my opinion anyway.
I made some scientific wild-assed guesses based on historic program costs, escalated to current year dollars, and I don’t think Congress would ever approve even a preliminary development program. Full scale development would never get approved. Impossible for full rate production.
I have worked on some far out projects but this idea is orders of magnitude more far out than all of them combined. I just do not believe that the world could ever agree to fund a program like this. And it would almost have to be a world project. Even if the USA paid for it we would still need to contract with countries around the world. Managing a project like that isn’t for the timid or faint of heart.
“What have you got against molten salt thorium reactors if all you want is electricity? Seems like a gargantuan waste of resources to try to get electricity beamed from satellites to ground receiving antennae. “
When I looked at the picture of available options, LFTR / DFR (both thorium molten salt based) came out top. Unfortunately political and capital investment is still in intermittent “renewables”…. so much time lost….
If this technology ever comes to be, I think it will be to late to scale the construction up to a point where it can extend the game.
These are all just pie in the sky ideas. Not only technically, but for all the other limits to growth reasons we’ve discussed in this here blog.
“how long would do you think it would take for them to detail design something like Skylon and scale up to 25 a month?”
You didn’t answer the question. Boeing is close to half the western world’s aircraft production. If the world is building them at 50 a month, Boeing will be building half of them. Airbus has already indicated it wants the Skylon airframe design and is willing to put a lot of their own money in it.
“What have you got against molten salt thorium reactors if all you want is electricity?”
Nothing. But we are talking 15,000 1 GW output MSR. Politically that’s not going to be an easy sell. I wonder if anyone has worked out the EROEI for MSR? Or the project cost in cents per kWh?
“Seems like a gargantuan waste of resources to try to get electricity beamed from satellites to ground receiving antennae.”
If power satellites are not the lowest cost way to replace fossil fuels, then we should not build them. Show me a way that can undercut 3 cent power from space and I will work on that rather than power satellites. I did this for a year and a half on StratoSolar. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8323
“In my opinion, the entire idea of power satellites and the attendant very heavy lift launch requirements are realistically far beyond current human capabilities. That’s my opinion anyway.”
Is your opinion fixed? Or are you willing to look into the physics, engineering and economics? Did you look at the videos?
“I made some scientific wild-assed guesses based on historic program costs, escalated to current year dollars, and I don’t think Congress would ever approve even a preliminary development program. Full scale development would never get approved. Impossible for full rate production.”
The interesting thing about power satellites is that it only takes a moderate front end investment. After that, the whole thing self finances, making gobs of money as it grows. Do you know of any other self financing proposal that will get humanity off fossil fuels?
Hkeithheson,
I answered to his message on the question of returns, but debit of being stopped in the tray. I am going to be several days without connection to Internet.
Enjoy in OFW!
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Wind power can be used to pump water back up to the reservoir as a cheap form of storage given sufficient water levels downstream. Colocating wind power and hydropower might make a lot of sense respecting storage. Otherwise storage costs are prohibitive.
Unless a practical energy storage method is devised, there’s really not much point to solar panels or wind turbines. The reservoir plan has special needs to work. Proximity to water, space and a elevation differential are difficult requirements to meet generally speaking.
Colocating wind farms with existing hydropower installations makes sense. But, drought conditions at a place like Lake Mead would negate the benefits of pumping water back up to the reservoir. There are no easy or simple solutions.
“There are no easy or simple solutions.”
Dead on correct.
Don’t forget…. ‘there are many problems for which there will never be solutions’
We are facing one of them….
“Don’t forget…. ‘there are many problems for which there will never be solutions’
We are facing one of them…”
That strikes me as a bit arrogant. How can you be so sure about the future?
there may well be something in our future that will power our way to a prosperous infinity.
problem is, we live in our here and now, and our needs are here and now.
which means that whatever is out there, as yet unimagined and uninvented, has to manifest itself pretty damned quick—like in less than the next 20 years.
Stop to think just what that means—I repeat: we have to invent something we don’t even know exists, or even can exist except to hopium addicts, and then power it out across the industrial function of the globe, all by the use of an old industrial powerbase that is itself grinding to a halt over the same time period.
Now—instead of—we must do that, or “they” must/will do the other, or other irrational nonsenses, would anyone care to point out the error of my doomerizing?
Short of JC springing a surprise return visit on us all, or 6 billion righteous souls getting raptured and leaving us sinners to pick up the pieces, I cannot see any way forward.But I might just have missed something that someone will no doubt point out shortly.—But please, logic and rationality only—immigrants from Delusistan must pray in their own temples.
“there may well be something in our future that will power our way to a prosperous infinity.”
Long range I am *much* more pessimistic about the biological future of the human race than Fast Eddy. Post singularity I don’t expect there to be any biological humans left, on the other hand, the extinction does not need to kill anyone. I developed this in some detail in “The Clinic Seed.”
“problem is, we live in our here and now, and our needs are here and now.”
Right. I would not bother if I thought the singularity would come sooner than the build up of problems with energy and CO2.
“which means that whatever is out there, as yet unimagined and uninvented, has to manifest itself pretty damned quick—like in less than the next 20 years.”
That’s the assumption.
“Stop to think just what that means—I repeat: we have to invent something we don’t even know exists, ”
Less than two years ago, I don’t have a proposal to offer. It’s taken a huge effort to find a path to cheap enough transport.
“or even can exist except to hopium addicts, and then power it out across the industrial function of the globe, all by the use of an old industrial powerbase that is itself grinding to a halt over the same time period.”
There is a huge market for cheap energy. If the profit from building power satellites is high enough, you can expect it to grow as fast as we can build rocket planes.
Feel free to point out the problems after you understand the proposal.
‘There is a huge market for cheap energy. If the profit from building power satellites is high enough, you can expect it to grow as fast as we can build rocket planes’
https://66.media.tumblr.com/0113e1abad32199c5e9dadf6e4cdf933/tumblr_nrdnowSjDe1qzpnnro1_500.jpg
assuming there is a (as yet unknown, unthought of) solution out there, when/if it manifests itself, it will require the existing infrastructure on which to get up and running.
The new “system’ will require physicality, not skymagic.
Such ”up and running” by definition cannot be instantaneous, therefore must require 20/30 years, maybe more. We do not have that much time.
In addition, we live in a capitalist system.
So unless this (whatever it is) is given freely to all, an elite few will capitalise on it. (as the ”system” itself will have required ”capital” to manifest itself in the first place)
Thus the few will enrich themselves, demanding a return on expended capital, while the rest will remain in worsening poverty through lack of energy access.
If on the other hand it is given freely to all, then all will proceed to use it at a frantic rate to bring themselves up to the level of ”western” civilisation.
That will consume ‘stuff’ at an ever faster rate. All ‘stuff’ is by definition finite. We use heat energy to refine all the other earth resources to make what we use and live by.
This is why fantastical energy resources will not resolve our consumption problems.
If it is not given freely to all, then you can be certain that the nations who have ”it” will need to build trumpwalls to keep out those who do not.
And be utterly ruthless in keeping out those ‘have nots’
You will then have a world of
A—permanent slave society (with a rich minority)
or B permanent conflict
Take your choice—humankind cannot exist in a simultaneous state of harmony and inequality.
Interesting conundrum isn’t it? But it is one drawn from the reality of human nature as it exists, not from something drawn from imagination and wishful thinking
Well…. if the best shot we have is your solar space boondoggle…. then I am 100% sure that there is no future.
The future is now — we need something now — there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.
There is a lot of options. It’s only matter than today, most of them are not competitive or require some changes that if you want to make today and not when the old infrastructure is amortized, you have to make a extra spend.
You have…
Water pump (hydro).
Batteries (energy dense -> transportantion, cheap -> local storage). See, for example, sodium based to scale batteries to terawatts hour levels of storage.
Flow batteries (more expensive power, but cheaper long term storage because separate both concepts).
Demand management. Cheap as infrastructure, but require global redesign, so slow to deploy or make a extra spending.
Better logistics. In some way, it’s like demand management but from the point of view of embedded energy in products. You manufacture more when there is extra energy production (ej. summer) and change the role in low energy (in winter, maintainance & repair, assembly…)
Etc. Etc.
There is a whole world between less energy and a collapse. In general, there is a lot of numbers about the peak oil movement that overstimate the problem and see always “irresolvable problems”.
How do you think we can resolve the peak oil problem?
“There is a whole world between less energy and a collapse. ”
Our main problems are not the physical world, but the financial system, political system, the minds of the masses, demographics, nuclear waste. If humans were ants or bees, we could cull down our population, adapt to less resources, and keep things rolling along at a lower level.
It’s in the collapse of the teetering financial system that will usher in the doom we so desperately fear. And that moment is coming sooner rather than later, as it collides with the immovable obstacle of limits to “growth”.
“Our main problems are not the physical world.” Yeah right. I’m just going to leave this here.
http://globalclimate.ucr.edu/images/evidence_CO2.jpg
the old system was amortized 50 years ago. Go ahead and make your new system.
How do we pay back debt (or debt plus interest) as we use less energy? How do we keep the prices for energy products high enough–that is, up higher than the cost of extraction?
I don’t think that you have thought these issues through. They are an important part of the problem as well.
Also. Where do we put our wastes from such a gargantuan endeavour? Back into the same closed system that’s already groaning under the pressure of too many people wanting infinite growth to satisfy their whim and needs?
There are much more money in credit and electronic form than cash. It is the same everywhere in the world. If everyone were to withdraw money at around the same time, the whole system will collapse in 5 mins. What will happen if the ATMs do not dispense money and after a few days the credit/debit cards do not work?
It is a very possible scenario that will happen.
USA – Total cash in circulation – USD1.47T
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm
USA MZM – USD14.4T
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MZM
Definitions : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
14.4T in claims and 1.4T in actual notes. So, it is 10times less. So, governments around the world will not allow a bank run to happen. They will come up with all sorts of methods and ways to prevent it. However, the more one prevents, the more it will happen. It is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That is why financial collapse will precede any other collapse
An infographic to get an idea of the proportions:
“All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization”
http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization/
I think your statement needs more “ifs” in it. You say, “Colocating wind power and hydropower might make a lot of sense respecting storage. Otherwise storage costs are prohibitive.”
I am not sure that when all of the costs are counted, including transmission costs, cost of replacement parts, and the relatively short life span of wind turbines (especially when the original manufacturers are out of business), adding wind makes sense, even when hydroelectric is available for balancing. Remember, the only data we have regarding wind costs in the US are subsidized wind costs. Denmark is balancing wind mostly with hydroelectric, and its costs are very high, for example. Part of the problem Denmark has is that it gets a low price for wind energy it needs to sell, but has to pay a higher prices when it wants to buy the hydroelectric it needs. It might be cheaper to burn oil than to use wind.
I’m going by the 2012 $US cost for a planned 96,000 barrel per day faculty that was planned to be built in the Southern USA around 2012. Qatar’s plants did not have to comply with US environmental and other regulations plus I don’t believe you’ve adjusted for inflation.
Qatar has large supplies of stranded natural gas. Our natural gas supplies are pretty much all near existing pipelines meaning subject to large price fluctuations. We supposedly have lots of coal that could be used for an FT coal to liquids process.
In her book “When Trucks Stop Running”, Alice J Friedman writes that coal to liquids is actually being done, but at considerable cost. It seems that about half of coals thermal energy is lost in the conversion, but the process makes a passable #2 diesel.
I didn’t catch my spell check undoing the correct spelling of the author’s name, Alice J Friedemann. The book is a well written realists view of much that is discussed here at FW. I highly recommend reading it.
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319263731
As an Aerospace Design Engineer (Electronic Systems, Electrical Systems, System Integration, Embedded Software, Launch Flight Safety, etc.) I worked on the design of huge programs (MX/Peacekeeper Missile Multiplr Protective Shelter basing, B-1, B-2 Stealth Bomber, 777, Sea Launch, multiple commercial airplane preliminary design studies, Small ICBM Hard Mobile Launcher, Small ICBM fixed launcher, etc.
I have yet to see any non-Delusistan solution to the problem of resource depletion of crude oil, crude condensates, natural gas and coal. The complexity of proposed solutions like power satellites, synthetic fuels plants, etc., are just not feasible solutions for transportation fuels, not to mention electrical generation. 95% of transportation requires liquid fuels like gasoline or petroleum distillates. It would take 50 years (that is the typical transition time for new technologies) to make the transition to new technology assuming that we had the time and resources, which we don’t have.
We have been in gradual collapse for around 50 years already. It’s been masked by the accumulation of unplayable debts. But, the signs are increasingly difficult to mask. Last week the 7th largest container ship line, South Korea’s Hanjin Line, filed for bankruptcy protection. They have 540,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent container units) filled with manufactured goods stuck in limbo aboard ships that have either been seized as collateral in ports or that have been refused entry to ports because they can’t pay for dock services. It’s estimated that it will take two to three months to free up cargo in the 540,000 affected TEUs. Logistics companies are already begging for a bailout because it’s potentially disastrous for just in time manufacturing.
Governments are insolvent. World debt is over $225 trillion. Private and government pension plans have unfounded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars. The world’s leaders have had their heads in the sand for 50 years, kicking the can down the road. Soon that can is going be seen to be a steel post buried in concrete and its not going to budge.
I try not to be a pessimist. But, as a realist I don’t see any feasible solutions that will prevent eventual collapse. The timing is impossible to predict, but the inevitability is surely certain.
While I can’t speak to the ‘Dreamliner’, I can say that the 777 is probably the best Boeing to have come along. How were you involved in it’s development, if you don’t mind my asking. I retired from flying on the 777.
Integrated Product Team leader on Electrical Load Management System (ELMS), Systems Cardfiles (miscellaneous aircraft specific functions) and Boeing-built Cabin Management & Entertainment System. Also worked on some aspects of the ARINC 629 data bus implementation. The 777 is a really great airplane.
Very interesting, Gregg. I remember how smoothly ELMS could switch between power sources, apu or external power. Quite a difference from the 767. No small feat I imagine.
Yes, it’s an amazingly capable system that automatically responds to sources, loads and fault conditions. I can’t remember the software metrics and wouldn’t say if I could. But, it’s a very complex system that monitors nearly every system on the 777.
Gregg, I know it’s not likely to happen again, but you know what engineers can do if they are well supported, i.e., the Manhattan project.
If the government (or several of them) decided power satellites were the way to go and went to Boeing, how long would do you think it would take for them to detail design something like Skylon and scale up to 25 a month?
“The timing is impossible to predict, but the inevitability is surely certain.”
I think you are right on this one.
We have been in “stagflation” since about 1970, which is a little short of 50 years. The timing would seem to be about right for hitting full collapse, based on the analysis of Peter Turchin and Surgey Nefedov, in “Secular Cycles.” (The graph is mine, but based on their work.
Oh look. Another Seneca cliff…They seem to be everywhere in our future. Lol…
Ok, you people can start talking about collapse when you can prove that:
-billions of people are dying in a very short time frame
-there is no oil, coal, or gas available, anywhere in the world
-there is no food available, anywhere in the world
-all currencies have either become locked up and unavailable, or are hyperinflating at the same time
-no electricity is available, anywhere in the world
-all the nations have gone to war, and all of the major ports and cities are being bombed, including nuclear weapons being used daily
Do you see how ridiculous your assertions are? You people believe in the above, you have posted this again and again. If you don’t actually believe in the above, now is your time to correct me. Which if you do, you have shown that you don’t actually believe in the fast collapse.
Moreover, if you actually subscribe to the fast collapse scenario, you are wasting your time preparing, because no amount of preparations will insulate you or your family from the fallout.
What you are engaging in is actually a form of wishful thinking, and it is interesting from a psychological perspective that grown adults, intelligent and educated, engage in it. What you guys believe can be summed up as
1) Everyone is about to die!
2) But I’m going to survive because I’m in the know!
Strange, really strange. For whatever reason Gail’s blog has become a focal point for this, many of the other doomer sites are going nowhere precisely because nobody can actually point to doom. It didn’t used to be this way, I’ve followed this blog for a long time and for awhile it was carrying on the tradition that was started by the oil drum. But it seems we’ve exhausted this, so we have nothing left to do but snipe at each other because you people keep saying “today’s the day it all comes down” and then some of us come back and say “nope, didn’t happen today” which is becoming really boring. I have a feeling we’ll be doing this for decades.
Collapse is coming next decade (2027), once 80% of the oil reserves are gone.
But keep this in mind:
“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Ernest Hemingway
Anyway, always enjoy your comments. Don’t go away.
Exactly. It’s Seneca’s cliff. There a gradual ramp up, a plateau and then a frightful plunge. Think of it as the world riding Space Mountain at Disney World in Orlando, FL.
What does 80% of oil reserves being gone have to do with anything? The economy will likely collapse, long before that point is hit.
Agree that the economy will go down first, followed by shortages that will lead to all kinds of unpredictable consequences.
The good thing is that no one will attack the US, and there are lots of dollars offshore. So, the next administration might be able to hold the economy within a basket of currency. Anyway, things will deteriorate to most Americans.
But, once the general public realize that there won’t be any more gas, and that we’ll going back to the first century, the only thing I can think that would best describe is: We’ll all become walking dead.
“The intellect has a sharp eye for methods and tools, but is blind to ends and values. So it is no wonder that this fatal blindness is handed on from old to young and today involves a whole generation.” — Albert Einstein. The Goal of Human Existence, 1943.
By the way, I love your work, Gail. Can’t thank you enough for how much I learned, and how much you, and your bloggers help me connect the dots.
Thank you all.
Obrigado
“The good thing is that no one will attack the US”
Not sure these people agree with you
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/concepts/joe/joe_2035_july16.pdf
“a basket of currency”
You can bet on it as on the fact the Sun will rise tomorrow
“We’ll all become walking dead”
Well, I’ve already gone through that stage. Hope it will never come back, or rather I know I will not endure it again, it’s not worth
Thanks! I know that a few years ago, I was one of a number of people invited to the Naval War Academy in Rhode Island. The people in charge there wanted to know what kind of “war games” they should be preparing for, in a world with increased pollution problems and perhaps resource shortages. I suggested that their biggest problem might be lack of funding for the military.
You are welcome!
I believe as little as a 2-3% decline in real production would be enough to obliterate BAU.
++++++
Correct ! A lot of people think that it needs to go down to zero before TSHTF. No it does. That is common misconception like the Chinese Reserves of whatever trillion they have. They have many already reserved for internal use. It is only left some that they can play with.
Some as you have tons of oil available but once the cheap ones are done, you are done and that may be just 5% of what it is. Ghawar produces about 5-6% of the entire world’s oil production. Tomorrow if Saudi Arabia goes to the press and says that Ghawar is dead, what do you think will happen to the financial world? Within 10mins, everyone with FB, Twitter, email, SMS, Whatsapp, WeChat will know and panic will set in whether that panic is justified or not.
If you are a trader who has nothing to do with oil production, when you play into the futures, you are actually manipulating the prices of real products. You are suppose to take delivery. Say, Fast Eddie is the guy who just shorted 1 million barrel of crude oil for delivery in one month. He thinks he can make big bucks as prices will drop over the next month. Suddenly, with Ghawar dead and Saudi’s production will drop from 10mbpd to 6 mbpd per day, the prices of oil spiked up 20%. Our dear FE has to take delivery or buy in oil to cover his shorts. Since he is not an airline company or refinery, he cannot take delivery of the 1m barrel of oil at Cushing, OK. He has no choice but to close his position just before the delivery is requested.
Multiply that by a thousand times for all the traders who has no intention of taking delivery of the oil. How about those who borrowed to play with this futures market. How about the banks who loan to the companies who then loaned to the oil traders? The chain is very long.
So, it does not take the whole thing to go down to ZERO before TSHTF.
