Global Energy Use in the 21st Century

The author is firmly in la-la land if he thinks that he can write a credible post on energy and not mention a word about Peak Oil/Gas/Coal/Uranium, not mention a word about the capability of renewables to provide for an industrial civilization the size of ours, let alone one 3 or 4 times bigger, while talking about growth in consumption all the time.
The world will most definitely not be using 2000 quads of energy in 2035, it will in fact never use 2000 quads of energy because simply there won’t that much energy available. In fact, it is highly doubtful that even the projected 40% growth will happen, for the same reason. It is also highly doubtful that population will level off at 9 billion, because that assumes economic development in the Third world followed by the demographic transition we’ve seen in other places, which, again, isn’t going to happen because the resources aren’t there.
But when you are blinded by your ideological commitments, it is all too easy to miss such obvious, if unfortunate, realities of the world we live in

kdk33 says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:02 am
No. It is not he duty of American taxpayers to subsidize hostile, corrupt, disfunctional, despotic (the list goes on) thirld world governments.

You realize that those words describe very well the US government too, right?

Lonnie Schubert says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:04 am
Using natural gas for electrical generation, versus direct heating, is so inefficient it could be considered immoral.

It hardly matters. Efficiency is measured on a linear scale from 0 to 100/0 to 1. In contrast, growth is exponential. 20% efficiency vs 40% efficiency, or whatever the numbers are, doesn’t really matter when you’re trying to beat exponential growth; you have no chance either way.
And did I mention that natural gas is a non-renewable resource?

Tom,
You wrote: “Imagine a world of 8.1 billion people, 7 billion of whom are using energy at the same rate as we do here in America–323 million btu’s per head. (3.23 x 7, for Joe Romm). That’s over 2,100 quads. ”
– What about the other 1.1 billion?
– In Europe the per capita energy consumption is a bit more than half that of the US, whereas our GDP is in a similar ballpark. Why do you think that the vast majority of the world population will follow the energy intensity of the US rather than that of Europe? I think the reverse is more likely: It’s cheaper.

Smokey says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:32 am
GM, you sound just like an academic with zero real world experience.

Statements like this reveal the hard to conceal anti-intellectualism of their authors. But let’s not go into that

There is plenty of energy available. The Universe is awash in energy.

Yes, there is plenty of energy in the Universe (although at the present 3% growth rate we will have consumed to WHOLE GALAXY in less than 5 million years, not that’s going to happen, but something to think about). How much of it is available to humans to do work is a completely different matter, something that free market believers refuse to understand, either because they thought that it was better to take one more economics class than to take thermodynamics, or if they took it (and understood something in it, which isn’t at all certain), as true believers, they put ideology before science and ignore it completely

Human ingenuity, guided by the free market [as one type of energy becomes too expensive, other types will replace it] will provide plenty of energy. Hand-wringing is pointless.

We’ve heard that nonsense before, and every time it has been thoroughly debunked. Why bring it up again? It takes a person completely detached from reality (how ironic given that those are the same people telling other that they need to stop doing that sciency stuff and look at how the “real world” of jobs and money works) to make such a statement. You can’t beat the laws of physics, no matter how hard you try or how smart you are. And we aren’t particularly smart, nor are we trying…

There is no such thing as “sustainability.” If a system is unsustainable, it will be replaced

.
Our whole socioeconomical system is totally unsustainable. Yet keeping BAU going at all costs is what you want us to do. Either take your words back or don’t talk complete nonsense again.

Really, get with the program: Malthusian thought is dead. Quit flogging that particular horse.

So what exactly is the “Malthusian program” if it is not a secret? I never knew I had anything to do with such a thing. That limits to growth exist and they will cause the collapse of any civilization that refuse to acknowledge their existence is a semiaxiomatic conclusion following from the finiteness of the planet and the exponential and supraexponential nature of our growth. Malthus had very little to do with that conclusion, so I don’t know why you’re bringing him up. The reality is that the Limits to Growth study projections from 1972 have been holding up quite well against the actual course of events, so I don’t understand why anyone would claim that the limits to growth have been falsified (as if you could falsify the exponential function)

Since coal is by far the most abundant resource, particularly in China and Africa, how about addressing its real problems, which to a certain extent we have here in the US, too:
* Increased mine safety — casualties have greatly decreased in the US over the last decades, but only because mechanization has reduced the number of miners; the per-man casualty rate has remained about the same. Mine safety in China is terrible, of course.
* REAL pollution: Particulates, NOx, and sulfur compounds — largely fixed in the US through scrubbers and advanced burner design, both of which are relatively expensive. Reduce the expense and watch the brown haze over East Asia dissipate.
The “dirty coal” epithet reminds me of the old Woody Allen line about sex: “Of course it’s dirty, if you do it right.”

