Strangely enough, the limit we seem to be reaching with respect to fossil fuel extraction comes from low prices. At low prices, the extraction of oil, coal, and natural gas becomes unprofitable. Producers go bankrupt, or they voluntarily cut back production in an attempt to force prices higher. As the result of these forces, production tends to fall. This limit comes long before the limit that many people imagine: the amount of fossil fuels in the ground that seems to be available with current extraction techniques.
The last time there was a similar problem was back in 1913, when coal was the predominant fossil fuel used and the United Kingdom was the largest coal producer in the world. The cost of production was rising due to depletion, but coal prices would not rise sufficiently to cover the higher cost of production. As a result, the United Kingdom’s coal production reached its highest level in 1913, the year before World War I started, and began to fall in 1914.
Between 1913 and 1945, the world economy was very troubled. There were two world wars, the Spanish Flu pandemic and the Great Depression. My concern is that we are again headed into another very troubled period that could last for many years.
The way the energy problems of the period between 1913 and 1945 were resolved was through the rapid ramp-up of oil production. Oil was, as that time, inexpensive to produce and could be sold for a very large multiple of the cost of production. If population is to remain at the current level or possibly grow, we need a similar “energy savior.” Unfortunately, none of the alternatives we are looking at now yield a high enough return relative to the required investment.
I recently gave a talk to an engineering group interested in energy research talking about these issues. In this post, I will discuss the slides of this presentation. A PDF of the presentation can be found at this link.
The Low Oil Price Problem
Oil prices seem to bounce around wildly. One major issue is that there is a two-way tug of war between the prices that citizens can afford and the prices that oil companies require. We can look back now and say that the mid-2008 price of over $150 per barrel was too high for consumers. But strangely enough, oil producers began complaining about oil prices being too low to cover their rising cost levels, starting in 2012. Prices, at a 2019 cost level, were at about $120 per barrel at that time. I wrote about this issue in the post, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. Oil prices now are in the $40 range, so are way, way below both $120 per barrel and $150 per barrel.
Interest rates and the availability of debt also play a role in oil prices. If interest rates are low and debt is readily available, it is easy to buy a new home or new car, and oil prices tend to rise because of the higher demand. When prices are too low for producers, central banks have been able to lower interest rates through a program called “quantitative easing.” This program seems to have helped oil prices to rise again, over a three-year period, after they crashed in 2008.
OPEC producers are known for their low cost of production, but even they report needing high oil prices. The cost of extracting the oil is reported to be very low (perhaps $10 per barrel), but the price charged needs to be high enough to allow governments to collect very high taxes on the oil extracted. If prices are high enough, these countries can continue the food subsidies that their populations depend upon. They can also sponsor development programs to provide jobs for the ever-growing populations of these countries. OPEC producers also need to develop new oil fields because the old ones deplete.
Oil production outside of the United States and Canada entered a bumpy plateau in 2005. The US and Canada added oil production from shale and bitumen in recent years, helping to keep world oil production (including natural gas liquids) rising.
One reason why producers need higher prices is because their cost of extraction tends to rise over time. This happens because the oil that is cheapest to extract and process tends to be extracted first, leaving the oil with higher cost of extraction until later.
Some OPEC countries, such as Saudi Arabia, can hide the low price problem for a while by borrowing money. But even this approach does not work well for long. The longer low oil prices last, the greater the danger is of governments being overthrown by unhappy citizens. Oil production can then be expected to become erratic because of internal conflicts.
In the US and Canada, oil companies have been funded by bank loans, bond sales and the sale of shares of stock. These sources of funding are drying up, as many oil companies report poor earnings, year after year, and some are seeking bankruptcy protection.
Chart 6 shows that the number of drilling rigs in operation has dropped dramatically in both the United States and Canada, as oil companies cut back on drilling. There is a lag between the time the number of drilling rigs is cut back and the time production starts to fall of perhaps a year, in the case of shale. These low drilling rig counts suggest that US and Canadian oil production from shale will fall in 2021.
Of course, unused drilling rigs cannot be mothballed indefinitely. At some point, they are sold as scrap and the workers who operated them find other employment. It then becomes difficult to restart oil extraction.
How the Economy Works, and What Goes Wrong as Limits Are Reached
Slide 7 shows one way of visualizing how the world economy, as a self-organizing system, operates. It is somewhat like a child’s building toy. New layers are added as new consumers, new businesses and new laws are added. Old layers tend to disappear, as old consumers die, old products are replaced by new products, and new laws replace old laws. Thus, the structure is to some extent hollow.
Self-organizing objects that grow require energy under the laws of physics. Our human bodies are self-organizing systems that grow. We use food as our source of energy. The economy also requires energy products of many kinds, such as gasoline, jet fuel, coal and electricity to allow it to operate.
It is easy to see that energy consumption allows the economy to produce finished goods and services, such as homes, automobiles, and medical services. It is less obvious, but just as important, that energy consumption provides jobs that pay well. Without energy supplies in addition to food, typical jobs would be digging in the dirt with a stick or gathering food with our hands. These jobs don’t pay well.
Finally, Slide 7 shows an important equivalence between consumers and employees. If consumers are going to be able to afford to buy the output of the economy, they need to have adequate wages.
A typical situation that arises is that population rises more quickly than energy resources, such as land to grow food. For a while, it is possible to work around this shortfall with what is called added complexity: hierarchical organization, specialization, technology, and globalization. Unfortunately, as more complexity is added, the economic system increasingly produces winners and losers. The losers end up with very low wage jobs, or with no jobs at all. The winners get huge wages and often asset ownership, as well. The winners end up with far more revenue than they need to purchase basic goods and services. The losers often do not have enough revenue to feed their families and to buy basic necessities, such as a home and some form of basic transportation.
The strange way the economy works has to do with the physics of the situation. Physicist Francois Roddier explains this as being similar to what happens to water at different temperatures. When the world economy has somewhat inadequate energy supplies, the goods and services produced by the economy tend to bubble to the top members of the world economy, similar to the way steam rises. The bottom members of the economy tend to get “frozen out.” This way, the economy can downsize without losing all members of the economy, simultaneously. This is the way ecosystems of all kinds adapt to changing conditions: The plants and animals that are best adapted to the conditions of the time tend to be the survivors.
These issues are related to the fact that the economy is, in physics terms, a dissipative structure. The economy, like hurricanes and like humans, requires adequate energy if it is not to collapse. Dissipative structures attempt to work around temporary shortfalls in energy supplies. A human being will lose weight if his caloric intake is restricted for a while. A hurricane will lose speed, if the energy it gets from the warm water of the ocean is restricted. A world economy with inadequate energy is likely to shrink back in many ways: unprofitable businesses may fail, layers of government may disappear and population may fall, for example.
In the discussion of Slide 7, I mentioned the fact that if we try to “stretch” energy supply with added complexity, many workers would end up with very low wages. Some of these low wage workers would be in the US and Europe, but many of them would be in China, India and Africa. Even though these workers are producing goods for the world economy, they often cannot afford to buy those same goods themselves. Henry Ford is remembered to have said something to the effect that he needed to pay his workers enough so that they, themselves, could buy the cars they were making. To a significant extent, this is no longer happening when a person takes into account international workers.
The high interest rates that low-wage workers pay mean that loans don’t really help low-wage workers as much as they help high-wage workers. The high interest on credit card debt and personal loans tend to transfer part of the income of low-wage workers to the financial sector, leaving poor people worse off than they would have been without the loans.
COVID shutdowns are extremely damaging to the world economy. They are like taking support sticks out of the dome on Slide 7. They produce many more unemployed people around the world. People in low wage countries that produce clothing for a living have been particularly hard hit, for example. Migrant workers and miners of various kinds have also been hard hit.
We Seem to Be Reaching a Major Turning Point
Oil production and consumption have both fallen in 2020; oil prices are far too low for producers; wage disparity is a major problem; countries seem to be increasingly having problems getting along. Many analysts are forecasting a prolonged recession.
The last time that we had a similar situation was in 1913, when the largest coal producer in the world was the United Kingdom. The UK’s cost of coal production kept rising because of depletion (deeper mines, thinner seams), but prices would not rise to compensate for the higher cost of production. Miners were paid very inadequate wages; poor workers regularly held strikes for higher wages. World War I started in 1914, the same year coal production of the UK started to fall. The UK’s coal production has fallen nearly every year since then.
The last time that wage disparity started to spike as badly as it has in recent years occurred back in the late 1920s, or perhaps as early as 1913 to 1915. The chart shown above is for the US; problems were greater in Europe at that time.
With continued low oil prices, production is likely to start falling and may continue to fall for years. It is hard to bring scrapped drilling rigs back into service, for example. The experience in the UK with coal shows that energy prices don’t necessarily rise to compensate for higher costs due to depletion. There need to be buyers for higher-priced goods made with higher-priced coal. If there is too much wage disparity, the many poor people in the system will tend to keep demand, and prices, too low. They may eat poorly, making it easier for pandemics to spread, as with the Spanish Flu in 1918-1919. These people will be unhappy, leading to the rise of leaders promising to change the system to make things better.
My concern is that we may be heading into a long period of unrest, as occurred in the 1913 to 1945 era. Instead of getting high energy prices, we will get disruption of the world economy. The self-organizing economy is attempting to fix itself, either by getting more energy supply or by eliminating parts of the economy that aren’t contributing enough to the overall system. Conflict between countries, pandemics, bankruptcies and economic contraction are likely to be part of the mix.
Coal Seems to Be Reaching Extraction Limits as Well
Coal has essentially the same problem as oil: Prices tend to be too low for producers to extract coal profitably. Many coal producers have gone bankrupt. Prices were higher back in 2008, when demand was high for everything, and again in 2011, when quantitative easing had been helpful.
There have been stories in the press in the past week about China limiting coal imports from Australia, so as to make more jobs for coal miners in China. The big conflict among countries relates to “not enough jobs that pay well” and “not enough profitable companies.” These indirectly are energy issues. If there was more “affordability” of goods made with high-priced coal, there would be no problem.
Coal production worldwide has been on a bumpy plateau since 2012. In fact, China, the largest producer of coal, found its production stagnating, starting about 2012. The problem was a familiar one: The cost of extraction rose because many mines that had been used for quite a number of years were depleted. The selling price would not rise to match the higher cost of extraction because of affordability issues.
The underlying problem is that the economy is a dissipative structure. Commodity prices are set by the laws of physics. Prices don’t rise high enough for producers, if there are not enough customers willing and able to buy the goods made with high-priced coal.
We Have a Major Problem if Both Coal and Oil Production Are in Danger of Falling Because of Low Prices
Oil and coal are the two largest sources of energy in the world. We can’t get along without them. While natural gas production is fairly high, there is not nearly enough natural gas to replace both oil and coal.
Looking down the list, we see that nuclear production hit a maximum back in 2006 and has fallen since then.
Hydroelectric continues to grow, but from a small base. Most of the good sites have already been taken. In many cases, there are conflicts between countries regarding who should get the benefit of water from a given river.
The only grouping that is growing rapidly is Renewables. (This is really Renewables Other than Hydroelectric.) It includes wind and solar plus a few other energy types, including geothermal. This grouping, too, is very small compared to oil and coal.
Natural Gas Has a Low Price Problem as Well
Natural gas, at first glance, looks like it might be a partial solution to the world’s energy problems: It is lower in carbon than coal and oil, and it is fairly abundant. The problem with natural gas is that it is terribly expensive to ship. At one time, people used to talk about there being a lot of “stranded” natural gas. This natural gas seemed to be available, but when shipping costs were included, the price of goods made with it (such as electricity or winter heat for homes) was often unaffordable.
After the run-up in oil prices in the early 2000s, many people became optimistic that, with energy scarcity, natural gas prices would rise sufficiently to make extraction and shipping long distances profitable. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that, while prices can temporarily spike due to scarcity and perhaps a debt bubble, keeping the prices up for the long run is extremely difficult. Customers need to be able to afford the goods and services made with these energy products, or the laws of physics bring market prices back down to an affordable level.
The prices in the chart reflect three different natural gas products. The lowest priced one is US Henry Hub, which is priced near the place of extraction, so long distance shipping is not an issue. The other two, German Import and Japan Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), include different quantities of long distance shipping. Prices in 2020 are even lower than in 2019. For example, some LNG imported by Japan has ben purchased for $4 per million Btu in 2020.
The Economy Needs a Bail-Out Similar to the Growth of Oil After WWII
The oil that was produced shortly after World War II had very important characteristics:
- It was very inexpensive to produce, and
- It could be sold to customers at a far higher price than its cost of production.
It was as if, today, we had a very useful energy product that could be produced and delivered for $4, but it was so valuable to consumers that they were willing to pay $120 for it. In other words, the consumer was willing to pay 30 times as much as the cost that went into extracting and refining the oil.
With an energy product this valuable, a company producing it would need virtually no debt. It could drill a well or two, and with the profits from the first wells, finance the investment of many more wells. The company could pay very high taxes, allowing governments to build roads, schools, electricity transmission lines and much other infrastructure, without having to raise taxes on citizens.
Besides using the profits for reinvestment and for taxes, oil companies could pay high dividends. This made oil company stocks favorites of pension plans. Thus, in a way, oil company profits could help subsidize pension plans, as well.
Now, because of depletion, we have reached a situation where oil companies, and in fact most companies, are unprofitable. Companies and governments keep adding debt at ever lower interest rates. In fact, the tradition of ever-increasing debt at ever-lower interest rates goes back to 1981. Thus, we have been using debt manipulation to hide energy problems for almost 40 years now.
We need a way to counteract this trend toward ever-lower returns. Some people talk about “Energy Return on Energy Investment” or EROEI. I gave an example in dollars, but a major thing those dollars are buying is energy, so the result is very similar.
I think researchers have set the “bar” far too low, in looking at what is an adequate EROEI. Today’s wind and solar don’t really have an adequate EROEI, when the full cost of delivery is included. If they did, they would not need the subsidy of “going first” on the electric grid. They would also be able to pay high taxes instead of requiring subsidies, year after year. We need much better solutions than the ones we have today.
Some researchers talk about “Net Energy per Capita,” calculated as ((Energy Delivered to the End User) minus (Energy Used in Making and Transporting Energy to the End User)) divided by (Population). It seems to me that Net Energy per Capita needs to stay at least constant, and perhaps rise. If net energy per capita could actually rise, it would allow the economy to increasingly fight depletion and pollution.
Conclusion: We Need a New Very Inexpensive Energy Source Now
We need a new, very inexpensive energy source that buyers will willingly pay a disproportionately high price for right now, not 20 or 50 years from now.
The alternative may be an economy that does poorly for a long time or collapses completely.
The one ray of hope, from a researcher’s perspective, is the fact that people are always looking for solutions. They may be able to provide funds for research at this time, even if funds for full implementation are unlikely.
“America’s nuclear energy situation is a microcosm of the nation’s broader political dysfunction. We are at an impasse, and the debate around nuclear energy is highly polarized, even contemptuous. This political deadlock ensures that a widely disliked status quo carries on unabated. Depending on one’s politics, Americans are left either with outdated reactors and an unrealized potential for a high-energy but climate-friendly society, or are stuck taking care of ticking time bombs churning out another two thousand tons of unmanageable radioactive waste every year.”
This is from an extensive review of the politics and technology of nuclear power.
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/democracy-and-the-nuclear-stalemate
Happily, the Canadians, the Indonesians, the Russians, and the Chinese are moving ahead on nuclear.
The State of Georgia in the US is moving ahead as well.
France, especially, has a problem. It has depended very heavily on nuclear, but its own uranium is depleted. The facilities are nearing the ends of their lifetimes. It is, in some ways, like Japan.
The US East Coast also depends heavily on Nuclear. Intermittent solar and wind make nuclear unprofitable, driving it away.
The Germans tried to use one of the nukes to act as a dispatchable power source and it ended up as corrosion inside the reactor.
Don’t play games with immense thermal base load seems to be the morale.
The only source of energy that can balance out the green gimmicks is hydro.
https://www.dw.com/en/japan-orders-military-pilots-to-report-ufo-sightings/a-55081061
from the article “The US side is understood to be keen to collaborate with Japan on UFOs, particularly after the Pentagon released three video clips in April captured by US pilots that apparently show “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
for a more intelligent species to run our planet can it happen? I say Yes
We saw a video earlier which was pretty strange. An experienced pilot reported seeing an unidentified flying object that did maneuvers that no plane we have today can do.
Gail a correction: no piloted plane. A pilot who tried such manoeuvres would be turned into strawberry jam. But I think we could build a pilotless vehicle that copied the moves; I would make it very light, and with a motor that coupled to the Earth’s magnetic field. No visible sign of propulsion, no reaction mass, and minimal inertia.
Good point! The UFO could be some sort of fancy drone.
Or a glitch in the imager.
It tracked the “UFO” with spotless accuracy.
I would guess it was a laser beam directed onto the aircraft.
I don’t think we can understand how UFOs move with our current level of understanding. I’ll give an example. Think of sliding an object over a rough flat surface. This causes friction and the object heats up. If there is a limit to how hot the object can get, this limits its speed. But if you pick up the object and move it from A to B, no friction is created, thus the speed limit is removed. Now substitute the flat surface for 3d space, friction for acceleration, and heat for the forces experienced by the object and its contents, such as passengers. If it moves not through 3d space, but like picking up the object, into another dimension, then it can get from A to B without experiencing acceleration, and thus the passengers experience no force. Not saying this is how it works, but just showing how our current models will limit our concepts of what is possible.
“for a more intelligent species to run our planet can it happen? I say Yes” — more intelligent does not mean less self-interested or more benevolent. What if they find our species repulsive, like we would find giant cockroaches repulsive no matter how intelligent?
Anyway, I’m not worried. I think the more plausible UFO sightings are probably experimental and highly classified aircraft (not spacecraft) of purely terrestrial origin.
When an object is dropped from 2000km high it ends up moving about 7000 km/hour before it gets to the air. It takes careful engineering to dissipate that energy.
Ed,
Seems about right, is it easier to push an object 2000km high or stop it from burning? That is the question, we did it with shuttle at about 2M kg, concern for life, etc., a rock ought to be doable in English say 4.4M pounds or 2200 tons. The tiles were more or less reusable, make a tub, tile it and let it rip, if it is steel heating it to 1500 degrees F or so should not be an issue, may need to limit temp to strength issues of Al, parachute at altitude. The tub and parachute to be reusable need to be lifted out of the earth’s gravity well, nothing is free. I am not an engineer, it came to me that a Saturn V is somewhat bigger than the capsule that landed the three astronauts after the moon missions.
I think we are being too earth and people centric, do it on the moon with robotics. We have been to an asteroid and landed on same already, technology may not be mature, but it works.
Again, no arguments, not attempting to be right; looking at solutions that we have access to now, looking for something other than a spear and loin cloth.
Civil peace seems to be a huge issue , people need hope, believing in nothing does not seem to be working. The future doesn’t appear as though it is going to be easy.
Dennis L.
Dennis, the energy to go up against gravity is exactly the same amount of energy one needs to dissipate to come down. Both going up and down against gravity requires less energy then reaching orbital velocity.
As for the Apollo the up stage needed to lift everything and get to orbital velocity and then lunar orbit along with the fuel needed to slow back down from lunar orbit. The weight to go down to the lunar surface and come bac up was all left behind. The return trip did not require fuel to slow from near earth orbit as the Earth air and friction dissipated that energy.
Ed,
Once at your altitude, one has potential energy, the trip down less air friction is free, yes it is dissipated it is already in the bank. Going up, there is nothing in the bank. You are smarter than I am, so I am trying to be careful, no sarcasm.
My understanding would be the energy to get out of the earth’s energy well was considerable, the energy to get out of the lunar energy well is trivial in comparison. The size of the rocket going up and the size of the reentry vehicle says it all. The space gravitational energy well of the moon is smaller than that of the earth. All that potential energy was “stored” getting to the surface of the moon, going home was a breeze. Bring essentially a zero gravity well , asteroids to the moon, drop onto earth a refined product less all pollution utilizing concentrated solar energy where necessary. Assume getting it going takes 100 years, it took James Colony longer than that, don’t tell anyone.
My thesis is look at energy expended to find suitable asteroids(no significant gravity well), nudge them and they are off, find another, another nudge, enough nudges and there is a stream headed towards the moon, categorize, place into suitable containers for heat reaction, nudge towards the sun, recover, send waste back into the sun, save the earth from pollution. Humans uber alles.
Economics, who knows, deal with it, win a Nobel; beats dumping everything into the Pacific. Gail has pointed us in the right direction, we need new economics, time to invent.
Population, believe earth is dynamic, it will deal with the issue, duck that one. For me, I don’t want to be the culler or the cullee.
Dennis L.
A quick and easy way to limit population. No more subsidies for childcare. If people have to pay for it. Then its best not to have children.
Childcare is mostly disappearing already in the United States. The schools that are open only take children for two or three days a week, alternating with other children. This leaves school out as an adequate childcare option.
Childcare facilities (mostly for younger children) are not making money. They may be operating at reduced capacity. They may close for lack of revenue. Mothers who are at home with school-age children are not likely to send their younger children to day care. They just drop out of the workforce.
Childcare becomes a luxury for the rich. The public options no longer work.
All the funds and efforts of excessive childcare and pandering to the cult of children should be put into better care of old people.
The change in society to revere old people is sorely missing. At no time has it been more clear than during the pandemic. Sweden springs to mind as a particularly atrocious example. It is despicable.
I suggest the filmThe Ballad of Narayama for a different view on old people. In it a poor village takes their old to the top of the mountain and leaves them there to die of exposure when they are too old. The cinematography is superb.
Old people used to help care for children, and vice-versa, before everything “needed” to be commoditized by the exigencies of the monetary system. Liz Warren picked up on this in the “Two-Income Trap” notion she had about 15 years ago and then seemed to drop.
Native born fertility has been below replacement for many decades in the US and Europe, even with subsidies. Only immigration is driving population growth. If you want to end the growth, just turn down the immigration valve. As simple as that. Why does everyone who talks about this issue (not just you) overlook the simplest, most obvious, and probably most popular solution?
Commodification-of-everything on steroids only started after WWII c. 1945. Those who were born before 1940 (old people) can remember what life was like coming out of a Great Depression and the world war economy. In a downsized economy as proceeding now this knowledge is very useful. Old people are good for other things beside child care.
@Gail Tverberg
In America. But what about Europe?
Some time ago I worked out how much energy it would take to reduce 100 ppm of CO2 to synthetic oil and pump it back into empty oil fields. Turned out to take about 300 TW-years.
Keith,
Don’t use oil for combustion, move the processes into space, shoot them around the sun for heat, shoot enough of them and one finished refined product will come by every day or so. This is getting out of my realm of expertise, but I think most space missions to some degree rely on gravity to do the trip and a slingshot like effect. It is mostly momentum once things get going.
You seem good at calculation, can we make a spaced elevator on the moon with current materials? Earth seems not possible at present, but the moon has much less gravity. Nuclear could run the elevator, no need for chemicals, rather than a chicken in every pot, a reactor in every crater.
Dennis L.
“shoot them around the sun for heat, ”
The energy needed for a close orbit on the sun would be a great deal more than the heat needed to vaporize the whole payload
“You seem good at calculation, can we make a spaced elevator on the moon with current materials? ”
Yes. I have worked the numbers. Got the same as Jerome Pearson. A lunar elevator is not without problems though. Even at 2000 km/hour, it will take more than a day to ride the elevator to L1.
” Earth seems not possible at present, but the moon has much less gravity.
That seems to be the case.
See, there you go, another problem solved in the last sentence, those working in tourism who have been laid off could have hope of future employment.
“An L1 station would have a number of important functions due to its stationary position between the Earth and Moon. It is in an excellent location to monitor and coordinate communications among various missions on the nearside of the Moon. A vessel launched from L1 could reach any place on the Moon within a few hours to a day. This would make it ideal for crisis management if an emergency occurred on the Moon. Furthermore, it could serve as a way station, especially once built up, and would probably be used to handle tourists and casual visitors to the Moon.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point_colonization
I don’t have a clue what can and cannot done, but is Widipedia ever wrong?
A quote and reference regarding lunar based space elevators.
“It is similar in concept to the better known Earth-based space elevator idea, but since the Moon’s surface gravity is much lower than the Earth’s, the engineering requirements for constructing a lunar elevator system can be met using materials and technology already available. For a lunar elevator, the cable or tether extends considerably farther out from the lunar surface into space than one that would be used in an Earth-based system. However, the main function of a space elevator system is the same in either case; both allow for a reusable, controlled means of transporting payloads of cargo, or possibly people, between a base station at the bottom of a gravity well and a docking port in outer space.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator
I suppose somewhat sarcastically but with dose of humor, we have solved moving things from the moon to earth, get them to L1 and drop them, after elevating them from the surface of the moon using nuclear power, an unshielded plant built to do on thing, make power and then be abandoned in place.
In the second hundred years after this project is working, expand to rest of the solar system, polluting at will as one goes along and cleaning up the irreplaceable earth. What happens on mars I can’t see from my backyard so who cares?
As for earth, only bring back what is needed, end products. Think of a mine, most of the process is waste, pollution, most of the process is conversion for human consumption the most profitable enterprise of which is conversion of raw materials. Do it in space, that changes economies, the elites can knock themselves out debating that one.
And Keith, more humor, “Even at 2000 km/hour, it will take more than a day to ride the elevator to L1.” Now, let your imagine run wild, this would make the mile high club look tame, more sources of income.
Dennis L.
Keith,
It looks to me as if the world generates about 3 terawatt years of electricity per year. (Actually, about 3.08 terrawatt years, but none of this is very accurate, I expect.) So this would be about 100 times as much electricity as generated in a year. It won’t happen soon, I can see.
The actual worldwide power demand is about 15 TW.
I went off to find the Wikipedia article and got this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cubic_mile_of_oil#Cubic_mile_of_oil
Before someone almost deleted the article it looked like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cubic_mile_of_oil&oldid=983413642
If any of you are Wikipedia editors, you might express your opinion of deleting this article. The current version, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil, might as well be deleted since it has virtually no useful information.
Yes, 15TW continuous but only 20% is electric, 3TW.
I was talking strictly electricity, after losses on conversion from fossil fuels, using BP data. That is why my number is lower.
“I was talking strictly electricity,”
Solving electrical demand is not going to solve global energy problems, which is why I use 15 TW.
Ed Kelly (StratoSolar) has gone into making synthetic fuel much deeper than I have.
Incidentally, Ed’s proposal eliminates long term storage since there are no clouds at 20 km.
So the theory here is that we burn coal at the surface and then recycle the CO2 into syngas in the stratosphere and then send it back to the surface?