You are likely correct. Worldwide energy consumption dropped by -1.5% in 2009, and that was pretty awful.
The increase in the production of goods and services may be a little higher than the increase in energy consumption, because of efficiency gains, so the two don’t match up exactly. But you get the idea.
For years maybe, but not for decades.
Collapse is a process.
Perhaps we are more accustomed to thinking of collapse as something quick and sudden because we think of someone falling on stage or banks and businesses shutting down all at once in the space of a week or two.
In order to reach that point, the process of collapse may engage over a period of months, years, or decades. Perhaps the actress on stage suddenly collapsed because she had pushed herself so hard for months or years without getting enough rest or sufficient nutrition, for example.
Looking around the world today, we can see that there is food on the retailers’ shelves and fuel in the service station pumps. We can see sharemarkets hitting or flirting with new highs. It would be easy to dismiss the prognostications of collapse so harsh that service stations rust and sharemarkets lay silent.
However, in that same survey of the current global situation, we see signs of things really being not so well at all. The Baltic Dry Index has been struggling to get anywhere so far this year, and shipping companies are in trouble. Manufacturing and global trade are in decline or stagnant. Increasing numbers of people are giving up on ever finding a job and people who do find work are not earning enough to make ends meet. Global Warming and Peak Oil are both implicated as causative factors in the current mess in the Middle East and North Africa. Banks in the USA, Europe, Japan, are struggling to stay afloat in an environment of low, zero, or negative interest rates even as those same rates are failing to spur growth. Greenland and parts of Antarctica are melting more rapidly than glaciologists and climatologists had previously expected would be the case by this time. Oil companies that had contributed to the increase in total all liquids production in recent years are going bankrupt as they find themselves unable to pay the debts that had allowed them to grow production so strongly.
The list goes on.
Those of us living in the developed world may be able to convince ourselves that full supermarket shelves suggest that all is well, but a peek behind the curtain reveals a very different reality unfolding – the progressing process of collapse.
Collapse is death by a thousand cuts…. at some point there will be that single tiny cut… that nicks the aorta…. and woosh….
I agree!
I doubt there will be a world war… but I agree on the rest.
I would add the spent fuel ponds poisoning the world… that should be top of the list
There is no point in prepping – there will be no survivors within max a year of the end of BAU….
But I’d still fill the 20ft container and vie to be the Last Man on Earth.
The only thing I am uncertain of is the timing.
It’s like the stock market — even if most investors agree a massive correction is coming — very few ever time it — and the ones who do — were just the ones whose guess came right.
If you have many thousands of punters guessing — some will get it right – some of the time
The thing is ….
The longer this drags out the better — I don’t find it boring at all … I don’t find not eating rat meat… suffering… dying … boring at all…
In fact I find it all invigorating…. I am scrambling to come up with more things to see and do before the curtain falls…
Maybe you should upgrade to a 40 foot container?
Once the electricity goes off you won’t have a clue what’s happening more than a few miles from where you live. Wouldn’t an inquisitive person like yourself would find it frustrating not knowing what was happening elsewhere? Not so much a front row seat as locked in a darkened room. Perhaps you would be too preoccupied trying to stay alive to care. If you are the last man standing, you’ll never know.
I forgot to mention …. the End of the World Party….. the dancing deck will be in place shortly…. solar powered disco light…. large barrel of booze… many cases of wine….
i trust you have a reliable volunteer orchestra and experienced deckchair re-arrangers
Mrs Fast used to sing for her supper… so she’ll be entertaining… I will be the back up dancer….
http://cdn04.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/timberlake-beyonce/justin-timberlake-beyonce-backup-dancer-snl-01.jpg
If it’s anything like the end of the world party in These Final Hours you can count me in!
Three words: short wave radio.
Ahhh, I had it, but my brother didn’t knew and threw my uncle’s radio as garbage. Hope I’ll find another one
I bought a solar powered one of those (receiver only)…. and a hand crank one…. perhaps there will be some military broadcasts for a period after BAU goes down….
Every seven or eight years we’ve been getting a recession. And recent recessions have been getting deeper. 2008 was the deepest yet and the world economy was put on life support for years afterward. The current 2016 one looks like it’s going to be worse, and we may not have a world economy by the time we come out of it. But even if we do get airborne again, we can look forward to more of the same in 2023-24. So I honestly don’t think we’ll be doing this for decades fun though it is.
The changes don’t have to happen overnight. Even a change over 20 years–or 10 years–would be very rapid.
The train is leaving the station. The top 3% are on it. You folks are on the platform arguing about stuff that just… does…not…matter…at…all. There is only one thing that will matter during collapse, fast or slow, and that is military power. The U.S. Military will prevail and protect the elite.
The U.S. military. LMAO…
Dmitry Orlov said recently that the US military employs clowns that otherwise would not be helpful to society, and gives them three squares a day. Rather harsh assessment, but some truth in there.
I saw Orlov’s comment about military members on his blog. This coming from someone who crowd sourced funding to make engine repairs on the sailboat he lives on. Helpful to society indeed. Though I often agree with Orlov, his remarks made me bristle as he is in no position to comment on military members unless he himself ever wore a uniform.
The military experience is what you make it. There are endless opportunities for those who want to learn something. In my case, I went from wearing stripes as I held the dumb end of a surveyors tape to wearing bars in just a few years, strapped to a supersonic jet. My experience was not all that unusual. The high tech military almost literally throws an education at you (they have to), in many career fields, if you are just willing to put out the effort. It’s all about the ‘tooth to tail ratio’ that makes such training important. Just as a huge tiger is really a life support system for a relatively small set of jaws, so is it with the military. Best of all, I would later find that the airlines were more than happy to hire us ex ‘military clowns’.
Back when I visited Antarctica, the US Antarctic Research Program used the US military (all forces) for logistics. On a visit to the summit of Mt. Erebus, I got to “ski” down the mountain in a Huey at what would have been tree-top level if there had been any trees. Nobody called those pilots “clowns”. They were highly-skilled Vietnam vets.
Let’s hope they don’t ever come across a credible fighting force, instead of peasants, shepherds and day labourers brandishing 30 year old AK-47’s…
So Orlov lives in America right? He is on the winning team then…
Yet he cheers for Team Russia…. the losing team… to date…
He seems to think they’ve got it right.
Why doesn’t he more to Moscow?
Orlov wanted a Russian passport as insurance for his son, and now indulges in very obvious Russian propaganda as pay-back, which is curiously similar to the old Soviet line (with a lot of truth in it.) Quite understandable and a good deal for him: easy to knock off a few lines now and then in return for a passport!
I have just heard from a friend in Moscow who has been in Iran and Turkey for the last 6 months, As to how things are in Russia, (in February 2016 we were told by our own propagandists that Russia was ‘on the brink of collapse and civil emergency’, he merely observed, ‘Not good, but we are used to that sort of thing and on the whole everyone is positive and enjoying the last of the summer.’
I think his wife and young son live in Russia. (He remarried a few years ago.) He spends quite a bit of time with them there. They also sail to warm areas of the world in winter, if I remember correctly. (I am trying to remember a conversation I had with Dmitry, a couple of years ago, when we were speaking at the same conference.)
Sorry FE. In what way is Russia “losing” exactly?
The El.Ders run the world as parasites on the host USA…. most states accept that they are vassals to the E.Lders…. and if a state challenges this relationship the US smashes them to pieces….
Russia and China are challenging the e.L.ders…. Putin is far more difficult to put in his place than say Mossadegh….
“…and if a state challenges this relationship the US smashes them to pieces….”
In Russia’s case, it won’t be on the battlefield.
Given the overall state of affairs… I don’t think it much matters that Russia and China are challenging ….
It’s like fighting over the pretty girl during the Titanic cotillion 🙂
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/03/27/article-2299778-1880F71E000005DC-323_634x388.jpg
Yes, too true.
Orlov has become a dull appendice of RT
Things went from this (2015):
http://resize.indiatvnews.com/en/resize/newbucket/740_-/2016/09/crhepgpwgaabhqe-1473158145.jpg
To this:
http://resize.indiatvnews.com/en/resize/newbucket/740_-/2016/09/crhepgpwgaebtkz-1473158140.jpg
And to a subsequent Micex’s all time record high (btw, Putin’s daughter married to a bankster; you know, that kind of things)
Titanic might be already torpedoed, but to spend a night with the princess may still be worth a ball
“Orlov has become a dull appendice of RT”
What does this mean? Why, because he’s Russian?
I’m not Russian, but have eyes enough to see where the real threats lie, and it ain’t with Putin.
Lot’s of other non-Russians think the same, are we all RT’s agents?
It’s amazing how easily people avoid one stinking pile of lying institutional dogsh#t (e.g. that the Fed’s a part of the government), but fail to miss other elite-backed agenda farts, like the Putin is Hitler meme.
(Interesting to note that some of the most virulent supporters of this Russia-baiting bile are Ukrainian neo-Nazis).
Ey, I’m not against Putin (nor am I against nobody, for that matter)
I say Orlov became somewhat dull because he no longer writes interesting things (now it’s up to some tee shirts with his logo…) The point is not he is wrong, it’s rather he’s becoming boring
I see… Well, I’m we’re in agreement here. Orlov has become a bit of a dull blade these past few years.
Cheers!
That’s not true. I served in the U.S. military for 6 years and there are lots of highly skilled, intelligent, and ruthless killers in it. There are also lots of dummies, which has been the case for every company or organization I’ve ever worked for. That said, the military won’t be protecting the elite; that’s pure fantasy. When people go a day or two without a meal all hell is going to break loose. Furthermore, the elites will have much, much larger targets on their backs than everyone else.
‘the US military employs clowns’
There are plenty of very capable people in the US military …. also plenty of cannon fodder…
As is with most groups with perhaps the exception of Tesla.
“Dmitry Orlov said recently that the US military employs clowns that otherwise would not be helpful to society, and gives them three squares a day.”
” I served in the U.S. military for 6 years and there are lots of highly skilled, intelligent, and ruthless killers in it. ”
How would ruthless killers be helpful to society? The only reason we need a military, is because the other guys have a military. It is a cost that does not really provide a proportional benefit. Maybe not as big a waste as the prison system, but probably not too far off.
The military is the basis of prosperity, freedom, life — if the US did not have a strong military the people would not be living large.
So the military is incredibly important to society.
Recall the first chapter of guns germs steel…. the one tribe is pacifist… the other aggressive…
Anyone remember what happened when they ran into each other?
My argument wasn’t that the military is helpful to society, it was that the military isn’t in the business of hiring clowns. Any military is useful in two situations; another country has something you want or they have a military and are trying to take something you have. In that sense they are incredibly important to society.
Take Iraq for example. The U.S. military has been a great benefit to society when we just hop on over and let Halliburton start setting up oil rigs.
Military is very much dependent on supply chain as well. There is no such thing as “I am fully supplied”. Just a single screw that is critical to the engine will cause the engine to just seize and die. The best part, you can use that tank as a “spare part tank” that you can tear apart and fit into other tanks (same type of model).
Russia’s advanced RS-26 intercontinental ballistic missile has raised admiring eyebrows of military experts everywhere, the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper wrote.
Russia’s new RS-26 missile travels along a continuously changing trajectory and as such it has no analogues in the world,” the expert said.
“This one is even better than the famous Topol-M missile… Its warheads are supersonic and change their course all the time. Some of them will penetrate any existing missile defense shield and will hit their target,” the expert added.
What makes the RS-26 so special is that even though it weighs just 80 tons, compared to the 120-ton heft of its RS-24 Yars predecessor, the Rubezh packs a frightening 1,2 megatons into its four 300 kiloton warheads.
With a potential range of 11,000 kilometers the RS-26 can hit targets all across the United States. Moreover, its booster stage is down to under five minutes, which means that NATO radars in Europe will have no time to register the launch. Adding to NATO air defenders’ worries, during the descending section of its trajectory, with only a few hundred kilometers left to the target, the missile’s warheads suddenly take a dive, lose altitude, and continue the approach as a cruise missile. These new Russian ICBM warheads were developed in response to America’s plans to deploy a global missile defense system along Russia’s borders. The RS-26 Rubezh is expected to become operational in 2016.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160309/1036002714/russia-missile-shocker.html
Really?
The elites control the military by paying them — and through the control of the financial system.
When BAU ends – wealth will vapourize — the financial system will disintegrate.
And the elites will be exposed as frail old men and women.
And the military will kick them aside …
Of course because the fuel reserves will soon run out .. the military will disband as well….
There will be no food post BAU – and spent fuel ponds will kill everyone — so this is all moot.
The elites and the military will be in the same boat as everyone else.
The Good Ship Extinction has room for all
We all know that FE. But before we reach that point, I’m sure there’s a lot more shooting to be done.
No doubt about that…. recall Rwanda…. my understanding of that conflict was that it was related to population pressures…. there was not enough land to go around….
And as expected…. fighting broke out … better to have a tribe behind you when you are confronted by a tribe in a land dispute…
http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/REU-RWANDA-GENOCIDE-1.jpg
Land = food.
There will be very little food available post BAU.
Rwanda? Not even remotely close to what we are going to see while the bullets and the bits of food last post BAU….
The planet is will be turned into an abattoir ….. we will experience the very worst behaviours….
I can imagine that those who currently protect us — will be some of the worst offenders.
When the collapse train leaves the station, the military have a long and honorable record of becoming the elite.
Correct.
Also take into account there something like several thousands, perhaps even low dozen of thousands castles and similar defensible – repairable ruins distributed nicely across Europe. Plus some surrounding fields and meadows nearby, you have got a nucleus for a restart on some quasi medieval level of society on steroids (scraps from todays world). It will take time to re-breed the working horses and outdoor varieties of cattle. All in all several millions of people living in Europe year ~2100-2200-2300 is a workable vision..
I did skip the era before that on purpose, because what will happen with the likely swarm of hundreds of million in various incoming migration waves, no one knows. But it’s likely sooner or later the gloves will go off.
“Also take into account there something like several thousands, perhaps even low dozen of thousands castles and similar defensible – repairable ruins distributed nicely across Europe. Plus some surrounding fields and meadows nearby”
I know a little about repairing ruins. I don’t believe it would be that simple. There is an entire world of aristocrats and historians and preservationists who would likely get in the way in the short run. Ruins are not just there for the taking.
“Plus some surrounding fields and meadows nearby, you have got a nucleus for a restart on some quasi medieval level of society on steroids (scraps from todays world).”
Such thinking is for people with lots of time on their hands.
Yep – and guys like George will be kicked down the stairs and into the gutter…
http://www.streetinsider.com/images/news2/112/11237256/george-soros.jpg
http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/cd4aa13/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fs3-origin-images.politico.com%2F2013%2F04%2F04%2F130404_sheldon_605_ap.jpg
I am wondering — how do these two guys not die – look at them! Particularly Adelson…
Do they have medical teams supported by Lance Armstrong shooting them up to keep the unit going?
Do they purchase fresh babies from the third world … suck the blood out of them … and drip it into the veins overnight?
Do they have a deal with the devil?
What is their secret?
Virgin’s blood transfusions!
only if the US military is still in operation–someone is paying them, and can get supplies for them.
The capital cost for a 100,000 barrels per day capacity Fischer-Tropsh synthetic fuels plant is estimated at $11 billion to $12 billion (2012 $US). In 2015 the United States consumed about 9.16 million barrels of gasoline per day and 2.9 million barrels of distillate fuel per day.
Assuming a 90% utilization rate, to meet the United States 2015 daily gasoline demand would have required 102 FT synthetic gasoline plants and 33 FT synthetic distillate plants. The capital cost estimate (2012 $US) is between $1.485 trillion to $1.62 trillion. Amazingly enough, that’s not much more than the present day cost of a Saturn V Apollo moon shot cost (25,000 pounds to TLI (translunar insertion), which is roughly equivalent to GEO insertion).
This does not include costs of carbon rich and hydrogen rich feedstocks required. FT plant feedstocks are typically coal and natural gas. But, in post-crude oil, post-coal and post-natural gas world some other form of feedstocks will be required. Also, FT plants usually use the coal feedstock to power the plant. Without coal the nation’s electricity demand would have to soar to power the FT plants requiring another significant capital investment for electrical generation plants and distribution grid.
If the oil glut results in us running out of storage…. we can just start sending rockets to the moon on a daily basis…
I understand that Elon Musk has a stake in this…. Richard Branson as well…
Now if I were Don Draper … I would spin this as The Space Dream Team.
Buy your ticket to the moon at http://www.fasteddymoonshot.com (a division of Strife Travel)
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/fuel-seawater-whats-catch-180953623/?no-ist
Yes, a nuclear reactor is needed to supply the power and lots of sea water.
“The capital cost for a 100,000 barrels per day capacity Fischer-Tropsh synthetic fuels plant is estimated at $11 billion to $12 billion (2012 $US).”
The Sasol plant in Qatar is 34,000 bbl/day and cost a billion (2012) dollars. So by that metric, you are high by a factor of 4 or around 3 B/100,000 bbl/day or $30 B for a million bbl/day output.
Another metric is to write the plant off in 8 years. $1 B/(34,000*365*8) making the capital cost ~$10 per bbl. Even at a penny a kWh, the energy cost is twice this high.
The US current oil use is around 20 million bbl/day so the capital cost to replace all the oil with synthetic oil from F/T plants would be around $600 B. In one lump that’s a lot of money, but spread over 20 years as enough cheap power from space comes on line, it’s only $30 B a year.
It would roughly double the capital investment in oil refineries.
Natural gas to methanol is the way to break OPEC’s monopoly in transportation fuel.
https://www.fuelfreedom.org/mit-researchers-methanol-is-a-viable-transportation-fuel/
MIT researchers: ‘Methanol is a viable transportation fuel’ 2015
These alcohol fuels can be produced from shale gas on energy-based cost that is competitive with oil-derived gasoline. They can also be produced from various biomass feedstocks and waste.”
300,000 cubic feet of natural gas that can produce 1,500 gallons of methanol
Because methanol is such a relatively small molecule, it does not form the residual carbon compounds that have been implicated in air pollution.
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Growing-Use-of-Methanol-as-a-Cleaner-Alternative-to-Gasoline.html 2013
In less than a decade China’s methanol use in the transportation sector has grown from virtually zero to providing 8% of the country’s fuel supply,
Peng Zhi Gui, the former Deputy Governor of the Shanxi Province, said that “methanol is seen as a strategic fuel by the rapidly growing nation due to its clean fuel benefits, favorable economics, the ease of adopting methanol in current fueling infrastructure and the advantage of being able to use alternative feed stocks in a nation that is lacking in domestic oil reserves.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/10/30/methanol__the_fuel_in_waiting_124487.html
Methanol is the fuel that would make the best and most convenient substitute for gasoline in automobiles and small trucks. It has about two-thirds the energy value of gasoline, but its high octane rating pushes this up above 70 percent. It is a liquid at room temperature and therefore would fit into our current gasoline infrastructure – as opposed to compressed natural gas or electric vehicles, which require a whole new delivery system.
It is also much less cumbersome than corn ethanol, which now requires nearly half the annual corn crop produced in the U.S. to provide only 3 percent of our energy needs. Methanol made from natural gas would now sell for about $1 less per gallon than gasoline. Methanol can also be made from food waste, municipal garbage and just about any other organic source.
Car engines can burn methanol with a $200 adjustment that can be performed by any mechanic.
http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2013/08/20/real-energy-independence-making-oil-no-longer-strategic/
Since 1973, the world’s population has risen from 4 billion people to 7 billion people, and there are four times as many cars on the road. Over that period, world GDP has risen 14 times — from $5 trillion to $70 trillion — and global oil demand has risen from 55 million barrels a day (mbd) in 1973 to 88 mbd today. Amazingly, OPEC’s share of global oil supply in the last 40 years has declined from 54% to 33% while their production level has remained constant at 30.4 million barrels a day. This is despite the fact that: (1) OPEC sits on three-quarters of all conventional oil reserves in the world; and (2) discovery and lifting costs in the Persian Gulf are among the lowest in the world ($2.50 per barrel in Saudi Arabia).