Patrick Davis says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:41 am
“GM says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:20 am”
Yes, there will be a peak with known reserves. 7/10ths of the planet haven’t been explored yet.

Which 7/10th haven’t been explored???? The polar regions definitely aren’t 7/10th of the planet. And it’s like you’re going to find oil in the Himalayas
You sound like someone completely ignorant of the geology involved…

Australia alone has enough coal, at current consumption rates, to supply coal for 500 years.
Supply it to whom? To itself – maybe; to the rest of the world – no way. And we aren’t talking about current consumption rates (an often used canard), we have to take future growth into account too. We probably had thousands of years of oil at the consumption rate of 1900, we have 50 years if that at present.

Not sure about gas, but I know LNG is being shipped to China at rediculous cheap prices and high volumes. I understand too, Australia has the worlds largest uranium reserves.

That confirms my suspicion that you have no idea what you are talking about. Largest reserves doesn’t mean anything. 10 billion barrels of oil is a huge quantity, but the world uses 30 billion a year, so it’s a drop in the bucket. Same with uranium and everything else

One other thing; Mr. Fullers post smacks of “noblesse oblige”. Which has never gone down very well with the “poor masses”.
Also, many of the comments so far reflect the views of “us rich folks”. I suspect the reaction of the average 3rd world “poor savage” to this topic would be quite different than what I’ve read so far.

Anybody who recommends subsidies of any kind is economically illiterate. If you want the poor to have access to cheap energy then you need to free up their economies and remove the regulatory and tax burdens that is preventing them from developing.
It is clear more people need to read these books,

The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (Peter Huber, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, MIT, 2005)
Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (Robert Bryce, 2010)

“Peak uranium” is a joke. The US has enough “spent” fuel rods to provide their electricity for a considerable number of years – estimates are in the hundreds of years. They almost got to the point of using them with the IFR (Integral Fast Reactor), but NRDC got Clinton to cancel it in 1994, just in the nick of time to stop commercialization of the concept. Talk about a history-changing event…
Go nuclear.

“Probably not with many readers here, who have seen taxpayer money go up in smoke on so many poorly-designed projects. But I think it’s our duty to ourselves, as well as the poorest of the poor. ”
From each according to their ability to each according to their need. Kind of a catchy phrase ….
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs) is a slogan popularized by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program.[1]
Really and how does one distribute the 2100 quads.

Human beings are best left to their own devices. Using one’s own resources to shore up another person’s resources is a fool’s errand, exponentially enlarged when applied to countries. You will both end up in the poor house.
Your best bet on improving the countries around you is to continue to build and maintain your own infrastructure (IE roads, educational opportunities, and energy availability) and by providing ample opportunities without roadblocks for your own citizenry to act on their own initiative and drive to make use of that infrastructure.

Re GM:
I just love hitting the ‘Peak Oil’ (and ‘Peak Whatever’) doomsayers with these two posts by E.M. Smith:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
“THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF STUFF, AND THERE NEVER WILL BE”—E. M. Smith
So far, I’ve heard no rebuttals.
/Mr Lynn

Do people know what has been done to improve the burn efficiency of coal? You remember, Bush’s clean coal initiative? Raising the efficiency up into the range of 50-60%. It’s called IGCC — integrated coal gasification combined-cycle. The Polk Power plant in Florida has a full scale plant online —- http://www.tampaelectric.com/news/powerstation/polk/
Why don’t more people know about it?
If your cause is global warming driven by CO2, then why isn’t your savior nuclear power?

Can we have this silly unit of the “quadrillion BTU” defined in SI ? I reckon its 1 EJ OR 10^18 Joules.

Resource (energy is the master one) is more than a stock of stuffs. Summing Julian Simon’s work, Ben Wattenberg wrote (in The Wall Street Journal February 11, 1998):

[Simon’s] central point is clear: Supplies of natural resources are not finite in any serious way; they are created by the intellect of man, an always renewable resource. Coal, oil and uranium were not resources at all until mixed well with human intellect.

That said, some countries are more energy efficient than others: see for example this interesting perspective [PDF].