“now you sound like L Ron Hubbard”
When one resorts to name calling one has lost the argument. But if one must compare the statement “don’t rely on science fiction, be inspired by it” I would prefer Carl Sagan or Gene Roddenberry.
Roddenberry and Sagan were not on the same scientific page. One worked within the laws of physics, one wrote fiction that contravened them
the words of Hubbard are accepted as truth by millions—can’t see how that can be interpreted as an insult.—-why should that present a problem?
But this thread is presenting me with a problem:
Should I be inspired by science fiction or change the laws of physics? (in order to solve the looming demise of civilisation) Both have been suggested on this thread.
I’ve already been taken to task for not believing in UFOs–despite defining what ‘hard evidence’ is.
Seems the only solution is unquestioning agreement with every nutty thesis .
I shouldn’t say change the laws of physic, but expand. Any new theory has to account for and explain the older laws. Eric Weinstein and Stephan Wolfram have proposed some new theories that, if proven, expand our view of experienced reality. Also, Donald Hoffman is working on a theory of reality based on consciousness as the basic unit of reality. These are some examples that I consider revolutionary and out of the box, but definitely not nutty. They are all internally consistent with their math and logic, only the beginning assumptions are different to current mainstream theories. When I said shake the box, I meant try different assumptions, but still be mathematically and logically consistent. The solution is to have an open mind, but, in my opinion, any theory must pass the math and internal logical consistency test. Of course ultimately testable with our experienced reality as well.
“accepted as truth by millions”
This cult reached perhaps 100,000 members at its peak. it may be down to 10,000 or even fewer now.
The cult was originally “Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health”, popularised by J W Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction. So you could learn on the inside pages how to become “clear”, and on the end papers get an invitation to join the Rosicrucians (AMORC), by writing to Scribe LVIII (occult reference, can you find it?). Elron then discovered the tax advantages of religion, and launched Scientology, which duly dissolved into a cult of brainwashing, intimidation, and sexual exploitation. Much like some other cults, not mentioning one centred in Rome.
“The cult was originally”
It’s a subject I know well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson
and https://archive.vn/20120709131213/http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html
Which was my attempt to understand why cult members act so similar to drug addicts.
Elron was earlier a member of Aleister Crowley’s OTO, Ordo Templi Orientis, a sex and magick cult, along with his friend, NASA rocket scientist (propulsion expert) Jack Parsons, until Elron swindled him. Later, Elron founded Scientology and modeled it very closely on the OTO, except that he replaced magick with a blend of pop psychology and science fiction (presented as fact, of course). I guess if you are going to start your own highly lucrative cult, you need to have at least a surface appearance of originality.
My thanks to both of you. I shall look further when it is not so close to my bedtime. However, I do know a little about The Great Beast and his life, and the almost entirely fabricated history of modern “neopaganism”. For what it’s worth, the one source I really trust is G R Levy’s “The Gate of Horn”.
Funny, I seem to remember Carl Sagan zooming around the Universe inside a Tinkerbell at warp speed to music by Vangelis, breaking the laws of physics while going boldly where no man has gone before.
Let’s watch it again!
https://youtu.be/FT_nzxtgXEw
Basically, Cosmos WAS Star Trek without the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians or the Borg, with Sagan in the role of Spock—half human, half Vulcan, pointing out to us how illogical we pure bred Homo sapiens are.
Truer words were never spoken in fiction:
https://youtu.be/GvHGsH5po00
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” (Arthur C Clarke, 1917 to 2008)
> A victorious age
Comparing discoveries made before 1905 with after 1985, the average age at which physicists made their discoveries rose from 37 to 50. Chemists’ average age rose from 36 to 46 and that of medical scientists from 38 to 45. Before 1905, 20% of prizewinning work was done before age 30, but by 2000, this fell to almost zero. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….
To explain the ageing effect, Jones and Weinberg suggest a shift from theoretical work, in which youngsters do better, towards experimental work, which requires experience and aggregation of knowledge, and therefore favours older scientists.
They also suggest that as fields expand, it may take longer to accumulate the knowledge necessary to make a novel contribution. With the exception of 1920s physics, the analysis found that, over time, Nobel laureates received their PhDs later and that there has been an increase in discoveries that depend on previous work. This suggests a modern tendency to draw on more established knowledge, a skill at which older scientists excel….
https://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.632.html
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” (Arthur C Clarke, 1917 to 2008)
possibly was true when he said it.
but the relentless diminishing returns of imagination-becoming-reality probably makes him wrong in 2020.
I’m still waiting for instacollapse.
Nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be found.
What, however, is collapsing is the money laundry, finance racket and the banker/CB cartel enabling it all.
Good riddance.
No more luxurious dinners, expensive wines, dope and hikers for the bandit gang.
Such a pity.
No, not really.
Collapses are rarely “insta” as you put it, although that is certainly a possibility (such was a massive CME). But if an “instacollapse” does not occur, then a gradual collapse is guaranteed. How could it not happen? Discover new laws of physics? Mine the moon or the asteroids? Try to contact UFO’s/ET? If it has come to the point that people must consider such “solutions,” isn’t it obvious that we are near the end of the line? In 1972, _Limits to Growth_ produced a set of graphs stretching from 1970 to 2070, with the down side of the graphs (such as energy production and population size) crashing in the second half–roughly 2020 to 2070. To say something like, “Well, it’s 2020 and we are still muddling through, so the theory must be wrong” is like saying, “Well, it’s September and still no evidence of winter; guess it’s not coming this year!”
I agree with you.
LTG is a fine and sobering read.
An instacollapse is only possible if some physical event triggers it, such as a meteorite impact, a more powerful virus than in the current pandemic, EMP weaponry going off in space. Nuclear war.
Otherwise, it will prod along with the slowest cars being detached from the BAU train as time progresses.
Physics has stalled. There are loads more scientists than before but no progress is being made. Just a few Nobels in physics are now awarded for work done decades ago because nothing new of importance is coming through. Some suggest that new methodology is needed, renewed recourse to the philosophy of science, but that is just speculative as a solution.
> The Present Phase of Stagnation in the Foundations of Physics Is Not Normal
Nothing is moving in the foundations of physics. One experiment after the other is returning null results: No new particles, no new dimensions, no new symmetries. Sure, there are some anomalies in the data here and there, and maybe one of them will turn out to be real news. But experimentalists are just poking in the dark. They have no clue where new physics may be to find. And their colleagues in theory development are of no help….
We know this both because dark matter is merely a placeholder for something we don’t understand, and because the mathematical formulation of particle physics is incompatible with the math we use for gravity. Physicists knew about these two problems already in 1930s. And until the 1970s, they made great progress. But since then, theory development in the foundations of physics has stalled. If experiments find anything new now, that will be despite, not because of, some ten-thousands of wrong predictions….
http://nautil.us/blog/the-present-phase-of-stagnation-in-the-foundations-of-physics-is-not-normal
Dear Oh. First, an historical comment. Physics has stagnated before; astronomy for example between the fourth century BC (Aristotle’s Physics) and 1609 (Kepler’s Astronomia Nova). And it stagnated for just one reason: a slavish adherence to the doctrine of uniform circular motion. Any astronomical opinion that contradicted this dogma was forbidden. Even poor Copernicus, who tried to rehabilitate the solar system of Aristarchus, was compelled to adhere to it, with the consequence that his system needed more epicycles than Ptolemy to give worse predictions.
Moving on to today, I again think the explanation is simple and obvious: a slavish adherence to the views of Albert Einstein, who is venerated today as much as Aristotle was then. Even though almost all his theories, supported by no real experiments but merely thought experiments, have proven false.
The constancy of the velocity of light was disproved by the aether drift experiments of Dayton C Miller. The claim that there is no preferred velocity was disproved, dramatically, by the discovery of the isotropic cosmic microwave background radiation, which provides a universal standard of absolute rest, just as its temperature provides a universal standard of absolute time.
The equivalence principle can be proved false using equipment you can build in a garage. The Einstein Podolsky Rosen thought experiment to disprove quantum mechanical entanglement was eviscerated by the real experiments of Alain Aspect. And finally, the claim that the velocity of light is the limiting velocity was overturned by Gunter Nimtz and his team, who transmitted Mozart’s Symphony 40 across the lab at 4.7c.
But the high priesthood have behaved just like the Pigeon League who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
Interesting.
Physics is obviously not my subject, so I am obviously not going to attempt to give a personal diagnosis of its state. There seems to be general agreement that it is radically stagnant and going nowhere fast. It has been like that for several decades.
Scientists give their own diagnosis of why that is, and what can be done about it. Google offers an overview of the various diagnoses. I suppose that their various remedies are unproven until something actually is done about, if it ever is, and physics actually does progress. Good luck to them.
There does seem to be some plausibility to your own diagnosis. Thanks for your input, very interesting.
The Pigeon League made me laugh, thanks for that.
> When Galileo announced he had seen mountains on the Moon, Cremonini and others denounced the claim but refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
Cremonini was later quoted as saying “I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge, and about things which I have not seen … and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. Enough! I do not want to hear anything more about this.”
Oh dear, thank you for your most courteous reply. I also am a great fan of the Pigeon League, which was indeed named after Lodovico delle Colombe. But please be advised that my views on physics would a few centuries ago have ensured me the same treatment as was accorded to Giordano Bruno. However, I do have three degrees in the natural sciences, as well as a grounding in the history and philosophy of science, and I studied quantum theory under Paul Dirac at the University of Cambridge (wow, that dates me!).
For the record, I also believed in the Theory of Relativity, until I discovered that the “experiments” that supposedly proved it correct were fraudulent. That led me to redo the mathematics for myself, and no, it didn’t hold up.
R, Nietzsche questions in BGE whether the cosmos really operates according to ‘laws’ at all or whether that is a metaphorical projection of social laws, a human way of thinking, onto reality.
He insists that it is just as congruous with the facts to say that objects are doing what they ‘will’ to do and without any ‘laws’. (He personally runs with the ‘perspective’ of the ‘will to power’ as the essence of reality.)
Your example of spiral galaxies spinning in an inexplicable manner and not according to gravity comes to mind.
‘Laws’ are, he says, a human ‘interpretation’ of phenomena but they do not express ‘truth’. Maths and science are ‘useful perspectival lenses’ but they do not necessarily allow us to ‘explain’ everything.
I am not saying that he is ‘right’ about that but the present state of physics does not seem to refute him.
We seem to assume that physics can produce a self-consistent and entirely explanatory model of the cosmos. Maybe that is not so? And maybe it is not possible to ‘prove’ that it can until and unless it actually has done so. What do you think?
There is exactly zero physics that agree completely with nature. All theory is a gross oversimplification.
Einstein taught man to think in a different way about time and space. There are many problems with that theory, such as zero division fantasy. However, all of the concepts within science is a reflection of how reality is hallucinated by the rapacious primate brain. No damming shade should be put on Old Albert.
Ultimate physical reality is in its essence impossible to conceptual use into everyday phenomena as observed and rationalized by the human brain.
Furthermore, all experiment performed is a logical contradiction, since the measuring apparatus is itself a part of the universe.
Imagine being a photographer wanting to take a photograph of a mirror and then acting surprised of why there is a camera in the picture. This seems to be the current status of quantum mechanics.
One might ponder why scientist believe they, themselves, and their instruments exists outside the realm of physical reality.
The whole shebang feels quite Gödelian and closed loop in its essence.
For Oh dear:
I do not agree with Nietzsche that “natural laws” are our own projection onto Nature. (But then, I don’t agree with him about almost anything, so take that with a pinch of salt). But I do agree that many of our theories of nature are merely projections of our own prejudices. Astronomy was held back not just by a single principle, but rather by our prejudice that events on Earth (“sublunary” as the dogma had it) were radically different from events in the heavens, This terrene world was corrupt; the heavens were incorrupt. Is that still true today? Of course. As an example, I cite our prejudice in favour of “higher” animals, that deserve our respect, against “lower” animals. The systematic destruction of the world’s insect species is a manifestation of that prejudice, and one that might well destroy us.
To pick up on Nietzsche’s argument:
We tend to suppose that physical things are ‘subject’ to ‘laws’, as if they are in a relationship between someone who ‘commands’ and someone who ‘obeys’. It is a projection of human social laws and of the relationship of ‘authority’ and ‘submission’ onto reality, as if that ‘paradigm’ is structural to reality itself.
That ‘perspective’ is found in the ‘creation’ account in Genesis where God commands things into existence, he speaks and they ‘obey’. Likely the interpretation of physical phenomena according to ‘laws’ harks back to a very early projection of human relationships onto physical reality. But ‘laws’ are not the only human ‘perspective’ that it is possible to project, just the one favoured by a particular sort of society, the law bound, which is not the only possible sort of society. The human ‘perspective’ of ‘will’ and ‘will power’ may also be projected in the place of ‘law’.
It is just as congruous with the ‘facts’ of phenomena to say that things do what they ‘will’ to do and without any ‘laws’. Things consistently ‘will’ to act in such and such a manner, to have such and such a state, such and such an influence, and the consistent outcome of their interaction is a consistency that is due to their consistent relative ‘force’ (power) to impose their ‘will’ on each other. Things are doing what they ‘want’ to do, and they are competing in an ‘unruly’ manner to impose their ‘will’ in their interactions with each other.
To develop that argument: the ‘will’ ‘perspective’ would seem to be more congruous with the ‘facts’ in so far as ‘laws’ cannot account for all physical phenomena, such as the spiral galaxies, that Robert mentioned, that rotate in a manner that is ‘incompatible’ with the ‘law’ of gravity. We need only say that not all things that seem alike have the same ‘force’ to impose their ‘will’, or that they do not ‘will’ to do exactly the same thing. But ‘laws’ are either consistent or else they are not ‘laws’ and they cannot account for phenomena at all. Thus the apparent ‘inconsistency’ of phenomena is accounted for by ‘will’ in a manner that ‘laws’ cannot.
It is as if those spiral galaxies raise an eyebrow and say, ‘whatever! subject to ‘laws’ are we!’ – just as it may be that there are no real ‘laws’, moral, social or political, to which humans ‘must’ be ‘subject’. The illusion of physical ‘law’ is parallel to the illusion of set social ‘law’. – An anarchist manner of physics?
Thus ‘laws’ are not only an inadequate perspective that cannot, at least yet, account for all phenomena, but neither are they the most adequate perspective that ‘fits’ with all of the ‘facts’. The ‘point’ is not that the ‘will’ ‘perspective’ is ‘true’ but that we are projecting human ‘perspectives’ or supposed psychological ‘truths’ onto reality, and that ‘law’ is not the only one that it is possible to project. And even if it were the only possible human perspective, that still would not make it ‘true’, it would just be the only one that we were capable of – which it is not. Likewise if ‘law’ could account for all of the facts – which it cannot, at least yet – it would not thus be ‘true’ but just ‘fit’ the ‘facts’.
‘Law’ is at best just a metaphor that alludes to a supposed universal ‘regularity’ that itself remains to be demonstrated, and in fact never could be demonstrated, as one would need access to all ‘facts’ and to demonstrate their ‘regularity’, which is impossible. Nor is ‘law’ the only metaphor that can allude to regularity, ‘will’ and ‘will power’ can too, as perhaps can others.
“same treatment as was accorded to Giordano Bruno” — No, Bruno was executed for his occult teachings, not for his physics. Even Galileo was only prosecuted because he had offended too many powerful people–offended them by his personality, not his astronomy, which was already widely believed by the Jesuits and others. Copernicus’s model had been around for a century, and heliocentrism had been embraced by some church clerics since the 13th century, yet only Galileo faced legal problems for anything other than theological disputes.
The problem seem to arise from the dichotomy between subjective reality as experienced by biological and man made computation, which is then forced into concepts of objective reality.
It is about time to give up on the endeavor that computational hallucinations has anything to do with objective reality.
The subjective experience exist in the universe much the same way that mathematics exist in human affairs.
Is it real?Yes. Does it have substance? No.
Not all manifestation need to have a measurable property.
For Nehemiah, on Giordano Bruno. We have no idea why Bruno was condemned, because for over four hundred years the Church has refused to publish the transcript of his secret trial. I have seen two claims by apologists for his killers. One: he denied the “hypostatic union”. An absurd claim, why would he even care? The second, that he denied the Trinity. Would a Dominican friar do that? And even if he did, the matter would have been dealt with by the Order; no need to refer it to Rome.
No: the only plausible reason is his teaching of the Plurality of Worlds; and that is not religion, it is science. (1) the stars are suns: true. (2) those suns have planets: denied even in the twentieth century, but true. (3) those planets are inhabited: not proven, but increasingly accepted. Bruno was murdered for telling the truth, by an organisation whose power rested on lies. It was a proud moment for me, when I visited the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, and laid a rose at the feet of his statue. Magna est veritas, et praevalebit
Robert, many thanks indeed for this insight.
Bah! We know very well why Bruno was executed as a heretic. He was very deeply interested in, and rather openly teaching, occult and heretical doctrines. This is really no mystery about this. If they had wanted to punish him for his astronomy, which was not even Bruno’s primary interest, they would have done so in that period of history without feeling the need for a smokescreen.
ALL the evidence points to Bruno having been executed for heresy (yes, clergy and monks can be heretics–indeed, almost all heresies have originated with clergy and monks! Rarely with laymen). Since the Enlightenment, there have been Deists and other “freethinkers” who have desperately wanted to portray Bruno’s execution as a story of conflict between religion and science, since it makes for wonderful propaganda points, but none of the evidence points in that direction.
Nehemiah, none of the evidence points in any direction, because there is no evidence, As I said previously, the Roman Church has never published a single sentence about Bruno’s trial. That is why I phrased my previous post as conjecture; it would perhaps have behoved you to do the same.
@Robert, re: Bruno, trial transcripts are not the only form of evidence that historians have access to. They may not even be the best form of evidence. One can by tried for X when the real reason is Y. Historians know they have to look at events from a lot of different angles before they draw a conclusion. “Bruno was killed for his science” is just Enlightenment (Deist/Protestant) propaganda that was introduced long after the event.
Oh Dear, dark matter is simply a fudge factor inserted into their equations to make them “work”. Adherence to their theory requires them to state that dark matter is out there is probably symptomatic of the state of physics today….grasping.
Jesse, we now have to contend with not only dark matter but also dark energy. Next I suppose is dark leprechauns (visible only after consuming 500cc of whiskey).
The experimental evidence is that the spiral arms of some galaxies rotate faster than their mass would predict. Conclusion? there is some mass in them that we cannot see. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work: the speed of rotation does not diminish with distance, as Kepler’s Third Law requires, and therefore the underlying attractive force does not diminish as the square of the distance, and so cannot be gravitational.
What is it? We don’t know, but our hubris will not permit us to admit that, so we craft an absurdity to preserve our appearance of knowledge (and our research grants).
It is also methodologically unsound to propose an unknown cause for an unknown effect. As has been the established wisdom since Francis Bacon, four hundred years ago.
Robert, I think I would enjoy a conversation with you, over a beer. I first majored in physics, then drifted into solid state realm of electronics engineering. Took mucho physics and advanced mathematics. One of my favorite and most interesting books was “Mathematical Methods of Physics”.
I could share my theory and evidence on why we might possibly be in a simulation.
Jesse
Who would be simulating it, and why?
Or is it our own simulation that we create for the usual (MPP/dissipation) reasons?
Now that Lydia, I do not know. Perhaps some being out of this dimension and time.
Thank you, Jesse, a good book I would recommend to any high school student. Alas, published long after my time. But it builds on Galileo’s observation (his best, in my opinion) that the Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics. But then, as an ostrakon carrying Platonist, how could I disagree.
Dark matter/dark energy is the ether of our age.
Oh dear, yes it does feel like physics has stalled. Yet, I have hope. None locality (Aspects delayed choice experiment at CERN) and Bell’s Inequality put us in the position 10 years before Einstein’s special theory of relativity pointed out the space and time are not orthogonal. We know there is non-locality and we have the theory that gives the probabilities that we measure. We just do not have a good story on why? I hope it is in my lifetime (30 years) that the next Einstein explains this to us.
I am also impressed with the work in foundational quantum mechanics at places like the Perimeter Institute in Canada.
In the 70s when I was an undergrad one professor suggested that the rotational data for galaxies due to unexplained mass might be ping pong balls. It would only take a few per million cubic meters. They do not emit light we can not see them.
“… yes it does feel like physics has stalled.”
does it feel like it has stalled because, um, it actually has stalled?
thanks to all for the physics discussion.
some may think it too simplistic, but it does feel like physics as a human endeavor has reached a stage where it is ever increasingly difficult to make progress.
in other human endeavors, this is usually called diminishing returns.
It may be that we just are not smart enough as a species to solve the remaining problems. Based on reaction time tests, real general intelligence in western Europe appears to have fallen about a standard deviation (15 points) since the 1880’s. (The Flynn Effect AKA Cattell’s Paradox, whatever it really is, has very little g loading, if any.)
It is exactly why the Sentient Machine is needed to assist in silly human affairs. Worrying about AI at this stage is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars.
The biological computer inside the rapacious primate skull is way too seeped in its own prestige, authority, feels and entitlements to make stone cold assessments of what needs and HAS to be done.
It’s about time to hand it over to the connected Hive Minds and join the foray.
https://datacenternews.asia/uploads/story/2018/03/16/MareNostrum.jpg
The only thing that will save civilization is another revolutionary energy source to replace fossil fuels. We all agree on that. This is out there a bit, but Cliff High is using the theory of Roger Joseph Boscovich to invent a way to tap into the Electro Magnetic Field and coming up with some novel inventions that will allow propulsion of vehicles without internal combustion engine, similar to how ufos might be moving. Other, energy creating inventions could come from this. His web bot predictions have had a few events in our present that shows a sci fi world is upon us. If reality is a simulation and the “programers” don’t want the game to end, this could be a way forward. It may sound crazy, but I am keeping a tentative eye upon developments. Hope springs eternal!
er—–
no we don’t all agree on that
check back through the last millennia of OFW posts and you will confirm that .
There was never a ‘revolutionary’ energy source in the first place. We burned biomass to create a ‘modern’ civilisation. Fossilsed biomass is still biomass. Using different burning methods does not change the basic premise of what it is.
There is not, and never has been, anything else.
(And no—it isn’t possible to use nuclear without burning biomass)
The laws of physics prevent the creation of energy, only allow converting it from one form into another.
But if this discussion is lapsing into the propulsion systems of UFOs, (let alone their existence) —I am suddenly lost for (polite) words. (imagine that!!!!)
Norman, I think nuclear is possible with energy only needed for mining the Uranium. No need for high pressure reactors with MASSIVE concrete domes. We can mine with electric from nuclear. Current coal mining uses electric machines. Operated remotely by people who are located in one of three centers around the planet so the operator is always alert working first shift.
With current technology, which has not changed in any fundamental way since the 1950’s in spite of decades of research in various advanced countries, we still need those domes. BTW, what do you think about former nuke supporter Derek Abbott’s reversal on nuclear power?
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6021978
Looking at the article, Derek Abbott makes a really good case that you can’t scale Nuclear up enough. In fact, the nuclear that we have now is getting near the end of its lifetime, if stations need to be replaced every 50 years or so. This leaves a big “hole” in the electricity generation of the US, Europe, and Japan, as we are discovering. Intermittent solar is not really a good replacement for this nuclear power, either.
Yes, scaling of nukes is an intractable problem. To replace the TWh’s of current energy needs would require a phenomenal build-up.
Then again, fissile materials are finite.
I’m looking at the skies, and what do I see.
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-26T131357Z_927083144_RC2DQJ95G8HF_RTRMADP_3_SPACE-EXPLORATION-MOON.jpg
There is definetley water on the moon, and that will enable slurries and wet processes for mining activities. Pressurized and heated concrete domes for the surface processing facilities.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/10/26/nasa-says-there-is-definitely-water-on-the-moon
Norm, before you dismiss UFO ‘s entirely checkout a Joe Rogan podcast with commander Fravor. This guy is creditable and has evidence that there is indeed weird and wonderful craft flying around out there.
That may (or may not) be so, but I greatly doubt they are piloted by space aliens. Any civilisation able to build interstellar craft with those capabilities would also have the technology to make them completely undetectable by mere earthlings. Unless …
“Pod mother, pod mother, may I take the landing craft for a ride?”
“Of course, sweetheart, but don’t get caught and end up in Area 51.”
Whoever is piloting these craft, they have been noted for centuries. Since they can outmaneuver anything humans can produce, I suspect they may be produced by humanoids rather than humans. There is therefore no requirement for the entities to remain undetectable. After all, we humans don’t think to hide from animals lower down the food chain. Beyond that, the humanoids – or entities or androids or whatever they are – might think it edifying for us humans to realise that we are not top dog even on planet Earth.
UFOs have lots of hard evidence for their existence. The Unidentified is key. If you are skeptical about who created and controls them then that is justified, but hard to deny existence. The rules of physics are always evolving, and it depends on your definition of revolutionary. How do you see civilization continuing into the long term future without fossil fuels? I thought that was the foundational concept of Our Finite World.
by my definition, hard evidence is exactly that
something you can go up to, (after it’s landed) bang with a hammer and demand to know where it came from.
If nobody knows, then it’s a UFO.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think we’re there yet on that one. I certainly wouldn’t put my faith in their propulsion systems.
******
As to civilisation, this is the only version of it that is in the process of consuming its own future. Or has been able to.
I will defer to our gracious host, but I would have thought that the title ‘Our Finite world’ pretty much defined what it’s all about..
Civilisations can only expand beyond the level of basic hunter-gathering by finding and exploiting surplus energy.
When that surplus (not the energy resource itself) goes beyond economical exploitation, civilisations collapse. Other factors are involved, obviously, but lack of surplus energy is the killer.
I fully accept that I may have missed some fundamental point, but every past civilisation seems to have ended in that way.
Every past civilisation has effectively consumed itself trying to stay viable ‘forever’ through denial that collapse is happening. (who wants to believe that? I certainly don’t. Greeks, Romans, Aztecs Germans, Brits USA et al—all were certain of their 1000 year Reich. All were prepared to die to prove it.
Check out the current VP—certain that Jesus is going to return and fix things. (literally). So the USA will be an eternal paradise.
We can only advance if we can go on converting explosive force into rotary motion.
But without FFs, our civilisation reverts to muscle power and the technology of the horse and cart. (no explosive forces (surplus energy) you see.)
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/you-wont-like-downsizing-975571bc846d
I think we are on the same page, civilization will collapse if it has to rely on animal muscle power. My point is that we need to find a way of creating movement of machines without the use of fossil fuels, and current renewable energies are too small in quantity, or we crash. You may have understood different than my intent. If you can’t see a way to do that using current laws of physics, one solution is to change the laws, or shake the box of the current paradigm and see what comes of it.