How much infrastructure does it take to make the methanol required for the change? Do we have the $$$ and will power for the change? Do we have enough time to make the transition. With regards to $$$, how is it going to be funded? Be realistic and again don’t give general answers. I can get a child to say general answers but as rational adults in this forum, please provide realistic answers to the questions that I pose.
Again – do you know what you are saying. I mean really really understand what you are saying just copy and paste? If you really really know what you are saying with the technical know how and engineering, then we can debate on that. If you are just copying and pasting it from other sources and you are not even from a science or engineering-based background, then there is no point debating. Do I debate engineering or science issues with an account or someone with no engineering background? No, it does not help but makes nerves fray.
” But, in post-crude oil, post-coal and post-natural gas world some other form of feedstocks will be required.”
No one is planning complex industry for post-BAU. The original post was about using coal-to-liquid and molten salt reactors to replace oil as supplies dwindle at whatever price consumers can afford.
I was thinking that as coal is more abundant than oil, it could be used as a feedstock for making liquid fuels while nuclear (either thorium or Mr Fusion) and space-based solar would be used to provide so much electricity that we could (not literally) fry the world in waste heat. All this would entail a continuation of BAU, which doesn’t seem to be on the cards. Post collapse we would have less chance of building nuclear plants or sending power satellites into orbit as the people of Dark Age Europe would have had putting the Roman Empire back together again.
“I was thinking that as coal is more abundant than oil, it could be used as a feedstock for making liquid fuels ”
Why not just use coal-fired steam powered trains and ships to move goods and people around? Even if you have to grind up the coal into dust and glue it all together with a binding agent to make fuel pellets to facilitate controlled, automated feed, I think you would lose less than half the energy, and the capital outlay would be far less than spending trillions on CTL plants. Or just employ people as coal shovelers.
around the early 1900s Winston Churchill converted the British fleet from coal to oil.
Now you want to convert them back again?
I hope you know where the coal is going to come from
I was thinking of coal mining the other day when some workers were digging some holes for piers for a deck/end of world dance floor that we are installing on our house …. they were down about 2 metres and had covered them as rain was expected…
They removed the covers and were going to pour cement but the holes had filled up as ground water had seeped in ….
They had to pump them out and let them dry….
There will be no coal mined post BAU because there will be no pumps….
i find it amusing when unknowing individuals imagine coal can just be ”got”
100ft below where im sitting right now there’s lots of coal
http://shropshirehistory.com/mining/coalbrookdalecf.htm
that is the link to it
interesting reading for anyone who wants to come and collect some
“There will be no coal mined post BAU because there will be no pumps….”
If there is a total, catastrophic collapse, mining coal will probably be pretty low priority. Imagining a future stable society that exists post-BAU, people have been successfully pumping water out of mines since at least the 16th century, before coal or oil.
no they haven’t—other than in a very primitive fashion.
modern (post 1776) steam pumps allowed deep coal mining, and thus access to vast coal reserves
Difficult to rewind…. we slowly built up industrial capabilities…. post BAU we crash into total starvation … massive deforestation … total chaos…
As you point out — trying to operate pumps to allow for coal mining will be very low priority….
Food will be the highest priority – and there will be very little
The wells are pretty deep now. Long walk in and out.
Coal is surprisingly depleted. What drives coal producers to bankruptcy seems to be an increase in price, followed by a decrease in price. This seems to happen at the same time for all fossil fuels. Coal right now seems to be in the worst shape among all fossil fuels.
Too expensive to extract – depleted sources, bureaucracy. I pick as bureaucracy as one of the reasons for high cost.
The whole system of paying for intermittent renewables is even more complex than I covered in my post. One of the parts of the system is Renewable Energy Credits. Another is “Forward Capacity Auctions” which are used some places to somewhat compensate for the funds lost when intermittent renewables sell their services at too low a price, and by doing this, disrupt pricing for others electricity providers. These also add to the costs, and shift things around so it is hard to see what is happening.
The global economy turning Japanese
http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-demographics-chart-2016-9
Demographics are a problem.
“At the federal level, the production or investment tax credit and double-declining accelerated depreciation can pay for two-thirds of a wind power project. Additional state incentives, such as guaranteed markets and exemption from property taxes, can pay for another 10%.”
“If we believe this statement, the developer only pays about 23% of the cost of a wind energy project.”
Very interesting. Is it a coincidence that the average wind turbine only generates ~21% of its nameplate power over the course of a year and that developers only pay ~23% of the development cost? I do not believe that this is a coincidence. I think that this is an example showing that the crony capitalist conporations have off loaded most of their costs onto the taxpayers and ratepayers while freeing themselves from all tax burdens. It’s a classic, “heads I win, tails you lose” game situation. The crony capitalist conporations always win and we always lose.
++++
We live in the all lies, all the time society.
“I stand between you and the guillotine”, says Hillary to a roomful of her investors. A rare instance of total honesty.
But hey, August was her best fundraising month yet. Go team!
I think that the same folks who came up with the name “renewable energy” have been able to “sell” a lot of people that wind and solar PV are so important that they deserve special treatment. I am not sure that it really has anything to do with the 23%.
One thing that has been pointed out to me is that some local residents are able to get funds when a wind turbine is installed, because of the fees for land use. These people are often influential people in an area. They will lobby heavily for wind turbines.
Even with all of these subsidies, there are a lot of wind and solar PV companies that are doing poorly. Abengoa’s financial problems are well known, for example.
These two Onionesque pieces are tributes to those who wants to have an alternative but high cost, technically troublesome, 10-year down the road type of energy sources. PV, Wind turbines, space-based power, thorium, nuclear, etc.
Now, in September 2016, let me as a question – Do we have an issue of high-price energy and that we must have a cheaper alternative? The answer is clearly a “no”. In fact, we have an issue of too low a price as people cannot afford high energy prices.
So, does it really sense to junk the current low cost energy and opt for high cost energy that may not even materialize in the distant future?
We need to get through this hurdle first that is presently in front of our eyes before we even see the need for this sort of high-priced energy.
Do you thin USD45/barrel of oil is a fair price ? No, without the Central Banker’s manipulation, it would probably be around USD25 per barrel. The law of diminishing returns will ensure that the amount of effort spent or expedited will be more and more and the effects will be less and less until the returns are negative (i.e. opposite effect). We are seeing many case of this now. Over doing of something will lead to a massive backlash.
It is not a matter of expensive energy, it is a matter if “we cannot afford the energy”. Why? We have used debts to mask the fact that we are broke. No matter how cheap energy is, no one can afford to buy a new car or a new gadget. Those who buy have to use long term loans (which essentially is debt masking demand). Sure there are people who can buy cars/gadgets/stuff but the numbers are insignificant and it will not help any company or manufacturers.
As I have stated, on the downward slope of the Hubbert’s curve and with the effects of debts, no amount of cheap energy can prevent a crash. We are already past the apogee of the Hubbert’s curve. What you read on alternative media are the signs and symptom of the failed economics. We need the entire system to function in order for civilization to persist. We are just too connected and expensive and uncertain promises of future new energy source is just “another 5 years away” and it will be another 5 years too late.
Energy isn’t a problem. We are wasting enormous amounts of energy.
The problem is: how do you get people to transition to lower energy. This is a problem yes, I’m not saying it isn’t. But it’s mostly a problem of propaganda more than anything else.
With half the population voted Brexit, with half the population supporting Clinton, with half the population say there is no climate change, with half the population supporting certain topics, you cannot get people united to do something that will save the civilization.
Energy is the the problem but it is debts that makes it not so. We wasted too much energy on nothing. Why? because we can get to buy cars with a 7-year loan. We have free money from the government.
20 years ago, when computer memory was expensive, all the programs are highly efficient and optimized. It used the smallest amount of memory possible. Now, when it is cheap, even a simple program used up more memory than the entire 1990 computer memory or even hard disk.
Same concept.
Dolph – I am really not sure if you fit in this blog because the things that you say, it looks like does not go through the thinking process. What is lacking now is common sense. Common sense is not common now. Please do some reading on supply chain, financial interconnection first and think about it deeply, not just on the surface.
Transitioning to lower energy? Kindly explain? Everyone walking to work? Everyone uses less? Everyone buy less? Turn on the server every other day? Internet available only on weekends? Everyone takes less vacation?
Come one, you are a physician (that is what you claim in your previous posts), do you sincerely think that will work??
So the car factory shuts down, the travel agency closes down, the factory that produces the trinkets close down? So, what happened to those people? What are they going to have for dinner? Sand? grass? How many people are working in a hotel in a tourist area? Close the hotel and all the jobs gone? How about the man repairing the air-conditioner or the plumber?
Tell us how you want to transition to a lower energy? Don’t talk, write it out in 5 paragraphs, detailing how it will be done and what the problems.
All the comments that you have are just comments, nothing concrete, no data, no write up, nothing to convince people that you are right and we are wrong.
Put on the thinking cap and make yourself respectable. We are adults here and can have the idea of “agree to disagree”.
I have made my points and ask anyone out there to correct it if I am wrong. I have put out all the facts and numbers. I have put in convincing write-ups and references.
Gain some respect from others, otherwise, just find another blog that fits your thinking. I am sure there are many around. I have already one in mind that says we will transition to lower energy society. Go there and join them as this is what they are talking about. If they can share the facts, then good. If not, then too bad….
@CTG
Agree – what is available will be used or consumed!
Even if “one” does not consume the stuff itself – if “one” puts money to the bank, lends it our privately, buys gold or silver – someone else does the consumption for “one”.
The only thing that “helps” is that everyone does less: produce less, consume less, do less. But that is not what appeals to the masses – they want more, more stuff, more money, more an faster cars, more toys, bigger houses, more vacation in more distant lands – because it imply’s “status”. “More” -> more “status”.
And as you saind.. if more that 50% are in the BAU or “more” category… the 0.1% (if at all) that are really committed to less, that really work less, that really consume less and really “do” less (in terms of calories) don’t matter, as there are >80 million a year new people who want “more”!
I has this conversation with someone a few weeks ago…
I explained that putting the money in the bank is even worse than buying stuff — because the bank will loan it out to others 8x over – and they will use it to buy stuff….
I explained that the only way to reduce personal consumption is to destroy your money (burn it… flush it…) — or keep it under your mattress… that if too many people did that… we’d have plenty of free time on our hands…. because there would be no jobs….
The person said I was ‘so negative’
The 80 million new people have to have jobs (or loans) to be able to afford more.
I believe the situation with banks is that they have plenty of money to lend. They simply cannot find enough people with good enough credit who want to buy cars or homes, and businesses that want to expand. Businesses who borrow money seem to use the funds to (1) buy other businesses or (2) buy back their own shares.
Americans are back to the past habit acquiring large 400 horsepower gas hogs with 4wd and extra cab. They like to toodle around town to the Walmart and the kid’s soccer games with these monstrosities.
But Americans have added an extra twist besides the increasing incidents of road rage. Now we have the rednecks installing oil burners in their exhaust systems so they can blast thick coal-black oil smoke into the faces of all the other drivers on the road.
The whole purpose of civilization, and world economy is to waste as much energy as possible, at faster and faster rate. If you want civilization to stop or reverse energy consumption rate, then you’re against civlization at all.
In a thermodynamics sense, yes !
What else?
dolph – when you say you are a doctor…. do you mean that you are a faith healer?
I don’t think we can transition to lower energy. Too many things “break” in the process. Too many jobs are lost; too many loans cannot be repaid; too many banks fail. It is more likely that we keep BAU going a while longer, on ever more loans.
Gail- I get dizzy just thinking about the amount of energy and resources that go into just maintaining and improving the US Interstate Highway System. Of course, it’s now a critical core of the US economy and any forced cut backs in maintaining the system would reverberate throughout the US economy.
Sorry, I have not seen a solid case so far as to conclusively refuting the possibility of current debt levels of ~250-500% GDP continue growing even higher or be partially or subject to full reset at predetermined point of time. In fact govs and CBs are happily buying equities, bonds of private companies, gov securities, and many other instruments..
Also don’t count on the “logic” they supposedly must reach some saturation threshold soon, i.e. implying crash looming not far away. In fact they can perform various switcheroo tricks, like at getting closer to that point of full saturation (swallowing most of the debt and assets), they can just turn the machine in opposite direction and privatize most of these assets again into hands of pre-selected cronies (plus some spillover for the plebs of course as a cover), hence new “cycle” begins..
I’m a proponent of hard limits and we are not there yet.
So much triage and slow decay still ahead of us.. Given demographics and the energy markets-depletion situation, lets wait for the mid ~2020-30s to get clearer picture where exactly do we stand on the collapse/reset timelines.
The G20 is meeting these days, it’s rather illustrative what they talk about, mainly various fiscal and other schemes how to gorilla tape the system under single dome of oppression, the rest is just theatrics about how to distribute chips at the table among the top dogs.
Is the issue not so much one of how much the oil sells for rather one of how much it costs to produce it…
If we could actually produce oil at say $40… we could probably hang on a lot longer if oil sold at say $50….
Instead we have break even prices of over $100 for the largest producers….
These two Onionesque pieces are tributes to those who wants to have an alternative but high cost, technically troublesome, 10-year down the road type of energy sources. PV, Wind turbines, space-based power, thorium, nuclear, etc.
Both pieces were very well done. You have a real talent for satire. And point taken. Most of us would prefer low-cost, low-maintenance, available now and with all the kinks ironed out of “em energy to the other types.
At the end of the day, if we don’t get off burning growing amounts fossil fuels and onto grown-up reasonably-priced and reliable energy sources, we’re toast, or long pig if you prefer. In this post, Gail has amassed a fair amount of evidence that, despite the hype and the obvious appeal of their well-crafted clean and renewable image, PV and wind turbines can’t cut it in the real world and are only going to exacerbate the energy crisis down the road. Space-based power is pie in the sky but it looks good on paper, thorium-based nuclear is currently under development and the Chinese think it could be a winner. I wouldn’t put it past them to be funding its development from sales of wind turbines and solar panels to the rest of the world.
Now, in September 2016, let me as a question – Do we have an issue of high-price energy and that we must have a cheaper alternative? The answer is clearly a “no”. In fact, we have an issue of too low a price as people cannot afford high energy prices.
True, at this point in time overall demand for energy is declining, and there are concerns that it may fall off a Seneca cliff as the world economy circles the drain. However, over the longer term low-priced oil can be expected to become both high-priced and less-available oil. The present situation might be the start of a closing sale for the oil companies.
So, does it really sense to junk the current low cost energy and opt for high cost energy that may not even materialize in the distant future?
We’re told that we have to “junk the current low cost energy” because of the need to “stop climate change”, “reduce our carbon footprint”, and “leave a viable world for our grandchildren.” This looks like a classic a Problem – Reaction – Solution (Latin: Ordo ab Chao) issue.
1. Create a problem: Take the life-sustaining atmospheric trace gas carbon dioxide (currently about one molecule in every 2,500 in outdoor air) and rebrand it as as “carbon die-off-cide”—the gas that is going to kill us all if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels ASAP.
2. Manufacture a reaction: Use your resources strategically to create a bandwagon and a gravy train to hype the problem in academia, politics and the public sphere so that a significant number of people come to consider it a serious enough problem to demand action.
3. Provide a solution: Drastically cut the consumption of fossil fuels through cap and trade, carbon taxes, etc., while promoting “alternative energy” solutions that may never materialize like Thorium or that may be worse than useless like wind and PV.
I’m attacked as a “denier” for doubting that CO2 is a major problem. Gail has received a fair amount of flack for doubting that wind and PV are real solutions. In our different ways, we are both attacking important aspects of the “climate mitigation through renewables” paradigm. Ideas like those we’ve put forward, if they were to become generally accepted, would threaten to derail somebody’s very lucrative gravy train. As far as I can see, that gravy train is behind the push to junk the current low cost energy system. I admit there is a lot more to energy politics than this. But it doesn’t take swivel eyes to see that we are dealing with what JFK called “a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence”.
And let’s not forget Ike’s farewell address, when he warned us to be alert, very alert to “the prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money” and “the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite” when “[p]artly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
Let me salute your for so eloquently presenting the case, how the expected vision of need for power-down or do without could/belt tightening have been dropped on us from the elites. I suspected something along these lines for a long time. Perhaps they play with it more or less as contingency plan or to bounce around some ideas before it get much more serious in terms of street level chaos. For one thing, we know for a fact they discussed the finite world issues at the top since the 1970s with various degrees of urgency and or tangential agenda push arounds..
Well said Tim
World, it’s true they knew it for a long time, so they’ve thought it in ideological terms: tech will save us from contamination. But as things go down, they will start lacking imagination reg. how to picture “contamination”, and even “tech”. But as long as food stamps go on…
Nuclear is the low cost energy source, specifically sodium fast reactors. The high cost of nuclear is illusory based upon unnecessary regulation. Radiation paranoia is not based upon reality. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl has turned into a flourishing wildlife habitat. The animals are full of “dangerous” levels of radioactivity and yet they are flourishing.
In Fukushima, 1600 people died from the tsunami and earthquake. No one died of radiation or is expected to die from radiation. 1600 died as a result of being evacuated to protect them from radiation.
Sodium fast reactors are 1000 times safer than the best reactors being built today and today’s reactors are 1000 times safer than the nuclear technology at Fukushima that was designed in the 1960s and built in the 1970s. The existing Uranium reserves can provide the entire world with energy consumption at US levels for 1000 years.
The only people who benefit from renewables and high energy prices are OPEC. For some reason the policies promoted by the Greens are entirely supportive of the OPEC cartel.
Holy crap. A disciple of Nuclear Jesus has landed…
I guess I am mistaken. I thought this was a serious site given the high quality debunking of renewables in the article.
Yes it is, but you’re talking about science fiction.
A serious — yet incredibly amusing site this is! Humour + Doom all in one place 🙂
Is it possible for you to point out one piece of science fiction in what I have said?
Fast Eddy?
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/65360264.jpg
Each arrow is tipped with fact…. >>> >> >>>>>> > >> >>>> >>>>>>> >>>
I could give you facts but psile already did and you ignore them…. Let’s see if the fact bullets are more effective…
More ammo … I need more ammo! >> >>>>> > >>>>>> …. > >>> >> >>>>>>>>
The thing is…
Some ideas are just so utterly ridiculous…. that the only response can be something at least as ridiculous…
This is not the 101 course…. you have landed on what amounts to another plane of reality … very few people even recognize that they are on this plane….
There are some people who have been hanging around here for years… and they still don’t realize there is their reality — and then there is the reality that less than 20 people on this site inhabit.
Even if we open the door to our reality and show them around…. they usually still insist on rejecting this reality …
And remaining in (drum roll) …. DelusiSTAN.
My advice would be to read through the last couple of years of articles….. all this stuff had been debunked a thousand times.
I must bow in the direction of the all knowing God.
Sorry, dont have time to read years of your musings especially when they are of this quality.
No need to bow down…. you could however donate the Fast Eddy End of the World Party Fund…. I do spend a lot of time here bombing hope into the stone age.
http://www.donatefasteddyparty.com
Actually what I meant was that you not read my posts — see the archived articles….
Very Onionesque…. I am entertained!
Keep it coming…
ctg ” wants to have an alternative but high cost, technically troublesome, 10-year down the road type of energy sources. PV, Wind turbines, space-based power, thorium, nuclear, etc.”