Steve Fitzpatrick: If breeder technology is used, and thorium technology is developed and used, there is a huge potential for nuclear energy production. The real limitation for nuclear power is political will. A few thousand nuclear plants would meet the short term (2050) demand for energy.

By that time oil will be so expensive so that all those useful oil byproducts such as plastics will become expensive. It’s a shame and stupidity to use oil for electricity production while we could save it for more appropriate uses.

R. de Haan: The so called “Green, renewable energies are all based on carbon fuels and I bet the carbon fuel needed to produce wind mills and solar panels are not calculated into the equation.

Wind mills and solar panels have a lifetime of around 20-30 years. The net benefits are enormous to cancel out any production footprint.
Let’s talk about a single solar panel, that produces 200W at peak. Let’s assume that it produces at peak for five hours per day (very modest estimate). Per year, our single solar panel produces 73KWh and for the 30 years of lifetime this makes 2.2MWh.
How much energy do we need to produce this single solar panel in terms of the 2.2MWh we get back?

Why does all this hand wringing remind me of the following?
In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world’s first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
[…]
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.
And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth-century city — for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.
All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.

I have long believed that subjective CAGW research has been for the purpose of finding ways to redistribute the use of those three big carbon based fuels between those that have and those that don’t. The poorest countries with the highest population densities don’t have. International treaties and national laws using carbon credits and offsets is probably the worst way to redistribute natural resources. While burning dirty coal is bad and should be controlled because it contains pollutants, CO2 is not a pollutant, does not have a measurable effect on climate, and should not be controlled. I would like to see pie charts of geographic distribution of the different energy sources(including known reserves) and energy consumption.

There are already several examples in the world of “succesful” green policies which would deserve that some economist could make here a post to show all of us the wonderful consequences of these.

I doubt that there is or will be a peak uranium problem. Breeder reactors make more plutonium than they burn.

“If we burn coal to obtain this energy, that’s 2,100 x 36 million tons of coal. If we withhold energy from these people, we condemn them to lives of starvation and poverty. If we subsidize clean energy solutions for them”
India and China are both net importers of coal. The price they are currently paying for imported coal exceeds $100/ton. The price for coal in Wyoming is $12/ton.
A 1,000 megawatt coal fired plant burns in about 4 million tons of coal per year.
If China or India builds a coal fired plant they are dooming themselves to spending more then $400 million per year on coal.
A Westinghouse AP1000 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor can be built in China for $2-$3 billion. So the Chinese can build a nuclear reactor for the price of 5-7 years of coal imports for one coal fired electricity plant. Sounds like the economics is beyond brainless.
Now one wonders why anyone in China or India would build a coal fired plant.
It’s simple, Clean Coal(Coal fired plants with more then 40% efficiency) are eligible on a case by case basis for Carbon Credits under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism and Nuclear Power isn’t.
Here we have an article about building coal fired plants in India and China
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE67O04X.htm
The Money Quote,
“I think it will be very difficult for such projects to survive without the CDM,” said an official at a USC plant now being built in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu by a joint venture involving state-owned utility Guodian.”

harrywr2 says:
September 1, 2010 at 7:46 am
Is that CDM really working? I mean “really” with real cash payments or it is just another “model” IF next Cancun jamboree is succesful. Because to make such big expenditures based on a Pachauri’s novel would be just crazy and I don’t think chinese people are either crazy or fool; instead they would fool all green–first-world-silly-believers.
I am sure they control themselves so as not to die by laughing at the utterly funny peculiarities of the occidental psyche.
They are just waiting, as the Confucius proverb reads: ” Wait at your front door and you’ll see the corpse of your enemy passing by”