“If you can’t see a way to do that using current laws of physics, one solution is to change the laws” — Such a simple and obvious solution, why didn’t I think of it?
I agree that we can only go so far in the only direction we know about. We seem to be reaching the end of the line.
Our self-organizing system will figure out how to maximize “productive” energy dissipation in the future. Humans may no longer be around. Or many years may have passed, plus higher radiation, leading to some new kind of beings. The self-organizing system will work things out in its own way. It may not be a way we would approve of.
Self-organizing systems can and do organize themselves into a state of criticality, whereupon they can collapse unpredictably at any time and to any degree.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095169280201400203
Why Do Societies Collapse?: A Theory Based on Self-Organized Criticality
Gregory G. Brunk First Published April 1, 2002
https://doi.org/10.1177/095169280201400203
Abstract: The oldest answered question in the social sciences is ‘Why do societies collapse?’. I advance a theory of the collapse of societies that is based on self-organized criticality, which is a nonlinear process that produces sudden shifts and fractal patterns in historical time series. More generally, I conjecture that weak, self-organized criticality is ubiquitous in human systems. If this conjecture is correct, it would not only explain the source of total societal collapses but the pattern of most other sorts of human calamities and even the frequency distribution of many mundane day-to-day events.
Interesting! Sort of like why sand castles collapse.
“UFOs have lots of hard evidence for their existence.”
I don’t think you will have a lot of influence on my thinking about UFOs or at least them being aliens from the stars. Almost 60 years ago, my friends and I (working out of the Druid Student Center) launch dozens of UFOs. The stories occupied about 20% of the front page of the Tucson newspaper in the summer of 1962.
In the late 90s, a TV show called Sightings filmed me building and launching a UFO. I think I still have a copy of the tape.
But if you want a reason to doubt we have any technical aliens in this galaxy, try https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf
What a great prank! Have you or others written anything about this?
Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee’s book, Rare Earth, also counters, with good evidence, hope for intelligent aliens. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but just very unlikely.
“What a great prank! Have you or others written anything about this?”
No. I have written up some of my adventures from my misspent youth, but not the UFO story. One of the better stories was “Blasting in a Cave.”
Years later I was talking with a Civil Air Patrol about UFOs. The CAP guy recounted another UFO story. It seems about 20 aircraft would get in a line across the sky. They would flick their landing lights when the plane next to them flashed their landing lights. What this looked like from a distance was a bright light ripping back and forth seeming to be an object that was moving faster than a conventional aircraft.
And there was a time when we hung a florescent light over a road out in the forest near Prescott, AZ. We lighted it with a model T spark coil, so besides the light, if the driver had on his radio, it was like a montain of cornflakes being crushed by a dozer.
thanks Keith.
conclusion:
“When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a
substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our
observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’
— probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological
horizon and forever unreachable.”
yes, the chance of aliens flying around in our atmosphere are extremely low.
the idea of such is just modern mythmaking.
Time for the canonical reference: “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky”, 1958, Carl Gustav Jung
but it turns out that flying saucers possess very good avionics, if we could engineer a propulsion system for them. Keith?
“but it turns out that flying saucers possess very good avionics,”
How do you know? My UFOs didn’t have any avionics at all
” if we could engineer a propulsion system for them.”
Given our current knowledge of physics, it looks like Forward’s method of using huge lasers to push light sails is the most efficient If we do this to our galaxy, it is going to be visible far across the universe.
The laws of physics prevent the creation of energy, only allow converting it from one form into another.
Who promulgated the laws of physics?
Also, if they prevent the creation of energy, why is there so much energy around?
How did all this energy that is around get to exist if it wasn’t created?
“Also, if they prevent the creation of energy, why is there so much energy around?”
A very good question, and one for which physics does not have a satisfactory answer. A “singularity” is nothing; it has no dimensions and no volume, so how could it turn out to be full of energy? And if it did have energy, the density would be infinite and nothing could ever escape.
Until we have a credible theory, I’ll stick with Genesis i:3.
I’ll stick with Hannes Alfvén.
“There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.”
–Hannes Alfvén
The perpetual Yugas seem more descriptive of the universe than creation myths.
Yes, Nietsche was right, it is the eternal recurrence. Luckily we get a good old format c: between the dramas. Like a gold fish in a jar.
Whatever new technologies anybody comes up with, however promising it may seem, will run into the same problems that we are being hit with now. Resources and systems.
We would need to use current energy sources to develop the new energy sources whilst we are transitioning to those new energy sources. This would be in addition to maintaining the current economy with current energy sources during the transition with a sufficient surplus not only for development of new energy sources but also to keep growth going. This is at a time when current energy sources would be in decline with no way to arrest that decline for anything more than a short period of time if at all. The same would apply to minerals used in the new economy at the same time as the old.
In addition, economic growth necessarily involves not only greater consumption of resources but also greater production of waste and of thermodynamic heat, regardless of what technologies are used.
We would therefore still be looking at pollution, global warming and other environmental issues regardless of what technologies are being used. And, of course, the biggest elephant in the room of them all: overpopulation.
The sci-fi is key. Off world travel, lots of minerals in asteroids and planets. Lots of room for waste in space. You have to go further out of the box with your thinking. Not going to spend a lot of time defending but just keep it in the back of your mind.
yup
rely on science fiction
why didn’t I think of that?
not rely, be inspired by.
now you sound like L Ron Hubbard
Here are three sci fi stories and one novel that inspire me:
Tom Godwin “The Cold Equations”
Theodore Sturgeon, “Twilight of the Gods”
H.G. Wells, “The Time Machine”
Mark Twain, _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court_
Movies:
Planet of the Apes
Mad Max
George Pal’s film adaptation of “The Time Machine”
But somehow I don’t think these are the sort of sci-fi stories Jason was thinking of. Everyone here has probably seen the films, but the three short stories and one novel are very well worth reading. Especially “The Cold Equations” and “Twilight of the Gods.”
I am also inspired to go into the business of manufacturing hoverboards after watching ‘Back to the Future’
would you like to invest in my new business?
Jason, a random and unpleasant late evening thought. “Lots of room for waste in space”. Well, previous generations thought “lots of room for waste in the ocean”, and they were badly wrong. As are we: near earth space is increasingly dangerous because of the presence of waste, which threatens our satellite network every day, and out manned space missions on the rare occasions we have them. There have been several studies on how to clean up space debris; they mostly conclude it is more expensive than letting them wreak their worst. As of course is the case with the oceans, which is why the effort is confined mainly to amateurs and philanthropists.
Okay, there is a mess in space. If we revert to spear and thong does it make any difference?
The oceans have changed gears in the past, they will do fine, if we are gone what difference does it make?
Stars explode, all sorts of orbital junk, haven’t seen a star clean up crew lately.
Nothing is perfect, we stumble forward or we most likely perish, what do we have to lose?
Junk in the oceans: I have a bet much of that came from the US and was recycled back to China who recycled it into the sea. We moved it out of mind and out of sight, it is still there and too damn close for my thinking. Put all this crap in space in the first place, one of the lunar elevators designs has it at the lunar pole, hide the mess on the dark side of the moon, earth for humans – new campaign slogan don’t you know? Think of it as Greta with a positive, hopeful twist.
Robert, we have to have hope.
Dennis L.
Relying upon the mining of asteroids for the minerals we use everyday can make for a decent background to a good science fiction tale, but it is not going to work in real life. The asteroids are far farther flung than the Moon. It would take an awful lot of energy and other resources to get robotic mining ships out there in very large numbers, at an exponentially growing rate, and then find that the mineral density of the asteroid belt is lower and less reliable than ores on Earth.
However, even if we could do that adequately, reliably, affordably and somehow fuel growth on Earth that way, that would make global warming worse and push us into uninhabitability. From that point of view, it is a good thing that we cannot afford to keep growth going indefinitely by mining asteroids.
“or a decent background to a good science fiction tale,”
https://htyp.org/mw/index.php?title=UpLift&oldid=26493
https://htyp.org/Mining_Asteroids
Kurt, I beieve the received wisdom is that we need to send just one robot miner to the asteroids, certainly well within our current capability. On arrival, the miner will make a copy of itself, and the system takes off from there. Until the robot swarm runs out of asteroids, and their advanced AI decides that a nearby small blue world would make an excellent source of raw materials …
I did the calculation once, if humanity increases by 1% per generation then in about 5000 years we will have a solid ball of human flesh expanding outward at greater than the speed of light. Unlimited growth is not possible in this universe.
That may not be as good an idea as it at first may seem to be. Although in science fiction we often see asteroid belts depicted as being densely packed with rocks, that is not actually the case where our solar system is concerned. Asteroids are also not all rich in the minerals we seek, but when they are they can be expected to be more widely separated in the asteroid belt than equivalent ores are on Earth. A robotic craft seeking to replicate itself would be likely to be required to visit and collect materials from multiple asteroids before having what it needs to do so, and there will still be the issue of where it might get its energy from. Not only for asteroid hoping and mining, but also for building the new robotic miner spacecraft. The resources ultimately sent back to Earth can be expected to be significantly more expensive than their Earth-mined counterparts.
Ain’t no humans that is going to leave earth, that’s one thing that is for sure.
The children of humankind, perhaps, just perhaps if the rapacious monkey can get its act together and power through until the end of the century.
Earth is our home, it’s where we’ll emerge and decay from mineral.
It is all process. There is no beginning, nor is there an end. It’s instantaneous and eternal at the same time.
Once you let go of part of what makes you human it becomes evident.
You may be right. I think someone will have to take a totally different approach than we have, to figure out how to get access to the huge amount of bypassed fossil fuels. If the earth and its biosphere together are a dissipative structure, something will come along to make certain that happens, even if doing so disturbs our sensibilities regarding what the earth should look like and what the temperature of the earth should be.
Gail,
It may be we cannot dump much more waste on earth, “The Limits to Growth” addresses that issue. Growth and waste heat have no solutions if the calculations I recall are correct, surface temperature goes to 200 degrees.
All the minerals didn’t just appear, “puff,” much current theory as I understand it makes the earth from aggregations of stuff much of which comes from novas and supernovas – processes best done at a distance.
We are right, BAU will not continue and all hopeful alternatives lead to dead ends. Xcel has a program to produce hydrogen for industrial uses because the nuclear plants need to run at capacity and are not now doing so, diminishing returns.
Make earth for biology, it is well suited for that, put the pollution in space, earth is our spaceship, it is already done this and although a bit beat up, it heals by itself, all will be well.
The “Limits to Growth” appears to be a correct approximation for earth, it is not an approximation for our solar system. Populations have always been self limiting one way or another, so earth will deal with that issue. Gross pollution from organic, human processes seems manageable if the industrial aspect is removed. All the minerals in the earth came from somewhere, out there? Well, mine them out there, use small nuclear reactors in space but don’t put one on every block. Make the MTBF for both the reactor and the process the same economically(NPV as always), before the reactor fails, kick into an orbit which collides with the sun, no space debris issues, make it a slow, low energy trip, takes two hundred years? Who cares, it is nimby.
A frivolous comment, make life a cargo cult, a landing area next to metropolitan areas, parachute goods from space – parachutes are waste a problem for someone to work on, get paid and solve.
Take these posts as approximations, not prescriptions. What is important for humanity now is to figure out whether the journey goes metaphorically to the east or west, the journey will not be a straight line but think of the wagons west in the US. Many did not make it, but hope kept them going and go they did.
Dennis L.
If I remember correctly, David Montgomery in Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations says that the bedrock erodes very slowly gives a big part of the dirt we find today. The speed at which erodes varies with the type of rock. Something like 1,000 years for a meaningful amount.
When we plow, we subject the soil to far more erosion than it normally would have. Montgomery believes that a major reason for collapses is because soil had been eroded that the farmers need. Alternatively, irrigation (except from the overflow of rivers) tends to add salt to the soil. Repetitive growing of one kind of crop also has an adverse impact on the soil. Montgomery believes that soil problem underlie many collapses.
So we are putting our faith in Clif High and UFOs now. We are in trouble.
Humanity has expressed its technological dreams in science fiction. In the 1930s when my late father was a boy, he used to collect used jam jars, which he says the cinema would accept as an entrance fee. He told me that he adored the Flash Gordon films of the 1930s. The cinema was a fixture in the UK in those days, since nobody had television.
Come the 1980s, my father bought a video recorder. He started taping films from TV and eventually building his own collection of tapes. I asked him if as a boy he had ever imagined he would have his own home cinema. He gave me an emphatic shake of the head.
And of course, by the 1980s the Americans and others had long since travelled, into space. So some science fiction does come true – not all of it, of course. The moral is that some people and some inventors do think outside the box and will continue to do so. And some people do not and never will. We have one of them among the commenters here, posting the same insight over and over again.
I know I keep saying a lot of things over and over again. I figure readers change, even in the comments.
space travel will not happen.
humans got ‘off earth’ using 1000 yr old ‘technology. (chinese fireworks,/exploding chemicals) ……That took us as far as the moon.
They brought back photographs and souvenirs.
The reactive thrust of the rocket follows the same laws of physics, whether a firework in a milk bottle, or a huge tube with men sitting on the top.
There is no other way of getting off earth, no matter how many science fiction books we read, or how we ‘shake the box’ or change the laws of physics
Viable space travel needs commercial returns, which is why we will not go anywhere. Without viable returns, attempts at ‘space travel’ will drain an already fragile economic (Earth) system.
Find a solid iron asteroid by all means. But it is then necessary to :
….get the iron to a point where it can be made into ‘stuff’.
….Such ‘stuff has got to reach a ‘market’
….the metal goods have to be bought/sold/exchanged
….the buyers need wages to do that
….but wages depend on surplus energy
….which we do not have
Raw elements cannot accrue value until they are converted into something usable in human terms, (and in so doing underpins the ongoing value of money-tokens)
Unless that happens an iron asteroid is worthless
Right now, the global economic system is shuddering to a stop, because we can no longer afford to keep it going. The same economic law applies off earth—except that off earth ‘travel’ requires such colossal investment that it can never bring a worthwhile return…ie wages for humans
I would agree. Certainly in the world as we know it.
There is indeed another way to get into space: magnetic repulsion. It has been demonstrated in the laboratory: https://science.howstuffworks.com/electromagnetic-propulsion.htm. Making it work is now an engineering problem.
Clever, if it works that would be nice, nuclear power to movement which seems more likely than a series of small nuclear blasts against a shield – project Orion.
Now journey out to the asteroid belt, maybe a few of Saturn’s rings, pick and chose and send the good stuff back to the moon, refine, manufacture, use a space elevator off the moon, drop on to earth with a parachute/drone thingy and Amazon will have another piece of the puzzle. A trillion here, a trillion there, money falling out of the sky, what could go wrong?
Dennis L.
Magnetic propulsion? I googled this. For a vessel of some substantial weight, how much niobium (rare earth), tin, and copper will it need (in addition to the more common iron and aluminum–and aluminum needs substantial energy to produce)? How much electricity will have to run through the wire, and what will generate the electricity? What is the “metal” cylinder actually made of (did not say in the diagram I saw)? How much total weight will this device add to the vessel? Yes, it’s an engineering problem, but that does not mean it will ever be commercially viable.
you do ask the most awkward questions
Norman,
May I suggest leave man on the earth, put replicating machines on the moon, the trip from the moon to the earth is easy, move the pollution off eartj, strip all the anti pollution off(basically what China did and trashed their ecology). On the moon shielding on a reactor is not needed, on a space craft mostly for the human cargo.
We are going to need a new economy(Gail’s idea, she has been right so far, who am I to argue), we need hope which seems to be one function of most/many/all religions(there are those here who know much more about that than I).
It is a hundred year or more project, think of it as a cathedral – if it has been done it can be done. Going back to spears and loin cloths sucks. It is also consistent with more complexity, complexity seems the only way out.
My understanding is we put man in space so people would fund space exploration – a monkey did not have the same stage value as John Glenn.
If everything is going to fail anyway, what is the risk? Keep looking at the size of the Saturn V vs the return rocket, build it in space or on the moon, pollute at will, no epa, no Osha, no building codes if she blows, she blows. That is a lot of cost removed, it is not important where cost is removed, only that it is removed. Gravity is a problem on a space station, we have one with gravity – the moon.
Earth is for man, well maybe even a few women(it is a joke, relax), get rid of the polluting machines, think of it machines as an interlude. Anyone have a better idea? It is green, what could go wrong?
Dennis L.
No, the polluting machines, and its CO2 generation capacity should go nowhere.
I don’t want to live on an icy rock. Yes I am the spokesperson of mostly all flora and fauna on earth. The trapped carbon needs to be returned to the biosphere.
The damaging substances of CO2 generation should however be filtered out.
Yes, earth is our birthplace and it is where we will eventually meet our demise as a species.
The Machine, however, will power along into intergalactic space and beyond.
It’s time to let go of the human chauvinism and ponder upon the likely outcome of the process of life itself.
It seems to me that life itself is the cancer of rock turning mineral into self-replication.
It is what we are. Turners of mineral into life. Synthetic and natural.
I do like a bit of good sci-fi.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByoueGSWXluVVUtHYnRJVEg4YnM/edit
…and a bit of good sci-fact.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html
“Going back to spears and loin cloths sucks” — I don’t think we will have to go that far back, but we will have to get to “steady state” using less energy per capita and with fewer capita to boot. I am not advocating this outcome as a strategic option, just saying that it WILL happen, voluntarily or not. Finite resources cannot accommodate infinite growth.
Even 2% growth per capita (US historical average and the current world average) is not sustainable for very long (as a historian might mean by “long,” longer than a politician’s or journalist’s long, but far shorter than a geologist’s long), even though 2% is commonly considered “moderate” or even “slow” growth. Two percent (not even per capita, but 2% total growth) means you double annual consumption of resources every 34 years. It does not take many doublings before you are consuming more resources every year than actually exist.
Because energy cannot be recycled once consumed, even a steady state is not possible at anything like current levels of global consumption. We have to burn too much just to stay in place. And if you try to go solar (including wind), then you will run short of materials for the technology (unless the population is vastly smaller).
and, the last commodity that we need from an asteroid is iron. the planet is practically made of iron. asteroids actually provide little that we need from them. maybe nickel, some cobalt, but probably not enough to justify the cost of extraction.
A few years ago I analyzed processing 1982 DA for the 0.75 ppm gold and 4 or 5 times that much value in platinum group metals. 1982 DA is about 2 cubic km of asteroid iron.
I didn’t expect the economics to work out, but if you can do enough bootstrapping (i.e. use local materials for the extraction plant) it looks like it would be profitable.
world stocks of physical gold are about 130000 tons, give or take
currently, gold is valued at about $1900 oz
find an asteroid carrying 1 m tons of gold and bring it back to Earth. reducing gold value by about 90% and the gold market is destroyed.
Congratulations!
I believe something similar happened in Spain in the 16thc when looted gold began arriving back from the Americas
” find an asteroid carrying 1 m tons of gold and bring it back to Earth.”
Asteroid iron is typically less than one ppm. That’s parts per million. or a ton of gold for every million tons of asteroid. Does this suggest a way to reduce the shipping costs by a factor of a million?
Boscovich (1711 to 1787) is someone whose ideas should always be considered carefully. He was a citizen of Ragusa, but studied mainly in Italy and France. Most of his work was in astronomy, but his “De inaequalitate gravitatis in diversis terrae locis, which discussed how the Earth’s gravity varied from place to place, was groundbreaking. It led to a famous 20th century experiment, which used atomic clocks to prove that time ran slightly faster at the top of a mountain.
However, Boscovich never wrote about the Earth’s magnetic field. But his paper “De motu corporis …” of 1743 seems clearly relevant. But on the other paw, we have a rather more direct method of tapping the Earth’s angular momentum than using its magnetic field: the tides.
Tides don’t seem to work very well for generating electricity. Sea water is damaging to metal equipment in the water. The availability of the energy is very intermittent. Cost benefit seems to be pretty bad, wherever it has been tried.
Thank you, Gail, and I agree. Getting the tides to push bits of metal is hopeless. But getting the tides to fill an estuary, and then letting the water generate hydroelectric power as it runs out, seems far more promising. There was a study many years ago that looked at damming the Bristol Channel in England for precisely this purpose; it went nowhere because as then envisaged it would have destroyed viability of the port.
Tide mills were once quite common in the UK. Storing water at high tide in lagoons and using the water flow to drive mills. You could get between 2 and 3hrs of milling twice per day. There is one down the road from here. Problem with tides is they move backward in time 45mins everyday so your working day moves every single day. Also the amount of work you can do varies every day as you cycle between spring and neap rides. So yes any electricity generated from this idea would be predictable but unfortunately would vary in time and amount every day, and therefore difficult to match to demand.
Thank you, Erdles, complete agreement here. The only effective use for intermittent energy is use in situations that can accommodate intermittent work. As windmills grinding corn, for example.
There is a problem with your human body analogy. Humans only grow in childhood. Adult humans use energy for homeostasis, not growth. We need to develop a homeostatic economy at a level the planet can support, which includes all the other life on the planet, not just humans.
Have you taken a look at the average American?
There are a lot of different kinds of dissipative structures. Stars, including the sun, are dissipative structures. They grow until they collapse. Ecosystems of all kinds are dissipative structures. They operate under the maximum power principle. They self-organize in such a way as to make maximum productive use of the energy available to them. The economy is, in a sense, a type of ecosystem. Our economy self-organizes and grows to make maximum productive use of the energy available to it. This includes energy sources of all sorts, including fossil fuels.
The economy keeps reaching diminishing returns. For example, wells need to be dug deeper or water needs to be desalinated, to produce enough fresh water. Mines become deeper and have minerals with lower mineral percentages. We need to grow more food per acre, so more irrigation is needed and more support of other kinds. Thus the economy needs to use more energy, just to “stay even.” If we want to repay debt with interest, we need even more.
Piggybacking on the debt – interest tangent.
Suddenly, there are appearing people (out of the woodwork) predicting period of sustained real negative interest rates and spike in bonds.. basically multi decade mega trend reversal out of the blue (for most).
I guess it was linked recently here, van Metre, Rickards, .. although the later even wrote about it long time pre-covid times, also citing historic precedents for econ depression times escalation, e.g. US blocking its debt owed to-held by China. Not exactly impossible to imagine in second term for this POTUS and non recovery..
Not really a mega trend reversal. Yields have been trending down since the 1980s, and many countries already issue bonds at negative rates. Really a continuation rather than reversal of the trend.
You are right! GDP results have been helped by lower interest rates and more debt for a very long time. Peak interest rates were back in 1981. We can no longer live without this kind of help.
Susan, my experience in Pittsburgh is that some adult humans graze on food stamps, and continue to grow until they die in their 50s from one of the diseases associated with morbid obesity.
Maybe after a huge collapse, some leaders might embrace the idea that the world is finite and thus the economy must be as well.
if covid never happened, then yes, after the inevitable huge economic decline perhaps by the middle of this decade, “some leaders” might have gained a bit of a susspicion that prosperity is finite.
but the herd mentality of the leaders to (over)react to covid makes me think that they will continue in a herd mentality that the economic downturn was only because of covid.
I say that, and I hope in a way that doesn’t give the impression that it is covid-con-spear-acy talk, because there is no such con-spear-acy.
Thorium. Check it out. Cheap and safe, fits the bill. The Means Assures the End. Do the Good. johngrootjr@gmail.com
John G Root Jr Just Abundance, Inc. Mutual Credit and Sociocracy shift the paradigm Cell: 413 329 3200 http://www.CredittothePeople.org http://www.CommonGood.earth http://www.justabundance.org http://www.massachusettsrepublic.org
On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 2:03 PM Our Finite World wrote:
> Gail Tverberg posted: ” Strangely enough, the limit we seem to be reaching > with respect to fossil fuel extraction comes from low prices. At low > prices, the extraction of oil, coal, and natural gas becomes unprofitable. > Producers go bankrupt, or they voluntarily cut back product” >
If it really worked as well as some claim, I expect it would be in widespread use.
“These managers can not calculate!”
“Do they not see that there is a problem?”
“Why does nobody do this, it is so obvous”
“Wind and solar is so cheap, These people do not understand what a good investment this makes”
“Politicians just do not know what to do”
I agree- thorium. Molten salt thorium reactors totally safe from melt down. Fuel is completely used with no radioactive waste. Abundant supply. No technological barriers to deployment. Gail, were are the scientific peer reviewed papers on why these CAN’T be built? Nowhere to be seen. I smell a rat.
I think they are in some sense, too safe. They don’t work well enough. That is why we don’t see them today.
Sorry, thorium is not a nuclear fuel. It must be subjected to neutron bombardment, which is itself a slow and expensive process, and the output Uranium 233 is the real fuel. Its major advantage is that there is a lot more of it, but there is currently no cost advantage.
The molten salt reactor seems like a highly radioactive chemical processing facility with a side effect of happening to produce electricity. A hot mess.
Keep the fuel solid and reprocess it centrally. Then burn it until all actinides are depleted of their fissile energy.
India has been trying to work the bugs out of thorium since the 70s, since they have a lot of it. No luck after 45 years of research. With patience, I once managed to google up a site that listed all the difficulties with thorium. It was a formidable list. There are a lot of countries that would love to adopt thorium if it were everything its advocates say. The technology is not ready, and may never be ready.
when you irradiate rocks, one of the biggest radioactive products is 22Na from sodium in the minerals. i can imagine what 22Na levels might get produced by neutron activation in molten salt used as a coolant. fortunately, it has a relatively short half-life.
For the molten salts used in thorium reactors its fluoride. Does that sucker got some nasty radioactive isotope?
Let me guess: Yes.
Its a Hot Mess.
“Does that sucker got some nasty radioactive isotope?
Let me guess: Yes.”
Wrong guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Fluorine
Fluorine has only one stable isotope (F-19), and does not easily become radioactive under neutron bombardment
There are radioactive isotopes of flourine. The flourine will inevitably be radioactive due to the large amounts of it inside the reactor bombarded by neutrons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_fluorine
It’s still a chemical processing plant with a side effect of producing electricity.
It is a Hot Mess.
Wrong. There ARE technological barriers to deployment. Lots of countries would love to burn thorium, esp India which as vast thorium reserves and has been trying to work the bugs out of the idea since the 1970s. I am sure China, Japan, Russia, Germany and France would all love to have a reactor that could not melt down and would burn an abundant fuel. Why do you think no one is doing it? Not even TEPCO!
As for peer reviewed papers, you don’t keep the grant money flowing by publishing reasons why it’s hard to do. Same problem with EV’s. Rumor has it that most of the engineers who work on EV batteries think they are a dead end that will only serve a niche market, but no one will say that for the record. They like having jobs!