I agree with your comment except for nuclear and in particular sodium fast reactors. GE produced the SPRISM design in 1998. This technology is ready to go. The problem is over regulation of the safest, lowest cost energy available.
With SFR and existing Uranium supplies, the entire world could enjoy US per capita energy consumption for 1000 years.
The energy issue is not CO2, the energy issue is the OPEC cartel and the monopoly that oil enjoys in the transportation sector. The winning strategy is to use nuclear for electricity generation with natural gas for peaking if necessary. Use electricity for heating. Convert natural gas to methanol for transportation to stabilize the price of oil around $50 per barrel.
Prices above $50 per barrel would attract additional capacity to methanol production. A special arrangement is required to prevent the oil producers from dropping the price of oil to bankrupt the methanol producers.
When the price of oil drops below a certain price, say $50 per barrel, a tax would be imposed upon gasoline sales and the collected tax would be paid to the methanol producers in order to allow them to continue production with low profitability. This will prevent the OPEC cartel from gaining market share by lowering prices. OPEC will be discouraged from raising prices because the additional investment in methanol production will lead to a permanent loss of market share.
When it becomes economic to produce hydrogen from water using nuclear, then hydrogen can be combined with CO2 from the air to produce methanol. When methanol is burned in an internal combustion engine, it returns CO2 to the atmosphere and produces some pollution. If a fuel cell becomes economic, the transportation energy cycle does not produce pollution and is closed except for uranium ie uranium plus water plus CO2 yields water plus CO2 plus energy for transportation.
‘When’ = never.
If you are referring to the production of hydrogen from water, there are two possible routes. The sulfur iodide method requires reactor temperatures of about 850C. If the Uranium Carbonate approach works, then temperatures of 650C are required.
Pressurized water reactors operate at 325C with no possibility of reaching even 650C. SFR operate at 450-550C with very little possibility of reaching 650C while maintaining safety margins. SFR is not a reasonable approach.
Molten salt reactors will operate at 650C and would be an excellent match for the Uranium Carbonate technology. I believe that some developments in materials science are required for MSR.
Getting to 850C is definitely a stretch in materials science. MSR may be too corrosive at this temperature and gas based (helium) reactors need to be developed.
I dont think that “never” is the correct answer. If you said 50 years for the 850C solution, that is probably a good guess. If you said 15-20 years for the 650C solution, that would be reasonable.
As for the rest of the scenario that I outlined, it is both technically and economically feasible. The main impediment is political. OPEC, the oil companies, and the Greenies are opposed. OPEC and the Greenies exhibit a surprising alignment in policy prescriptions. The Russians have even been caught funding the Greenies on the issue of fracking in Europe.
Honestly, I’ve never seen such a way of thinking about geopolitics: that those holding the grip (look at how many US force bases there are in Middle East) are just the tail waged by the dog…
Or perhaps it’s Venezuela who has the Eurodollar under fire…
Very original
http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2013/08/20/real-energy-independence-making-oil-no-longer-strategic/
Since 1973, the world’s population has risen from 4 billion people to 7 billion people, and there are four times as many cars on the road. Over that period, world GDP has risen 14 times — from $5 trillion to $70 trillion — and global oil demand has risen from 55 million barrels a day (mbd) in 1973 to 88 mbd today. Amazingly, OPEC’s share of global oil supply in the last 40 years has declined from 54% to 33% while their production level has remained constant at 30.4 million barrels a day. This is despite the fact that: (1) OPEC sits on three-quarters of all conventional oil reserves in the world; and (2) discovery and lifting costs in the Persian Gulf are among the lowest in the world ($2.50 per barrel in Saudi Arabia).
This article is so bad, so stupid that it’s hard to find where to begin to destroy it…
First and foremost, if there is a monopoly it is not opec’s, it’s petrodollar (which is conveniently not mentioned)
Second, oil price reached 100 because WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF IT
Third, in my country we had ethanol vehicles and we have a lot of methanol ones, and you know what, they’re not cheap, it worked for a while but it does not anymore
And… That’s enough for today
And four, reserves is not a reliable metrics and does not explain oil extraction dynamics. See M. King Hubbert’s work, if you never heard about him
@ Christian
Your response is so bad, so stupid that it’s hard to find where to begin to destroy it…
Here are the facts:
oil production increased from 55 mbd in 1973 to 88 mbd today, OPEC production over the same period has remained constant at 30 mbd, OPEC’s oil is low cost and should be developed first instead of deep offshore oil, oil sands, Venezuelan heavy etc, and OPEC has 3/4 of the worlds reserves of oil. Only a cartel explains this investment pattern.
First, the US $ is the world’s reserve currency, however the Chinese are starting to make a play. Not sure how reserve currency relates to the price of oil. Given that the US has been printing money like there is no tomorrow, one would expect the price of oil to be $200 per barrel rather than $40 per barrel.
Second, oil price did not reach $150 because we are running out of oil. Oil price reached $150 because OPEC did not increase production in response to demand. $150 barrel triggered the 2008 recession/depression and demand was rapidly reduced and the price fell to $40 per barrel. OPEC reduced production to compensate for lost demand and within 2 years, the prices was back at $100 per barrel. Then the US fracking boom took off and US oil and gas production expanded. The Saudis were unwilling to reduce market share by themselves and decided to push the weakest/highest cost players out of the market. That’s where we are today with oil at $40.
Third, you mention that in your country you have a lot of ethanol and methanol vehicles, that they are not cheap, and this approach no longer works. Are you Brazilian? I thought that Brazil went down the sugar cane based ethanol route. Sugar cane based ethanol is better than corn based ethanol but both are very inferior to methanol. I dont think that Brazil has the natural gas required for a methanol approach. Methanol can also be made from coal but it is more expensive than from natural gas.
Fourth, I didn’t realize that people still believe in Hubbard. People did not end the Stone Age because they ran out of rocks. People ended the Stone Age with bronze, iron, and steel. Wood did not stop being used for energy because we ran out of forests. Coal was a much better source of energy than wood. Oil and natural gas are better sources of energy than coal. Till the 1970s, coal was on its way out being replaced by oil, gas, and uranium. Then the Arab oil embargo took oil out of the mix, and the Greens, in cooperation with the coal industry took nuclear out of the mix and a resurgence of coal occurred.
Hubbard has no concept of substitution. As the cost of a natural resource goes up due to increasing demand , other material are used as substitutes. Eventually uranium will replace fossil fuels. Even if the US implodes due to mass delusions, the Chinese are building their nuclear industry. They look to be on track to doubling their nuclear build capacity every 10 years. They might build 60 reactors between 2010 and 2020 even with Fuku slowing them down, they will build 120 reactors between 2020 and 2030, and 240 reactors between 2030 and 2040, and 500 between 2040 and 2050. As soon as technology is available for nuclear to operate at 650C (best case) or 850C (worst case) hydrogen from water becomes economic and fossil fuel are relegated to the dustbin of history.
this is a real headbanger of a comment.
may i suggest that other doomsters do the headbanging—my hat no longer fits the peculiar shape i’ve banged it into, and my optometrist has warned me again about brickdust getting in my eyes!!
Just to pick out a few nonsenses at random:
You cannot change rock into anything other than smaller rocks—even Fred Flintstone knew that.
Copper tin and Iron require HEAT to extract them from rock—all require smelting. Bronze needs sophisticated smelting /combining processes.
And yes…we most certainly did have to find new methods of producing/refining metals because we started running out of trees (and thus charcoal)
We used coke for smelting. (coal was too impure)
In our industrial/commercial system nothing can be produced without heat input
As to uranium being used as a substitute for hydrocarbon feedstock
let us know about the formula for producing wiring insulation from uranium.
If Hubbert doesn’t do it for you, try Albert Bartlett—or maybe you’ll find he got his sums wrong too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8
Well worth sitting through, though it will clash with your established thinking
“Fourth, I didn’t realize that people still believe in Hubbard. People did not end the Stone Age because they ran out of rocks. People ended the Stone Age with bronze, iron, and steel. Wood did not stop being used for energy because we ran out of forests. ”
The Bronze Age probably ended due to volcanic eruption, mass famine and die-off, and the innovation of producing enough heat to refine iron ore.
Running out of forests was in fact a big reason for the industrial revolution and the move to coal, as well as the drive to start harvesting outside of Europe.
Hubbert’s Peak was about maximum rate of production of light sweet crude from conventional sources, which he predicted would be around 2005, and did in fact occur around 2005.
Hubbert predicted in 1956 that within a decade breeder reactors would be used; his baseline projection is based on the assumption that before 2005, the world would be powered primarily by breeder reactors, giving us ten times as much energy for at least five thousand years.
He also provided an alternate model, in which nuclear is not adopted, resulting in a decline for fossil fuel production and a much lower level of renewable only energy, at less than 10 percent of current.
His paper is actually titled “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels”. The main link everyone uses seems to be down:
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf
You can see the main charts here:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/05/02/the-context-of-hubbert%E2%80%99s-peak-in-world-oil-forecast/
“Second, oil price did not reach $150 because we are running out of oil. Oil price reached $150 because OPEC did not increase production in response to demand”
Guess what?
OPEC does not decide. OPEC is bullshit.
OPEC was invented so that the leaders of member countries could say to their people – see – we are independent… (then they took their payoffs and hired Ms Teen so and so’s and had orgies in between shopping trips to Dubai…)
Oil is everything. It is the master resource.
The men with the biggest stick decide.
Not some turbaned inbred half wits from Qatar or Saudi Arabia…
The el.ders have the big stick. It’s referred to as the United States Armed Forces.
You do not dictate policy to the el.ders. You kiss their rings. You laugh at their jokes. You never – ever – oppose them.
As for 147 oil — conventional oil peaked in 2005 – most new finds were too expensive to bother with …
The eld.ers ramped the price up — and rolled out a PR campaign that Don Draper referred to as ‘Saudi America’ — this was all aimed at pouring investment capital into previously unpalatable plays like shale and tar sands.
The money was spent – the wells drilled — then e.lders took a page from goldilocks… and now we see them maintaining oil in a band —not too low to bankrupt the industry — not too high to crater the economy…
Forgive me … but whenever I hear the words ‘in 30 years… or 10 or whatever’
It triggers The Song…. ‘In thirty years… in thirty years…. we’ll all be saved… in thirty years’
And I cannot get it out of my mind unless I run head first into a brick wall – the thing is all those concussions are adding up….
In 10 years or 30 years or even 2 years = NEVER.
Because we are very close to collapse now.
Even if someone could make one of these pie in the sky ideas work now – it would be too late…
The global already economy is in ruin — it is going to blow up no matter what happens. Energy aside – when a complex system like this breaks — you get total chaos…
Oh and BTW …. I fail to see how such a contraption would deal with the fact that we have 7.4 billion people …. all it would do is accelerate our burning through everything else on the planet —
Hold up though, we still got the helicopter phase of monetary distribution before things go to hell. We might still have a couple of years left but certainly no more than that, barring a massive, massive reduction in population somehow.
Maybe…
Clock is ticking for the new energy guys… hurry up ….
http://gaggif.com/albums/userpics/2013y/12/08/16/1/87YV-gaggif.gif
I think new energy wouldn’t work even if we had another decade. Changing all of the infrastructure to run on something else would take years and years.
And in 30 years there’ll be 11 billion peeps inhabiting this worn out planet groaning under the strain of our huge insufferability, and if not earlier, certainly by then, will be preparing a gigantic sh#t sandwich for us, which will crater our, once and for all, our self-anointed status as “top dog”. Followed by a four course banquet of, disease, starvation, violence and pestilence.
Pity the other species and the happiness of all generations of humans to come.
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/reddwarf/images/f/fe/3gunman.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070516031947
Stephen, why do we need energy sources now when people are too poor or too in-debt now? It does not help anyone. That is my whole point. Let us say, instead of 10 years down the road, tomorrow, you woke up and the fairy god mother granted you your wish. You have a shoe-box sized power source that is really excellent. No input, pure power output, no pollution, very stable, very safe and very portable.
Can you tell me what do you will happen to the world? Please be realistic when you list down what will happen. How it is going to help the over extended and indebted world now? Appreciate serious answers that goes through serious thought processes.
Imagine if that box were so cheap that all 7.4 billion of us could have one!
” Let us say, instead of 10 years down the road, tomorrow, you woke up and the fairy god mother granted you your wish. You have a shoe-box sized power source that is really excellent. No input, pure power output, no pollution, very stable, very safe and very portable.”
Sounds familiar:
This discussion was originally upon energy. I do not agree with your characterization of the energy industry. I believe that there is lots of oil in OPEC countries and further that within 100 years, oil will be as important as wood to the energy industry due to uranium.
If your free cube that produced unlimited amounts of energy was available to everyone, the standard of living would go up tremendously. In 1500, a peasant in Britain had zero chance of going to the Spanish seashore for a one week vacation, today it is a possibility. With your cube, a lower middle class Brit could probably afford to spend a month at the beach in Thailand.
An unresolved issue is the effect of robots, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering upon society. I see them as being extraordinarily positive. However, just as the invention of the loom caused huge social disruption, these technologies will be revolutionary. Completely new social structures will have to be invented.
I am very close to you on your characterization of monetary affairs around the world. We are reaching the end of a debt cycle. The last one was the 1930s and it ended in WW2.
There are only 2 ways to get rid of the debt: inflate or deflate. Inflation destroys the savings of the old and shortens their life. Deflation puts young people out of work and causes social upheavals. Route 1 kills off a lot of old people while route 2 leads young people to kill off politicians. Which route do you think the politicians will choose.
Yes, inflation it is. Thus the huge expansion of the US monetary base and the doubling of debt levels in 8 years. Unfortunately the inflation route can not continue forever. Eventually inflation accelerates geometrically and the economy collapses in chaos. Very similar to the scenarios you are concerned with.
“This time is different” by Reinhart describes 800 years of financial history and repeated financial collapse. “When money dies” by Fergusson is an excellent history of financial, economic, and social collapse in Wiemar Germany between 1919 and 1923.
We may be heading into war with China, Russia, and Iran vs US, Europe, and Japan with India as the wild card. An Electro Magnetic Pulse attack upon the US will destroy the electrical grid, telecommunications network, pipelines, food and water distribution and lead to 80% casualties or 240 million people within 1 year. The Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) in 2008 describes the effect upon all the networks in the US. I believe that this is a realistic route to the collapse that you are talking about.
CO2 emissions and lack of oil will not bring about the collapse that you are describing. A return to the Ice Age after the current interglacial ends will result in a collapse. We are due for a return but any forecast for the end of the interglacial probably has an error margin of plus or minus 1000 years. Changes in the operation of the sun and the position of the Earth relative to the sun most likely determine this issue.
Hopefully we will have converted to nuclear before the big chill starts. Most people will probably die anyway from lack of food. But who knows? With nuclear powered greenhouses and genetically modified crops maybe a majority of the population will survive.
I would recommend that you spend some time reading the archives of this site … reading the comments… and getting up to speed on the issues …
I would avoid reading MSM sources completely as they will only pollute your mind. Smash your Tee Vee with a hammer or give it to a homeless person
For the time being… I would refrain from commenting if I were you.
Stephen, you did not answer my question. What will happen if you have the cube? The quality of life goes up. Can you elaborate on how it will go up. Give me a step by step on how it can overcome the present situation. I want an immediate overview of what is going to happen tomorrow, next week and next month. Not just another long term visa of next 10 years. I want “now”.
Most of the people I know give just a simple answer that does not really pass through their brains. How? Improved productive? who is going to buy the stuff? Tell me how would a middle class British guy spends his retirement in Thailand when he is already broke and no job?
I am more than happy to accept your view if you can give me the details. I am usually very patient with these kind of people but at the end, I am disappointed because either they disappear from the comments section or again they did not give me the answers.
As I have stated early and many times. Things will be so cheap that deflation sets in. With so much debts, no one can afford to buy half-priced Mercedes or Toyotas. Trade war starts, financial system collapses. Write off debts? Sorry, one man’s debts is another man’s assets. So, pension will collapse and all hell breaks loose.
Just put on your thinking cap. Don’t give me general answers. I want specifics. I don’t buy your idea until you can prove to me step by step how it will work.
Tell me your academic and work background. Mine is engineering plus finance and management with lots of experience in supply chain, entrepreneurship and lots of common sense. What is yours?
Stephen, are you really an engineer or just writing what other people are saying. Do you actually know what you are writing or just copying?
I used to debate this geyser like, 11 years ago, who used to pontificate about this Gen IV and solar power satellites malarky back then…Jeez, what an insufferable pr#ck he was.
What’s happened to these grand designs during all this time? F#cking nothing except…Fukushima, oh and…
The economy is on life support, never to recover, kept movie, zombi-like, thanks to all the funny money bouncing around looking to shaft something or someone. The thing could develop a brain aneurism at any time and kill us all…
The population has grown by 1 billion, yet the planet in carrying capacity terms has shrunk! Holy f#ck, just that should tell any sane person all they needed to know…The arctic has shrunk to a nearly new all time low, since about 600,000 ago…all thanks to decades of fossil fuelled onslaught on the planet.
Species, large and small are toppling like dominoes as the human hoover sucks up everything it can in a last-ditched battle to “save our way of life!” Although billions have been thrown under the bus, so we on our laptops can live large. Sorry socialists and do-gooders, I’m afraid it’s a zero-sum world.
And jokers like this and Keith continue to beat us about the head with their nonsense…
Christ, I could go on and on, but it’s a nice day and I want to play with the dog…
Passing on the baton…
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/65360264.jpg
I will fire some short bursts of support …. +++ +++++ ++++ ++++++ +++++ ++ ++++++ ++ + ++++ +++++++
I agree “solar power satellites malarky” Gen IV is not the same as Sodium Fast Reactor which is not the same as SPRISM. Each is a more specific design.
Fukushima was a dreat advert for nuclear power and the idiocy of the Green movement. A reactor designed in the 1960s and built in the 1970s shutdown within seconds of the start of the earthquake. There would have been no problem except for a 45 foot tsunami with a 15 foot breakwater, except for the backup diessel was at sea level and was wiped out by the tsunami (grid electricity was wiped out by the earthquake). This early design requires a continuous water supply for several days/weeks to remove decay heat after the reactor is shut down. Current designs have passive decay heat removal. SFR have both passive decay heat removal and passive shutdown rather than earthquake detection and engineered shutdown. Both current design and SFR would have survived the tsunami.
And what of the Fuku disaster. Small amount of radiation were released. Noone was killed by radiation. 1600 people were killed trying to protect them from radiation. It is the irrational fear of radiation that is killing people, not radiation.
I agree with your comment about the Earth being in bad shape and printing money like crazy.
An extra billion people and carrying capacity shrinking – tinfoil hat.
The Artic is the same size it was in the 1920’s before the major ramp up of fossil fuel that started in the 1950s. Nuclear would have replaced all the coal plants by now if the Greens hadn’t killed nuclear in the late 70s. Ironically the Green are responsible for all the CO2 from coal plants.
There is no mass extinction underway.
Most of what you are pushing is nonsense. Even worse, your policy prescriptions will lead to the adverse conditions that you are forecasting.
Green dreams kill.
“Green dreams kill”
Hard to believe here we are a bunch of greenwashers
I think you need to stop watching Fox News.
“solar power satellites malarky”
Stephen, even two years ago I would have agreed with you that space based solar power did not make economic sense. It was like that from the time it was invented. G.K. O’Neill tried to make it work in the context of using lunar resources, but even if every part of his concepts worked, the overall complexity was too much for conventional investment.
But times change. Reaction Engines precooled engine design has been examined in great detail by ESA and the AFRL. Both are convinced it will do low cost SSTO. Reaction Engines has produced an estimate of the cost per kg as a function of the number of flights per year that goes out to a million. At that flight rate REL makes a case for cost to LEO of under $100/kg. That’s still not enough if you attempt to use chemical fuels for LEO to GEO, but it’s good enough with arcjet propulsion above LEO to get the cost of transport under $200/kg. At that transport cost, electric power from space can be sold for 3 cents a kWh, rapidly falling to under 2 cents per kWh.