Well, you nailed it. I like your assessment, (with a few caveats) and hate your solution, but you were partly correct as to why. Now, we’re to subsidize their electricity use so they can watch our movies? Uhmm, no. First, it is apparent, at least to myself, that this nation, (the U.S.) needs to do an about face regarding what comprises our GDP. We’re exporting services and other amenities of little intrinsic value.(Shown by the drop in energy use per person) We produce less and less goods with a value. If we continue in this manner, we won’t have the money to subsidize much of anything. Further, from a purely economical view, coal is the best(cheap and reliable) source of energy in forms of electricity. In some places in the developing world, hydro would be cheaper and almost as reliable. There are techniques that allow for the free flow of the poor fishies around the dams.
Gas is too expensive here. We should encourage people that can’t afford it to use it there? I like nuclear power, but obviously, put in improper hands, there are several ways things could go real bad.
So, it looks like the world is screwed………but wait! There is an answer! Things do not remain static! There is a proverb that has served mankind quite well, I believe it is attributed to Plato, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” The saying has been amended with, “if, necessity….,then ingenuity is surely its father.”(I think Challoner) There is no reason to believe mankind cannot overcome this minor difficulty with the abundance of energy sources yet untapped.
All of the predictions about GDP, population, and energy use is based upon what is known today and not what is unknown. In 40 years, the methods of transportation is likely to be significantly different as also the sources for electricity. To what or in what form, I haven’t a clue, but I know things change, and things are changing quicker now than what they had in the past. We’ll be fine if we don’t over-react and make small difficulties large ones.

And will someone tell me how much energy they will be using in India or Indonesia to heat their houses? Try zero – it’s hot all the time. Such is extrapolation. In the 1970s there were rock solid predictions of mass famine by the 1990s. All the experts agreed – except they were wrong.
The problems with all future predictions – 1. You have to keep every other variable fixed which in this case means energy efficiency, and 2. you really don’t know what future technology will produce. 8 billion people will not be driving around in 2010 cars in 2050.
The one word answer is Thorium. It would only take 5000 tons a year to provide all the electricity. There are 1.2 million tons of known reserves and no-one is looking for the stuff so there will be a lot more than that. The nuclear industry gravitated around Uranium because they really wanted the Plutonium for bombs. Thorium has always been more suitable for power generation. And then there’s solar thermal…

Interesting post – thank you Thomas Fuller.
I do disagree with you that we should use our tax dollars to subsidize the developing world or that we should even fight for them. Let them fight their battles themselves. If they have a corrupt and restrictive government that is preventing them from bettering themselves, it is their problem, not ours.
I am not interested in us being the police or even the conscience of the world. I’ve had enough of it. We have plenty of problems with our own corrupt, over-grown, opportunity-killing government to deal with here at home. We’ll all be better off when we learn to mind our own business.

Martin Brumby said
September 1, 2010 at 5:47 am
@GM says: September 1, 2010 at 5:20 am
“The author is firmly in la-la land if he thinks that he can write a credible post on energy and not mention a word about Peak Oil/Gas/Coal/Uranium, not mention a word about the capability of renewables to provide for an industrial civilization the size of ours, let alone one 3 or 4 times bigger, while talking about growth in consumption all the time.”
Sorry, GM. The one firmly in la-la land is you.
If any of the so-called renewables (other than Hydro, or in a few lucky countries Geothermal) was remotely capable of “provid[ing] for an industrial civilization the size of ours” then how come they only exist when massively subsidised and how come the actual output achieved is absolutely derisory? Have you bothered to look at the actual figures?

Someone has severe reading comprehension problems. Of course renewables can’t do the job, they are too diffuse. Combined with fossil fuels non-renewability, this means is that we are in even greater need of reduction of population and consumption

There is no energy shortage. There never will be, either. Man’s ingenuity has always (Always, except when idiot governments intervene) provided more than sufficient energy to meet any situation.
Without resorting to toxic, dangerous, far-too-expensive nuclear power, the world has far more than enough oil, natural gas, wind-power, solar power, and ocean-based power to meet any need at any time.
There is no Peak Oil problem, either. Never has been, and never will be. Oil is much like picking fruit from a tree. The lowest-hanging fruit is picked easily by simply walking up to the tree and grabbing the fruit by hand. This is the equivalent of land-based, shallow oil, which is very cheap to produce. Middle-level fruit, higher up the tree, requires a ladder of some sort, so its production requires a bit more cost. This is the equivalent of deeper wells on-shore, and shallow wells off-shore. The highest fruit on the tree requires a mechanical lift, with higher cost. This is the equivalent of deep-water offshore, or from hostile environments such as the Arctic north slope, or more recently, Russia’s Sakhalin Island. The oil is there, always has been, and we know where it lies. When the price increases sufficiently, we will produce that oil. This is exactly what happened after the oil price increases of the 1970s, when drilling and production occurred in the North Sea and Alaska.
Really, it is astounding that the over-abundance of energy resources on this planet are overlooked by so many people.
There is no energy shortage. There never will be, either. The engineers will see to it, as we always have.
For those who want to read more on this, see the articles with key words “Grand Game” on my blog.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/search?q=grand+game

@ Tim
Oh brother. Why not post the DOE numbers for dollars per kWh for wind/solar. Put things into perspective.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/chap5.pdf
Refined coal is a high subsidy, but it at least produces a net increase in electricity output. Neither wind or solar can do that. If the playing field were leveled as you suggest, “renewables” (wind/solar in this case) would go belly up in a week.