Here is the latest example of overblown MSR hype:
https://www.powermag.com/blog/molten-salt-reactor-claims-melt-down-under-scrutiny/
In other words, this was another case of technology hubris, an all-to-common malady in energy, where hyperbolic claims are frequent and technology journalists all too credulous.
“As for peer reviewed papers, you don’t keep the grant money flowing by publishing reasons why it’s hard to do. Same problem with EV’s.”
People don’t realize how important grant money is as a driver of what gets written. Also, peer reviewers will like the papers better, if they seem to present a solution.
“With unrest on all sides, Russia’s regional muscle is being tested…
“To the south, the three-decade-old conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has reignited. To the west, protests calling for Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko’s ouster are well into their second month. And to the east, Kyrgyzstan is facing its third political crisis in 15 years after recent parliamentary election results were annulled.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-nagoro-karabahk-belarus-kyrgyzstan/2020/10/15/2129fcda-0b27-11eb-8719-0df159d14794_story.html
Perhaps there is a “Center” that is in better shape?
People like Khazin, Orlov, .. been trying to explain it why there has not been over-reaction from “the bear” so far. Well, it took almost two decades to turn over, stabilize the situation since the breakup of ~1991, push oligarchs to pay at least some taxes locally, and or let them engage in the economy somewhat meaningfully, retooling the economy to higher value added instead of mere raw resource exports etc.
To foreign meddling call (via Ukraine, Belarus, Caucasus, .. econ sanctions) has been always responded with “minimal variant – great restraint” so far. In essence, well played by the underdog, evidently being a chess game about longer time horizon. Yes very recently western underclasses had no problem getting credit for ~400hp toyz and other crap, living the opulent dream, while in .ru settling for funny looking econoboxes and (clean) public transit. In next installment (almost there now) western underclasses won’t get (enough) food, medical assistance and even the middle class starts seriously hurting. It seems the politics of post Soviet break up was also in large part actively managed/nudged triage for mere survival of the most essential, several regions out of the former core [millions of pop] have been completely ruined..
We can observe some similar precursors on the “EU southern edge” as well.. or even within/near that core, say [Bavaria and Austria, Hungary] vs Londonistan and Benelux/French suburbs (new beheading just yesterday)..
What Khazin trying to explain for years now: The World needs new order. And this new order is reverse of globalization. World will be divided in local “Centers”. These centers are: USA, China, Russia. Smaller countries will be more dependent on thier local center. Example: if Ukraine’s local center is Russia, Russia can do whatever it wants with Ukraine and noone can’t say anything, because it’s new world order. I don’t agree with his view, but it’s only an opinion, I think he oversimplyfying things.
Thanks, Sergey!
I agree with the idea of new centers to smaller areas. USA, Russia, and China could be the new centers. Or China/Russia could be a single center, I suppose. China doesn’t have enough oil on its own.
A lot of places could be knocked out of the trade loop, it would seem, to try to get oil prices higher for providers. Parts of countries could disappear as well, such as the Wall Street area of New York.
The center is the datacenter and production capability, not where the frivolous consumer happen to live.
“The average American has $90,460 in debt—here’s how much debt Americans have at every age…
“In our efforts to keep up with the Joneses (or just get by during this period of economic uncertainty, debt has become a normalized part of the American lifestyle.”
https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-american-debt-by-age/
“Millions of unemployed Americans faced an income “cliff” in July when the extra $600 in pandemic jobless benefits came to an end.
“But millions more are now facing another — and perhaps more dire — hit to their income as they exhaust all their unemployment options at both the state and federal levels.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unemployment-running-out-millions-americans/
The CNBC article is about consumer credit only, not governmental debt or corporate debt. It is based on an analysis by Experian, a credit rating organization. I would presume the ratios are to the count of borrowers that Experian monitors. I would assume that this means everyone who individually applies for credit. If a husband and wife have always applied for credit as a couple, I would expect that they might get a count of one, rather than two.
I would be interested to know how the analysis treats “zeros” in this calculation. There have to be a moderate number of people who have no debt, other than the end of month balance on items charged on credit cards in a given month. I know this is the way we handle our financial transactions. My guess is that they are leaving the zero’s out.
For mortgage balances, they say:
Mortgage loans: Gen X have the highest average mortgage balance, at $238,344. Millennials were a close second, at $224,500.
I suppose that in many instances, there are two people on the mortgage, so the the mortgage amount is double this amount. These amounts are a big part of what hold up the $90,000+ amount averages.
I use my millennial son and his wife as an example. They both have good paying secure jobs in biotech (for now). They are concerned about all the wealth concentrating in a top few. I keep trying to educate (especially my daughter. In-law) who is on facebook a lot, that it is the oligarchs that own the media and the government that are their true enemies…not the left versus right distraction. My son actually stated that with the wealth concentration it is like we are moving toward feudalism. How right he is!
Early on, I had my son read the classics, including 1984 and Brave New World. He listened to them, on audiotape, and is pretty discerning. I hope to get them to realize the energy predicament we are in. They just don’t see it yet.
I should probably go back and reread 1984. I read it long ago and have forgotten most of what it said.
The most relevant thing is that the UK is Airstrip One and we are off the coast of Eurasia but actually part of Oceania. Anyone say Brexit?
I have read it every4-5 years since picked it up in the day room at Army MP school in Ft.Gordon GA in 1965. That’s at least 10 times and I seem to always find something I didn’t catch before. Last year it was “newspeak”. OMG newspeak is everywhere.
Orwell never dreamed we would all be carrying a telescreen in our pockets.
Remember everyone. Big Brother is watching to see if you are wearing your mask.
Where I live there is widespread disobedience to the emperors mask decree. 3/4 of the people in the dollar general not wearing masks. The beauty is its by both the right and the left. Could the rebellion end the manufactured polarization?
According to that Bloomberg graph discussed recently, millennials own only ~5% of the assets (vs Silent-Boomers-GenX) while becoming the largest employee group.. That won’t end well, rebellion or abandonment/walking away unlikely at the moment (and or given their psycho-social setting), so perhaps allowing lapse into more direct forms of ~feudalism instead..
“Nigeria’s army has warned it could step in against “subversive elements and troublemakers” as the protests against police brutality that have erupted throughout the country over the past week continue.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/15/army-standby-police-brutality-protests-nigeria
“Pakistan opposition starts countrywide protests to oust government…
“The protest campaign comes at a time when Pakistan is experiencing an economic crisis, with inflation touching double digits and negative growth. The next general election is scheduled for 2023.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-pakistan-politics-protests-idUKKBN2711ZV
“Thai protesters said they would hold another demonstration on Saturday despite a crackdown by police on more than three months of protests that have targeted the powerful monarchy as well as the government.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-thailand-protests/thai-protesters-vow-new-demonstration-despite-crackdown-idUKKBN27206P
“On anniversary of protests, Chileans brace for fresh demonstrations and violence.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-chile-protests-anniversary-preview/on-anniversary-of-protests-chileans-brace-for-fresh-demonstrations-and-violence-idUKKBN271302?il=0
Protests around the world are continuing. Not enough jobs that pay well for everyone!
massive protests!
and covid doesn’t seem to be repressing them at all.
the covid-con-spear-acy to stop protests idea is very much toast.
Perhaps that is why the World Health Organization is no longer recommending shutdowns.
““A double dip [recession for the UK] seems an increasingly realistic possibility,” said economist Robert Wood at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“The bank’s large-scale surveys of households point to increasing fears over wages and jobs.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/10/16/threat-double-dip-recession-looms-second-wave-hits/
“The UK’s pub industry, which generated sales of about £23bn before the pandemic, is not one of the country’s largest but it is among its oldest and best known and it is facing its deepest crisis yet…
“Estimates suggest more than a quarter of the UK’s 39,700 pubs may not survive the pandemic.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9cae3108-c314-4400-900f-32d789ac3da8
“Financial strains on U.K. borrowers as wage subsidies end and unemployment rises could lead to a spike in defaults on mortgages, credit cards and other loans.
“According a Bank of England survey of lenders, they expect default rates to increase this quarter. The expectations index for both mortgages and unsecured debt has risen to the highest since the financial crisis.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/u-k-banks-expect-to-see-a-jump-in-mortgage-loan-defaults-chart
“Boris Johnson warns UK to prepare for no-deal Brexit. It could cost his reeling economy $25 billion next year.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/16/business/uk-brexit-deal-economy/index.html
“Moody’s downgrades UK credit rating…
““Negative long-term structural dynamics have been exacerbated by the decision to leave the EU and by the UK’s subsequent inability to reach a trade deal with the EU that meaningfully replicates the benefits of EU membership,” Moody’s said.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/10/16/moodys-downgrades-uk-credit-rating/
Yeah, but if the British play fair with their former dominions, they may get access to very cheap Australian and New Zealand butter, cheese, beef, lamp and grain again, thereby spreading the common wealth.
Last year the UK had a trade deficit of 77 billion pounds with the EU. Even if that estimate is true, a no deal would therefore save us at least 55 billion.
Somehow, the problems of the UK are no surprise. Their total energy consumption per capita has been falling. So has their electricity consumption per capita. Most UK jobs get to be service jobs, because there is not enough nearby, cheap to produce energy.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/energy-consumption-per-capita-canada-us-uk.png
Of course. It is normal for energy consumption to fall during a recession. One day, falling energy supplies will cause recessions. Right now, it is still recessions that cause falling energy demand.
Of course. Energy consumption (demand) routinely falls during recessions. One day, falling energy supply will cause recessions. Right now, it is still recessions that cause falling demand. It is the difference between post peak and pre peak.
It is the fertility cult of Mother Mary that became the root of the further division of Christianity in the times of the medieval energy collapse.
It is noteworthy that the Orthodox and the Catholic churches give this cult a prominent position on their teachings, while protestantism rejects it.
That way e.g. Brasil, once a Catholic country, becomes a protestant country now, as it’s limits are approaching. The same was happening in the medieval ages, when the individual European countries started to declare their independence from Roman Catholic church.
The ordination of women is not possible in the orthodox or Catholic churches because it contradicts the cult of Mother Mary.
The cult of Mother can not be served by women, as it is the men who provide support to motherhood. The women compete between themselves, are greedy to get the men with status or money, steal them one from another if there is a scarcity of such men. And are able to steal one from another in a most violent way in order to get the resources.
A greedy woman is worse than a greedy man, as greed is the result of scarcity that limits the population growth. Mother Mary can be viewed also as a story of a greedy woman who lost everything, so the women invented the story about ressurection and taking her into heaven.
It was the women who testified the ressurection of Jesus Christ, not men.
The resource limits endanger the role of mother and the women must take other roles and compete with men.
It is the women who invent the wildest lies in order to get hold of resources, money and status, when limits become reality, as accepting the reality of limits mean denying the possibility of creating a man via birth that can serve as energy source.
Nearly all of the “cult of Mary” things are not in the Bible. Coming from a Lutheran background, this view was completely lost. Also, the view of hell being real, or important, disappeared. The focus is much more on, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”
When I visited Norway, I noticed that the sculpture there was not of male soldiers, as in many European countries. Instead, there seemed to be more women and children. Norway does not have military heroes; it could never fight anyone and win.
I don’t know about women inventing the wildest lies to get resources. I know that historically, women (or their parents, choosing partners for the women) have tried to find the husbands who look most likely to be able to provide well for a family. Men who can barely support themselves are out of luck in finding a wife. Men, on the other hand, have tried to find healthy, good looking wives. Where divorce laws permit, they often find a new, younger wife in middle age, leaving women alone with not much means of support in their later years.
The situation of energy abundance created more favourable situation especially for women. That is why their reaction to the collapsing system is more desperate. They could live without men as husbands and without the male offsprings. That is why I wrote that they invent the wildest lies, fiercely defend their jobs or gain other sources of income, using even very dirty methods etc. to secure the resources.
Losing both the status of a wife and mother due to the job and subsequently also the job is a total loss which the men do not experience. And having children and do not have resources for them is another reason for stealing from others, when the system is collapsing and the males are not able to provide resources.
In such situations the women look worse than males, because they look like they were not careful, they relied too much on the system or on their male partner, who left them or died.
I know the cases whan a woman, who was an only child, commited a suicide after the death of her parents or completely broke down.
Such is the reality.
I know quite a few women are very big into maximizing their own careers, regardless of how it works out for the rest of the family. But I think most women still put their families first. I haven’t run into women telling wild likes to defend their jobs, but maybe I am not connected to enough people in this role today.
Dmitry Orlov wrote that when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was the men who were especially depressed because they lost their jobs and didn’t have much else to hold onto. The women did better, because they were also mothers, and had this role to hold onto.
The point is that there expectations from men to provide energy. That is why they can not handle the rising complexity of both serving family and keeping the system going on.
There are no such expectations from women, unless there is a shortage of men and the women have to take over the roles of the men, as in Russia, when the system was imploding and alcoholism of the males was a by-product of collapse.
When the collapse accelerates, the alcoholism of both males and females, or some drug addictions are present.
Or there are mothers who can not handle the care for their child because of their low income and the children are left to the fathers for raising or provided for adoption.
The imlosion is multi-faceted.
Gee, Lutherans seem to have changed a lot since Martin Luther, who certainly believed in hell, once hurled a bottle of ink at the devil, leaving an ink splot on the wall, and highly venerated the ever virgin Mother of God:
https://www.churchpop.com/2017/03/07/5-surprising-quotes-from-martin-luther-on-the-blessed-virgin-mary/
https://indaily.com.au/news/2020/10/12/deflation-puts-brakes-on-retired-sa-public-servants-pensions/
This article talks about the indicated inflationary change to pensions in part of Australia being negative. The powers that be have chosen 0% change instead.
CHS has a new “OfTwoMinds” up, a concluding quote:
“I think you see the analogy to the present. Our leadership, such as it is, is devoting resources to maintaining the absurd pretense that everything will magically re-set to September 2019 if we just print enough money and bail out the financial Aristocracy.
Whether we realize it or not, we’re responding with passive acceptance of oblivion. The economy and social order were precariously fragile before the pandemic, and now the fragilities are unraveling. We need to start thinking beyond pretense and PR.”
We need a vision of the future, something to believe in. Even if the pyramids were useless they kept the people together and the Nile was worked for the greater good to provide for those moving stones. Mention has been made of cathedrals by myself and others, many took several hundreds of years to complete and in so doing provided jobs and instruction in masonry and associated mathematics. In these structures there was also something beautiful, something of the soul, compare them to modern architecture, it is butt ugly for the most part.
Our civilization needs something bigger and better than the latest bust size out of Hollywood. Doing this project would probably take at least 100 years, but there would be something for everyone including hope for the lowest and incredible graft for the highest for graft seems to be with us always. Isn’t that what the elites mean by win win?
Dennis L.
I think part of the problem is that we are so specialized today that it is hard to have projects that the many unemployed can work on.
A favorite new project today seems to be COVID tracer. Call up people who recently came down with COVID, and try to get them to tell you who they had contact with more than 15 minutes, fairly close up, in the last several days. Then try to tell those contacts to self-quarantine, for a time. Unfortunately, this is just another “service” project that doesn’t really add much of lasting value. Case counts are going up rapidly, anyhow.
There are many useful projects that unskilled can do.
There are indeed. Everyday I walk rundown unmanaged woodlands in the UK crying out for unskilled labour. These once did and could do so again, provide work for millions, increasing both human, social and wildlife capital. It’s matter of priorities.
Nature “manages” woodlands in the way that it requires. This includes fires that we humans would prefer never take place. It is a myth that we can manage woodlands better than nature. We can temporarily make them “look better,” but the cost of preventing and controlling forest fires goes up over time. We can never manage woodlands as well as nature does.
Art,
I would like to believe that, there may be niches that a group/clan, fill in the blanks can adapt to, but some of the jobs require a very high degree of intelligence.
I loved the local CC, MIT is a different world, simple problems requiring fluency in the application of basic ideas. The problem is during my cc days I watched the classes thin down, I watched and made note of who did well. We were diverse only in having whites, Asian and I think Persian students at the end. Draw your own conclusions, others did not make it. Yes, I ranked myself, couple of brilliant kids, no way, rest of the class at the top, could run with them, each year the bottom became thinner and thinner. They all seemed to work hard, the ideas are tough to grasp and use.
With todays population there are 70M in the top 1%, there are probably not 70m slots for that 1%. I have no solution, don’t want to be part of solving that issue. I have a combination solar, LP, electrical heating system at the farm, really could use PLC’s, simple programming. It is not trivial, have a friends son, recent ME grad, first in his class, weak in PLC’s, go figure.
No arguments Art, not many jobs the unskilled can do for me personally. Farm is farmed by huge complex machines, western MN is now going to 45′ heads on a combine, add a 600hp tracked tractor pulling a multi hundred thousand dollar grain cart and the poorly talented need not apply. The grain cart and combine merge at 6 miles per hour, this is over 250, 000 pounds maintaining a distance of plus/minus say 4 feet, well over $1M on the roll not including three semi trailers to keep up with this process.
Even digging a ditch, excavator is $3K+/week rental plus fuel, takes considerable skill to run one, not much use for a shovel, it would slow things down and actually cost money. I have a long ditch to dig, renting a excavator, hiring an operator, no shovels needed.
Dennis L.
Of course, to use all of the fancy equipment, there is no possibility of terracing. Fences between smaller fields have long since been removed; also old farm houses. Going backward gets to be a huge problem. Erosion is a huge problem without terracing. There is nowhere to live near the fields. In fact, small towns have mostly a few low-paying jobs, making it difficult for there to be a real middle class in farming areas. Too many young people end up with drug problems or depression because they see no way for themselves to fit in. The highest local job available is working in a Walmart or in a gas station with a convenience store.
Even hospitals are disappearing in rural areas; everyone wants to go to the big, well-known facilities like the one at Rochester Minnesota, near you. I heard however, that during the worst of the pandemic, doctors at Rochester were being asked to take a 20% pay cut. I don’t know whether the full pay level has been restored.
Again no arguments:
Equipment: The work is too hard for humans, there is no surplus energy without it and it is back to the population problem which I choose not to touch, we have people to feed. Absolutely not trying to be right, people need to eat or they become very angry and tear the whole thing down, nothing to lose. I think you are right about the soil, but both the tenants and landlords watch that fairly closely. Farmers have a love of the land, it is a lifestyle which many including myself did not appreciate, it took me a few years.
Population: you are right, there are fewer and fewer neighbors. It could be done differently were we to raise the prices, say by 50-100%, but then one is back to the system and maintaining order with food inflation.
Mental health: There has to be hope, if anyone is missing it my frustration with some of the opinions here is the nihilism, nothing can be done. I made a bold suggestion much of which is uniformed nonsense, but compare the Saturn 5 leaving to the earth and the lander leaving the moon and common sense says do it on the moon, it gives hope, it gives a project for mankind, a second or third industrial revolution with out pollution – man what a campaign slogan! Somehow much of the population has to share this hope. It is not a great idea, but it beats burning down the town or yelling in the world’s town squares. Jordan Peterson says many of the mental problems he treated were not intrinsic to the individual but extrinsic to them in the situations they faced.
Hospital salaries: Yes, there were cuts, there were layoffs I am told, all money taken away plus $1 000 bonus for all staff as I understand it was restored when Mayo reopened.
Mayo does have many outreach clinics, I am not sure where they are or how many, there is a certain logic in doing that, practice makes perfect and the specialty clinics and associated hospitals have deep resources and protocols to handle emergencies. There is a great deal to be said about working with talented colleagues, doing presentations for fellow colleagues(we called them grand rounds), and having a ready source of continuing education. It is also a group, not lonely, lunch with friends, etc.
Dennis L.
I have heard that surgical outcomes are much better in hospitals that do quite a few of some kind of specialty operation than they are in facilities where only a handful a that type of surgery is done. Having experience seems to help outcomes.
I get my healthcare from Kaiser Permanente. As you know, Kaiser’s charges are mostly on a “capitated” basis, in other words, per person, regardless of the amount of treatment. Thus, there is no incentive to over treat. They keep track of what works and what doesn’t. I have discovered that my primary care doctor responds to my emails incredibly quickly–something like two hours, even on week-ends. There are other ways to get help as well, including “Nurse Advice” and a new “Text Message a Doctor.” Kaiser does a lot of telephone or over the internet appointments now, as well.
Gee, Gail, if the Maya were able to terrace the fields around Machu Picchu with no draft animals and without even the wheel, how hard can it be. I have seen them, and they are still in working order, even their water supplying canals and conduits are still functional.
easy to do
all you need is a human workforce, focussed entirely on the job in hand, clear of outside distractions, prepared to work over a time period of xx years (you tell me)
their labour is for food production, and stone piling—- virtually nothing else. They know nothing of the world beyond their own territory
if one gets sick, he dies. No fuss.
No vacations. I think I just desribed a termite colony
Maybe to occasional virgin sacrifice for mass entertainment.
Like I said—easy. (apart from finding virgins I guess.)
Art, I reread my post. I want to see us as a society succeed, I want everyone to have value. The problem when I looked at my own life and hiring practices, there isn’t time to organize but a few people and those need a considerable amount of talent. I have no answer and leave it to others to deal with that one.
Dennis L.
Dennis L. Gail reminds us that we have little to no control over the system we’re part of. So one would do best not to worry about such limitations as you mention? Just do the best you can? And you’re right that it’s up to everyone to pitch in and help with whatever they can.
Not looking to argue, looking for solutions.
Compare the size of the Saturn rocket to take men to the moon to the combination required to return the same three men, gravity wells at work. The lunar lander was a glorified toy, rickety at best.
There have been discussions regarding solar power beamed to earth, my suggestion, manufacture on an existing satellite of size(moon), ship finished product back to earth. Raw materials are zipping around out there, we don’t know what is on the moon. Smelting, use the sun, shot stuff close to the sun(it is all relative, smelt, don’t vaporize) have it return, deorbit and finish processing on the moon with nuclear. We are robotizing factories at an amazing pace, robotize the moon, the thermodynamics work. The tough part is lifting stuff off the earth, dropping it down is relatively easy. Move all the pollution off the earth, in refining metals in solar orbit, don’t bring back the waste, kick it into the sun, the sun will never notice or burp. We are seeking fusion to power industrial scale manufacturing, we have a fusion reactor close by, use it, the energy is dense, solar energy on earth is diffuse, another problem solved.
We are killing ourselves with pollution. The above paragraph is all engineering, we don’t have to invent the wheel.
We have talked endlessly about the problems we face, the ideas seem mature, nothing looks to work on earth and back to the earthers have no clue how much work that is and how little surplus energy will be available for healthcare, or even sex. No, that is not a joke, one gets very, very tired working the earth.
Population I will leave to others to solve, that truly is a third rail.
Dennis L.
Dennis, the problem for the green movement is that your solution does not end capitalism. I once upon a time worked with my local Transition Towns group. I suggested we involve the supermarkets in the solution; big mistake!
Dennis, everything you write makes a lot of sense. Move all heavy industry off Earth and we drastically reduce pollution, and reduce our energy needs to the point where the parallel introduction of renewables with a reconfiguration of the built environment (no cars, no aeroplanes, efficient buildings) can probably pull us through.
You are also right that we have had access to fusion power for four billion years, and on the moon, energy flux density is no longer a problem because we can sequester as much sunlight as we need. I suspect it would also be cheaper than installing renewable energy on Earth, if you consider life cycle cost, as we certainly should and the greenies certainly won’t.
It also makes no sense to beam energy from space for use on Earth. Use the energy to make the finished products in space, and drop them on parachutes, which when I last looked require no energy input.
yup
just don’t forget the magic words:
Beam me up Scotty
Ah, the arrogance of the obvious.
Obviously the current scientific and technological progress is impossible as viewed through the eyes of a middle age man.
Here is a thought experiment for you Norman. Let’s grab the flux capacitors and power us back in time using a slightly modified De Lorean and ask a Stone Age man how he foresee the future after some 10.000 seasons come and go.
I still can hear his laughter echo through the halls of time. Just as I am laughing at you sitting in front of that marvel of human ingenuity and technology.
https://media.makeameme.org/created/Oh-really-Please.jpg
I’m laughing at me too
And I regularly use my own pin to puncture my own ego in case I find myself starting to believe in moon mining and space elevators UFOs and galactic travel
Re-entry into the atmosphere might just be an issue. Unless you had some kind of lift system to get items down from orbit.
Erdles, a good point. But goods from the moon will be moving in lunar orbit, not low earth orbit, and so will be a whole lot slower (Kepler’s Third Law). It will be much easier to slow them down than it is to slow a space shuttle.
Hey, let’s do the math. The Moon in its orbit makes one revolution in about 30 days, or 12 degrees a day. At 400,000 km, that is 13,000 km per day, or 1100 per hour. Low earth orbit is 11 km/sec, which is about 40,000 km/hr. So we need about 1/40 the orbital retardation to achieve geostationary entry. Not hard.
Cover it in rock and let it burn as it enters the atmosphere.
Recover the fissile materials from the impact site.
No fancy doo-dahs needed, solid fuel rockets or perhaps a catapult on the moon.
Just send it. If it misses, so what. The earth is bombarded with space rock every day.
“Cover it in rock and let it burn as it enters the atmosphere.”
A long time ago I was speculating on what to do with millions of tons of asteroidal iron. The idea was to vapor deposit ship hulls for a future version of the Society for Creative Anachronism for people who want to reenact WWII. Coat them with foamed rock and let them enter the atmosphere over the Pacific at a shallow angle. Nothing like a 50,000-ton battleship supersonically skipping across the ocean.
Keith, now what would be a sight to behold. 😮
I imagine “parcels” from the moon arriving with a loud *thud* on the front “lawn” sand traps of the nukes.
Transmute elements into fissile material on the moon, cover them in rock, strap on a few boosters and send em back to earth as a great fireworks display. Recover the fissile raw materials from the impact site. Let’s say in the vicinity of some great desert area in the US known for its UFO associations.
No need for fickle space solar and energy beams to earth. Use the satellites to power the industrial processes on the moon instead.
” looking for solutions.” — First we need to define the problem: we have painted ourselves into a corner, and we have an urgent need to get out of the corner BEFORE the paint dries but WITHOUT getting ourselves wet.
Limits to Growth does not allow for a healthy Middle-class. Protests exist around the world and many, if not most are the result of declining standards of living. It’s degrow or go now.
Please expand, healthy physical, healthy economically, both?
Thanks,
Dennis L.
Boris Johnson just announced that talks with the EU are over and businesses need to prepare for no UK/EU trade deal. Discussions next week are cancelled. There are many who said he was just bluffing.