The front end investment looks reasonable too, probably less than the ISS cost to get the transport running. After that, power satellites can seriously undercut coal.
It’s not that power satellites are certain to be built, but with technology advances, they now make economic sense to do so. They make even more sense if you are looking for a way to cut CO2.
Tokyo 4 September 2016
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced today that a Japanese consortium of universities and private companies have manage to perfect a new and nearly infinite energy source. Known as a “zero-point energy cube”, the cube is about the size of a small car and it harnesses the inter-dimensional energy to give out a constant stream of electricity or heat. It is perfect safe, input-free and emission-free. It is estimated that one cube can produce a petawatt of power per year for at least 20 years. A petawatt is 1000 terawatts. The world consumed approximately 12 terawatts per year.
Akio MeNoWorri, the chief scientist for the project proclaimed “this is Hubbert’s dream of energy that is too cheap to meter and it is so safe and easy to use. We have already produced 10 cubes and are on track to produce another 10 by mid of next year”.
The spokesman for METI announced that the cubes are only available in Japan. Haruda MorEnergi said “It took the consortium more than 5 years, working in secret to come out with this energy cube, thus, we will use it for our advantage. All manufacturing plants outside Japan will close down and move to Japan. The plants in Japan will be fully automated stringent quality controls. The process of bringing back the manufacturing facility will commence immediately and we hope to complete the process within 10 years”. When asked about the plight of the employees of the factories overseas, MorEnergi quipped “They just have to find other jobs. Japan first.” MorEnergi laughed when asked about the future. “Within a year, we will be able to export Toyotas from Japan with quality of Lexus at one fifth of the current price. High quality made in Japan toasters will be the same price as those produced elsewhere”. He is referencing to the fact that manufacturing companies outside Japan will collapse as none of them will be able to compete at the price point of the Japanese manufacturers.
While answering questions posed by reporters about the deflationary effects of this technology, MorEnergi replied “It is not a problem as our products will be so cheap that anyone can afford to buy it. Where can you get a Japan-made MP3 player at USD10 per unit?”
“This cube solves a lot of our energy problem. We can use the energy to extract and sequester the carbon dioxide in the air, combined with H2 that we get from the electrolysis of water, we can make our own hydrocarbons. We don’t have to subject ourselves to the whims of the commodities market as we will import scrap metal and convert them to raw materials for our factory.”
wow a magic cube. It must have great energy intensity. hehe
I smell the taint of Elon Musk … there’s far to much heh diddle diddle involved…. for him not to be lurking….
… the faint muskie smell of Musk.
The Japanese can now start building sex robots powered with magic cubes.
Ey be carerfull with those super toys, just a stare and you will shine yourself
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 4 Sept 2016.
In a hastily called press conference, the Saudi Arabian government literally shook the world with an announcement that they have found a gigantic oil field just 50km from the city center of Riyadh.
“We were surprised by this find even though we have spent years and countless billions looking for oil” said Ahmed Cheepoil, the spokesman for the Ministry of Petroleum. The estimated recoverable oil is in the region of 5 trillion barrels. The light sweet oil is in a gigantic limestone cavity and the top of the cavity is just 50m from the earth’s surface. The pressure in the cavity is enormous. “It is a lucky thing that Riyadh’s suburb did not reach the location” Cheepoil was saying without mentioning exactly where the location is. “If it did, just the foundation or piles of a condominium would have breached the cavity and the light sweet crude would have gushed out and flood the entire area. It is like opening a can of soft drink after shaking it”.
“We plan to capitalize on this finding immediately and since it is on-shore and close to urban areas, we expect to ship the first barrel of crude out within the next 2 months. Based on preliminary findings, we will be able to extract 150 million barrels a day for the next 50 years.” he adds. Currently, the global demand for crude oil is around 95 million barrels per day. Cheepoil added “We will be able to control the entire crude oil market within 12 months and with our very low overhead at around a dollar per barrel, we will still be able to make a profit if it sells at USD2 per barrel.
In response to questions from reporters that if the oil prices dropped to USD5 per barrel, then Saudi Arabia may not have revenues to cover the government expenses. Cheepoil retorted that Saudi will go by volume. “We are confident that we will have 100% of the market share within a year as the oil prices will drop dramatically”, no other competitors will come close to matching our prices. The government of Saudi Arabia spent USB260 billion in 2015 with more than 25% in military and security services alone. Assuming that the Saudis have a 100% market share and the oil demand is at 100 million barrels a day, Saudis need to have at least USD8 per barrel of oil to cover their government budget and the cost of extraction.
It is uncertain at this point of time if low oil prices are good, bad or neutral for the world economy as there are way too many peer-reviewed articles written by world-renowned economists working in large think-thanks, prestigious universities and published by academic publishers.
“Now everyone has a chance to own large cars or bikes and takes vacations to exotic places as the price of oil will be an insignificant part of the travel expenses”. Cheepoil was joking saying that he will ask the large car manufacturers to start manufacturing cars with at least 5L engines and forget about fuel efficiencies. A reporter from New Zealand commented that practically all the consumers are in debts and have no means to buy any new cars or afford vacations as they are struggling to make ends meet. Cheepoil remarked “The savings from super cheap oil will enable them to travel.” In response to a question that worldwide oil and gas industry will be destroyed as Exxon, Shell, other national oil companies and USA shale oil producers cannot operate at USD5 per barrel, Cheepoil just snide “They can be bartenders and waitresses.”
“Cheap oil is good as it will jumpstart the world economy. With low prices everywhere and everyday, no one really needs to earn a lot to make a living. Electricity will be cheap as we will offer special prices for power plants to convert from natural gas to diesel. For those who are worried about CO2, we already have the solution and will fund the building of special plants to take extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Solar devices are being made by universities and they will be available for us early next year where the extraction ratio will be 2:1. The extracted CO2 will be double the CO2 used in electric generation. We look forward to a very bright future indeed” Cheepoil closed the press conference with a thunderous applause.
missed out this paragaph :
It is uncertain at this point of time if low oil prices are good, bad or neutral for the world economy as there are way too many peer-reviewed articles written by world-renowned economists working in large think-thanks, prestigious universities and published by academic publishers. Cheepoil commented that every other month, there will be a peer-reviewed paper telling the world that we need low-priced oil or high-priced oil to pump up the growth of world economy. “We have decided that we will take the low-priced oil route and make it up with high volume. The economists just cannot make up their mind which is better”.
This is from The Onion?
I think you have been reading “Onion” articles!
Jaded in your doomer expertise, you guys just can’t accept nice things happening, can you? Me neither. Probably it7s an age thing. From where I sit, US$5 a barrel would solve a lot of humanity’s problems, but it might well create as many problems as it solved.
Is that oil find a September Fool’s joke? I can find nothing when I search for details….
“We were surprised by this find even though we have spent years and countless billions looking for oil” said Ahmed Cheepoil, the spokesman for the Ministry of Petroleum.
Cheepoil = cheap oil. get the joke ?
🙂
I didn’t get to that part….
Very good ctg. The only “real” thing to add is that the announcement would be made by Mr. Obama himself, because Saouds’d instantly become so lazy that they wouldn’t even make this effort (and the us wouldn’t let them to do it anyway)
Wonder what would we be saying here if something like that really hapens
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Jesus H Christ where did all these new hope-filled posters come from on this thread? I feel like I’m on Scribbler or Common Dreams or something.
And where is Fast Eddy to defend the realm?
Gail’s touched a real nerve with this post, deeply offending true believers in the viability of our BAU-lite future, not to mention tarnishing the reputation of the nose-deep-in-the-subsidy-trough “renewables” industry by deriding the energy its products provide as “low quality”.
“where did all these new hope-filled posters come from on this thread?”
Gail’s articles get re-blogged onto a few other sites, so each topic brings a few people passionate about that issue over to this blog.
There are an amazing number of people who equate electricity–even intermittent electricity–with high quality. They didn’t get the story right.
even worse
the number of people, not just in here, who are convinced that energy is a fungible commodity
I think that some people got carried away with “conservation of energy.” From Wikipedia:
This equivalence doesn’t mean that different forms of energy can be used in different applications, however.
And where is Fast Eddy to defend the realm?
I was wondering the same thing…………………………………
He said he will be going out to the fjords today… … have a great time 😉
Half his luck. I was born in that area…………………a beautiful part of the world.
Aside from switching planes at Christchurch airport on my way back from Europe, I have been to the south island only once. That was forty years ago.
I think New Zealand’s South Island would be the place to be when the world collapses.
It is definitely the place to be pre – collapse….
Probably not much better than any other place post BAU
I am not hope filled and if that is the way you interpret my posts, you are mistaken. If anything, I am even more pessimistic than most here.
Rather, it’s a question of psychology, adaptation, and timing. The fast collapse scenario has proven to be wrong. From top to bottom, each individual makes adjustments in their circumstances which, all together, stave off the collapse.
As such, we are looking at a much longer sort of decline. And this should scare you more, because during the decline we will never actually make a diagnosis as to where the problem lies. If we did face a collapse now, there would be no denying it, and therefore even more drastic measures would be taken. Any way you look it, the fast collapse scenario is wrong. Think of it this way
Scenario 1:
-fast collapse occurs now, lots of various measures put in place to deal with the collapse, so once the initial phase is over, we set into a slower decline
Scenario 2:
-fast collapse doesn’t occur now, the measures taken are only half-hearted, and we get a long decline anyway
Either way, there is no immediate, systemic collapse which reduces us all to hunter gatherers in the span of a year. You have wasted precious time in your life believing in this nonsense.
Dear Dolph,
If you don’t like to be at this blog, you can visit some other blogs whom you have can your opinions. There are hundreds of blogs around that you can find your peers. It is still a free world on the internet.
All the best to you.
CTG
“There are hundreds of blogs around that you can find your peers.”
What a great idea, drive off all different points of view and create an echo chamber. That will surely benefit all of us greatly.
The problem is he gives no points, nothing to discuss. No links or whatsoever. Others like Arn who came in out of the blue at least have links and have done some research.
Ctg,
Arn appeared saying that …
“–15 terawatts, the total human energy use
–180,000 terawatts, the total energy the surface of the Earth receives from the Sun”
… and it is a demagogic garbage. It is like to say that the oceans are full of gold. This speech does not contribute anything any more than confusion for the person not initiated in energetic topics. In addition it did a series of malicious insinuations on Gail’s figure. What does mean it?
I do not understand your anger.
We really do need different points of view. Often good questions or concerns are raised.
No collapse yet, because energy consumption rate was rising all the time. Now it has reversed.
If oil and coal consumption are both down–and I think they are–then collapse cannot be too far away.
” The fast collapse scenario has proven to be wrong.”
How do you know this? This type of massively complex event can’t be timed.
A pattern often repeated is a long long buildup. Then a sudden release of energy. Somewhat like an earthquake.
Or it could all go very very slowly, almost unnoticed by many as their reality slowly adapts.
So how do you know which?
Cars that are made in 1950s or 1960s does not contain electronics. It is actually rather simple and things are mechanical. If there something is wrong, you can hear or feel it. You can still continue driving if the axle is crooked or there is water in the fuel tank., It will cough, splits out black smoke, and then jerk. You know something is wrong.
My modern car is filled with electronic components ranging from microprocessors to a multitude of sensors. Very complex indeed. One day, the display told me that light bending and a host of other features are not functioning. I sent it for repair. It was just one of the bulbs (fog lamp) fused and a replacement was made. The guy has to do a reset of the computer system. Do I have this issue in an old but simple car? No. Will it cause my wiper to malfunction if the light bulb fuse? No
The other previous car, had some water in the fuel tank. The car moved for about 10m before it stopped; all the lights ranging from check engine to all sorts on unknown lights popped up at the dashboard. The computer system does not want me to start the car. It just stopped dead and I have to get a tow truck to tow it away.
That is the problem with complexity – the more complex it is, the harder it is for anyone to predict. The more complex it is, the more likelihood that just a simple issue (like the fused bulb) causing a lot of other non-relating issues. This is known as “cascading effect or ripple effect”.
So how do you know which?
That’s a very good question.
The economy is a non-linear system in many respects, which makes predicting the future from the past a very risky proposition. In my opinion collapse could come like a thief in the night, or it could be a long bumpy ride.
On the other hand, if we get another return to progress, peace and prosperity in the decade ahead, I will be very surprised, but I wouldn’t be complaining.
Everybody is wrong. Collapse is phenomenon best described in terms of relativity. We are all in the collapse right now. Some nations are just collapsing faster and some slower. Some nations are rising relatively to the faster collapse of their surrounding. Some nations are collapsing from a higher level and some from a lower. Some people are collapsing consciously while other are collapsing unconsciously. Everybody is in this collapse on a personal level that is relative to everyone else. Some people are getting rich while others are getting poor. Collapse is such a natural phenomenon that we don’t even recognize it as a collapse.
If it was just a zero sum game where someone gained what another lost, some died and some was born, we wouldnt call it collapse.
Look at our young people today. Most of them have less good jobs than their parents did. They are having problems paying back college loans. They are putting off getting married and having families. Looking around the world, the unemployment and underemployment rate for young people is very high.
The issue Dolph is talking about is timing. He is saying. ” . . . there is no immediate, systemic collapse which reduces us all to hunter gatherers in the span of a year.” Timing is the hardest thing to understand. We could still be quite a ways away, if somehow a guaranteed income for everyone works for a little while, or some way of saving banks works for a while. Even if we end up as hunter gatherers, it won’t happen all at once. If there is a spare parts shortage, it is possible to take apart existing units of a particular products, and use its parts to keep some things going for a while. Governments will eventually fail, but it likely won’t be every government failing quickly–some will hang on.
I’m sorry but it’s not possible to prove something wrong when it hasn’t happened yet. We are currently experiencing slow collapse. Fast collapse won’t happen until banks or supply chains for parts or oil freeze up and then the quick scenario will unfold.
Collapse is when your atm machine isn’t working
when your supermarket is empty
when your gas station is closed
and when your hospital shuts down
Not when some nation 7000 miles away is collapsing and/or starving
until its gets up close and personal humankind is conditioned to state of denial
why?—because we have million year old brains trying to make sense of a 21st c environment.
our 21st c environment is what I have just described above—a means by which we obtain our daily energy requirements without corresponding effort put in.
We might dress it up as civilisation, but essentially that’s what it is.
Our million yr brains see it as an easy option, and naturally take it because there is no reason not to
(the effect is that of “free antelopes”—we don’t have to chase them)
We have created a world where energy is virtually free, no one is alive who can recall when this wasn’t so.
Now we demand it goes on like that forever.
The personal realisation that it can’t will trigger the chaos we anticipate.
That’s true but as of right now at least 99% of the population lives in a state of denial where they absolutely REFUSE to accept reality. Americans for example have always had it good while the rest of the world is in a various state of collapse.
I think he is on a vacation trip in NZ, west coast?
It’s wild, there’s a lot today. I tried responding to one and my post seemed to just disappear, even after getting a followup comment.
Could you please comment on how you arrived at the pecentage of renewable energy in Germany? How come that your estimate (19.5) differs so much from MIT (nearly one-third):
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
MIT is measuring either a single day when wind did well and in another case the name plate generation. Gail is stating the actual total Kwhrs provided during
… Gail is stating the actual total Kwhrs provided during the year, a more important number. Wind and solar have much lower contributions to the total energy production because they have lower capacity factors. They typically average about 29% capacity factors. Nuclear for example historically has a 90% capacity factor in the US. Some merchant power states, however, do not count nuclear as renewable and utilities are threatening to unplug them, causing customers to wonder what they will use for backup to intermittent wind and ground solar, since coal, the typical backup, is also being gradually shutdown.
I am looking at electricity actually produced over a year’s time. Most studies look at amount of generation capacity, or they talk about a brief burst of solar and wind, on one particular sunny windy day (path followed by the linked article). Solar and wind generation capacity tend to sit unused most of the time.
Not sure capacity is the right term for a solar farm at night or a wind farm on a calm day. Part of the time they are similar to stranded assets. Over a year the nameplate on a solar farm puts out no more than 1/5th in the best places. It the main thing going for solar power from space, the power producing time is potentially over 95%. If you can hold the cost down to the same per kW than solar on the ground, the power cost should be about 2/5th
In theory, solar in space also gets rid of nearly all of the intermittency problem.
“In theory, solar in space also gets rid of nearly all of the intermittency problem.”
Quite right. There will not be any power at any time because we will never have the GEO lift capability to put power satellites into space. The heaviest launcher to achieve operational launches was the Saturn V Apollo moon rockets. They could “only” put 25,000 pounds into translunar insertion (roughly equivalent to GEO insertion). Each launch cost about $1.3 trillion in current dollars.
” Each launch cost about $1.3 trillion”
Gregg, you can’t do power satellites with throwaway rockets. See my reply to Fast Eddy.
We have no reusable very heavy lift rockets. One study I read quoted a power satellite weight of 50,0 00 pounds. That is twice the TLI (~GEO equivalent) capability of the Saturn V Apollo moon rocket that was RETIRED decades ago. There are no very heavy lift rockets currently operational. Power satellites are a Delusistan concept.
“quoted a power satellite weight of 50,0 00 pounds.”
The original Boeing mass estimates were 50,000 *tons*. More recently a thermal design using low temperature, lightweight radiators came in at 32,500 tons.
Nobody ever considered one of them going up in one piece. It’s even more complicated, you can’t build them in LEO because of the space junk. Boeing started down this direction back in the 70s. They were going to have the power satellites self power out to GEO. Doesn’t work, calculations showed they would be hit too many times on the way up.
The pilot project sets up enough transport to build around 10 a year. Takes about 25,000 flights of a 15 ton cargo container per year. Full scale production takes around a million flights per year or 15 million tons to LEO.
There are two videos linked from http://www.htyp.org/DTC. They are a bit out of date, we now think we can rebuild the Skylons twice so a production of about 50 per month will support a million flights per year. (They are scrapped after 1500 flights.)
Email me, hkeithhenson at gmail.com if you want and I send send you the most recent papers. I can also add you to the power satellite economics list if you want. If we can’t get the cost to GEO down to ~200/kg, then power satellites don’t make economic sense.
Keith – this is not a business plan…. it’s not even an executive summary of a business plan…
If you were presenting to this to a team from a venture capital firm —- pained looks would appear on their faces….. then they would wonder if one of the partners was a) playing a joke on them or b) you had photos of the partner having sex with a goat… and you were threatening to release the photo if you didn’t get a hearing for your idea
Either way …. they’d quickly ang the gong (remember the Gong Show?) —- thank you for your time … and show you the door…
If you insisted on continuing they would call security…
Who would then wrap you in a straight jacket….carry you to the lift — and lean you ever so gently against the doors so that they remained shut as the door closed… they’d then hit the B for Basement button…. and when the doors opened … you would crash to the floor…
You would then slither along very much like a snake…. to the exit… up the ramp … and onto the street…. your attempts to explain what happened would result in people scurrying past ‘the mad man’ …. but eventually a kind sort would wander past … and feel pity for you …
They would ring Bedlam (this is another province in DelusiSTAN — it is where the seriously delusional are kept because their ideas are too far out there — even for DelusiSTAN)… and the men would race to the scene… and plop you in the back … hand you a lolly…. and they’d take you back to the ‘safe place’
Where you would log back onto FW…. and continue to bang on and on and on and on ….
About the solar space project that you are working on…
Yes we know that NASA and all the other entities that have looked at this theory have dismissed it …. that only you know the secret to making it work … if only someone would give you a trillion dollars to ‘try it out’ you would prove them wrong….