Enneagram says:
September 1, 2010 at 8:23 am
“Is that CDM really working? I mean “really” with real cash payments or it is just another “model” ”
The UN CDM issues ‘purchasable carbon credits’. The value of those credits is determined by the European Carbon Markets.
The Chinese aren’t stupid, the Carbon Credits aren’t working out to be as valuable as originally anticipated and becoming dependent on coal imports when you are already dependent on Oil and Natural Gas imports doesn’t make for ‘energy security’.
As a result they are building nuclear power plants without UN subsidy as fast as the Japanese can make the critical reactor forgings. Unfortunately that is slower then their rising energy demand.
India doesn’t have much in the way of Uranium deposits and is doing some research work on thorium. They had loads of thorium deposits. I expect as soon as they get a ‘commercially viable’ thorium reactor worked out they’ll abandon coal but it’s not going to be tomorrow morning at 9.
The world has an enormous supply of coal. Unfortunately the vast majority of it is not ‘economically recoverable’ or is too far from markets. It costs 2-3 cents/ton mile to transport coal by rail. Then $20-$30 for ton if it needs a boat ride. The $12/ton coal in Wyoming isn’t ‘cheap’ once it has to be transported 1,000 miles by rail to a seaport.
Hence, while electricity from coal is still cheap in the US Midwest it’s not cheap anymore in the US Southeast. Not surprisingly the electric utilities in the US Southeast are trying to build nuclear power plants.

Humankind has a long history of those that “have”, “fixing” things for those that “have not”. Usually to the detriment of those being helped, and enriching the helper.
Make the technologies available and let then decide for themselves.
Oh, and by the way, while you are at it let us decide for ourselves too.

Peak Oil is a myth,
Myth: The World is Running Out of Oil (Peak Oil)
Peak Uranium is a myth,
Uranium resources sufficient to meet projected nuclear energy requirements long into the future (Nuclear Energy Administration)
I am so tired of the fantasy (renewable) energy source delusional types. All forms of renewable are NOT economically viable. If they were we would be using them. Over 88% of the world’s energy comes from hydrocarbons the remainder is nuclear (5%) and hydroelectric (6%). That is right less than 1% from everything else.
Fine remove all subsidies (I am all for it). Renewables will NOT be economically viable because they are low in power and energy density. People pushing fantasy energy solutions don’t understand basic physics or economics.
I always ask people if they are for renewables and then I ask them if they are for paying higher electricity, heating and fuel costs and you will find you will get two very different answers to each question. Emotionally people want the magic energy sources, realistically they pay for what works.

PaulW – It’s a shame and stupidity to use oil for electricity production while we could save it for more appropriate uses.

It is shame no one knows where our energy actually comes from or how it is used,
Only 1% of the United States electrical generation comes from oil (EIA) (48% Coal, 21% Natural Gas, 20% Nuclear)

You want to replace worldwide hydrocarbon energy? No problem just find me the energy output (in oil equivalent) of twenty-seven Saudi Arabias per day.
Should be easy!

Tim Williams – After checking out ELI ‘s web site , I have little faith in their objectivity . None the less , an interesting read . I keep hearing about how heavily subsidizes the coal is , but your report suggests that this isn’t really so – especially when compared to oil . Taxing coal royalties as a capital gain hardly qualifies as a subsidy in my opinion . Furthermore , most of the tax breaks afforded the fossil fuel industry seem fair , IMHO . Obviosly the ELI doesn’t agree .