Good luck Boris ! (doesn’t make much difference in the end anyway)
A limited trade (tariff only) deal offers nothing really of value to the UK and I think we will rip up the withdrawal agreement as well.
I looked at the WSJ to see what it has to say. There is no article simply talking about the talks being over. Instead, there is an article called, Moody’s Cuts U.K.’s Credit Rating Further
It starts out
Yes, Downing St. is now saying that ‘talks are over’ and that we are headed for ‘no deal’, though no one is convinced by anything that they say any more. EU reckons that talks are still on for Monday and we will not have to wait long to find out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54566897
So much for Boris’ ‘oven ready deal’ with which he won the last UK GE. It would surely be the end of Boris if he extended the Brexit transition period beyond Dec. 31, after he won the GE with the slogan ‘get Brexit done’.
UK may be headed for WTO and tariffs, which would not be such a bad outcome, at least it would clearly enact the democratic decision of the referendum. Democracy must be done and be seen to be done. It would also ‘get Brexit done’ on which the GE was premised.
The economics of that outcome are arguable, though not an argument that I fancy this morning. Moody’s have clearly got their own opinion on that.
Tariffs have never been the issue rather it’s inspection of products entering and leaving the EU single market. There is neither the staff, procedures, nor facilities at ports to do this. There is no deal at present even being discussed which solves this.
No deal means huge tariffs, decimating car industry, farming and just-in-time manufacturing – and tariffs will hit food and drink imports from EU, averaging 18%. Border delays and disruptions will also lead to further costs that will be passed on to customers. UK can expect to export less to EU and to pay more for imports. Tariffs are a massive issue for both imports and exports.
Westminster has completely bodged Brexit and Scots are most unhappy about it. They voted against it in the first place. It is all the more reason for Scotland to quit UK and to develop its own relationships with the world, which is what 75% of Scots now want.
A new poll has found that 58% of Scots now support Scottish independence from the UK, the highest level ever recorded. It is the tenth successive poll this year to find majority support for independence. Independence polls were neck and neck throughout 2019 but that has changed.
Recent polls have found that younger generations overwhelmingly support independence and that persons who voted to stay in the UK in 2014 are moving in increasing numbers toward support. The feeling is that Scotland should make its own political decisions and that it can do better outside the UK.
SNP is set for its largest ever majority in the Scottish parliament in May 2021, and two-thirds of Scots think that there should then be an independence referendum. It would be untenable for Boris to deny such a clear democratic mandate.
Gail has explained the energetic basis of regional independence movements, as societies shed the complexity involved in centralisation in order to dissipate less energy – energy consumption per capita has fallen in UK for decades.
> Poll: Support for independence hits historic high of 58%
STV/Ipsos MORI poll finds record support for independence and puts the SNP on course for a Holyrood majority.
Support for independence has risen to an unprecedented 58% of Scots, according to a new poll.
The Ipsos MORI poll for STV News found just 42% back staying in the union when undecided voters are stripped out, with 58% in favour of a breakaway.
Including undecideds, 55% of people would vote Yes if there was an independence referendum tomorrow, 39% would vote No and 6% said they didn’t know.
It’s the biggest lead in a poll ever recorded for the pro-independence side.
The STV/Ipsos MORI survey also suggests the SNP is on course for a Holyrood majority in next year’s Scottish Parliament election, with 58% of likely voters planning to back the party in the constituency vote.
And should the SNP win a majority of seats next May, nearly two-thirds of Scots (64%) say the UK Government should permit a second independence referendum within the next five years.
Meanwhile, people overwhelmingly back Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister, with 72% saying they are satisfied with the job she is doing compared to 24% dissatisfied, giving her a net approval rating of +49.
The poll was conducted by Ipsos MORI between October 2 and October 9 and spoke by telephone to 1045 Scots….
According to the website Election Polling’s seat calculator, this result next May would see the SNP win 73 seats, a gain of ten, and four more than in the historic majority the party won under Alex Salmond in 2011, which paved the way for the first independence referendum.
The Scottish Conservatives, meanwhile, would remain the official opposition but be reduced by nine to 22 seats and Labour would fall to a historic low of 15 seats, down from 24 currently….
https://news.stv.tv/politics/poll-support-for-independence-hits-historic-high-of-58
The 64,000 dollar question is, which comes first: Scottish independence or collapse?
We get independence and then what? We celebrate in a world of unemployment, hunger, pestilence, and no-one is allowed to do what they like except for members of the security services / police, and senior politicians. And it’s downhill from there.
‘Cheer up, Brian’, Scotland may get to enjoy independence for a couple of decades, maybe even a few, before collapse sets in – no one knows the exact timescale or the exact path downward, and life goes on in the meantime. Enjoy BAU while it continues.
M, one way to look at it is that industrialisation was never going to go on forever, and some people must have always realised that from the simple finitude of fossil fuels, from the finitude of all things.
We always knew that all previous civilisations had come to an end, and it did not take that much imagination to foresee the same of ours. It was a simple matter of induction from precedents and of deduction from finitude, really.
Liberals and Marxists ran with the idea of ‘progress’, and even of the ‘perfectibility of society’, but there were always voices like Thomas Malthus who pointed out that there were always going to be limits to development.
And that ‘positive’ attitude served humanity well for a few centuries. It allowed millions, billions of people to live with an optimism for the future.
In retrospect, some persons may well ponder that we might have done things differently and stretched it out for a bit, but history is what it is and it had to happen that way otherwise it would have happened differently.
We spent fossil fuels in a concentrated manner that allowed a wild flourishing of human life, and who can really regret that? It was magnificent while it lasted.
It would all have been gone one day in any case, whether seven billion people lived all at once or over a longer period. So, it makes no real difference on that count.
Life is all about living with a positive attitude in the moment. Industrial civilisation was never going to last forever. We could have realised that 200 years ago, 100, 50, 20 or now – even so, one has to enjoy life while it lasts, however long one thinks that it will last.
That is the human condition in any case, life has its time, everyone knows that, and the art of life is to enjoy it nevertheless. The fall of civilisation is analogous to the finite human lifespan. Its finitude is no argument against it, rather it is the condition of everything that life affords.
So, whether Scots get to enjoy independence for 50 years, 30 or 20 before collapse sets in makes no real difference. They still have to live in the moment and to enjoy civilised life while it continues. Most of them have no inking of what is coming anyway, so it makes no difference to how they enjoy it in the meantime.
That is how life is and they may as well enjoy BUA, independence and all that it entails while they still can. No one can really do anything more. It will have its end in due time but we live with a view to life and not its end.
Life always has its disappointments but it is a part of maturity to learn how to cope with that. Everyone who ever lived had to learn how to cope with that. It is just the human condition again. So, ‘cheer up, look on the bright side’ is probably not that bad advice.
Human ‘dignity’ comes from coping, not from succeeding always and forever, which no one ever does.
To be able to foresee failure and even demise, even to expect it and to live cheerfully anyway is a great demand and most people accomplish it with great psychological strength and even gracefully. It is the ultimate ‘success’ in its own way.
Everyone is a stoic when it comes down to it, it is just the human condition. I ‘take my hat off’ in that regard to everyone who ever lived.
We had an elderly aunt of my husband living with us during the last two years of her life. Toward the end, she was in hospice care at our home. We were told to plan as many meaningful get-togethers and outings as we could, during what we knew would be her last days. We picked up her wheel chair and took her and the wheel chair (and oxygen tank) out to restaurants. She had COPD and heart issues, but her brain was in good shape.
Was she a smoker? We should not have to pay for smokers….but we do….I love how people try to paint everything black and white…I wish it was that simple but if you are a human on earth right now you are a burden…..
She was an unmarried lady who had lived in North Carolina nearly all her life. (North Carolina grows a huge amount of tobacco.) She was indeed a life-long smoker. When she started on oxygen, I took her cigarettes away from her. She was a very frequent visitor to the emergency room. I found myself taking her there on a regular basis. She usually didn’t need to remain in the hospital.
She had a master’s degree in biology, but she found she didn’t like teaching, so she worked in a low-level support role at a company selling electrical products.
Nice job.
Dennis L.
Thanks for that, Gail. It comes to us all in the end. I can only hope that I will be of some service to my parents as they age. They have certainly more than earned it. We have remained quite close emotionally, and they recently indicated that they will look to us for everyday assistance rather than to my siblings. It is just a part of life and it has to be done. Frankly it will be more of an honour than a duty.
Not that superficial concepts of ‘honour’ really come into it, which demeans the reality by making it ‘justified’ by some superficial aspect. I will act instinctively and intuitively. I thoroughly regret using that word and I certainly will not be motivated by it or by any other ‘words’.
“there were always voices like Thomas Malthus who pointed out that there were always going to be limits to development.” — Even Smith and Ricardo understood this, but today’s economists totally ignore it.
Lesson from Brexit is that you need a clear super majority say 70% for independence and with a straight majority in each region. You should also have a confirmation referendum once the final withdrawal agreement is available so everyone knows what they are getting.
Not really, democracy functions on a majority basis and it generally works pretty well. If Westminster bodged Brexit then that is its look out, and all the more reason for Scotland to go with a more functional parliament. Majoritarian democracy suits Scotland just fine.
If Westminster cannot cope with majority democracy, then that is all the more reason for independence. It will be for the Scottish parliament, elected by Scots, to set the terms of the Scottish independence referendum, not Westminster and not you.
Losers often would prefer to gerrymander the vote, cheat, but democracy does not work like that. You may just have to cope with that it will be the decision of the Scottish people and not your personal decision. You may have to cope with losing, which is part and parcel of democracy.
If Westminster then wants to abandon majoritarianism in its own jurisdiction then it is up to the people of rUK whether they want that. No Westminster government ever gets anywhere near 50% of the vote but they are free to try for 70% if they want. I cannot see them getting it though.
Many assume that Scotland is a single entity? It is not. Indeed, many people living in Scotland are not Scots and many outside are.
The referendum will be conducted on the basis of residency. Again, the terms of the referendum will be set by the Scottish government, elected by the Scottish people (residents of Scotland who have the right to vote in Scottish elections) and not by Westminster or by you.
Like I said, you may just have to cope with losing, it is part and parcel of democracy, and coping with disappointment is just a part of being an adult. It will be the democratic decision of the people of Scotland, and not your personal decision, neither will you get to gerrymander the vote in any way.
Aye, there’s more out than in. If it’s supposed to be a “national” vote, how are we supposed to define who are “the Scottish people” and who aren’t? Sean Connery should ge a vote, obviously. But how about the rest of the Scottish diaspora? There are 40 million of them around the world and there are more Scots in the US alone than there are in Bonny Scotland.
https://clancrawfordassoc.org/sites/default/files/th-3.jpeg
No one suggests that British ‘diaspora’ in USA, Canada, Australia, NZ etc should get to vote in British referendums, and there will be no gerrymandering of the Scottish referendum. It will conducted on the basis of Scottish residency and the usual right to vote in Scottish elections. You may just have to cope with that it will be the decision of the Scottish people (those resident in Scotland and with a right to vote there), and not yours. Get over it. Frankly this behaviour is embarrassing for the British.
Nothing for me to get over. I’m not Scottish and I—unlike you apparently—am not obsessed with the referreendum issue or with the issue of keeping the UK together or splitting it up further. I really don’t give a highlander’s curse about it. The whole thing bores me, to be frank.
As far as I’m concerned, you and the Scots, the English and the British can make your collective beds and then you can wallow in them. The greatest country in the world in its time, the UK has already gone to pot, and now the pot is cracking. Incidentally, most of my English friends have gone from being in favor of maintaining the Union a decade ago to hoping the Scots leave and rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall now. It’s sad but understandable given the constant stream of anti-English hate speech from all the usual agitators.
There is no need for nastiness. If you are not interested in the subject then do not get involved, no one is forcing you to.
Why should it be so much harder to leave than it is to join?
I doubt it. Scotland will probably use the vote as an excuse to say “give us more money and we’ll stay”. As Rudyard Kipling might have said: As long as you pay the Scotgeld, you’ll never be rid of the Scot.
People living in Scotland may very well decide how any vote on independence is carried out but the British people collectively will decide what form that independence takes.
You wish.
Perhaps Westminster would better apply itself to the ‘form’ of its own independence from the EU.
Another new poll out this week has indicated that a full three-quarters of Scots would support independence should it benefit the economy. Similar numbers also think that the Scottish parliament alone should determine the relationship of Scotland with the EU, and that the Scottish parliament should have full control over all matters that affect Scotland.
Clearly, campaigners for independence are pushing at an open door now. No more than a quarter of Scots have any dogmatic attachment to UK, and as Gail’ post about Moody’s below indicates, Unionists are going to find it harder to make an economic case for UK after Brexit. Scots are generally a pragmatic people with no real attachment to UK.
> New poll: 75% would back independence if convinced it would be good for economy
A NEW poll has found 75 per cent of Scots would back independence if they were convinced it would be good for the Scottish economy.
The poll, conducted by Survation for pro-independence campaign group Progress Scotland, also found 57% agreed that independence would be good for the Scottish economy in the long run.
Elsewhere, 70% agreed that control over all decisions affecting people in Scotland should be made by the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government.
And 74% agreed that decisions over Scotland’s relationship with the European Union should be made by Holyrood and the Scottish Government….
The findings are the latest to be released from a “super-sized” poll of 2,093 respondents conducted by Survation for Progress Scotland.
Scots were asked to agree or disagree with the statement “I would vote for independence if I was convinced that it would be good for the Scottish economy”.
Three-quarters (75%) of those who expressed an opinion agreed and 25% disagreed.
Findings from the same poll, published in the past week, also found more than a third of people who voted against independence in 2014 have changed their mind or are now undecided….
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18793379.new-poll-75-back-independence-convinced-good-economy/
Yawns!
Is your attention span spent or just your decorum? No faloorum?
It’s nothing to do with attention spans. It’s just that he’s not interest in your petty obsessions.
Who is interested?
Nobody at all.
Even the people who agree with what you say are bored with how often and how monotonously you you say it. It’s like sitting in a GP’s waiting room next to a hypocondriac who sounds off like an endless tape telling tales of their decades of suffering with athletes foot.
But that’s one of the virtues of free speech. Let a hundred flowers bloom!!
https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/m/maozedong/115705/maozedong1-2x.jpg
Again, there is no need for nastiness. If you are not interested in the subject then do not get involved, no one is forcing you to.
Gail, can you give us a quick wrap-up of what you discussed on Peak Prosperity with Art Berman and other industry oil experts? Is Chris Martenson going to allow you to make your video available?
Yes, Chris Martenson’s assistant Adam Taggart promised my a copy of the panel discussion video. I told him, when I asked about getting the copy, that I would not put it up until after Martenson’s conference, which is on October 24-25.
I thought the discussion went well. We know each other fairly well from Oil Drum days and from ASPO meetings. At the beginning, Chris said, “I will ask questions of a particular person, but be sure to jump in if you have something to add.” Also, Chris follows my writings to some extent, so he was directing questions to me, when he knew my view was different from Art’s and Richard’s.
A few points I made during the panel discussion:
–It isn’t the EROEI of a particular energy source that matters as much as the total quantity of net energy. In fact, the required quantity of net energy increases with the number of people. Each person requires 2,000 calories of food, plus additional energy to cook the food. The system also requires energy to pump the water that the person needs to drink. As water resources get depleted, the amount of energy required to obtain a given quantity of water tends to increase. So the total quantity of net energy required tends to rise, with population. This rising need happens at the same time that the EROEI of depleting energy resources falls.
–When world population falls, it will be the poor people, in poor countries, who are hit hardest.
–COVID restrictions will indirectly lead to population declines, especially in poor countries. (Richard Heinberg had earlier talked about how horrible it was that Trump hadn’t shut down the economy to prevent COVID’s spread.)
–The expected result of falling oil supply will likely be a troubled economy, as in the 1913 to 1945 period, rather than oil high prices. I don’t remember getting any argument from the others on this point.
Chris was going to create and record an introduction to the panel discussion, after the fact, when he know who said what.
One thing that annoyed me, but hopefully won’t bother those watching too much, was the fact that I had sunlight coming in through a palladium window, shining on me and my computer screen during the panel discussion.
Gail, what is a “palladium window”? A window with Pa coating?
It is a half circle window above a rectangular window, installed in a room with a high ceiling. I have my desk in the dining room, and this type of window is frequently used for decoration in dining rooms. There are shutters on the lower part of the window to provide shade, but if the sun comes in from the top (at a certain time of day and a certain time of year), a person is sort of stuck with the result.
Thanks. We used to have a house with those, but I never knew their name. I think we referred to them as “sky lights”, definitely to those recessed in the ceiling.
are we talking about a Palladian window (an architectural feature)
as opposed to a Palladium window, Glass intended to produce renewable energy?
Gail, it is actually called a “Palladian window”, since it was popularised hy Andrea Palladio in his “I quattro libri dell’architettura”, published in 1570. It is considered the most significant book on architecture since Marcus Vitruvius’ “De architectura”.
“–When world population falls, it will be the poor people, in poor countries, who are hit hardest. ”
That’s what Gregory Clark says about the period in the UK from about 1250 to 1800. The relatively wealthy had about twice as many surviving children as the poor. The last couple of pages of “Genetically Capitalist?” goes into how this selection applied to China and Japan.
Electric vehicles won’t be mainstream, says Honda CEO
https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/passenger-vehicle/cars/electric-vehicles-wont-be-mainstream-says-honda-ceo/72010071
Honda calls on government to support hybrids, reduce EV focus
Honda Europe senior vice president claims EVs are “not a silver bullet” and ICE engine should not be completely replaced by 2035
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/honda-calls-government-support-hybrids-reduce-ev-focus
I am glad to hear a car company come out and say this. There are several reasons for doing this:
(1) Materials for batteries are to some extent limited. We make much better use of available materials, in terms of oil use saved relative to battery use, with hybrid vehicles, rather than plug in hybrids.
(2) Plug in hybrids will always be a toy of the rich. They perhaps can be used in a specialty applications, such as electric vehicles in factories.
One issue is that total electricity production is fairly limited. Countries like Japan are already very short of electricity. Another issue is that most people don’t have garages equipped with electrical outlets to charge their vehicles in. Setting up charging stations and sitting around while vehicles are recharging will not be something people want to put up with. Prices of the cars have not come down enough, either.
“Plug in hybrids will always be a toy of the rich.”
Always a point estimate, I have driven a Camry hybrid for 13 years, 130K miles or so, same car, one replacement set of batteries $4K. The increased fuel economy seems to even out with the increased cost, there is peace of mind in knowing that should rationing come to gasoline sales one runs out later rather than sooner. Mine has been very reliable.
Mechanical observation: drive them 70-90mph and the battery runs down, the ICE cannot keep up, probably a maximum sustainable speed of about 70mph or a bit more. I only get around 32-33 mpg, can’t understand why, laughing quietly.
Dennis L.
The UK National grid is currently struggling to keep the lights on as there is little wind and no solar. Wind is generating 1GW from an installed capacity of 16GW.
Once the last of the coal fired stations close in the next three years we will really be in trouble. There is no way we can supply electricity to cars.
How will we power all those electric trucks? The folks at Argonne National Labs suggest small nuclear plants at every truck stop to make electric, no transmission lines needed.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/10/argonnes-developing-micro-nuclear-reactors-for-etruck-supercharging.html#more-167079
I am sure that there will be no security problem with all of this infrastructure. No one will need to look after them, in the long run either. Presumably the spent fuel just stays in place. Lots of crossed fingers.
Yes, security does seem to be an issue. The spent fuel will be picked up and brought to a central storage local where it will sit with no place to go, but the trucks will be running.
You and others here have made me a believer in things not going on very far as they are now. My solution, move production to space, to the moon, lasso an asteroid for metals, crash it into the moon, one more crater, who cares? Use nuclear exclusively and forget about the waste problem. All fossil fuel seems to be used to produce heat, start a continuous process, launch towards the sun, orbit, fusion heat, very clean. Have some undesirable waste, have it tag along, drop it off into the sun, puff. This almost has to be thermodynamically efficient, space is virtually(not quite) frictionless.
Save the earth, mess up the moon, most will never get close enough to complain. The game is up on earth, growth is over, more energy even if found cannot be radiated fast enough into space. Try something else, build a metaphorical pyramid or a cathedral, jobs, sense of purpose, all for the greater glory of mankind – you might note I do not see man as a scrug on the planet, it is ours, we found it, we own it.
Dennis L.
Nothing great seems to be built anymore. All the powerful people are only interested in building the biggest data centers, the biggest ghost cities, biggest yachts, biggest hotels… The wealth has driven us mad and has become a religion on its own. Maybe when people realize they can’t be wealthy anymore they will stop chasing it. And enjoy life more.
And yet those Easter Islanders kept building those moans until they physically couldn’t… They weren’t wealthy at all, ever, by modern standards. That points to humans always having been mad to some degree. So far, the MPP/MEPP is the only thing I have found that explains the “method” to our madness.
I think the Buffets/Gates/Ellisons, etc. really do enjoy life (as they know it, anyway). It’s been many decades that they’ve had enough money to do anything, conceivably: learn to play the violin, coach Little League, sit on the beach drinking rum drinks.. and yet they hang around with financiers and war criminals and wonks and lawyers and creeps like Epstein, living in Power-Point-Presentation/TED-Talk land. They choose to do that, so they must enjoy it.
After World War II, the GI bill provided a lot of benefits to veterans of World War II. They received low interest mortgages and stipends to pay for college or trade school. Many suburban housing projects were built.
The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System was started in 1956. A large amount of our electric power transmission lines seems to date back to the 1950s. Oil pipelines also seem to date back to about this same period. When there was a lot of cheap-to-produce oil, it was possible to do all of these things, without worrying about raising taxes to pay for them.
This is also about the time the civil rights movement began, with integration of schools and public transportation. The Medicare system, providing health care to those aged 65 and over, as well as to some disabled people, began in 1965.
Without a huge amount of very inexpensive to produce oil, it is hard to see how all this would have happened.
From the article: “When the rest stop is empty, the reactor produces power in the form of heat, which is transferred and stored in a separate tank of inert heat-transfer fluid. When trucks crowd the rest stop, the system taps that heated fluid to produce steam, generate electricity and recharge batteries.”
I’ll leave you to count the number of energy conversions in the above, and to sum the losses in such a system. Enough for now to say that this is totally insane. And if a runaway truck crashes into that micro nuclear reactor?
I think these people rely on there being civilization as a backdrop for their schemes which, as might be said in a courtroom, “assumes facts not in evidence”.
I imagine it sort of works on paper, if a person assumes an infinite supply of resources (including fossil fuels) and the price of the system doesn’t matter. Of course, if that is true, there would be no point in the system in the first place.
The trucks will be automatically driven by the sort of technology Elon Musk has perfected for Tesla cars. The system, run by an HAL 9000 computer, will be infallible and crashes into power reactors will be impossible.
I was talking to a truck computer the other day and asked it if it was really that safe, and the computer replied: “Let me put it this way, Mr. Groves.The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.”
The reactor section is underground. No concern for crashes.
Who cares about loses when the fuel source lasts 10 years and has a EROEI of 150 to1. Just like to the old days when 427 Chevy’s got 12 miles per gallon on $0.35 cents per gallon gasoline 🙂
“Should a Biden presidency prevail in the upcoming elections, my own experience tells me that our oil and gas industry will be facing regulatory headwinds that will far exceed the blow back I personally faced during President Obama’s time in office.
“As the owner of a frack company, this has me worried.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/A-Biden-Presidency-Could-End-The-US-Oil-Boom.html
“The vast majority, 85% of all oil and gas donations this election, have flowed on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump, other Republican candidates and conservative causes, according to data from campaign researcher the Center for Responsive Politics.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUKL1N2H30QE
Harry,
You do seem to favor the more liberal side of things, the headlines are consistently slanted, perhaps that is due to more headlines available in that direction.
This is an observation, not a criticism, but perhaps critical thinking; can’t we have fun with words when we want to?
A genuine thanks for your efforts,
Dennis L.
Dennis, I think I would go so far as to say that I am anti-political. The cut and thrust of competing political ideologies with all protagonists convinced of their moral superiority repels me.
But I’m afraid it is impossible to avoid a certain amount of political “slanting” when following the various strands of Gail’s diminishing returns story in the news. I hope readers know that I am posting articles to be understood in that context and not because I am endorsing their biases.
I will happily admit that I sometimes get riled up by what I see as mean-spirited generalisations about particular races and similar but that is not politically motivated.
And you are welcome.
I think, Harry, that you are doing us a great service that adds to the enjoyment of this blog, and I also think that it would be very difficult not to select a biased selection of news articles, simply because IMHO the pool of potential articles in the mainstream media has a set of strong overall biases to it.
In order to overcome this bias in the raw material, one would have to pass over a good many interesting articles on subjects of interest and consciously try to bias one’s selections in such a way as to compensate for the bias in the article pool.
And even if you could achieve that successfully, somebody would be bound to detect a bias in your selection. A person’s view of what is bias is determined at least partly by their perspective. Most people have difficulty adopting more than one perspective on a given subject, and people who are able to “walk around” a subject and view it from multiple perspectives are apt to be accused of intellectual inconsistency by the champions of the 2-dimensional world view who insist implicitly that there is only one correct vantage point for viewing any subject.
Unconscious and conscious biases—we’ve all got ’em. Our view of anything more complicated than a ball depends on where we are standing. But all in all, you are doing a grand job.
Thank you for those very kind and sensible words, Tim.
I might add that a huge part of the appeal of Gail’s analyses for me is that they in effect transcend politics.
I think low oil prices are already leading to the end of those doing fracking. I showed a chart with respect to the number of rigs in use for oil drilling. Natural gas drilling rigs are probably not down quite as much; I haven’t looked.
Legislation to stop drilling doesn’t make much difference if the business is already unprofitable. I expect that the elders will point out to Biden that there is a need to keep the lights on. Without natural gas, that won’t happen. And without fracking, there won’t be nearly enough natural gas.
So I am not as convinced as the article writer that this will really happen. Regardless of what people say before an election, TPTB usually explain the practical considerations when people are in office.
“European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Thursday said her organization would be prepared to impose further emergency measures to tackle the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/15/coronavirus-ecbs-lagarde-says-further-economic-stimulus-on-standby.html
“As China recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s central bank is more open to increasing loans to an already debt-heavy system than it is to cutting back.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/16/china-is-open-to-more-debt-to-support-its-economy.html
Nobody wants to see the whole system fall apart. Adding more debt looks like the approach that might work.
“As Wall Street banks reported quarterly results this week, investors wondered about the staying power of the trading bonanza that has floated profits, offsetting problems in traditional lending businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-banks-results-trading/wall-street-bank-trading-boom-does-little-to-assuage-concerns-about-lending-idUSKBN2711K6
“Coronavirus: Europe’s banks struggle to survive a second wave.