We feel your disappointment … if only ‘they’ would have faith …. if only they would trust in you….
We trust in you Keith — we know that you could save the world…. but alas… it is not to be!
So close… yet so far…
I have worked on launch system designed to place satellites in geosynchronous orbit. It’s extremely unforgiving of errors and everything else. The rare extremely reliable launcher might have as high as a 99% reliability.
The Space Shuttle Main Engine was a very expensive and very complicated undertaking. In comparison even military aircraft development pales in comparison to heavy lift or very heavy lift rocket lift development. This is just the main engines. It doesn’t include the strap-on reusable solid rocket boosters. Also, complexity, difficulty and cost increase exponentially as the mass lifted to orbit increases.
http://www.enginehistory.org/SSME/
SSME is really an engineering wonder. I followed it’s development when it was happening, like when someone used the wrong welding wire, oops.
SABRE is something really different. It’s been obvious for many years that if you could cool the incoming air at high Mach numbers, you could turbo compress it. RE actually developed the precooler. It has 26 km of tiny tubing, and thousand of braze joints. They vacuum braze the whole thing all at once, and it doesn’t leak helium. Amazing things, was close enough to touch the test article last March.
SABRE is this weird combination of turbo jet and rocket engine. If you google AFRL and Skylon you will find a bunch of news stories from a year ago.
This kind of engine changes the game of getting into space.
You may (or may not) be right. This is not my area of expertise.
Thanks a lot. I posted my comment not having read the whole text beyond the introduction. MIT is by the way measuring the energy consumption in Germany over a year, excluding the dumping of the excess of electricity supply in Germany on EUs electric grid, I presume.
Helmet – check; Riot Shield – check …
http://www.naturalblaze.com/2016/09/organic-rice-crop-yields-debunk-myth-gmos-are-needed-to-feed-the-world.html
“In India’s poorest state, farmers are setting world-breaking records growing rice and other staple foods, without the help of genetically modified organisms, and none of Monsanto’s billion-dollar herbicides.”
“Sumant Kumar and many of his friends in neighboring villages in Bihar, known as India’s poorest state, had to prove their astonishing results to University experts, who accused them of cheating the system.”
These folks are still using fertilizer–organic fertilizers–to grow the food. I am wondering how much rice that they would grow using sustainable techniques, rather than “organic” techniques.
I find it amusing that people who do not trust the MSM to deliver facts…. will swallow just about anything if it was published in an alternative ‘green’ media…
No attempt made to check sources… No attempt made to challenge the claim…
Dr. Yuan, however, has cast doubt on the claim. “I introduced the [SRI] intensification method in China myself,” he said. “It could increase yields by 10 to 15 per cent in low-yield fields, but it’s not possible in fields that are already producing relatively high yields.”
Dr. Yuan noted that the farmer who claimed to have broken the record, Sumant Kumar, had said “they had lots of rain and little sunshine last year,” but high yields would be impossible without adequate sunshine.
From photographs, the harvested plants “appeared short and couldn’t possibly produce high yields,” the scientist was quoted as saying by South China Morning Post.
Dr. Yuan also expressed scepticism of the Indian government’s statement that it had verified the record. “How could the Indian government have confirmed the number after the harvesting was already done?” he asked.
“If Mr. Kumar is able to repeat his success next year, I will be glad to examine the results in the field personally.”
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/bihars-claim-of-rice-record-fake-says-top-china-scientist/article4439924.ece
And more…
Nine years ago, I published one of the first papers that tried to provide a critical analysis of the biological principles underlying the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and its potential to improve rice production.
My curiosity at that time was aroused by some huge rice yields that had been reported in the SRI literature, with some farmers in Madagascar apparently having harvested rice crops with a grain yield of 15.0 to 23.4 t/ha. Naturally, I wondered whether that might actually be possible, and, if so, what one might be able to learn from that. My analysis concluded that it didn’t seem to be possible under the given circumstances. A common response to that article was to since then label me as one of the “opponents” of SRI. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I believe in evidence-based science for finding the right, sustainable development solutions and I also believe that good agronomy is going to be a key for sustainable rice production, in terms of yield, profitability, resource efficiency, and ecological resilience. I am a curiosity-driven person and I have no vested interest in favoring one opinion (or technology) over another. I don’t get paid for that.
The precedent for Mr. Vidal’s Guardian article was an article published in the Indian magazine Agriculture Today in June 2012, by three people who promoted SRI in that particular district in Bihar. This article describes in detail how this particular rice crop was grown in 2011. There are some striking inconsistencies between that article and the picture painted in The Guardian article.
Mr. Vidal quotes a farmer as one growing 15 hectares of rice and vegetables, whereas in Agriculture Today the farmers are said to have landholdings of 2 to 2.8 ha. Whatever it is, these are hardly small farmers in Bihar, where a more common landholding size is 0.5 ha or less.
The Guardian article suggests that Mr. Kumar and other farmers achieved something beyond what can be achieved by scientists and GMO companies, and that they used only farmyard manure and no herbicides. The much more detailed article in Agriculture Today shows almost the opposite. No GM rice is grown anywhere yet.
However, all five record farmers grew commercial rice hybrids from Bayer or Syngenta; their seed was fungicide-treated (carbendazim); they used intensive tillage (two deep plowings plus two puddling operations); they applied green manure, farmyard manure, mineral fertilizer (N, P, K), and other nutrient input products (poultry manure, vermicompost, phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria, micronutrient foliar spray of zinc sulfate); and some also used herbicide (2,4-D) for additional weed control. These are in fact very intensive input management practices, perhaps not something that many poor, small farmers could afford.
How can one “verify” the yield of a crop after it had been harvested?
How is it possible that all of a sudden other farmers in the same village or in a neighboring village were also able to break the world record for potato and the Indian yield record for wheat?
I was quoted with a personal statement in The Guardian article (and re-quoted subsequently by many other outlets). Interestingly, I have never spoken with Mr. Vidal. Instead, the words ascribed to me in his article appear to have been extracted from a phone interview I gave to World Bank staff in 2008, which you can find here. You will notice that I spoke at great length about SRI (for about 10 minutes), explaining a lot more than what was quoted by Mr. Vidal and others. Journalistic standards should be followed. It would have been nice to see at least a reference to the full interview or to talk with me in person.
Let me now turn to the question of whether known thermodynamic and biological laws could actually explain the stated yield record of 22.4 t/ha paddy. Those who wish can read in more detail what needs to be considered when trying to understand such a number.
More http://irri.org/blogs/achim-dobermann-s-blog/another-new-rice-yield-record-let-s-move-beyond-it
If you are rich, a home stand alone solar system and an electric car makes a lot of sense.
They don’t do much to make sure that roads will be available, however. Of jobs that you would want to drive to.
For those who wants to know more about electric cars
http://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Hybrid+Electric+and+Electric+Cars_BR_2014_Web.pdf?fileId=db3a30432ba3fa6f012ba4a6027b0002
http://www.dupont.com/industries/automotive/hybrid-electric/articles/materials-hybrid-electric.html
https://setis.ec.europa.eu/publications/setis-magazine/materials-energy/electric-vehicles-and-critical-metals-jamie-speirs
You need the entire word’s support to produce an electric car. No amount of money can let you have the bad IC (semiconductor chips) if the world’s supply chain is down.
** Plant your 2 feet on firm and real ground **
“You need the entire word’s support to produce an electric car. ”
You need the entire world’s support to produce a modern electric car. People made electric cars in the 19th century. Then, I suggest questioning the need for the car at all. The car itself is something we changed our lives with and because of. It is practically a religious belief in North America (outside a few cities) that you MUST have a car.
Car – I am responding to Kurt’s posts on electric cars.
In the quest for efficiency, we have made things more complicated. Automatic transmissions were available in 1930s (Volvo) and they use torque converters. Now, we have all sorts of electronic controls to ensure a safer car (now moving at higher speeds), better fuel economy and smoother ride. In the end, the transmission is not possible to repair. It may need to be sent back to the manufacturer for servicing and you need to buy one as a replacement.
Precisely, it is the drive for efficiency that make our world complicated. Jevon’s paradox – the gains from efficiency allows us to have more cars, gadgets, people and more overshoot.
Questioning the need for cars – you can forget about it. No sheeple will ever have a good debate with you on this matter. It is a birthright for those who are staying in developed nations. Electricity and modern transport – it is a birthright. Maybe add the cell phone and internet.
Humans are not capable for a major paradigm shift. That is the reason why it is not possible to get all the 7B people on earth to agree to something. It is utopia. Ever wonder why in movies, when we aliens in other planets, they are usually united across the whole planet and have one leader only? Here on earth, we cannot even agree to the shapes of the power outlet (socket), voltages, frequency and on which side of the road one drives. When we are not united, we cannot have a means to resolve any global issues. We will deny them until it is way too late. If one denies the issue, one cannot put in something to resolve because it is not even identified. Just have a look at climate change – how many warring factions we have ? It is until we are down to the last tree that we say “we should have done something”. As a discussion, I am totally not surprised that the person chopping down the last great big tree on Easter Island may have this issue – do we need tree now or in future? Will it cause disaster later on? No, climate will change anyway, so might as well use it, etc.
Debts and modern conveniences dumb all of us down to a point where we do not want to think anymore. We just accept what the MSM says and if someone else gives you a different viewpoint and if it does not match yours, then you will reject it regardless if it makes sense of not.
in the context of our modern way of living we use powered wheeled vehicles for three things
1 Employment
2 Sustainment
3 Entertainment
Examine those three aspects of life and living very carefully and in detail.
Post BAU none of them can exist, because they are co-supportive, and they have been built on the back of unlimited hydrocarbon input
we have situated our places of employment sustainment and entertainment so far apart that now a private car is the only way they can be linked, in general terms.
yet this is just a recent freak, and is unsustainable.
Musk is fully aware that outside the hydrocarbon envelop his transport ”revolution” cannot exist.
hence he is making money while he can for as long as it does exist.
“Musk is fully aware that outside the hydrocarbon envelop his transport ”revolution” cannot exist – hence he is making money while he can for as long as it does exist.
I like to understand what drives him to that level of insanity…. and then even to promote his things as “possible” solution to some of the core problems. When I read the specs of Modell X (from 500 up to 750 horse power) I see nothing at all which looks like a solution or something which preserves or conserves energy. Its the other way around… (resource) insanity to the max.
it isn’t a solution.
but Musk is on the same rollercoaster as everybody else.
You and I don’t stop what we are doing this week because BAU “might” end next week.
So Musk goes on building more and more cars or whatever because the subsidies keep rolling in.
When the subsidies are no longer there, and electric car users find there is no purpose for them, then Musk will stop.
But until he is faced with that reality in hard terms, he will go on. He has no real choice as long as his cars roll out the factory gates, looking beautiful.
And you and I will go on
You seem to be making an assumption that people and their employment are immovable. I’m fairly confident that, barring catastrophe, people will move closer to their sustenance, and the employment and entertainment will have to move to them.
movement requires energy input
post bau we will not have sufficient cheap energy to facilitate large scale movement in the directions we need or wish to go
barring catastrophe—the key phrase there i think
General motors will move? The local bank will move? The local hospital will move?
lol
my thinking exactly—I left it to you to put into words Gail—I’ve run out of walls to bang my head against.
“General motors will move? The local bank will move? The local hospital will move?”
I don’t think there will be a General Motors, no matter what happens, barring never-ending bailouts. Maybe they will make bicycles, wheelbarrows and wagons. Something resembling a bank and market will form anywhere a group of people are for any amount of time. Whether or not there is health services, is a matter of how much surplus that community can produce.
Of course, someone has to pave the roads as well, to keep the system going–another reason the system can’t keep going, even with electric cars.
in the sense of being co-supportive, it comes under employment and sustainment.
though when i was a kid, watching road menders was entertainment as well
What do you mean by this?
Electric car drivers don’t pay road taxes as they don’t buy fuel.
So the gov think they don’t need roads, this cars can fly may be
In some states, there is a small charge added when electric cars are registered (or perhaps later) to try to make up for this shortfall. I doubt that the special charges would be enough to make up for the shortfall.
Reblogged this on Patti Kellar.
Reblogged this on Colder Air and commented:
If you’ve never read Gail Tverberg, this would be a good place to start:
“Many people are hoping for wind and solar PV to transform grid electricity in a favorable way. Is this really possible? Is it really feasible for intermittent renewables to generate a large share of grid electricity? The answer increasingly looks as if it is, “No, the costs are too great, and the return on investment would be way too low.” We are already encountering major grid problems, even with low penetrations of intermittent renewable electricity: US, 5.4% of 2015 electricity consumption; China, 3.9%; Germany, 19.5%; Australia, 6.6%.
In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today. There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.”
Gail, do you have a link that elaborates more clearly on the new “fed-in” structure after 2017 in Europe? I tried to google it but there is to much noise to the signal….
Thank you.
Paul Krugman has identified Germany’s prudent fiscal policy as the root cause to the global economic recession. If only Germany started to borrow money and started a fiscal spending program that would turn the German economy red hot which would create inflation, raising prices and wages in the core euro area, then the euro periphery would become competitive again and rise to its former glory and the Eurozone economic engine would turn on again, which would ignite the global economy once again. But Germany, the only nation that could make a difference, isn’t listening.
………………………………
Paul Krugman has perhaps identified the only nation left with some spare capacity to try to ignite the global economy one more time ?
Good points! You are right that more debt from Germany would help the world economic situation. I don’t know if Germany is big enough to ignite the world economy. It also has the drag on its economy of its high priced electricity. Germany has tried to keep labor costs down with all of its immigrant labor. This helps keep costs down, but these workers have a hard time themselves buying much of the output of the economy.
Mein Gott, once again Germany is the only evil country in the whole world, cutting off its nose to spite everybody else’s face. Didn’t you just know it? Prezzie O’Bomber’s only response to Germany must be: “Get spending – or get nuked!”
Germany is the engine of the European Union thanks to its armies of robots. That is simple. Germany uses the rest of the EU as the export destination for its industrial production. So the rising debt is there, but not directily in Germany, it is in other EU countries, that use EU funds or borrow funds to buy the industrial production of Germany.
Paul Krugman misses the context of the EU, in which Germany functions. The scheme is easy: Germany puts its earned money into EU funds, which go to the poorer states (i.e. the states that need the products from Germany) and they buy the products from Germany and keep that way the demand for the products produced in Germany.
I would say that this is quite clever way of keeping the demand, which would otherwise fall. The big share of EU funds is used for things that no one needs, but when they are spent, the GDP rises and more money can be borrowed, as the illusion of the growth continues, despite the lack of the cheap energy for the operation of the systems, i.e. buildings that no one needs etc.
Anyway, the biggest share of the EU budget goes to agriculture, so that the illusion of low food prices is preserved. And guess who is the biggest producer of agricultural machinery? Germany. Followed by Italy and France.
“Out of the EU total, the share of Germany is 27 per cent, followed by Italy (17 per cent) and France (14 per cent).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_machinery_industry
Ok then. The Earth will have to absorb more CO2 so the utilities can continue to produce electricity, pay employees & shareholders, plus all the other perks granted monopoly capitalists. Deforestation, soil depletion, and a host of other negatives also would apply to centralized, monopolized, electrical production.
Ah.., no. The faster the utilities collapse, the faster this fraudulent polluting economy collapses, the better for all life in the long run.
Higher CO2 levels are leading to feedback loops that will be caused by, and contribute to, a warming planet, and all that entails. Ever consider a warming planet will require more burning of fossil fuels to cope? No? Figure out at what level CO2 in the atmosphere will be burning twice as much fossil fuels as are being burned today. What are the environmental impacts of that?
The other point to consider is the best application for renewable energy is at the point of consumption. The homeowner segment can more easily adjust to the fluctuations, the savings would be at retail rates, and when the grid crashes, or a government that is elected to change the amount of CO2 exhausted into the atmosphere, these consumers who have installed renewable energy would continue to have power.
RIck, what you say makes perfect sense from a certain point of view. If i accepted all the assumptions and implications behind your reasoning and ignored the things that you ignore, I would probably come to similar conclusions.
The Earth will have to absorb more CO2 so the utilities can continue to produce electricity, pay employees & shareholders, plus all the other perks granted monopoly capitalists.
Would you be happier if the utilities were nationalized? Or if their employees worked as unpaid slaves? Would that make any difference to your main point that, if I understand your correctly, is that the Earth will have to absorb more CO2 so the utilities can continue to produce electricity?
Well, if we want to keep keep burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, the Earth will have to absorb more CO2. That much is true. Is that a problem? It seems to me we can’t know in advance what the consequences will be.
The faster the utilities collapse, the faster this fraudulent polluting economy collapses, the better for all life in the long run.
It’s a point of view, Rick. And a lot of ecologically-minded people would agree with it. Whether you would continue to hold it in the wake of a collapse is something only the future can tell. What if anything the animals, plants, fungi and bacteria we share the biosphere with think about the prospects for a return to “nature red in tooth and claw” is another open question.
Higher CO2 levels are leading to feedback loops that will be caused by, and contribute to, a warming planet, and all that entails. Ever consider a warming planet will require more burning of fossil fuels to cope? No? Figure out at what level CO2 in the atmosphere will be burning twice as much fossil fuels as are being burned today. What are the environmental impacts of that?
What indeed? Not having a crystal ball, and lacking a pair of Earths—one in which fossil fuel burning continues and the other in which we collapse now and start dining on long pig—to perform the experiment on, I really couldn’t say.
However, Nir J. Shaviv has studied the CO2 climate forcing issue and is not at all alarmed.
And before anyone dismisses his ideas out of hand, I’d like to point out that he stresses that:
• there are a dozen good reasons why we should strive to burn less fossil fuels.
The two primary reasons why fossil fuels are bad are of course pollution and depletion, while minor reasons include for example the fact that many fossil fuel reserves are controlled by unpleasant governments.
Thus, I am very much in favor, and always have been, in using less fossil fuels and keeping the environment clean (I am proud to say that I grew up in a solar house), but we should do things for the right reasons, not the wrong ones (and I don’t see Kyoto addressing the right reasons). I am therefore in favor of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium) which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue.
http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolarHYPERLINK
The other point to consider is the best application for renewable energy is at the point of consumption….
While the utilities are still in business and BAU is functioning, fine. There are many situations in which rooftop solar PV, solar hot water, or a wind turbine in the back garden behind the tennis court might be a very good investment. They might even reduce the consumer’s CO2 output over time relative to what it would have been had they not installed them, or then again they might not—particularly if they were financed using a government subsidy or if any surplus power generated is sold off to those evil utilities. Any saving on electrical bills is likely to be spent on products and services that entail CO2 output, that being the nature of this fraudulent polluting economy.
After the grid collapsed, there would be no more production of solar panels or wind turbines, no functioning economic system, no food in the supermarkets, and a lot of desperate and possibly armed, angry, violent and desperate people on the move. Anyone aiming to keep their existing “renewable”-powered lifestyle in such circumstances should plan on having lots of company.
Tim Groves said-
“Well, if we want to keep keep burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, the Earth will have to absorb more CO2. That much is true. Is that a problem? It seems to me we can’t know in advance what the consequences will be.”
And on the effects of a doubling of global CO2 emissiions-
“What indeed? Not having a crystal ball, and lacking a pair of Earths—one in which fossil fuel burning continues and the other in which we collapse now and start dining on long pig—to perform the experiment on, I really couldn’t say. ”
Are you saying that the global scientific community is so corrupt or so incompetent that even the most basic climate finding should be ignored? And that the entire body of climate science should ignored unless we can actually have a second earth to run experiments on?