“Although the current crisis was not triggered by the financial sector, the fallout from a prolonged second wave is a bigger threat to banks than the eurozone debt crisis. The sector is preparing for a spike in bad loans.”
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-europes-banks-struggle-to-survive-a-second-wave/a-55269838
“Britain’s banks are not ready for negative interest rates, according to the chairman of NatWest.
““We’re not completely ready for it,” Howard Davies said. “There would be technical issues and many contractual issues.””
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/15/uk-banks-not-ready-negative-interest-rates-natwest-chairman
It is a question of how long the debt problem can be put off. A whole lot of buildings used as office buildings, restaurants, fitness centers and stores are no longer needed. There are also businesses that are not viable, which have other debt propping them up. And of course, there are a whole lot of renters who cannot pay their rent and mortgage holders who cannot pay their monthly payments. How long can these issues be hidden?
“World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart said the coronavirus pandemic is turning into a major economic crisis and warned of the possibility of a financial crisis emerging.
““This did not start as a financial crisis but it is morphing into a major economic crisis, with very serious financial consequences,” Reinhart said…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-16/carmen-reinhart-sees-risk-financial-crisis-emerges-from-pandemic
““The COVID-19 pandemic could be a major resilience test for the global financial system,” IMF economists wrote in the Global Financial Stability Report.
““Triggers such as new virus outbreaks, policy missteps, or other shocks could interact with pre existing vulnerabilities and tip the economy into a more adverse scenario.””
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-pandemic-could-pose-major-resilience-test-for-global-financial-system-imf-says-11602599401
According to the Bloomberg article, China is a big lender to the poor countries of the world, but it is not participating fully in the plan to delay debt repayment.
Many people see China as being particularly ruthless in how it uses foreign debt to amass and control land. So they might not see much advantage in slowing down debt repayments?
surely the oldest trick in the book is to take the farm as collateral, knowing it can never be redeemed?
I think you are right.
The economy won’t completely collapse until the amount of oil available begins to decline a lot, even if the governments of the rich countries throw trillions of dollars at trying to produce it, but still can’t slow the decline in oil production. That might be another 30 years down the road.
The billionaires who run the world aren’t stupid. They won’t sit around and watch the world melt down, while a lot of hydrocarbons are still able to be produced. Only after the oil, gas, and yes even coal become so scarce, that no amount of effort can produce enough of them to keep the economy afloat, will the collapse occur. By then, fusion might be perfected.
Don’t be shocked if Russia finds vast amounts of natural gas on their Arctic continental shelf as the Arctic Ocean ice becomes less of a restraint on drilling. CNG and LNG can substitute for oil to run engines. When the lights start going off, and when people have to wait in line for rationed gasoline, most people will forget about climate change really fast.
We are dealing with a self-organizing system that works very strangely. It is tempting to think that we are in charge and can change things to work in the way that we want them to, but this is not really the case.
Unhappy people are likely to overthrow governments, for example. Countries will vote to leave the EU. Changes will happen, without anyone expecting them.
Thirty years? I would be shocked if obvious and steep decline can be put off that long. In thirty years, I expect to be up to our eyeballs in crisis–falling oil, falling coal, falling uranium, probably falling nat gas and falling copper supplies. I expect a lot of peaks to cluster. The “fracking revolution” (fracking Indian summer) just guaranteed the peaks would cluster a little closer. Why to politicians now talk about this publicly like they did in the 1970s? I think because they have no idea what to do about it this time. Everything we know how to do has already been tried.
“Refugees cling to hope of resettlement, even as world slams doors.
“Fewer refugees than ever before are likely to be resettled in 2020 even with the number in need at record levels.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/16/refugees-cling-to-hope-of-resettlement-even-as-doors-close
“Despite COVID-19, new wave of Venezuelan migrants heads to Colombia.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-venezuela-migrants/despite-covid-19-new-wave-of-venezuelan-migrants-heads-to-colombia-idUKKBN2702J4
“Central Americans edge north as pandemic spurs economic collapse…”
““People migrate because of extreme poverty and violence,” said Ismael Zepeda, a researcher at the Tegucigalpa-based think tank Foro Social de la Deuda Externa de Honduras. “With the economic contraction, poverty is becoming more profound.””
https://uk.reuters.com/article/usa-immigration-centralamerica/central-americans-edge-north-as-pandemic-spurs-economic-collapse-idINL4N2H44X9
“Greece installed two electronic devices that can produce strong sound waves that cause deafness in the area bordering Turkey to prevent possible refugee waves entering the country.”
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/greece-fortifies-border-security-against-refugees/2008011
The immigrant story is very much a part of the “not enough resources to go around” story. As it goes on, I expect that there will be more and more local immigrants, as people choose to move to more generous states for benefits, such as Massachusetts. In theory, people can still move around within the European Union, but this will be more restricted as well. And we will have more countries (UK and Spain come to mind) breaking into discrete parts, with the more well off wanting to isolate themselves from those draining resources.
Not surprisingly the BBC’s Radio 4 news from 7 – 7:30 am this morning was entirely about Covid. One item that was discussed was a cartoon, I did not catch in which publication, that showed Trump turning into a chimpanzee because he had taken a sars-cov-2 vaccine.
The journalist went on what can only be described as a rant, describing the idea that vaccines come from chimps as ‘dangerous’ and ‘ridiculous’ (presumably on the basis that if people believed this, they would not take the vaccine). Then she introduced a professor from the University of Oxford, and invited him to, once and for all, ‘get rid of this myth that sars-cov-2 vaccines come from monkeys’.
To which the professor responded, after explaining that chimps are not monkeys, that some viruses that are being tested as vaccines are cold viruses – from chimpanzees.
‘Dangerous’ and ‘ridiculous’ – presumably this journalist will not be taking any sars-cov-2 vaccines.
Strange!
Of course, with all of this distancing from other people, our exposure to the common cold virus is going down. If there is cross immunity coming from having exposure to the common cold, this will be lost from the social distancing requirements.
That is a real conundrum, for us as individuals; we are meant to live in the wild, we have evolved to live with nature and nature includes viruses and bacteria. Nature does not build the best, it builds what works, it discards errors in the process of discovering what works; this is consistent with slow mutations when things are working.
Not being with other humans of a diverse variety, limiting one’s exposure seems to suck socially; do oldsters die of loneliness before they die of Covid’s effect whatever that is?
Have too many people become afraid to live? Life is pain, it is suffering and it is also a beautiful world. Some seem to think we close it down, there may be some social benefits to that in irony; all the naysayers lose an audience.
As always, it is a point estimate, I don’t get nor have I ever gotten flu shots; I worked for years in a public health setting and saw health histories on a daily basis, many communicable diseases, no flu so far. Death is part of life and even in birth we are not around at the beginning to voice an opinion on our very existence.
Dennis L.
>>Have too many people become afraid to live?
That is a pretty good way of summarising the situation. I’ve never had a flu jab either, and wouldn’t consider having one.
Thank you, Dennis. Excellent comment. The politicians and public health officials capitalized on a population in which vocal snowflakes dominate the conversation. I agree that life is pain and suffering; it is also risk, a concept that seems foreign to so many nowadays.
There’s no proven vaccine against snowflakery among young people, but the lucky ones grow out of it in time and become immune to further attacks, while in those who can’t quite shake it off it eventually tapers into a milder aliment— chronic normiesm. 🙂
Hehe …
“consistent with slow mutations” — mutations are not slow. For example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1461236/
The average mutation rate was estimated to be approximately 2.5 x 10(-8) mutations per nucleotide site or 175 mutations per diploid genome per generation.
Of course. The only sure defence against the virus is herd immunity and the consequently elevated immune systems of most of the population. And it is well known that the immune system learns from one virus how to respond to another.
But the medical profession continue to recommend extreme social distancing because, as usual, they are treating the disease rather than the patient. And so the death toll inexorably rises.
Death toll will be much higher if the hospitals overflow (as they did earlier in some locales when this outbreak first spread) in a “let ‘er rip” scenario.
Minority, this system works because we are chimpanzees. The genetic difference between the common chimpanzee (pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (pan paniscus) is larger than the difference between them and us. Something we prefer to forget. Our physiological differences are due to neoteny (hereditary) and adaptation (the savannah).
” The genetic difference”
Do you have a URL for this? Not saying you are wrong, but this does not feel right. As I recall, the split between the two chimps was something like 2 million years, and the separation between chimps and humans is around 7 million.
I meant “you Robert” not “you Keith” have that backwards.
I am pretty sure you have that backwards.
I meant pretty sure Robert, not Keith, as it backwards.
I agree entirely, we should be very concerned about low oil prices. It seems to be off the general public’s radar.
Low oil prices have been around for a while now. At least in the UK, the biggest payers into pension funds have been oil companies, in particular, BP and Shell, and they are struggling to maintain a profit. The writing is on the wall for pension funds, and yet any news on that front is almost non-existent, for now. I am a member of a university pension fund and they continue to issue statements as though there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about.
At least in the US, rules about how pension plans are valued are designed to keep concern about the plans very low. Averaging of interest rates goes back very far, to keep the interest rates expected in the future as high as possible. I imagine other assumptions are on the optimistic side, as well, such as how many will be contributing to the fund in the future.
Gail, you are correct. US private pension plans come in two flavours: defined contribution and defined benefit. In the former, today’s pensions are paid by today’s workers, so the industry published absurdly optimistic forecasts as to how many workers will be employed in 10, 20, 30 … years. The same is true in the public sector: https://eu.ldnews.com/story/opinion/2018/05/16/pennsylvanias-looming-pension-crisis/615097002/
Defined benefit pensions were supposed to be paid from investments that would grow during the pensioners working life. Again, it was common to estimate 7% or even 8% annual growth, which of course was largely fantasy and is now history.
Samuel Smiles again had it right: the bedrock of prosperity is individual savings.
Here’s one for ‘Oh dear’, starring a Scot who is world famous in England.
Apparently, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is in its infancy.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/
Here perhaps is one example of its products:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/28/new-super-enzyme-eats-plastic-bottles-six-times-faster
So, AI and quantum computing too? Could such science develop new materials that do not need to be mined in bulk from the ravaged earth? One lives in hope.
Infinite Energy, But Not For The Masses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1db-UqlBa8M
But surely the capitalists would prefer to sell us energy that costs, rather than allow us to glimpse free and infinite energy. And that way, the military-industrial complex gets to play the war games it loves so much.
Beyond that, what else could people do with infinite free energy? Use it to make terrible weapons, presumably. So on the basis of not encouraging terrorists, the genie would not be let out of the bottle.
new materials?
I suspect that will take lots more energy than just using the materials that have been easily found on the surface of the Earth or just below.
like wood, which is freely available in many places, and was “manufactured” without any human-added energy.
“new materials?”
The most useful structural material is carbon. A couple of decades back, I predicted the real carbon crisis “the real carbon dioxide crisis will be when there is too little from people taking carbon (the strongest engineering material) out of the air to build houses, roads, tunnels through the mantle, industrial works, and spacecraft in large numbers.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120412082944/http://www.hackcanada.com/blackcrawl/elctrnic/megascal.txt
This requires nanotechnology, something which I expect to come along by mid-century.
Keth; Calculate the energy required to take co2 from the atmosphere and create a cubic meter of carbon fiber. As you well know just because atoms exist does not mean they are in a usable form. Entropy dictates that once hydrocarbons are consumed the energy required to reassemble them is extreme. It is perhaps crazy that we burn hydrocarbons as they are the building blocks for so much and the form of the hydrocabon so versatile in its uses and non manufacturable due to energy requirements. Natural resources are not created by thinking about them. If you reply that there will be infinite energy from power satellites I am going to vomit.
you really must stop pointing out the obvious
it is against the religious doctrine of the wish-scientists, wish- economists and wish -politicians.
The thought-police will come looking for you one day.
The thought police dont care about a occasional thought criminal because no one listens to or believes anything contrary to “the religious doctrine of the wish-scientists, wish- economists and wish -politicians.” Well phrased i must say. We gather here on this tiny blog trying to determine the truth and NO ONE CARES. I consider Gails work the most pivotal of our era yet NO ONE CARES. Its horrible because the truth is denied and the young people of our tribe will suffer. Its beautiful because we can discuss all topics openly.
“One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.”
George Orwell
>>>>>“the real carbon dioxide crisis will be when there is too little from people taking carbon (the strongest engineering material) out of the air to build houses, roads, tunnels through the mantle, industrial works, and spacecraft in large numbers.<<<<<<
Forgive me HK—I am writing this comment in a hurry. The neighbours found me rolling on the lawn outside, cackling with insane laughter and, caring folks that they are—sent for the men in white coats to take me to a place of safety.
Plastic eating bugs! The protagonists of an episode of the BBC series “Doomwatch”. Called “The Plastic Eaters”, and broadcast on 9 February 1970. Premise: the bugs escape, and start eating all the world’s plastic, starting with an aeroplane, which crashes. Chaos ensues.
‘the bugs escape, and start eating all the world’s plastic’
But surely Nigel Farage’s prosthetic testicle would be safe?!
Recently, some plastic-eating bacteria were discovered to have evolved naturally. I always figured they would, but I thought it might take millions of years for the right mutations. Sometimes evolution works fast.
Some speculate that the Muskianic spinoff in tunneling-boring technology is not only about the lower cost small diameter tunnel transportation with robotaxis under existing cities but also could play some role in precision targeted mining of raw ores, again with higher degree of automation..
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a “digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.”
The big deal is keeping electricity operating. California is a case study of what goes wrong when an economy tries to depend on renewables. Lots of long distance transmission lines that need to be maintained that tend to cause fires, for example. Not enough electricity produced locally, so a need to import electricity from elsewhere, if it is available. A need for very much higher charges for electricity than are currently being made, if the system is to go on. A major exodus of people from the state (especially the San Francisco area) because of the problems California has.
I wonder how long it will be before other states will put up barriers to people from California moving in? Can California be the center of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? I don’t think so.
thanks for the new article Gail and Senecas Cliff definitely is coming but hopefully not just yet maybe the elders will come to their senses and deal with the real problem so far their introduction of the virus and lockdowns which has resulted in dwindling economic activity may forestall the cliff for a lot longer and who knows what other surprises they have in store for us . https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/gc33hi/10yearold_document_by_rockefeller_foundation/
I still have plenty of good food, a cool house in summer and a warm house in winter, clean cold water and hot water when desired, great transportation (my car!), and excellent arts and information resources.
please thank all the elders for me.
You are right. It is bizarre the amount of planning that seems to have gone into a pandemic response like the one we are seeing, starting back in 2010. There was also the planning session in late 2019. They really had nothing to do with controlling the infection. They were more aimed at controlling population growth and use of resources.
“maybe the elders will come to their senses and deal with the real problem” — You don’t understand. The elders are not in control. They would love to rush in and play hero to an adoring populace, but they can’t. Geology, math, and other natural factors are in the driver’s seat. It’s not 1933 or 1961 or 1981. Not this time.
“people are always looking for solutions.”
True. In the last couple of months, I have seen two proposed steel mills that propose to use PV. One of them is in Pueblo, Colorado, and is being set up to make railroad rails. The other is in Finland or Norway
I have been following converting renewable electricity to hydrocarbons. PV in the mid-east gets down to as little as 1.35 cents per kWh. Power from space can get down to 1.5 cents per kWh. The cost to pull CO2 out of the air and make hydrogen out of water for either of these sources will make synthetic fuel for around $60/bbl. Electric vehicle batteries look like they will considerably reduce the need for hydrocarbons.
Keith,
You have thought about this problem for a long time. Try putting industrial processes in space, leave all the pollution there. Radiating all that energy on to earth will not work, the earth cannot radiate it all back.
Not being disagreeable, we have covered all the obvious solutions here and concluded they do not work, there is nothing left to lose by thinking outside the box.
Follow the money and one generally gets a good answer. Big money is invested in space, there is renewed interest in the moon. If radiation is an issue, dig a hole, beats trying to shield a space craft.
There is always an answer.
Dennis L.
“You have thought about this problem for a long time”
Off and on since 1975 when Dr. O’Neill first merged power satellites and space colonies.
“we have covered all the obvious solutions here and concluded they do not work,”
I have seen a fair amount of handwaving, but I have never seen an engineering analysis on OFW as to why an “obvious solution” will not work. Engineers take such things as a challenge.
Attempted to find the analysis of economic growth, growth in energy over the past 200 years and what it would mean for the next 200 years. It seems to me that the earth’s surface would heat to about 200 degrees F.
I am lazy, my first guess and it is a guess is move manufacturing to the moon for basic materials, mine them, drop an asteroid, whatever and use nuclear to refine the raw materials. Drop end products on to the earth, or build an elevator which does not need to accelerate objects into orbit, drop them at a “controlled” rate. Need more physics than I have to look at that idea.
We have beaten all the conventional ideas to death on OFW, I am willing to concede they won’t work. Your idea of beaming power from space and continued power growth seems to run into the limits of getting rid of that energy once it is here. My mantra is “pollute the moon” no one will ever know and in person inspection will be a challenge. I suppose somewhat sarcastic, but realistic.
At first I thought mine the moon, but asteroids are already up there, find the desirable ones, nudge them, crash them into the moon, part of the milling process for processing is done for you.
It really comes down to basic energy calculations. The ores on earth are requiring every greater energy inputs, use the gravity well, use the energy of mining ores to nudge an asteroid into the moon, collect, refine and ship.
Dennis L.
great stuff
moon mining/asteroid mining
make goods—TVs, cars, Furniture, bricks, cement, planes—Ive run out of ideas
assemble
ship back to earth
earthpeople wait in line to collect and use. (Amazon space) You saw it here first folks!!!!
oops
use implies energy again====,
TV–energy
New car–energy
plane?—energy
tyres?—energy
8 bn people awaiting eagerly for development of engineering systems as yet uninvented, so they can utilise products for which they will have no means to use.
Why am I losing the will to live?
“past 200 years and what it would mean for the next 200 years”
Google “singularity” vinge.
There was an industrial revolution that changed the world. It seems likely that the singularity Vinge talks about will change the world even more than the industrial revolution. The earth heating to 200 F in 200 years is really unlikely
Vinge and Kurzweil have watched too many Star Trek reruns. Here are some quotes I found from physicist Geoffrey West’s book _Scale_:
https://leadershipmarketingandeverything.com/2018/04/01/book-report-scale/
p31, summarizing the ramifications of scaling laws for cities, and the unfortunate likelihood of a finite time singularity (note that this phenomenon is different from a Malthusian collapse): “In a nutshell, the problem is that the theory also predicts that unbounded growth cannot be sustained without having either infinite resources or inducing major paradigm shifts that ‘reset’ the clock before potential collapse occurs.”
p31, with another serious catch…we can put off the finite time singularity with innovations, but, “Theory dictates that such discoveries must occur at an increasingly accelerating pace; the time between successive innovations must systematically and inextricably get shorter and shorter.”
p32, with the kicker: “This is clearly not sustainable, potentially leading to the collapse of the entire urbanized socioeconomic fabric.”
p414 expands on the inconvenient problem of a finite time singularity, and distinguishes it from a Malthusian collapse: “Because of the presence of a finite time singularity resulting from superlinear scaling, this scenario is categorically different from that of Malthus. If growth were purely exponential as assumed by Malthusians, neo-Malthusians, their followers, and critics, then the production of energy, resources, and food could at least in principle keep up with exponential expansion because all of the relevant characteristics of the economy or city remain finite, even if they continue to increase in size and become very large. This cannot be achieved if you are growing superexponentially and approaching a finite time singularity. In this scenario demand gets progressively larger and larger, eventually becoming infinite within a finite period of time.”
You can also find some lectures by West on youtube. Please note too that being “different” from a “Malthusian collapse” is not in this case “better” than.
the industrial revolution (in the 1700s) was in fact just the discovery of the means by which we could burn through more fuel at a faster rate.
https://extranewsfeed.com/the-day-that-made-your-life-possible-42f6a56c0705
btw HK—I watched a sci fi movie on TV last night:
‘Interstellar”
—normally I would be zedding after the first 10 minutes, but this one had a particularly clever story line even if it was all hokum. Entertaining though..
Interesting because they used those ‘cylinder’ thingies in space you’ve mentioned in the past.
They skipped over the bit about making them, which was a pity.
Ah, and here we are again.
The myopia of the ordinary.
Don’t you see?
You ARE already living in fantasy land compared with a man from medieval times. Not to speak about a bronze or Stone Age man.
FF’s were uneconomical and totally irrelevant for mankind for the better part, if not effectively 99.999 percent of human existence.
The same with electricity.
The same with the microprocessor.
The same with the Internet.
The same with highly automated production.
And the list goes on.
But for the blindingly obvious myopia is the default.
There is always a answer. Sometimes its no.
How do you plan to deal with the intermittency problem of solar in your factories? Do you plan to use batteries to store electricity for when the sun is not available, or balance with fossil fuel energy? Will the manufacturing plants operate all year, or only in the summer?
The plants dont need to actually function. They serve to get politicians elected by supposedly offering solutions. More money lended debt injection into economy via jobs on a boondoggle. The steel coming out of the plant would cost many multiples of steel coming out portugal, spain, or china. Not that any steel would ever come out of it. ghost cities.
LOL! There is actually a little truth to your answer. Anything that provides an excuse for more debt to the economy, and more jobs thanks to this debt, is actually helpful, whether or not the purpose of the debt is actually helpful. This is why Japan and China build unneeded roads. Any kind of grant to study the feasibility of some project is likely to hire more workers, and thus to be helpful.
“…whether or not the purpose of the debt is actually helpful. ” But with a little bit of luck the purpose of the debt would be quite helpful. After all, stupidity does kill when taken too far.
It could perhaps work. Steel production relies more on the insulation of the foundry than the energy itself. You place energy into the foundry as heat and it cant escape. The DC from the panels could pour heat into the foundry. If the heat loss is minimal due to extreme insulation It wouldnt matter that it was daytime only. The storage would not be electrical energy stored in batteries but heat stored in the thermal mass of the foundry steel. All foundries use electrical energy not combustion to provide the thermal energy. The source of the energy could be PV DC electric. The losses due to intermittent energy would be compensated by the EROI of PV. Lets just say hypothetically the EROI of PV is 8 without batteries. It actually could be viable. The foundry would have to be insulated to a extreme but thats how they work anyway. Whether there is actual demand for the steel is another matter. Conceivably the project could even pay for itself from both a EROI and $ perspective over the life of the plant although i find that doubtful. The premise of the plant itself is not completely irrational however.
I am more concerned about winter and prolonged cloudy periods than the overnight issue. Norway, especially will not be getting much solar energy in winter.
“How do you plan to deal with the intermittency problem of solar in your factories? Do you plan to use batteries to store electricity for when the sun is not available, or balance with fossil fuel energy? Will the manufacturing plants operate all year, or only in the summer?”
I have not read the engineering and financial analysis soi I don’t know. But the consequences are fairly obvious. The cost of steel is the material (mostly scrap), labor, energy, and the capital charge for the plant. Assuming the other costs are about the same, the reduced production from using intermittent renewable energy will be a factor of 4 to 5. But especially for old plants like the one at Pueblo, the capital investment is mostly paid off.
Guessing that the capital cost is around ten percent, the cost of renewable steel might go up by around 15%
There is enough oil and gas for everyone for many decades. A single barrel oil > 4 years of human labour. Does 4 years of human labor anywhere in the world cost $40?
Renewables (except hydro) cannot match hydrocarbons for too many reasons. If they were so much better every company, house, cat and dog would have converted already leaving hydrocarbons in the dust. Like moving from DVDs to Netflix.
Everyone wants a greener world but as-is that push is just a higher rent extraction for energy while decreasing resiliency. If you really want to rush into a green world you better take stock of poster boy California – embrace rolling brownouts while hoping to charge your electric vehicle tonight to get the kid to the doctor tomorrow all with a much smaller bank account.
How did the USA and Canada realize their exuberance from the first settlers until the amazing cross nation buildout and unprecedented wealth creation through the roaring 1920s when the population did not have access to and utilize credit credit, and, effectively paid no personal income taxes like they do today?
There isn’t an energy problem, there is a debt and tax problem.
There might be enough oil and gas for many decades, if we could get the price high enough. Our problem is that we can’t get the price high enough. I am not sure that there is a work-around for this issue. If not, production of oil, coal and natural gas could all fall quite steeply. Ugo Bardi talks about the fall followinga Seneca Curve. Seneca, long ago, said something like, “The way to gain in slow, but collapse comes quickly.”
Almost every other industry goes through boom and bust, just because energy is going through another bust of many doesn’t mean it is falling off a Seneca cliff. They talked about peak oil 50 years ago in USA and where are we today? A key pillar to that theory is the assumption of starting with the best opportunities and finish with the worst but that is not the shale story at all.
The innovation in shale is mind boggling and turns that pillar on its head. For example for a decade many producers punched holes in the Montney and got poor production. The worst. Then one producer identified a unique way to realize bountiful extraction and now everyone has land in the Montney.
Huff and puff is just getting started, estimates are one can get about the same return as when the well was virgin. But this second time no cost for both drilling and building most of the surface infrastructure. Imagine going back to existing wells and applying huff n puff.
Since producers are only getting a small fraction of what is there, then any additional tiny increase in recovery makes a huge difference. The innovation with shale as a rock is in its infancy.
The list goes on.
This changes the price has to rise theory.
Renewables are the one in potential danger of a Seneca cliff because first of their reliance on oil and gas just to get off the ground and maintain viability. That’s compounded with all the rare minerals with horrid environmental issues, then silver which appears to be reaching peak production and then the inability to recycle lithium batteries and wind mill arms. The list goes on.
Based on your break even price chart most producers around the world should be bankrupt since the oil price collapse in early 2015, why not? That’s almost 6 years now. Globally not just USA. Oil will be at the 2020 range for coming years and production will still happen, the strong hands will take over the weak hands. Just like in every other industry that goes through cycles. Lower prices will also make the green push all the harder.
Oil and gas are the economy.
Renewables have their place but they are unfortunately proving their own sustainability and resilience issues already.
thanks for your mentioning “Huff and Puff”. I’d never heard of it before and it looks interesting.
https://geomarkresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/GeoMark-Unconv-Huff-and-Puff-Study-Proposal_1-Jan-2018.pdf
“Current oil production techniques for unconventionals are often estimated to recover just 5-7% of inplace oil using today’s technology. In response, a number of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques are being considered to boost this percentage and improve ultimate recoveries. One of the most promising techniques is “Huff and Puff” cyclic gas injection.
In the Huff & Puff technique separator gas from a nearby well or gas installation is injected (the Huff phase) into a depleted or partially depleted oil well at a high enough pressure to achieve miscibility. During the following soak period the miscible gas spreads through the formation, swelling the oil volume and decreasing its viscosity. After the soaking period, the well is put back on production (the Puff phase) with an expected increase in production rate due to the higher reservoir pressure and lower oil viscosity. The separated gas can then be sold, or reinjected in another well to initiate a new Huff & Puff sequence. This process can be repeated as long a commercial quantities of liquids are extracted from each Huff and Puff cycle. “
I noticed this proposal relates to oil, rather than just natural gas, which is good. We don’t recover much of the oil now. Getting the percentage up would help a lot. I didn’t find a date on this PDF, so I couldn’t tell how recent this is.
I would never rule out the possibility of technological innovation helping. Of course, if may not help enough, soon enough, to fix our problems.
The admonition 1s from Seneca’s “Ad Lucilium epistolae morales”, No 91 if memory serves.
“Wealth creation” is nothing more than maximum power principle. Those that used the power of fossil fuels were able to provide value many times in excess of their potential without doing so. The coolaid your drinking , taxes are keeping u from infinite wealth is. the counterpart to the oligarchs are keeping u from infinite wealth coolaid. Coke or Pepsi. They both rot your teeth and taste fantastic.
Jim: “There is enough oil and gas for everyone for many decades. A single barrel oil > 4 years of human labour. Does 4 years of human labor anywhere in the world cost $40?”
Gail: “There might be enough oil and gas for many decades, if we could get the price high enough. Our problem is that we can’t get the price high enough. I am not sure that there is a work-around for this issue.”
I think there is a simple work-around, but I am not sure if it will be enacted in time.
in the case of our USA, it is government takeover of the FF industry, which eliminates the production price and profit issues.
then, the real economic benefit, which Jim correctly describes, could continue for a while longer, though “many decades” is doubtful.
I think we will see just such things. We are already experiencing that states are taking over more and more corporations (e.g. from aviation) and that we are sliding more and more into the planned economy. The only problem is that the state is usually a bad entrepreneur and inefficiency will increase.
Nationalizing oil companies may help for a while, just as printing money may help for a while, but it still doesn’t get around the physical problems.
Your prescription might work for the US, but I’m skeptical that the energy equation and the debt equation can be kept in longer term balance. But the OPEC countries are in a hopeless situation, because their major source of revenue is oil taxes. If the oil cannot be sold at (extraction cost plus huge tax) their economies will simply collapse. And since they have to import almost everything, including labour, the countries will then collapse. But be of good cheer, the price of used camels will soar.
I see taxes as a way of transferring surplus energy to the broader economy. Dividends to shareholders do this as well, but taxes are essential. They are what tend to keep the need for taxes on other parts of the economy low. You can see this in historical tax levels in states with significant fossil fuel resources, such as Alaska and Oklahoma. But it also works as the federal level. Of course, for oil exporting countries, these taxes are absolutely essential.
Added debt is a way of temporarily hiding the fact that not enough energy is really available. Add ever more debt leads to debt bubbles that pop. I am afraid we are headed for a popping debt bubble. Governments will try to hide this for as long as possible, however, by creating as much money as they can.
So what we need then is the magical unlimited power of fusion. Unfortunately fusion has been only 25 years away for the last 50. Looks like the brown stuff will hit the fan in the not too distant future, or maybe it already has?
It seems like problems hit different parts of the world at a little different times. Poor people everywhere are having problems now. Venezuela has had a particularly difficult time with oil extraction. It also made the mistake of pre-selling some of its reserves in the ground to the Chinese. Using this money, he raised the standard of living of the people, but of course, that cannot really last.
The “closed nuclear cycle” has been already solved in the combo of fuel reprocessing facilities, breeder + conventional NPPs, the Russians have it running on industrial scale. But is it really going to scale up with still readily available access to coal mines and natgas fields?
Most likely the best midterm gain for the buck are these Chinese passively cooled arrays of coal power plants in W-deserts, it’s cooled like computer processors – heat sink with liquid metal loop or something..
ps the Northern Kim ran a mil parade just few days ago showing a new “fat” missile, most likely MIRVs capable (swarm of warheads), so the club of top players got bigger and chances “everybody” in every systemic region of the globe might eventually receive blast from such weapon (although smallish size) has risen significantly aka you can’t even hide into a cabin in the woods anymore lolz..
Yes,
The nukes will come online en masse once the essential production capability and capacity is threatened by FF depletion.
The last thing stuffed into those behemoths will be those fancy MIRV warheads.
Expect rolling blackouts for the hoi-polloi in the death traps (cities).
But not quite yet.
https://thequadreport.com/fusion-energy-fantasy/
“The End Of Oil? Battle Lines Drawn As Industry Grapples With Energy’s Future”
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/15/923592572/the-end-of-oil-battle-lines-drawn-as-industry-grapples-with-energys-future?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=nprtopicsbusiness
Oil companies can see that oil prices are chronically too low. They can also see that with subsidies, it is possible to make wind and solar. So they talk about transitioning to renewables. This adds to the credibility of the Green narrative.
Of course, subsidies for renewables would disappear without fossil fuels. The renewables cannot possibly stand on their own. With subsidies and government guarantees, renewables do generate jobs, so that they look good for now.
Yes all on the bandwagon
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Fuel-Cells/The-Hydrogen-Boom-Will-Provide-A-200B-Boost-To-Wind-And-Solar-Energy.html
“The renewables cannot possibly stand on their own.”
I would like to see a conference on this subject. I can’t think of a renewable project that requires fossil fuels. For example, we could use electric trucks to maintain wind turbines and the electric grid.
I agree.
Renewables can stand on their own.
in this scenario, the world economy would be perhaps 99% smaller than it was with FF in 2019, but so what?
“I can’t think of a renewable project that requires fossil fuels.”
a lot of solar panels use glass melt from coal-fired power plants, in China for example. wind turbines are soaking in fossil fuel, like in the hydraulic cranes and the trucks that position and get them out there, in the plastics used in their construction.
“a lot of solar panels use glass melt from coal-fired power plants, in China for example. wind turbines are soaking in fossil fuel, like in the hydraulic cranes and the trucks that position and get them out there, in the plastics used in their construction.”
If you asked a bunch of engineers to melt glass with PV, the engineers would just do it. The amount of energy involved in setting up a wind turbine, even if you count all the materials in the trucks is an insignificant fraction of what a wind turbine produced over its life.
Try mining copper or cobalt with just electricity. Or try running industrial farming with electricity to feed the electric-truck drivers and the electric wind-turbine mechanics… It is not do-able now, nor will it ever be.
hkh: “I can’t think of a renewable project that requires fossil fuels. For example, we could use electric trucks to maintain wind turbines and the electric grid.”
So, you are proposing that roads no longer be made of asphalt, that tires be made of -what? -hand-collected natural rubber? .. that internal vehicle fixtures be made of -wood? -leather? rather than plastic? That gaskets and insulation be made of -organic straw? -compressed yak hair? That lubricants be supplied by.. [was going to say something extremely rude here]?
Wind turbines are complex fiberglass/resin compounds that cannot be recycled. To build and maintain them today, with cheap FF inputs, already costs more than the value of the electricity they yield in a number of cases.
Warren Buffett: “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Outside of personal collection of wood, dung, peat, or other biomass for home heating and cooking, ALL NON-RENEWABLE “RENEWABLE” PROJECTS REQUIRE FOSSIL FUELS. PERIOD.
Your vaunted wind turbines are composed of 11-16% plastic:
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-materials-are-used-make-wind-turbines
But, hkeithhenson, you “can’t think” of that! Are you physically prevented from thinking of it? Genetically? Or what?
Dennis L., maybe you should hook up with keith, here, if you are looking for a grandiose end-of-civilization boondoggle in which to invest. I’m seeing the Dennis L./HKH wind farm and electric truck stop. With AI-based robotic silicone hookers.
“Try mining copper or cobalt with just electricity.”
Not sure about cobalt, but copper is already mostly processed with electricity. Look up “electrowinning” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrowinning
“Or try running industrial farming with electricity to feed the electric-truck drivers and the electric wind-turbine mechanics… It is not do-able now, nor will it ever be.”
People were growing food before fossil fuels were in use. Are you trying to deny the historical record?
“If you asked a bunch of engineers to melt glass with PV, the engineers would just do it.”
of course Keith, they, like you, focus on the challenge and the end result, nevermind the true costs of the project. all alternatives to FF will work, for a limited time, in special circumstances, for a limited number of people. the trouble is we’ve built a whole civilization on FF, so when they get scarce, bad things begin to happen, like in now.
Once FF have gone, in the not too distant future and certainly within my children’s lifetime if not mine, renewables are all we will have. But it will be renewables based on very simple, easy to make, easy to maintain principles, just like before FF came on the scene.
Both global population and personal energy consumption will fall 90-99%. It is just a matter of how we get there.
I’ll be ok
i bought shares in a flint mine
HK
I remain mystified by the statement:
I can’t think of a renewable project that requires fossil fuels.
your technical background would suggest a certain level of reasoning intellect.
Yet the above statement must invite mirth
The most basic construction projects, which is what ‘renewable projects’ are, cannot begin to function without fossil fuel inputs at the most primary–and subsequent— levels.
Of course, if such construction is to take place by means as yet uninvented—that would be a different matter entirely.
In the meantime I’m off to road test my new hoverboard
“cannot begin to function without fossil fuel inputs”
Even if fuel is required, it does not need to be fossil. Simple economic analysis will tell you that we can make hydrocarbons for about the same price we pay for them now. You simply cannot distinguish between synthetic fuel and fuel from fossil sources. I could run through the analysis again, but it is fairly clear that your ideas are fixed and facts are not going to change that.
someone else on here has threatened to vomit at the suggestion of reconstituting molecules back into viable hydrocarbons
i won’t go that far our of respect for assembled company
Sure, you can make hydrocarbons from biomass but:
1. It’s an energy sink. EROI is less than 1. Might still make sense on a small scale, but would not be viable on a large scale.
2. It displaces crop land or timber land or pasture, so just how scalable is it? Someone estimated that running just our farm equipment on biofuels would displace 20% of our crop land. (We can go back to horses, but they too require quite a bit of crop land to “fuel.”)
“Sure, you can make hydrocarbons from biomass but:
Where did I mention biomass? The analysis assumed using PV (at under 1.5 cents per kWh) to make hydrogen from water and to pull CO2 out of the air. The hydrogen and CO2 would feed an F/T hydrocarbon synthesis. these have been constructed at scale (34,000 bbl/day). Green plants are not much better at capturing energy than 1%, PV is ~20%
” 1. It’s an energy sink. EROI is less than 1. Might still make sense on a small scale, but would not be viable on a large scale.
Are you an engineer or equivalent? Or have you read an economic analysis?
” 2. It displaces crop land or timber land or pasture, so just how scalable is it?
The proposal is to pave over a fair fraction of the Sahra Desert with PV, so no food production would be lost.
Dust
the sahara is covered in it. You need water to wash it off
thought it was as well to mention it.
We currently use between 6 and 11 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy, so growing plants is already an energy sink. Now convert the plants to another form of energy (oil) and you will lose even more energy in the conversion process.
After fossil fuels, the analysis gets more complicated. If you live near water transport, you might be able to transport the biomass efficiently, but if the biomass must be transported overland about 60 miles to get to a processing point, the animals doing the hauling will consume an amount of energy equal to what is contained in the biomass. (I assume the animals are oxen and the surface is level, but I don’t think equines would change the equation much either way.)
Using PV to make oil for certain purposes sounds interesting, but we have to consider the EROI of the PV’s (which will likely fall as minerals become more depleted, plus I don’t think current PV EROI includes the cost of “decommissioning” the PV waste, and that needs to be figured in) and the EROI of extracting CO2 from the air (and don’t start sucking it out faster than it gets replaced or we will endanger all life on earth!) and the EROI of hydrolysis (which is usually put about breakeven!) and whatever other energy costs are involved in synthesizing hydrocarbons, and I don’t see how this ends up as anything other than an energy sink. Every step in the process will require energy.
Americans are 90 watt bulbs burning at 11,000 watts. Three Americans are the energy consuming equivalent of two blue whales. Everybody else in this world wants to be a blue whale too. How many blue whales can the earth support?
PV’s in the Sahara Desert: who’s going to blow off the dust??? And you have to run a huge amount of electrical cable to Europe, and Africa will probably want a share of it too. You’ll need more copper and aluminum and insulation (made from petroleum no doubt) and maintenance men and trucks, and there will be energy losses along those long transmission lines, and threats of disruption from political unrest in Africa, or simple thievery, so you will need security, and in about 25 years, the PV energy production will begin falling, so you will need to expand the coverage area or replace the declining panels and pay for the waste disposal and transportation. The whole operation would be a HUGE engineering project. People have talked about it for at least 20 years now, maybe longer, but I will be surprised if anyone actually attempts it. Ever.
by now, you will be traditionally blue in the face from the telling of what would seem to be obvious by any level of rational thinking. But no matter.
the arithmetic says you can reconstitute molecules of hydrocarbon back into liquid fuels (or something like that) so therefore it will be done,
The arithmetic says you can cover the sahara with pv panels and have free electricity for evermore.
Sandstorms and bad tempered bedouins are not covered by any mathematical formulae, so they do not figure in any form of energy calculaion.
Arithmetic states quite clearly that you can have space elevators, mines on asteroids, nuclear farms on the backside of the moon and our excess population can shift to off earth cylinders pointed at the sun.
And all by utilising the industrial means available to us today.
(Oh—and with a few ‘technology breakthroughs ‘ of course)
Where would we be without breakthroughs?
“convert the plants to another form of energy (oil)”
I don’t think I have ever written about biomass as an energy source. Photosynthesis is less than one-tenth of the efficiency of PV. No transmission lines are needed for making synthetic oil.
” People have talked about it for at least 20 years now, maybe longer,”
I would really like a pointer to where people have talked about this 20 years ago since I don’t like taking credit for someone else’s work. I started writing about it when PV power cost went under 2 cents per kWh in the mid-east a couple of years ago.
I might add that I am not a big fan of this idea. My main interest has been power satellites. But if you are serious about one energy project, you need to keep an eye on other proposals that might be lower cost. See StratoSolar for an example. I spent a year and a half working on that project.
I think I can imagine an “energy savior” technology based on solar energy, but perhaps I’m too ignorant of the basic physics to understand whether there are fundamental barriers. Otherwise, it’s fusion or bust.
Georgescu-Roegen wrote a lot about the important, usually elided distinction between energy sources which are stocks and energy sources which are flows. It’s precisely this characteristic of fossil fuels, that we’re releasing energy that’s already captured and so can therefore consume the energy in arbitrary quantities just at the place & time it’s required, that makes them so damn useful and difficult to replicate in all their distinct qualities with green energy sources.
We need to shift to the relatively abundant solar source, but we also need to capture and store that energy using infrastructure that’s created either out of solar flow or of stocks that are so plentiful that we’re kicking the can several hundred years down the road. If Goodenough really has the goods with batteries that can be made out of sand & salt if you throw enough solar energy at them, that would be an enormous help. I don’t know of solar capture devices which are not reliant on rare earths, though, other than plants obviously. Perhaps I’m thinking in too limited a way, you might have to go solar energy -> chemical energy -> electricity.
https://electrek.co/2017/04/06/ev-battery-breakthroughs-are-usually-bull-but-this-guy-won-nobel-for-lithium-ion/
If we can get to a point where we electrify everything that can be electrified and can produce suitable biofuels for every other application, so we can at least hold greenhouse gases constant, then a path forward to a high energy consumption economy based on solar that could persist for a couple of centuries seems narrow but passable. Nothing about this addresses the fundamental problem of indefinite growth on a finite planet but we’ve wasted the past 40 years and need time to work on the social & political side of the problem.
I don’t know, this all seems like drawing to an inside straight but it is the only game in town so we’d better try and play as well as we can.
A major problem with solar is the fact its availability drops greatly in winter, which is precisely when it is needed most. Researchers in the area of space solar technology would like to generate electricity up in geosynchronous orbit. Its advantage would be that it would provide electricity most of the year, except around the spring and fall equinoxes.(These are low times for heating/cooling demand as well.) But solar energy from space would not be sufficiently cheap. And no one thinks it would be available soon.
Perhaps that is why serious money is talking of mining the moon in 2025. Wags would worry about lunar pollution, but it would be a good place for dirty processes. Run it nuclear, place the waste on the back side of the moon.
We are fast approaching a time when hypotheticals become realities, the decisions are going to be neither easy nor comfortable.
Dennis L.
I have heard recent comments that the radiation level is surprisingly high on the moon. It may not be a good place to do mining (besides being hard to get to and from).
Not arguing, really don’t know. One of the issues in “Limits to Growth” is pollution and I have speculated that not only did we use China’s energy, we dumped significant amounts of pollution there. Who care’s about the moon?
This is the opposite of a gravity well from earth, low lunar gravity, give the finished product a shove and let it go into earth orbit, drop it down one way or another.
The US stopped neodymium mining in CA I believe not because of access to ores but the incredible pollution in processing the stuff. Again a guess, the moon was blasted out of the earth, no reason to not expect similar minerals, less lunar gravity should mean heavy metals did not fall to the center as in earth, shallower mining. Snag an astroid, slam it into the moon, it will not burn up in the moon’s atmosphere – it will join the other craters already present, no one will notice.
Nuclear has a proven history of things going wrong, it requires huge mitigation costs for wastes and plant decommissioning. Moon, let it rip, when one out grows the moon, there is the cosmos, it is impossible for man to pollute the cosmos. Or, think big. We have a beautiful planet, move the dirty stuff off site. Renewables might work if one did not need to do industrial processes, in any case the ores are becoming less and less concentrated.
We have more or less concluded nuclear is the only option, move it off site, move the processes off site. Greta may well be right, we may be killing ourselves with our own waste products. Don’t ship the waste into space, ship the finished product back to earth. If one wants to make jobs, this one should keep everyone busy for a few years – sort of a joke, but no sarcasm. At least it has a chance of working and the idea has held civilizations together before, think pyramids, or cathedrals.
Dennis L.
Well this would be a non-starter. The energy on earth still exists but the economy won’t allow the price to go high enough to extract it from the ground and process it. How do even begin to make a business case to fly rockets to the moon and extract energy and ship it back to earth. Pure science fiction.
Robert,
We have been through everything here, none of it works. Humans have tried everything and now it is done with debt – for how long? What do we have to lose?
If fossil energy is the problem, go to one of the moons of Saturn and pump it off the surface, there has to be a surplus as there is so much of it. Getting around in space is frictionless and gravitational assists from planets are common. Momentum is the biggest issue, starting and stopping, mass is a constant at current speeds, warp drive is a different issue. Need heat, move the process through an orbit close to the sun, fusion that works.
The real problem with increasing use of energy on earth is the radiation issue, earth can’t radiate it to space quickly enough, it warms the surface and makes a desert. Pollution was mentioned in “Limits to Growth,” we are there.
Reading this month’s post, we are out of solutions; I don’t see lying down and waiting for death and misery. For me it suggests reasons the pyramids were built – same as FDR and the make work jobs, build dams for which there is no real current use, get into a war and use them to build bombs, advance technology. Humans are designed to cooperate, not kill one another, sometimes that idea is forgotten.
A great frustration of mine is this constant calling for collapse to happen – next year. ASPO started this in earnest and it hasn’t happened yet. I say go for it, get the pollution off the earth, accept Greta may not be totally wrong, put as much effort into a “save humanity” project as into fighting for what is left. Some here think humanity is not worth saving, okay, they can be not saved first; for me “What do we have to lose?
Dennis L.
I think I’m beginning to understand why Bucky Fuller said the following: “The global energy grid is the World Game’s highest priority objective.” You address the physical problem of inconstant solar flow while also creating a social project that binds continents together. I asked a friend of mine who works for a utility whether a world grid was theoretically possible and he replied, “If an HVDC line from Darwin to Singapore is possible, anything is!”
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/newsletters/1995/buckminster-fuller-on-the-global-energy-grid.shtml
Information and Energy flows is the only hard currency in existence.
0’s and 1’s inside computers is digitized delusion.
Only a hallucination would make it real.
And as an obvious coincidence the rapacios primate brain is a master at hallucinating objective reality into computationally tractable concepts.
Ah, the irony is staggering.
https://i.imgflip.com/gx9ph.jpg
> He’s tops in the field and really a fantastic scientist.
He’s also 98 years old (emeritus syndrome). And it’s 3 years since his was announced. I think a high degree of scepticism is appropriate.
as i keep trying to point out
make as much electricity as you like/need. (fusion, solar, wind etc)
but without the means to use it, it’s exactly the same as having a lightswitch on the wall, but no bulb in the socket
If you still don’t get it—go research the level of industrial complexity needed to produce lightbulbs in billions
“research the level of industrial complexity needed to produce lightbulbs in billions”
The light bulb was invented in 1879, so it would not take more complexity than was available then.
I didn’t mention ‘inventing’ the lightbulb
I said manufacturing it in billions.
If my bait hadn’t been taken so eagerly it would have been obvious that the lightbulb was meant to symbolise the complexity of our entire industrial system of the 20th c
And no, that complexity was not available in 1879
Consumption of incandescent light bulbs grew rapidly in the US. In 1885, an estimated 300,000 general lighting service lamps were sold, all with carbon filaments. When tungsten filaments were introduced, about 50 million lamp sockets existed in the US. In 1914, 88.5 million lamps were used, (only 15% with carbon filaments), and by 1945, annual sales of lamps were 795 million (more than 5 lamps per person per year). (Wikipedia)
Fusion or bust?
https://thequadreport.com/fusion-energy-fantasy/
Research physicist Daniel Jassby, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently, said that commercial fusion energy, long a supposed holy grail to solve all of the problems associated with generating electricity, is a flawed fantasy.
Jassby has standing. Now retired, he did major plasma physics research for 25 years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. He writes, “Now that I have retired, I have begun to look at the whole fusion enterprise more dispassionately, and I feel that a working, every-day, commercial fusion reactor would cause more problems than it would solve.”
The current article is a follow-up to a Bulletin article a year ago, in which Jassby concluded, “The harsh realities of fusion belie the claims of its proponents of ‘unlimited, clean, safe and cheap energy.’
“Conclusion: We Need a New Very Inexpensive Energy Source Now”
That’s not going to happen … goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
So what we need then is the magical unlimited power of fusion. Unfortunately fusion has been only 25 years away for the last 50. Looks like the brown stuff will hit the fan in the not too distant future, or maybe it already has?
“Looks like the brown stuff will hit the fan in the not too distant future, or maybe it already has?”
This is a worry. But given that the world didn’t completely fall apart back in the 1913-1945 era, perhaps there is some hope. All of us have some older relatives who lived during this timeframe. Somehow, most of them made it through the period. Of course, the world was far less interconnected before. It is today’s interconnection and our dependence on international trade that make the current situation frightening. It would seem like the system could fail quite quickly, but we don’t really have very good imaginations regarding what might happen next. Could part of the system hang on, while parts of it fail? I don’t know.
I’d say in the end everything boils down to the overpopulation drived by surplus energy and Maximum Power principle. In 1914 there was 1,6 billion of us around. Today that is only the population of China + Nigeria, who themselves represent “only” 20% of world population. Everything lead us to believe we are utterly doomed. Pockets of high-tech and COG will be maintained in certain regions/countries? Maybe, but even these not for very long i suspect, remembering the insoluble problem of nuclear waste.
ASPO Germany uses the term “oil fields of hope’ in a graph trying to unhide the information given in the latest IEA World Energy Outlook
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkVcHh_VoAINER9?format=jpg
Of course that hope is not cheap
‘All you need is hope’, evidently.
IEA should do a ‘presentation’ of their message like John Lennon – get the world leaders together for a video, drop the opening bars to the La Marseillaise and off they go – ‘all you need is hope, la la la la la’.
Good luck to them in trying to run the global economy on that stuff – it is as likely to run on literal BS.
There’s nothing you can do; It can’t be done
No place you can go; Nowhere to run
Nothing you can say that wouldn’t ruin everybody’s day
It’s easy!
There’s no one you can teach who isn’t taught
No one you can buy who isn’t bought
No one you can tell who wouldn’t tell you to go straight to hell
It’s easy…..
I took the train and visited Osaka yesterday.
The city, which was a ghost town on my last visit in May, is now back to normal, albeit the “new normal”. In the big commercial districts and subterranean malls, the streets are crowded again, although well below the the levels before the pandamonium started—thanks to the collapse of the inbound tourist trade and to the practice of many office workers working from home several days a week. But department stores and boutiques were doing a reasonable trade, perhaps enough to keep them ticking over with the aid of some government subsidy money. The back streets told a more somber story. There are lots of stores and other businesses boarded up as if their owners have given up on the idea that their trade is going to come back any time soon.
About 99% of the people on the streets were wearing masks—loose fitting paper masks, tight fitting rubber-looking masks that made their wearers look like ducks or puffins, and various cloth masks, many of which were beautifully decorated fashion statements, as well as a few bandannas. I didn’t see a single woman unmasked in the street. Among the men, the minority of unmasked included people of all ages from sixteen to sixty-six. Some were older salary men who had emerged from restaurants and were walking with a toothpick sticking out of their mouths—a common custom among the less well-mannered classes. It is difficult pick your teeth AND wear a mask at the same time, so what are you gonna do?
As for the night life, you CAN eat, drink and be merry and maskless in bars and restaurants. There is often a plea to patrons to wear a disinfect your hands with the liquid provided at the door, but masks are dispensed with once the customers sit down.
Underemployment is undermining a lot of people’s confidence and robbing them of peace of mind. Parts of the economy have been almost unaffected by the slowdown, while other parts, such as tourism, accommodation, advertising and wining and dining, have taken a real beating. The service sector is beginning to look like it will never be the same.
The overall consensus seems to be that the virus is dangerous, the masking and social distancing are effective at keeping it at bay, the government is doing its best and should be supported, no price is to high to pay to keep people safe, and that we are all in this together brother. People I’ve talked to who have lost most of their expected income over the past half year and are worrying that things will be worse next year have in every cased blamed the virus for their problems rather than the response to the pandemic. One old friend commented to me, “This bloody virus kills in more ways than one!”
My views are obviously in a small minority and, after a series of difficult conversations in which others raised the issue of coronavirus and I replied by doubting the virus’s strength, the potential of masks to protect people from it, and need for such stringent measures, and met with suppressed anger or hostility from people who were unable to accept such views as valid, I no longer voice skepticism openly. These people have enough on their plates without having to put up with conflicting points of view or inconvenient facts. They want only to lament or vent the situation ad wallow in the consensus, not to question it. I feel I have no right to intrude and so I let them get on with it.