Are you saying that the global scientific community is so corrupt or so incompetent that even the most basic climate finding should be ignored? And that the entire body of climate science should ignored unless we can actually have a second earth to run experiments on?
I’m saying that we can’t know in advance what would happen if global anthropogenic CO2 emissions were to increase.
If you disagree with that view, fine. Tell me how we can know what would happen in advance. I’m all ears.
But if you want your explanation to sound credible, here’s a tip. Try not to base it on argumentum ad verecundiam fallacies. The issue is a purely scientific one that logic dictates can only be approached scientifically.
I make no comment on the level of corruption or incompetence within the scientific community. I’m a member of that community by the way.
Actually core samples are very clear as to what happened when CO2 was this high last time. You can pretend you don’t know what’s going to happen but it’s akin to sticking your head in the sand.
“Would you be happier if the utilities were nationalized? Or if their employees worked as unpaid slaves?”
I’ve not been following the thread, but the position that slavery is the only alternative to getting work done without pay comes up here a lot. I have no doubt you’d agree that there are ways for people to pull together and do difficult things in the absence of money. Seems that they did it before money was invented. And, even now, family members do very difficult unpaid things for one another.
I’m all for volunteering at the local community scale or for specific objectives in a good cause. On the national level I have my reservations because it can easily lead to nefarious exploitation. My question was in response to what Rick said about the utilities. I was wondering if he was objecting to them providing paid employment for people on top of all the other sins he condemns them for.
” the better for all life in the long run.”
I don’t think that humans are necessarily considered in the mix of future life on earth, however. (It is a maybe, maybe not situation.) There are certainly a lot of people who would prefer to postpone a possible extinction even as long as possible. The earth has recovered from a lot of bad shocks in the past. Perhaps it would take a few more years to recover, if humans could live a little longer. Would that be such a terrible trade-off?
‘The faster the utilities collapse, the faster this fraudulent polluting economy collapses, the better for all life in the long run.’
If you mean it results in the extinction of humans and the possibility that some other organisms survive… I agree…
However we do have the problem of the spent fuel ponds… if there is no electricity they blow — and they spew radiation for decades….
http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/putin-has-thorium-plans-and-engages-russias-vast-nuclear-establishment
Russia is moving fast to become a global nuclear power leader. The Vice President of Rosatom states that Russian nuclear plants are very welcomed worldwide with more than 90 plants in the pipeline worth some $110 Billion in total. These 90 reactors are just the beginning of Rosatom’s vision to deliver 1000 GW by 2050.
Now in a meeting that took place on the 29 of July, Putin ordered the leading Russian nuclear institutions Kurchatov and Rosatom to:
‘the National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute” and State Corporation “Rosatom” Atomic Energy will in conjunction make proposals on the prospects of using thorium.’ (Deadline March 1st 2017)
Meanwhile in the US we will continue to debate the value of abortion and homosexual life.
Meanwhile in the US we will continue to debate the value of abortion and homosexual life.
If we get to the point where it becomes possible to determine the sexual orientation of a fetus in the womb, things could get really ugly in SJW Land.
Can you say CRISPR Cas9 Genome Editing?
We are already there.
LOL!
Imagine the cognitive dissonance of a Christian who is faced with a child that’s going to be homosexual versus their belief that abortion is murder.
Thought experiment: Swap Russia and Frances nuclear technology. I bet Russia still “succeeds” with nuclear while France would still fail.
Moral of the story: If you haven’t got control over lots of conventional gas, some oil, and other stuffs (coal, metals, etc) like Russia then the Nuclear reactor business is really a tough go as France is discovering.
People here like to propose nuclear as the transition from fossil fuels. But again, where is the empirical evidence that is can work?
P.S. Don’t you find the need to investigate thorium rather alarming as in uranium is not long for this world either?
“Don’t you find the need to investigate thorium rather alarming as in uranium is not long for this world either?”
U-235 is quite rare. Reprocessing spent fuel to extract plutonium has some serious security concerns, so is banned or heavily restricted. Breeder reactors were always the next goal in nuclear fission anyways.
Yep— always something that has never scaled, nor commercially workable.
But if anyone can do it, the Russians are my top pick.
Yep, if I recall it correctly they have got them working in ~ .8 – 1.2TW range.. plenty of fuel ready for it in the storage as well .. so they evidently front running by scale of ~ 3x on the world stage in this particular segment. They most likely plan not to burn domestically as much fossil fuels which could be exported instead for cash or bartered for something else.
Correction, power units obviously in GW instead, i.e. 800-1200MW
Like paper, video also refuses nothing :
https://www.youtube.comh/watch?v=0BybPPIMuQQ
India is actually doing something with thorium, I wouldn’t suggest hurrying with this technology.
If you had to pick one word to describe Gail Tverberg’s philosophy, that word could only be ‘defeatism.’ Without entering into matters of psychology, or speculating on a hidden agenda, it seems that her defeatism is rooted in her view of human economy as a dissipative (aka decaying) system. Dissipative (or decaying) systems consume the resource which is available to them (it could be matter or energy) and then collapse, to be replaced with something else. [1] [2]
In the case of human economy, the resource is energy, in the form of fossil fuels, cheap oil in particular. In her view, we are already reaching ‘peak oil,’ and the inevitable collapse of human society is only a few decades away. As for renewables, forget them–they are just too darn expensive. (Although it is hard to conceive of any sort of rational accounting system that rates upgrading our electrical grid to handle solar and wind energy as being more expensive than the end of human civilization.) [2] [3]
Climate denial has gone through several phases. The first phase was to deny that climate change was even happening. The second phase was to acknowledge the reality of modern climate change, but to deny that humans were responsible. Naomi Oreskes warns of a third phase, which is to deny that renewable energy sources are (a big part of) the solution to the problem of human-caused climate change. It would seem that Gail Tverberg has placed herself smack dab in the middle of phase three. [4]
For those who see in these numbers
–15 terawatts, the total human energy use
–180,000 terawatts, the total energy the surface of the Earth receives from the Sun [5]
a reason for a policy of active optimism–as opposed to Gail Tverberg’s implied policy of passive defeatism–the Additional Reading section below provides some good starting points. (The above numbers of course apply to solar energy. When wind is thrown in, the case for optimism grows even stronger.)
Sources:
1. The Physics of Energy and the Economy
Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World, 8 Feb 2016
2. Forget Renewables, We Need Cheap Oil – An Interview with Gail Tverberg
James Stafford, OilPrice, 9 Oct 2012
3. Oil Limits and Climate Change – How They Fit Together
Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World, 11 Apr 2014
4. There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don’t celebrate yet
Naomi Oreskes, The Guardian, 16 December 2015
5. Introduction to Modern Climate Change
Andrew Dessler, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 49
Additional reading:
We Can Stop Searching For The Clean Energy Miracle. It’s Already Here.
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, 12 May 2016
The U.S. Could Make a Fast, Cheap Switch to Clean Energy
A new study shows that the nation could shutter coal-fired power plants by 2030, maintain a steady power supply—and save billions of dollars.
Emily J. Gertz, TakePart, 25 Jan 2016
Al Gore: Climate Change Biggest Business Opportunity in World History
Peter Koekoek, Daily Planet, April 2016
Normalize that big solar energy number to area and the resulting energy density is not so impressive. If it were so, we and other biotic forms and the ocean-atmosphere system we enjoy on this planet would not be here. Do some reading of past posts and perhaps take some college courses in basic earth science. It might help your viewpoint become closer aligned with the predicament we humans are facing.
The biggest predicament–in fact an existential threat–which humans are facing is unmitigated climate change. Climate-science denial and renewable-energy naysayery are a big part of the problem.
Article:
How much land is needed to power the U.S. with solar? Not that much
Rob Wile, Fusion, 1 May 2015
/In 2009, [the Land Art Generator Initiative], calculated that we’d only have to cover an area a bit bigger than California with solar panels to power the entire world with solar energy./
Please refer to my previous post.
I guess you will believe anything … so long as it contains to facts or logic….
Please list the cost in capital, metals, labor, rare earths, etc…
Here are some relevant cost numbers.
–Cost of switching to 80% renewable energy by 2050, 1% of world GDP (about $800 billion per year) [1]
–Cost of unmitigated climate change, 20% of world GDP (about $16 trillion per year) [2]
Sources:
1. IPCC, Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation, Cambridge University Press, 2011
2. Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Cambridge University Press, 2007
Arn, you seem to imply that if a switch to renewable energy could be made, that climate change would be mitigated or even reversed. Unfortunately, even if such a switch could be made, it appears that the warming effects from what has already been exhausted into the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean system from fossil fuel combustion are “baked in” and irreversible.
\
There is indeed committed warming in the pipeline from the excess CO2 which humans have already added to the atmosphere. The purpose of mitigation is to prevent the situation from becoming even worse–not that hard to understand. doomphd’s reply makes as much sense an alcoholic telling his doctor, “Gee, Doc, since I’m already in the early stages of cirrhosis of the liver, I might as well keep drinking.”
You’re still sucking on the Hopium pipe. I’m not advocating making things worse, but you seem to believe that doing things like completely melting the north polar ice cap will result in a survivable global climate for humans and their civilizations. It likely will not. A few uncivilized ones might make it, for awhile.
Not quite…
It’s as if the doctor said ‘you have to keep drinking or you will die – so I recommend you keep drinking — you will die from drink – but better to die later than sooner — and enjoy the party while you can’
How do you suggest we reduce the burning of carbon — without collapsing the economy?
I definitely do not believe Stern’s report. It got the story pretty much wrong.
Yes, I get it now. “Our Finite World” is just that corner of the climate-denialism echo chamber that caters to those with eschatological hang-ups. Sorry for bothering You-All.
You won’t find any climate change deniers here. What they are trying to tell you is its too late. We don’t have until 2050 to reduce Carbon dioxide, the tipping points have already been passed. The mere fact of switching to electric cars and solar power itself would push us over the edge if we weren’t already there.
“the tipping points have already been passed.”
There is at least one proposal, power satellites that could be bringing the CO2 down well before 2050. But we would have to really jump on getting the job done.
Cheaper than wars though.
Jarvis wrote, “… it is too late… the tipping points have already been passed.” In fact, nobody knows exactly what the climate sensitivity is or just where the tipping are located. Uncertainty is not our friend, but it is perfectly within the realm of possibility that with a real concerted effort we still have time to avoid the worst of unmitigated climate change. Direct CO2 removal could also buy us some extra time, and if things start looking really desperate there is also the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering, such as injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere, which would act very quickly to increase albedo and so lower temperatures.
Jarvis also wrote, “The mere fact of switching to electric cars and solar power itself would push us over the edge if we weren’t already there.” It is indeed possible that the process of switching to renewables could push us in the wrong direction, but only initially and for a limited period of time. That is just a way of saying that the system has a right-half-plane zero. Many practical systems that we use every day have RHPZs, but that doesn’t stop us from using them. A familiar example is a simple boiler. If we add some water to increase the head of steam, it temporarily reduces the temperature and so lowers the pressure–exactly the opposite of what we want–but soon turns around and begins to correct. Assuming the existence of a RHPZ in the energy economy switchover, it should be possible to estimate the frequency of the RHPZ, and thereby also the turnaround time.
The philosophy that is being promulgated in ‘Our Finite World’ is one of passive defeatism–on tranquilizers. I think most people if they understood the gravity of the situation would prefer to fight.
“would prefer to fight.”
There are a number of people who are interested in doing that spread over at least three areas, MSR, StratoSolar and power satellites. I can connect you into the last two. hkeithhenson at gmail dot com
FW hosts the pre-wake for the end of BAU.
Only the stupid or the delusional bother to fight.
The wise recognize the futility of fighing — and live each remaining day to the fullest…
Meanwhile the stupid and delusional run around like chickens with their heads off in search of the latest version of hopium….
Calm down — and prepare to go down with the Good Ship BAU. There will be no survivors.
The philosophy that is being promulgated in ‘Our Finite World’ is one of passive defeatism–on tranquilizers.
That’s twice now you’ve employed the term “defeatism”.
But isn’t your promulgation of our need to deindustrialize in order to mitigate the affects of CO2-induced global warming a form of defeatism of the first water? And isn’t your pronounced fear of climate change an indication that you lack the balls or the brains to survive and succeed in approaching era of revolutionary change?
I for one advocate keeping the industrial economy pumping away and developing coal-to-liquids technology and thorium-based molten salt reactors in order to provide the muscle, along with space-based solar if that can be proven to work at a reasonable cost.
Wind turbines are for wimps and solar cells for sissies!
“developing coal-to-liquids technology ”
Why? Trade half the energy in coal to get oil, then get 40 percent of that energy turned into mechanical energy. I guess if you need transport fuel and have no other option.
have you studied/researched the mess involved in turning coal to liquid fuels?
OK—no doubt these methods can be improved on—but these aee in the “inventions pending” tray
“along with space-based solar if that can be proven to work at a reasonable cost. ”
The only way to prove “reasonable cost” is to do it. But analyzing the model isn’t too hard. The first thing you need is a target for the cost of power from space. If the goal is reducing CO2, then the cost needs to be less than electricity from coal without considering the external cost of coal. There are places such as India that are unlikely to implement carbon taxes. Electricity from coal typically costs 4 cents per kWh. So as a first pass target, “less than coal” would mean 3 cents per kWh.
Working LCOE backwards gives you a limit on the capital of ~$2400/kW. That includes the rectenna on the ground ($200/kW) the cost of parts ($900/kW) and transport to GEO ($1300/kW). Transport is more than half the cost and the part that needs the most development. I have done mass estimates for thermal power satellites. They came in at 6.5 kg/kW. To stay under the $1300 available, the cost has be $200/kg or less. (All these numbers are approximate.)
$200/kg is about 1/100th of the current cost to deliver communication satellites to GEO. On the other hand, $200/kg is about 100 times the energy cost needed to lift a kg from the ground to GEO. $200 per kg is about 1/10th of what we expect SpaceX technology can eventually do.
Rockets are not the only way to get into space. At high flight rates, the Reaction Engines space plane is expected to reduce the cost to LEO to under $100/kg. A newly designed beamed energy propulsion system using arcjets and several hundred MW of beamed power looks like it will get the cost for the LEO to GEO leg down to $50-60/kg.
There are thousands of details to consider, from the NOx from reentering space planes to the amount of gallium available for microwave transmitters and CPV. There might be some serious study funding available in the next year or two.
There are multiple ways we might get out of the energy and carbon problems, MSR are one of them, StratoSolar deserves a serious look, and you never know when something new will crop up.
Long term it’s not obvious what might happen to the human race. In “The Clinic Seed” (fiction) the human race went extinct without people dying.
Keith – have you ever heard of a business plan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
Might I suggest one of the reasons you are working out of your garage – or your basement — or in your mind…
Is because of this statement ‘The only way to prove “reasonable cost” is to do it.’
I guarantee you that would never – ever – not in a million years — get funding to ‘to do it’ without a business plan.
Because you will never ever in a million years find someone with money (unless perhaps you a silly old granny who won the lottery…) to fund your idea.
Never.
Why?
Because business plans have been done — by organizations that include NASA – and they have concluded that there are a series of impediments that make this idea NOT feasible – all of these relate back to cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Drawbacks (e.g. debris hits the satellite – you have to send a repair team into space or launch a new satellite)
You remind me of someone I know who took out a substantial personal loan to fund a business venture… it was not working …. he asked me to evaluate…. within 30 minutes of looking at his website and some quick googling to understand the business … I went back to him with a few comments suggesting why the venture was not working …. and was unlikely to ever work… that there was never going to be a return on investment
I asked him if any of these came up when he made the business plan….
‘oh – we didn’t make a business plan’
I later found out that he was a card-carrying member of DelusiSTAN….
Keith – I hope you have not taken any personal loans to fund this… surely you have not mortgaged your house…. I definitely do not recommend following the lead of some entrepreneurs who run up massive bills on credit cards to fund start-ups…
The business plan for this idea has been done to death — it is NOT feasible.
seconded
“business plan?”
Did two of them back in the mid 80s. Gutenberg Express was a project to put a book printing/binding machine in bookstores. Proposed material distribution was to be on CDs, the latest storage technique in those days. That early idea for print-on-demand got as far as a couple of venture outfits putting in a month or two. The other was a proposal to put a terminal over newspaper stands to take and display classified ads, sort of an early implementation of Craig’s list. Neither were funded.
Those experiences showed me that the financials are the most important part of a business plan. Potential investors always look there first. If the return on investment isn’t high enough, or the investment is too high, the plan gets rejected without further consideration.
“business plans have been done.”
That’s true. I think the earliest one was by G.K. O’Neill, Dec. 5 1975 in Science. Recognizing the high cost of lifting power satellite parts, his approach was to mine the moon. Inflated to current dollars it was about $425 B.
The most recent partial plan was a study led by Seth Potter at Boeing in 2009. It wasn’t organized as a business plan because they were not seeking to get it funded. The technology (all of it old) gave them an estimated cost of $145 per watt, or $145,000 per kW. By the normal metric of divide capital cost by 80,000 to get per kWh, it came our at around $1.80 per kWh. There is no market for GWs of power at that cost, so there was no need to go further with a plan.
“personal loans”
Lost a little last year, made substantially more this year.
“The business plan for this idea has been done to death — it is NOT feasible.”
Lots of things that were not feasible become possible as technology advances. If the physics makes sense, then it can be done, eventually. The question is, can we do it now and make a profit from doing so? For power satellites to make economic sense, the cost to lift parts to GEO has to be reduced by about 100 times, from $20,000 to $200 per kg. Until the precooled engine technology was developed by Reaction Engines, there didn’t seem to be any way to get the cost down that far. Even with cost reduced to $100/kg to LEO, the cost for LEO to GEO using chemical propulsion was too much. Takes both a very low cost space plane to LEO and a beamed energy arcjet tug to get the cost down to where power from space can undercut coal.
The financials are the part that interest potential funding agencies the most. I have put the numbers for power satellite engineering, Skylon purchase, costs of runway, LNG terminal, ship terminal, ship, Hangars, Hydrogen plant cost, LNG cost, among other things and ran the model. Came out with similar shaped cumulative profit and loss curve to what O’Neill did back in 1975.
The current business financial model shows a peak capital investment of around $30 B. I would not trust this number, but it shows that further study is worth doing. A version of the model has been posted on Power Satellite Economics.
But due to the size, risk and the nature of the business environment, I don’t think a business plan in the conventional sense of convincing investors
Well Keith — if you have a solid business plan …. there should be no shortage of investors lined up …
Think of the rewards to investors if you could make this work!
Perhaps your business plan is not convincing?
But that should not matter….
Look at Tesla — it is a total joke — yet billions pour in ….
Look at all these silly dotcom ideas that lose money — the investors pile in with billions round after round…
The money is there —- there are trillions floating around the world searching for a good story… it does not even have to be a viable business… just a good story…
I remember in the late 90’sRichard Li – son of Li Ka Shing … floated the idea of beaming broadband across Asia cost-effectively via satellites… the concept resonated because in much of asia there were no phone lines…
I recall at the time thinking this is ludicrous…. yet when you are the richest man in asia’s I guess that gives you a certain amount of gravitas…
He ramped the idea up to such heights during the dotcom bubble that we was able to takeover the venerable HK Telecom…..
All from a story… not a single satellite was launched….
So there you go Keith — you don’t even need this to be feasible…. you just need to talk the talk
I don’t understand why you are unable to source the funds you need.
Stop talking Keith – Make it Happen!
I agree with the “work backwards to see what you can afford” approach. There has been an awfully lot of people who assume that we can somehow charge for all of the externalities, and then use that charge to justify a lot higher price for alternative energy sources. People’s wages don’t go up to cover externalities. In fact, to keep our system going, we need very low prices for the entire mixture of energy types used–including both electricity and liquid fuels.