Online, of course, it’s quite a different matter. Here, freedom of expression should reign supreme, every commentator is a warrior using words as swords, and pretending not to disagree with opinions that you find disagreeable for the sake of politeness is the worst form of deception.
Steve,
There is the issue of waste heat, the earth cannot radiate that much heat, in a few hundreds of years the surface exceeds 200 degrees F(I am doing this from memory, in actual time and temperature the result is the same). The processes have to be moved off planet, a note to Gail below, serious money is now looking at that, I have seen a date of 2025. Trump wants to go back to the moon. A guess is serious policy understands the issues.
Dennis L.
interesting.
I agree that serious upper level people are looking at all of that, but failure is the only option, since all of that is based on energy resources and not just bright ideas and big money.
a woman will walk on the moon later this decade (and the “next” man!) but any moon project is always going to be an energy sink.
certainly the math guarantees it.
Moon (and other world) projects must always be energy sinks.
job creation schemes for NASA PhDs
The cost of obtaining any material ‘off earth’ must always be colossal, and can never bring any material return
Amen, Norman!
All human endeavor is a “waste of energy”/waste of energy.
Everything we consider consumption, is consumption.
And everything we consider PRODUCTION, is consumption.
“Productivity” is a misnomer.
There is no human production of anything, that I can see.
Not for you.
Lycka till på färden. 👋
Do we even get a galactic super high-way out of the deal?
So the booming Trump economy is a farce, as confirmed by declining oil production. Orange face is a fraud and a fascist. Creepy Joe is no better.
Well, one is certainly not advised to hang much around with “wolfiee” like Donald’s clan, but in comparison to plain “trailer park material” with Biden’s (recent news just confirming again), they are then rendered almost human in comparison. Marginal difference or none?
ps that cheap “fascist” smear is not even laughable as the guy evidently survived multiple deep state (majority) attacks to dethrone him
The first thing Trump did in office was dish out a 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut to the giant corporations. He then convinced the Fed to print another 4 trillion. Trump has filed bankruptcy 6 times. I’d say that qualities as fascism. How much of that money did you get?
Trump was ~2nd-3rd rate regional oligarch who struck it lucky against the permanent state (FIN+MIC) political structure in 2016 as he jumped over their pre-selected pool of usual uniparty candidate cadre. He (and his tiny allied faction) naively believed the levers of power are still with the office.
If you really think, one term president (so far) tied down mostly with faked investigation against him for the entire time somehow means fascism vs. several aggregated decades of expropriating hundreds of trillions by these guys (say since WWII), be my guest..
ps The Duran just ran a declassified .pdf how the outsourced spooks of FBI/CIA ran that msm narrative with help of several key staffers from various dept., it’s hilarious they literally have had a “story board” like script how to feed the complex propaganda machine on all fronts..
The Telly always gave me a bad vibe for some reason. AlIt oozed “manufactured” narratives. So I dumped it some 20 years ago and feel much happier ever since. What a waste of time to be programmed by clueless people.
When the abyss of brutal reality stares back, I feel a warmth in my cold, dead heart. ❤️
The British state actually forces us all to pay upfront for state propaganda MSM. It is illegal to watch TV at all in UK unless you have first given hundreds of pounds to the BBC for a ‘TV licence’ – even if one never, ever watches the BBC.
It would be like if you were forced to take out a pricey subscription to CNN every year before you were allowed to watch any other TV. Otherwise you get hauled into court and fined thousands of pounds.
The Tory Party fully supports the ‘TV licence’. They actually have the front to make noises about it, to try to get votes, even while they adamantly impose it, year after year.
The Tories are like that in UK, they actually get votes by making noises about policies that they support themselves, like open borders for the CBI – and the ‘sheep’ fall for it and vote for them. It is completely ridiculous country.
I cant say how valuable i think your posts are world of H. In a world of polarization and intolerance the truth still shines light. Well done. Today I listened to a NPR guest talking about “misinformation” about Hunter Biden. Yet i heard a show about HBs massive China interests on NPR about a year ago. Now thats bad. Everything other than PC narrative is “misinformation” “fascist” . Very scary.
Twitter is saying the Hunter Biden story link “is unsafe”. The Senate is subpeona-ing Jack to do some ‘splainin’ (after which nothing will happen, just like every other Senate hearing into misconduct that I can remember).
There really is a full court press to suppress this information, which is damning in the extreme.. with more to come, promises Giuliani.
Hunter’s text to Naomi [Biden, Hunter’s daughter]: “But I don’t receive any respect and that’s fine I guess. Works for you, apparently. I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard, but don’t worry, unlike Pop (Joe Biden) I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1316804040857137160
correction: Senate is voting next week whether to subpeona Dorsey over the Biden censorship; they have not decided to do so.
It’s very interesting how abrupt intersections of history [right now] tend to reveal things in simplicity as they are.
For example, one can almost feel tiny drop of sympathy with the desperate Hunter character, basically forced into the vulgar-sleazy gang operation of his father, who himself is a small fish anyway. Compare contrast with the slightly higher level and “always Mr. Clean” players such Obamas, Gores with their nice bulletproof mega contracts and skyrocketing investment portfolios.., and there are several layers above them.
It’s almost like watching some “swamp creature” ecosystem consisting of various animal forms with different pecking order, and survival strategies.
Worldof, it sounds like the bidens will be the proverbial sacrifical lambs. But not only them will be on the chopping bloc, rather the complicit MSM and the interests behind them will be thrown into the dustbin of history for their lack of coverage.
No action is also an action.
The only good thing with this plan is that the Bidens will be mostly immune to foreign blackmail in the case of an election victory.
Well lets see if this makes it though…..really lame of Gail to censor…Lidia it does not matter what biden son did anymore…Trump used campaign money to pay off porn stars and borrowed money from countries all over the world..and that is just the tip of the iceberg …..Yes I voted for the douche bag but I am regretting it every day….he has added so much to the debt…yes anyone can look like they made the economy great if they borrowed 5 trillion dollars!!!! Come on Gail I know you are for trump but you need to do a story on how the economy broke in 2008 and was never fixed!!! And yes please if you are going to complain about the left wing media censoring then don’t do it yourself! ! STOP CENSORING!!!!!!!
The economy (especially the US, Europe, and Japan portion) was already suffering from not enough growth in net energy consumption per capita back in 2008. It had been trying to cover up the lack of energy consumption growth with debt growth for a long time. Growth in energy consumption had shifted mostly to China, India, and other developing Asian countries. This wasn’t really a substitute for growth in the Advanced Economies. New home building dropped way back, and did the sale of new automobiles.
More recently, the lack of growth in world coal consumption in China and worldwide has been an issue.
Be of good cheer, worldofH. The fact that Trump’s enemies have to resort to cheap smears is just further evidence they have no good arguments against him.
Yes, the harder they attack, the more encouragement you should feel. You’re onto something.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/39/fc/f8/39fcf870065a5bda458d95e19b47706d.jpg
Yes indeed. Good ole’ Plato understood this very well.
It is difficult to believe that the system is shrinking. That affordability is a lasting problem. The people tend to believe that the problems are related to the lack of the discipline, spoiled young people, corrupt politicians or greedy companies.
In fact, the people often work more and more, because they want more and more.
Recently, I started to listen to a Czech Catholic radio station Proglas. The Czech Republic is known for its high proportion of atheists and the reduction of the institutional cults. What is so different about this radio station, is that it reflects the implosion of the Christian churches in a way that also the people from protestant churches can be heard on this station. What is more, they use slow speech and no advertisements, unlike the commercial or even state radios, and broadcast a lot of culture and arts. That way the cult of Mother Mary, i.e. fruitfulness, is suppressed, which seems to be the key problem of catholicism vs. protestantism.
It seems to me this is the way how the shrinkage should look like: accepting the things as they are, acting rather slow than try to stimulate the growth (my attention was caught by the dialogues about burning out in work or in volunteering, or a dialogue with a former member of a religious order, a woman who left the order because of bullying).
What surprised me is the fact that the founder of this radio station, a Catholic priest, had a father who was born in one of my neighbouring villages, namely a final upper village in the neighbouring valley, full of alcoholics. He left this Slovak village and went to the Czech city of Brno, which is, together with Prague, a center where the population from the depopulating parts of the Czech Republic concentrates.
Many of us seem to have been a part of this process of implosion for a longer time without knowing it and it can be the consolation to all of us who have been tempted to have more, that we have not succumbed to this temptation…
If we don’t have religion, it seems like people have to have faith in something else. Recently, that seems to be the political system, the models of scientists, the powers of central banks and growing use of technology. These kinds of things have been a religion of their own. All a person needs is faith in these things, and endless video games to entertain himself/herself.
Thanks for this new presentation, Gail.
“As a result, the United Kingdom’s coal production reached its highest level in 1913, the year before World War I started, and began to fall in 1914.”
And a mere 30 years and two world wars later, the British Empire was gone, and the UK was bankrupt, consigned to strategic subjection to USA and would never regain its industrial competitiveness with the continent let alone global significance.
Changes in energy profitability can totally disrupt the global order and can lead to entirely new hegemonies with a permanent relegation of the old global powers. The configuration of global power relations depends on energy availability among other things.
But the absence of new, profitable energy sources to replace the old ones would take the world into unimaginable, if imaginable territory – a massive fight over dwindling energy between desperate ‘powers’ with populations bloated by fossil consumption.
The human world would be plunged into a truly Darwinian struggle for survival, the likes of which have been more ‘theory’ than ‘fact’ in living memory. Fossil fuels are absolutely ghastly stuff and they may ultimately have an equally ghastly outcome.
Humans, being basically driven by blind organic drives and urged on by a profit, debt and growth based capitalist economy have exploited fossil fuels to expand their numbers at a rate never before – and the population crash occasioned by unprofitable-unaffordable energy is likely to be just as spectacular.
If the growth of global population levels mirrors that of the consumption of energy, then the collapse of the one is also likely to mirror that of the other. That will likely be facilitated by the ‘four horsemen’ of plague, famine and war – and death.
Malthus was not so much ‘wrong’ as premature. He could not have foreseen the exploitation of fossil fuels with their many uses in food production and a general rise in living standards. What he could foresee however is what happens when the human population hits limits imposed by a finite world.
It has long been fashionable to scoff at the old parson since fossils. ‘New technologies will always save us – like they always have. Humanity is underrated!’ Maybe, maybe not.
As Gail indicates, the unprofitability of energy production will lead to state support for energy sectors through banks. Unprofitability will affect the entire economy as the problem is one of customer affordability as well as producer profitability.
The fall in profitability is thus systemic and will likely lead to the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’, including the energy sector, and possibly, ultimately to a completely nationalised and planned economy. It is difficult to see how capitalism can continue to function without systemic profitability, growth and debt maintenance – the real basics of capitalism.
Capitalism may well ‘work’ the best of any economic system in a situation of growth but can it function at all without growth, without systemic profitability? If growth depends on an expansion of energy consumption, then a contraction of the latter may well scupper capitalism.
Arguably we already have a ‘fake capitalism’ with QE, NIRP, bail outs, zombie sectors etc. – and now generalised state support of businesses and ‘workers’. A gradual ‘socialisation’ of the economy is already well underway in an attempt to countervail falling profitability-affordability. Presumably there is a limit to how far that can go before it obviously is not capitalism any more.
But in any case, a rapid collapse in energy availability would precipitate a rapid collapse of economies and populations, so states will just have to do whatever they have to do in order to avoid that – otherwise they will be ‘picking up the pieces’ and doing what they should have done in the first place.
None of which is to suggest that collapse – and the horsemen – can ultimately be avoided, just maybe put off for a bit, maybe not.
I’d agree with all of your eloquently argued points. And only add that we have entered that more “gloves off” energy resource conflicts era already, e.g. Iraq & Libya & Venezuela (petro/euro-dollar/ext. dollar volatile actors neutered), Ukraine (existing one leg of Russian->W pipeline & potential alt gas producer), Syria (denied access for Gulf->Clubmed pipeline hub), ..
In that sense (accepting such scenario as ~correct) we are relatively long into the game at this point aka expect rapid worsening of the situation ahead.
Yes, and the recent invasions give us a ‘heads up’ of in what manner to expect the ‘powers’ to go about energy grabs.
They never admit these days that it is all about self-interest. They dress up military interventions as ‘right’, ‘moral’ and even ‘humanitarian’.
‘Look at what heroes we are, upholding decency in the world’, even while they slaughter their way to resources.
And as soon as one power makes such a move, the others will also have a ‘moral’ pretext to ‘pile in’ against them.
They use ‘international decency’ as a strategic cover for pure power politics.
Open egoists are almost preferable, such obvious dishonesty seems to compound the indecency and to add insult to injury.
Even Nietzsche despised the ‘perfect cant’.
> Cant. 1. hypocritical and sanctimonious talk, typically of a moral, religious, or political nature.
There are always many reasons for a choice. But the only ones we are told about are the ones that will make the person making the choice look good in the eyes of others.
There is no substituting energy and, yes, there is a solution: an agraric society with a biomass producing, organic agriculture or gardening. We could bury our nuclear waste, clean up some rubbish and start giving gardens for free that currently compete with the immo bubble. But we dont do it because we dont WANT it. It is a religious thing. Those that promise the biggest love on earth after the enemy is destroyed (in an extremely cruel war), have a problem to create a garden eden with no possibilities for war and mandatory vaccination. They prefer to end in chaos, fear and darkness. The new beginning will be exactly that agrarian society, like the Harrapian, the Egypt, the Romans, the Mayan or the Middle Ages – only a few million years later, after the nuclear waste has been decayed.
lololol
bury our nuclear waste?
What with, picks shovels and wheelbarrows?
Other than that I found your reply difficult to comprehend
We still have backhoes and diesel. We could start today!
I understood the rest just fine.
oh well—of course
backhoes and diesel—now why didn’t i think of that?
Great post could not agree more!
Food subsidies is the early stage of a rumbling stomach.
There is always the likelihood that the food subsidies will disappear.
Great article. I think it unfortunate we are trained to think of energy as a utility delivered by a grid instead of a commodity we can create through the purchase of appliances sold down the street, like gasoline. I am thinking of buried units that harvest methane out of blackwater, solar water heating tubes attached to the south side of our homes, solar panels attached to roofs of our patio gazebos and steam generators that produce enough electricity to power our homes and underground bladders to store the energy in until required. Finally we need uncorruptable governments with spines that make laws we all have to live with as a just society, or pay the consequences, starting with regulations on how much power our technological inventions are allowed to use in order to work. Start wil scrapping 5G, because the drawbacks fas outweigh the benefits for anyone other than the corporations that wish to have the upper hand on us all.
Janet, no sarcasm intended,
” I am thinking of buried units that harvest methane out of blackwater, solar water heating tubes attached to the south side of our homes…”
Engineers say you can have it cheap, you can have it fast, you can have it good, pick two. I am doing some of what you suggest, it takes time to do it cheap and the rest, while one is doing all that life is passing.
Also, there is the talent aspect, what you suggest takes considerable real world talent, those ideas cross thermodynamics(heat gain/loss calculations), plumbing, electrical and electronics as well as considerable building skills in wood, masonry and plumbing. Conservatively, you might be talking about a minimum of the upper 20% of the population and that is probably generous, what about the other 80%?
Think about that last sentence as not a challenge, but a question? With very little surplus energy from that scheme, what does one do with the remaining 80%?
Dennis L.
Like what we do today, jobs programs. Military and infrastructure.
Teaches kids some manners and discipline and will also provide good infrastructure.
Slap down those HSR tracks and let the MIC play with the latest tech and drill young whippersnappers.
Something like that. Fsck the soulless consumerism and fake “jobs”.
I’m doubtful that you can, or have to, do all these things. I see no remote chance of managing with 8 B people without industrial production. But the energy needed for warming buildings in cold places could be reduced by half, simply with insulation from what we now discard. There are many other possibilities for reducing resource use without requiring additional complexity to do it. The problem is people. There is no known way to get 8 B people to be on the same page. Capitalism probably forces people to think/behave in constrained ways that preclude cooperation/coordination/innovation. Radical decentralization would likely require much less energy decoupled from globalist capitalism. But again, everybody is caught up in a self organizing vortex. We’ll snap out of it somehow, but not in any clear or predictable way. A scary probability is that one way out would be the scenario in your last sentence. That’s because we don’t know how to get out of it through humanism instead.
You provided great way to visualize it.
Radical decentralization from formerly ordered state leading to block/regional/indiv vortexes of panicky self interest. It’s like turning from stable laminar flow (providing benefits) into chaotic vortexes (disorderly sinks)..
Thanks.
Sort of like, dunno, nature.
Semi chaotic orderliness. Sort of like the Mandelbrot and Julia sets.
Just leave it the fsck alone any it will thrive just by process evolving by and with itself and the supreme ruler of it all do the bidding. The behemoth life form Gaia preparing for the purely synthetics to take the next step in the process of evolution.
Gail has intimated that there’s a scarcity of energy to enable any other scale of governance than at the local and regional levels. This is where the warlords and the dons take over. This happens because there gets to be a deficit of intelligence and planning for these decentralized places. tHE MORE eduCATED AND QUALIFIED FLEE TO THEIR GATED COMMUNITIES. We see it in Johannesburg and many other places. We give up on the poor, but only the poor can help us. The poor need rigorous but elegant governance, but this is not available to them. And they lack the cognitive skills to supply it by themselves.
Personally, I think oil peaked over a decade ago. By that, I mean the conventional, easy to get at stuff. As soon as we had to go after the difficult stuff, the clock started ticking. Not sustainable for long.
You are correct in that we need an alternative. It probably won’t materialize anytime soon, if at all. (I did read about mini nuclear power stations as a possibility.) A long term contraction or de-growth period is in the cards. In the meantime, especially because of Covid, get red for the helicopter money dropped directly on the masses to further kick the can down the road.
I suppose a lot of people would like to think that that we are in charge. We don’t really have a self-organizing economy to try to deal with. If political leaders just point the right direction, we are smart enough to work around the problems of the past.
“I suppose a lot of people would like to think that that we are in charge.”
A video i found at Megancer, saying more or less the same.
Gumtoo> You are probably correct in the sense that onset of peak oil / ERoE ended ~BAU decade+ ago already. But here comes the catch – we don’t know for how long and where the system could attempt to rearrange itself. As you alluded out of the major tech civ hubs (US, EU, China) have adopted now some form of direct digital wallet for citizens with CBs bypassing the commercial banks if needed be. Some argue it’s just another preparatory step for phasing in some ~UBI like policies in society without much work (many assembly lines are 80% robotized today and frivolous service sector tends to burn much energy hence lets curb it via GreenND like policies), mind you UBI will be ~starving min wage/ration anyway.
This could work for a while in some places at least or not all, perhaps intervening chaos would derail any such attempted schemes early on. We don’t know, as always the uncertainty and “slow grilling” is unfortunately the most (likely and) depressing outlook..
Might work for a bit, but you can’t print food.
The amount of waste in the food production is staggering.
For example returning to a more plant-based diet will cut down on FF usage, transportation and other excesses associated with fat blokes who can’t exist without their lard, beef and insulin injections.
You see, it is “life quality” to eat garbage and take medications for all its poisonous side effects.
Yes, you don’t have to agree with me, but then you’d be wrong. And you do t like being wrong. I know.
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In a world ‘drowning’ in debt, experiencing diminishing returns for almost all ‘investments’, and central banks flooding the world in fake, fiat currency to try and prop up what is essentially a gargantuan Ponzi scheme, I really have to wonder how we can ‘fund’ a very inexpensive new energy source (to say little about the fact that even if we do ‘discover’ such a source, all the other dilemmas we’re facing are still present). It seems we’ve painted ourselves into a very tight corner…
it is only possible to ‘fund’ a new energy source with an ‘old’ energy source
eg, the complexity and volume of the oil industry since the 1860s would not have been possible without the volume production of the coal industry which in turn allowed the production of cheap iron in vast quantities.
Extracted oil only took on ‘value’ when it was shipped into factories and cities and burned.
Burned oil was paid for with cash that was itself supported by the function of oil consumption.
There was and is nothing else.
The more oil burned, the more oil Rockefeller (et al) extracted-transported-sold—and burned again. And we all eagerly joined in the great burning.
Why?
Because without the burning process cash could not exist in the necessary amounts to support the manufacture of our machines and everything they produced We all wanted higher and higher wages, so we could buy and burn more and more oil..
This is why our economic system has stalled. Oilburning has drastically slowed, and seems likely to stop because we can no longer afford it.
There can never be an ‘inexpensive’ energy source because of the complexities involved in getting access to it. Oil has been our ‘one trick’. It not only gave us access to energy, it gave us access to more and more of it.
The ‘windbags’ in the alternative energy brigade simply cannot grasp that.
I agree with you. And hydroelectric, nuclear, geothermal, wind and solar wouldn’t be available without at least coal, and perhaps oil as well.
Ma’am,
This is my first comment ever, but I’ve been reading your material for years. I’d like to thank you for all your writings, I’ve gotten much enjoyment and learned a lot. I think you are the most balanced and agreeable blogger around. Your arguments are sound and you can really see the big picture. Thank you!
Secondly, I’m very glad you agreed with Norman’s post above. I agree, too. Very encouraging. I’m happy that there is someone like you, enlightening people and not giving them some “pie in the sky” false hope like so many others.
It will be a difficult road ahead, but studying your reflections and insights will help many to prepare.
Many thanks
“There can never be an ‘inexpensive’ energy source because of the complexities involved in getting access to it. “\
A bit of a stretch, that word “never” can come back to bite a person. I don’t think we know everything, we have never gone backwards towards the future; why would one think that this time will be different? That does not make the path painless or stress free, but it has always been thus. In the fifties and sixties life was wonderful in the states unless one got stuck at the Chosin Reservoir or Viet Nam at the wrong time. In that case, oil was of little direct use, propellants in brass cases were of more immediate value.
Financially, what is on paper may not have as much future value as notational value which means the discount rate is incorrect. Trick is to make the real NPV positive, some are doing it, some are not.
“Windbags” is a strong word, if it gives one last puff that puts civilization across the gorge before us, it may be sufficient.
If all is really that bad, why not do one last cocaine binge and go out high? My thought, perhaps that person will cease to need some useful items and a passerby may just pick up enough for one more day. It is all in the per capita and being in the right capita.
Dennis L.
We must convert one energy form into another in order to support our current lifestyle.
That is the immutable law that governs every living thing on the planet.
Every other species except humankind, (unknowingly) accepts and lives within that law.
We consider ourselves above it. We have holy books to prove it. Those books are wrong.
We are a biological anomaly that accidentally discovered a way of (temporarily) subverting that law. Then we invented gods and economists and politicians to tell us it was permanent. (Infinite growth??)
Our current existence has expanded itself only for about 10k years, during which time we have used our intellect to grab more resources to sustain ourselves, while taking from other species.
10k years in NOT permanent. It is an eye blink of evolution
(the total ‘energy pot’ is a fixed quantity btw)
The same intellect that allowed us to ‘grab’ energy resources, also allowed us to delude ourselves it was infinite. What we’ve actually done is strip the future from our gg granchildren.
https://extranewsfeed.com/the-life-i-stole-from-you-f609f8db6353
So to sustain that certainty, we must continually look for new energy resources to keep our wheels turning.
But we’ve used most of the cheap surplus energy resources, the stuff that returned 100:1 and created the lifestyle we have.
Now we are getting desperate, and looking to windmills to deliver the same results despite the ‘return on investment’ being at best about 18:1.
18:1 doesn’t deliver the necessary ‘surplus’ to sustain our civilisation in its current form. Covering the land with windmills won’t change that.
In other words we are expecting a lifestyle to continue as it always has, through the frantic chasing of energy conversion systems that bring less and less return on input.
Or to put it in a simpler form :
We are continually running faster and faster to stay in the same place.
Norman, we have been consuming energy above our natural level ever since we learned to control fire. It is part of what makes us human. Some other species may use tools, but only our genus controls fire.
“The one ray of hope, from a researcher’s perspective, is the fact that people are always looking for solutions. They may be able to provide funds for research at this time, even if funds for full implementation are unlikely.”
We don’t solve tomorrow’s problems with today’s tools. There is also a certain peace in this post, if all is lost, there is no downside risk so many investments with even a small upside potential are better than total failure.
It will be a challenge and interesting.
Dennis L.
The group I was talking to included a lot of grad students. Our whole economy is built on the idea that we can work on solutions and maybe some of them will pan out. In fact, a lot of jobs for researchers come from seemingly hopeless situations. There was no point in my saying, what you are doing will lead nowhere. We have to shrink back. Perhaps, from the lower base, a later civilization can approach from a different point of view.
I believe you are 100% correct Gail. The shrink back will not be voluntary with humans, because it never is. It will be sudden and harsh.
Tim
For some it will be sudden and harsh, for other not so much so. Some humans are more valuable to the group than others, if I am less valuable and my brother has a more valuable son/daughter, their survival carries on some of my genes, better they survive than me, I am expendable.
You have a note a bit down regarding Trump. Look at his wives, that is plural, they are pretty awesome as the kids say now days, look at his children. Now, making it personal, how are you doing in that area? Ouch.
Eventually the sun burns the earth as it expands, that make life a farce? We do today what is necessary to make it to tomorrow and prepare for tomorrow with surplus that is available today. Not every day is the same, some better, some not so good.
Dennis L.
Well Dennis, glad you asked. I’ve been married to same woman for 32 years. I’ve never cheated on her with hookers and bimbo’s whom I payed off, then lied about, nor caused my family constant turmoil because of my selfish, psychotic desires. I’ve never filed bankruptcy nor hidden my taxes from the courts. My son’s are both successful engineers who are honest and intelligent. Now get back to your bong and your Budweiser and leave this conversation to the adults in the room. You and Trump apparently share the same gene pool.
Tim,
Thanks for your thoughts. I am still looking at genes, 5 children to two, I could afford one including a professional degree.
Somewhere I came across a theory that Christianity had as one of its selling points one wife per man. I believe in virtue, you have it, it also seems that virtue does not always win.
We expect a great deal out of leaders, sometimes getting the job done is good enough.
Ad hominem attacks really aren’t very useful, and you did miss the adult beverage, Glenlivet is more to my taste.
It is a stressful time, all the best,
Dennis L.
Even if their research is futile in the end, they can enjoy the process. Better then wallowing in hopelessness..
Wow, am I the first to reply. It is 1826 GMT,or 2026 local time, so please allow me to thank you again, Gail, for a comprehensive and most insightful post. And best wishes to all readers of OFW. But now to resume my viewing of “The Riddle of the Sands”.