There have been too many people with the idea that energy costs will go up. When that happens, renewables will suddenly become cheaper, and thus the energy types of choice.
I bet you never met someone like me….
I am not a denier — I am pretty sure we are doing some serious damage to the planet by belching out carbon from exhaust pipes large and small…
I want to burn more carbon … I want to dig up more coal…. and load it into blast furnaces and generate electricity to power the factories that make more stuff to sell in Walmart.
More More More!
Because the alternative — i.e. reducing consumption means immediate collapse.
If you see that the amount of carbon burned up and released into the atmosphere in a given year has gone down from the previous year…
Get ready to starve and die.
Would you like to be my friend?
Arn, does your power from solar panels will be used to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and combined with H2 (electrolysed from water) to form the oil that will be used to power the aeroplanes? You need planes in BAU, no questions asked. What does BAU stands for ? Business As Usual. There can never be a solar plane or any planes that is powered by batteries.
New Solar Device Removes Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere
Emily Gertz, TakePart, 28 Jul 2016
/On Thursday, a team of scientists announced in the journal Science that they have created a device that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses sunlight to break it into a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called synthesis gas or “syngas,” that can be used directly or turned into diesel or other liquid fuels…/
NASA X-57 (aka Maxwell)
–Battery powered aircraft
–14 distributed electric motors
–5X reduction in energy required to cruise at 175 mph
–Electric propulsion eliminates penalty for cruising at higher speeds
So… how many solar panels you need now to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere, electrolyse seawater so that you can get the hydrogen to form the oil that we need? Another 2 California-sized land filled with solar panels or solar devices? We need about 30billion barrel, scratch that, with electric cars, we need 10billion barrels per year for the plastics (for making solar panels as well), medicine, fertilizes, etc.
Can you please put your two feet on the ground? The Chinese a proverb that fits you very well – “Plant your 2 feet on real ground”. You are the most interesting person that I have met so far, unleashing all the peer-reviewed documents and proclaiming that all those work in research will serve us well in the future. I do not even plan to refute what you claim because it is waste of energy. You are either playing a fool in this website or you are really that “mentally-challenged” . I don’t pick a fight with those who are not worth fighting.
I did my MBA and when it comes to writing thesis, we were told to quote only peer-reviewed papers. I raised a question – what if the theory is wrong in those papers? We were told just to shut-up and do what thousand others are doing – just quote and don’t bother to check on the validity. If 1000 people quoted it, then it must be true. What a farce ! I never bother to continue my studies in other fields or PhD. It is a total joke !
NASA X-57 http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/nasas-x-57-electric-research-plane
You are replacing this
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Boeing_777_above_clouds,_crop.jpg
with this ?
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/sceptor_city_nasa_half_res.jpg
We don’t have a lot of time left. The time to get new technology working was in the 1960s when we are still at the up slope of Hubbert’s curve. We are not at the downward slope of the Hubbert’s curve and are using debts to mask off reality will only accelerate things. We are already way past the event horizon and are hurtling dead ahead. Full steam ahead. There are no good solutions left.
acorn + time = mighty oak tree
X-57 + time = replacement for 777
Only a fool scorns the acorn while admiring the oak tree.
Anyway, I’m outta here. Lesson learned:
posting in the eschatological fetishist website = waste of time
Wait… don’t go!!!
I think you are on to something.
If we collect all the acorns … they can be burned in the Acorn/Thorium Reactor that I have been working on …
Perhaps we could train the squirrels to gather the acorns and trick them into bringing them to the reactor building — where stinky hippies will gather them in tie-dye sacks and drop them into the shute.
We are saved! We are saved!
Dear Arn,
Thank for your your visit. Wish you a good day. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time for acorn to grow into oak tree.
best wishes,
CTG
I was wondering how far the MSM could go before people concluded … hang on … now you are taking the piss of me…
Ann demonstrates that there are pretty much no limits…. if the NYT or Huffington or Washington Post publishes it … it must be true.
I am waiting for the big fat headline ‘Scientist Debunks 1+1 = 2 – It’s Actually 7’
If solar energy is only input besides making device, how much syngas does the system produce in one hour? Timing to scale up? Cost to scale up?
Breaking News: Fast Eddy Enterprises in collaboration with Dyson launched a prototype solar powered vacuum cleaner that can suck up carbon from the atmosphere.
More http://www.timemagazine.com/solarvacummbreakthroughfasteddy
I bet you clicked that link …
I have long wondered who gets sucked in by those Nigerian scam emails…. how can they fall for such blatant bs?
Do you mind posting your bank details and password?
I want to deposit a reward in your account for helping me better understand how people get suckered.
Cost of switching to 80% renewable energy by 2050, 1% of world GDP (about $800 billion per year) [1]
I know you will ignore this … but what the he.ll….
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
“For those who see in these numbers
–15 terawatts, the total human energy use
–180,000 terawatts, the total energy the surface of the Earth receives from the Sun”
This numerical relation demonstrates a great ignorance of the problem for your part.
Insinuated “hidden agenda” the Mrs. Tverberg confirms what I say.
“Al Gore: Climate Change Biggest Business Opportunity in World History
Peter Koekoek, Daily Planet, April 2016”
Business… especially for him.
To him , I meant .
https://informacionporlaverdad.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/al-gore-fuego.jpg
Any response to Crates’ reply beyond pointing out that it has zero real content would be supererogatory.
Very funny, thanks.
You make much attention to the IPCC and Al Gore.
That’s as absurd as believing projections BP, IEA, EIA, etc.
They do not take into account the actual state to which the economy is headed when they make their projections and theoretical calculations of all kinds. They are linear and simple, and therefore useless.
The problem we face is manifold, and not solved with “renewable”.
Very difficult to explain why in a comment.
Read more to Gail and Tainter to understand, if you wish.
Arnho: diffuse energy, intermittent energy. Storage costs. It’s like you did’t even try to understand the challenges…
There is a substantial amount of peer-reviewed research showing that we could meet most of the world’s energy needs with renewable sources using _existing_ technology, and it wouldn’t even be that expensive. For example, here in the US:
MacDonald et al., Future cost-competitive electricity systems and their impact on US CO2 emissions, Nature Climate Change, 2016
/Our results show that when using future anticipated costs for wind and solar, carbon dioxide emissions from the US electricity sector can be reduced by up to 80% relative to 1990 levels, without an increase in the levelized cost of electricity. The reductions are possible with current technologies and without electrical storage. Wind and solar power increase their share of electricity production as the system grows to encompass large-scale weather patterns. This reduction in carbon emissions is achieved by moving away from a regionally divided electricity sector to a national system enabled by high-voltage direct-current transmission./
Lovely, lovely, lovely, Arn. As long as it’s peer-reviewed, not that expensive, and your future costs are as anticipated, you should confident that it’s bound to work. So be our guest. Go ahead and build it with funding from MacDonald et al. Then get back to us when it’s done and we’ll be green with envy. In the mean time, please allow us to scoff in peace.
Again. Peer-reviewed… darn. it is too peer-reviewed papers that got us into this mess in the first place. All the peer-reviewed economics papers that got us into this mess the first.
Peer-review = the blind leading the blind
Recall the early forays into biofuels and the hydrogen economy? There are many peer-reviewed papers in that literature. US corn was a scam, replacing food production for fuel, and hydrogen’s fuel source was to be natural gas, as even those dreamers could see and understand the depth of the energy well from which it would take to extract hydrogen from water.
Now, thanks mainly to aware analysts like Gail, even the cherished wind and solar are shown to be shoddy, intermittent energy sources that endanger our grid electrical power systems if brought in at over 10-15%. (Amazing coincidence, that was also the upper limit for enthanol in gasoline, before it begins to damage the fuel system’s seals and lines.)
So quoting the peer-reviewed literature won’t cut it here, because the blog’s owner and many if not most of the regular commenters here are on to that system not providing the quality guarantees advertised.
+++++++++
Gail’s work is not peer-reviewed because as an analyst Gail is peerless.
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Thanks! It is amazing the amount of bad peer-reviewed work I have seen. In a “publish or perish” academic world, professors are forced to publish something, no matter how bad. Governments help the process along by offering grants to study things that clearly are too expensive and impractical to work in the real world.
Is anyone suggesting alternative energy systems are feasible here?
I think not.
What is there for peers to review and debunk?
We are the peers – we are the ones doing the reviewing — and destroying all hope — with facts and logic.
Anyone who does not agree with us is more than free to try to prove us wrong.
We will listen to facts and logic — we will not listen to Koombaya….
For us… Koombaya is torture… it’s like being water-boarded… while locked in a freezing cold room with heavy metal being played 24 hours a day under bright lights….
If you had to pick one word to describe Gail Tverberg’s philosophy, that word could only be ‘defeatism.’
I think the word you’re looking for but can’t quite bring yourself to type is “realism”.
Gail collects relevant real-world data, analyzes it in appropriate ways and collates it to form a thesis. She doesn’t conjure up data that supports her thesis out of thin air and she doesn’t ignore or distort data that she finds inconvenient. If I had to pick one word to describe her methodology, it would be “meticulous”.
Indeed, Gail’s methodology is the very opposite of that demonstrated by Naomi Oreskes, for example. Naomi is prone to making big claims, childish claims, outlandish claims, deceptive claims. That’s basically what she does. One such claim is the subject of ” “My Science is Better than Your Science,”—an “error-riddled essay” in a 2011 book entitled, How Well Do Facts Travel?
As Ron Arnold wrote:
That short chapter is important because Oreskes totally misinterprets the “memos” as Big Coal’s plan for a vast national campaign with paid climate scientists that created the lasting public doubt about global warming. That’s the very same interpretation repeated endlessly by climate alarmists including Al Gore, Ross Gelbspan (1997’s The Heat Is On), Canadian public relations flak James Hoggan ’s attack website DeSmogBlog, and many others.
Appallingly, nobody in this parade of critics did any fact checking of the memos, not even historian Naomi Oreskes, which is a serious lapse for a historian. In fact, Oreskes and the others were using a garbled conglomeration of nearly a dozen different memos from different sources that were collected by Greenpeace and posted unsorted and in no rational order on one of its websites – because they never checked who they really came from.
Critics had no idea what they were looking at in the hundred-or-so pages of “Western Fuels memos.” They simply took the pieces that made skeptics look the worst and patched them together into an assumption-laden fairy-tale, historian Oreskes most unseemly of all.
Had Oreskes, the renowned Harvard Professor of the History of Science, bothered to interview any of the clearly identified sources of the “Western Fuels memos,” she would have discovered that less than one-third of the jumbled “memos” involved Western Fuels Association at all.
It’s ironic that the “Western Fuels memos” became known as “Orders from Big Coal” because Western Fuels Association is actually just the opposite of what the alarmist critics thought: It’s a small, not-for-profit, member-owned co-op serving 24 consumer-owned rural and small municipal electric cooperatives and other public power systems from Wyoming to Kansas. Oreskes never mentions that, probably because she never researched her sources well enough to know it.
http://leftexposed.org/2016/06/naomi-oreskes-warps-history/
This vignette gives a good illustration of the level of Naomi’s academic professionalism, her lack of attention to detail, her willingness to prostitute her intellectual talents for partisan ends, an aptitude that may one day see her go on to great things. There’s always room at the top.
It is sadly common for people promoting solar energy to equate the quantity of energy reaching earth from the sun as radiation with the maximum possible energy humans can get from the sun as electricity. Considering the enormous sums of resources involved and the efficiencies involved, among other factors (such as land area required), we can expect only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation to be transformed into electricity. Then consider the need to expend more resources to replace the current fleet of oil-fuelled vehicles around the world (plus maintenance and replacement over time), the fact that energy is not the only resource we get out of fossil fuels. Add on the issue of the need for a lot of credit / debt just to get things started (and the need to service that debt). All of this in the environment of a supposedly exponentially growing population.
Take all of that in the situation we have where trade, manufacturing, banking are already on dire straits, and where we are already seeing problems (including the aforementioned) which may be at least partly attributable to the resources and systems issues we are supposedly seeking to solve with solar energy.
On top of all of that, so-called renewables don’t actually solve the global warming issue anyway – they add to it. Not to the same degree as fossil fuel burning, but they add to it nonetheless. Partly due to the fossil fuel burning used in mining, manufacture, and distribution. Partly due to thermodynamics.
Not only are “renewables” not actually renewables, not only would the full-scale replacement of fossil fuels with “renewables” not be possible now to the extent required to allow us to continue BAU, but by insisting on pursuing “renewables” we would actually be making matters worse.
Good points!
Here’s some facts that will answer the question on wether renewables can save us: to power a 1 hp motor it takes 10 – 230 watt solar panels will give you 5 hours running time in summer and possibly 1 hour in winter. To run that 1 hp electric motor 24 hours you would need a battery of 100,000 watts and you’ll want that battery to lasts so you only discharge it 80% so that gives you 20,000 watts to run the motor when the sun isn’t at solar peak. Know this! You’ve just spend close to $100,000 in solar and batteries to run 1 hp motor for one 24 hour day now scale that up to run our world economy !
I have experience in electric transportation as well with 6 years driving my Nissan Leaf. In our overcast Canadian winters it would take 1 month to give my leaf the 24kwh to bring it to a full charge and that might get me 80 to 100 miles now try and scale that up to run the transportation system we need to keep BAU going!
Gail is spot on folks because this renewable fantasy isn’t going to happen. I know this because I have the best inverter, the best charge controller, the most durable batteries, solar panels and electric car and I’ve said it before IF it keeps my taps working, my lights on and a few plugs going for my appliances and tools I’ll be very happy because with my experience that’s all it’s capable of.
Thanks for your on the ground view of what is likely to happen.
Way back when I started to write about oil issues, I started investigating a few different options–adding solar panels, living in an intentional community. My early investigations raised serious doubts in my mind about either of these options really working. I don’t think I got the amounts figured out this well, however. I am sure that there are some improvements now, too.
Gail, that is the problem with all of us in this website. We think. We are not suppose to think and accept what the MSM, experts and peer-reviewed papers to guide us. That is our problem. We should just go back to the Matrix.
You can ignore reality but you cannot ignore the consequence of ignoring reality.
The Chinese just announced/confirmed they will sign up to the global climate deal.
Which in translation means, they really don’t need and expect continuous expansion pace as clocked per past ~three decades, even including their current project of pivoting to Asia and the so called Silk Road ring of trade partner countries. In terms of pollution The Chinese will simultaneously shut down some of the dirtiest coal (in close proximity and downwind to megacities) while finalizing some of their nuclear and natgas facilities, plus keep some token renewables.
The mother of all deflations (via financial repression hammer dropped on poor/wage people’s head) is definitely coming soon, lolz. Many people here don’t like this message (as they religiously-idealistically prefer some sort of sudden instadoom resolution), but the trends are clear: deflation, demographic and social adjustments (youth spending in virtual world not real consumables), gov grand kicking schemes under the whatever it takes mantra, systemic and infrastructural inertia holding the charade, ..
We are entering a horrible pre-end era of “suspended time” a bottomless swamp, not eternal, but most likely enduring till the end of my times, i.e. few more decades to go.
“We are entering a horrible pre-end era of “suspended time” a bottomless swamp, not eternal, but most likely enduring till the end of my times, i.e. few more decades to go.”
I like your post, since it’s in accord with what I feel and sense.
There are some great discussions here of why renewables can’t work, but what you point to integrates all the issues in a way not too common on this blog.
I coin the phrase “aesthetic intuition,” where upon extreme aesthetic “conditioning”–art, architecture, art history, etc.–one can directly sense what can and can’t work. The renewables with their shiny metals and plastics and numbing technical complexity scream at one vileness, ugliness, depravity, oppression. And it’s miraculous that a part of it–like the Internet–can bring together PhDs in physics and engineering with other people who only judge things through their senses. It’s a rare gift to have this forum space.
I like your post too. And personally I’d much prefer a horrible pre-end era to a quick collapse. My bucket list is not a very long one. If I can spend a quiet decade or two living on oats and raisons and studying Aristotle, Spinoza, Voltaire, et al., I think that would be nice.
The Chinese, I think, are in for the long haul. Their “token renewables” really are just for show. They are run by technocrats who are determined to keep their version of BAU on track. It will be interesting to see how far they can go down that road.
Arn… you should count yourself lucky to have endured such a comprehensive beating…. without expiring…
We may allow you to return to DelusiSTAN … as a warning to the others….
Hang on a sec – let me hold up the mirror for you….
http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/resources/images/2462417.jpg
There are several other unsolvable dilemmas lurking in the background including peak resources (oil and copper come to mind), potable water scarcity, population overshoot, a massive species die-off happening right now, irreversible climate change issues, and more. Even if you hypothetically solve the impending energy crisis you basically change nothing.
I took a couple of minutes to read your first source and only got a few paragraphs in before I started laughing and had to stop. “Key climate solutions” are not going to involve solar that is made with lignite coal. Unless you’re aware of some magical new technology that can create solar panels without fossil fuels, I’d say that “renewable” energy dreams are nothing more than a scam.
Then I see a mention of electric cars as being a solution. I’m sorry but no. A Toyota Prius has a higher carbon footprint than the average SUV until it goes over something like 100,000 miles. Also the giant lithium battery stacks under the car are anything but green. Any solution that proposes pushing 3,000 pound steel deathtraps 30 miles one way for someone to commute to “work” and calls it sustainable is a liar, a simpleton, or a conman (i.e. capitalist).
The article also proposes that we need to keep the current temperature increase to 1.5 C in order to be ideal. Lol, 2016 is at 1.2 C above baseline right now so that’s not very far to go. CO2 hit 410 PPM in April and the last time it was this high humans didn’t exist on Earth. Core samples are very clear as to what’s coming and it involves dozens of feet of sea level rise and a temperature increase that will probably go beyond 6C or higher. Human extinction from abrupt climate change is very likely.
I think arn has returned to DelusiSTAN….
It’s almost harvest time; pretty soon I’m just going to start asking people what strain they’re smoking.
The wind and solar energies are the opposite of the hydro energy. They accumulate water into clouds in an intermittent way, utilizing the changing state of the water when applying the heat of the sun and thus lifting it in the opposite direction of the effect of the gravitational force.
The hydro energy is based on this constant gravitational force and the easy accumulation of water in the above ground (the clouds), underground (the aquifiers) or on the ground (the dams) storage devices.
This is the only economical way of using the wind and sun energy for creation of a non-carbon energy source based on the liquid state of the water that flows thanks to the constant gravitational force.
All other ways of using solar and wind need additional huge amounts of fosil fuel energy. (Until the arrival of the fossil fuels, the only non-intermittent energy source, besides burning the wood, present in the human settlments was usually the water mill.)
Very good way of connecting up wind and solar with hydro. I had not thought of the situation that way before.
Solar can be efficiently used to heat homes, cook food. Wind can be used to propel ships. I think a part of the problem is the obsession with turning energy from source X into electricity. Unless there is a need to transmit the energy long distance, this assumption should be questioned.
Yes, we have a lot of energy sources that can be used for heating, but the lack of cheap energy sources for high quality concentrated energy for industry and mobile energy for transportation, i.e. a lot of low-potential energy, but the lack of cheap high-potential energy (http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/39/077/39077423.pdf)
There is so much energy sources for heating that using the wood from distant places becomes uneconomical, as transportation, machinery and human resources costs rise. There are already big amounts of such wood in Slovakia that is not economical to bring to the customers, as they have other options. So this wood for heating is rotting in the forests.
With high tech machinery, electricity that meets precise specifications is needed. Using the energy directly, as to power wind powered boats, is a much better usage of intermittent electricity.
we function on large scale world trade.
(we call it employment—we all like our jobs and cheap food)
100,000 ton sail driven container ships?—I can’t wait