Although most of you have good argument, remember to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. I hate to pick on one person, but the only person who is really really wrong is GM. Lets look at this qoute first:
“If you haven’t heard any rebuttals (as if the claim that the planet has infinite resources needs some sort of rebuttal) that’s because you have either:”
No one has claimed the planet has infinite resources. You are just repeating mathusian philosophy which has been around for over 2 centuries. If you are going to argue this philosophy, you need to go research it and come up with points that have not been already disproven by economic PHD’s who know more then philsopher’s on economics. Prove it versus just going on the “I am right” band-wagon.
There are finite resources on the Earth, but for all practical purposes, the classic economical model is that there are enough resources on the Earth for about 100k years of development if not more. The cost of mining versus taxes versus other things is what keeps the true numbers down. When something becomes scarse, its price goes up, less profitable mining sources are opened up, and the price comes down again. Classic economics…..but do not take it from me, go do your research…
Start with Population Bomb and start reading about the famous “Wager”. Economics crashed the Population Bomb theory in the 70’s, and even though his every prediction has been incorrect, this guy still has tenure and still is looked up upon. Do I dare mention his name?
The all encompassing exponential growth theory does not work either. Growth overall is slowing down as far as the exponential curve goes, but to someone unversed in mathematics, this appears like growth is accelerating. The thing to remember is that growth is never linear, its a different scale. Even a slowing growth will appear to be faster then what it will be just because most people do not understand the basic math behind the equations.
Energy usage is another one of these variables that appears to be worse then it is for those who do not understand math. Growth (acceleration) is different then the actual linear trend. Comparing these two forces is apples and oranges, and should be elementary, but for some reason its not. I have not looked at the developing countries energy curves to determine whether their exponential curves are going up or down, but that is different then their increase in energy usage and should be stated as thus.
But heck, we are all wrong sometimes, I just have this to really say. Subsidies are always mis-used, I have no problems with getting rid of them all-together personally, lets do it.
Research and development, now that is something that never has a tangible benefit, but by far economically speaking is the best way to invest money. Ask any big company this and look at what happens when you cut this budget….
What if hypothetically speaking, we would have spent every dollar we invested into subsidies (for both coal and renewables) into research and development or space exploration? The benefits are impossible to quantify, but we can go by history and look at what space exploration brought us technologically speaking from landing on the moon.
Society as a general rule would benefit much more from us investing in R&D and to me this does not mean we have to “go to Mars” or something else like that. Spending the money on clean energy is missing the point where once again we are going back to subsidies which overall just keep unproductive or less profitable alternatives in the running. Sure, coal usage would sky-rocket at first under no subsidies anywhere…you will notice that a majority of the subsidies are for oil….which I have no love affair with, but with no alternative right now, let the market take its course.
R&D will result in expensive alternatives that eventually with economics will become commercially viable someday. The thing with transforming society is that people think this can be done instantly when in reality it takes decades to achieve any tangible accomplishment/achievement with R&D. This may not always be the case (Sometimes results are quick) but you must take the long view on society.
We all think we have the one solution that will resolve the world’s problems, but the truth is any result today will produce 3 problems tomorrow in society. The best we can do is rely on capitalism which like democracy is inherently a terrible system…but like Churchill says “Its the best system we have.”

GM
That quote was from a book at the time, I have no comment on the accuracy.
If the price of oil goes up consumption eventually goes down. All I was saying was that if the resources arent there the price will go up, and consumption will go down. Solar power is supposed to be price neutral with oil round about 2018 – presumably 3rd world first, due to incident energy. Energy is just not the issue you are making it, and the replacements get cheaper every year.
Why would you not have the resources to make the solar panels? The energy required itself would be a problem nowadays if you used photovoltaics – although I didn’t actually state that. photovoltaics are currently more than 99% silicon (i.e. sand) so what did you think would not be available? It is prohibitively expensive currently but it will eventually be cost effective with oil – rapidly if the peak oil theorists are correct longer if not. If I recall you can make photovoltaics using several different materials, and the non photovoltaics can use pretty much anything reflective. Which material did you have in mind to run out of?
I wasnt actually suggesting you use the sahara, just suggesting that the energy consumed by man is a tiny percentage of the radiant energy hitting the earth. When oil gets rare enough or solar becomes cost effective everybody will fit solar – unless a cheaper alternative becomes available. Oil has competition – it is just currently the cheapest. When the price goes up the others become cost effective. The longer you delay it the less expensive the replacement is. The idea that there is a major problem because oil will peak 20 or 30 (or frankly 2) years from now is not realistic. Consumption will get squeezed and other stuff will take over unless somebody tries to co-ordinate it in which case it is liable to lead to war. The universe is absolutely full of energy and the human race will just use the most cost effective one at any given time (except when directed by real or imaginary environmental concerns). fossil fuels are currently the most cost effective because they are so plentiful. When it peaks it will not be and we will use something else or less of it. It is hardly something anybody needs to plan for at the moment.

Thomas Fuller may be overestimating, but even conservative estimates of “third world” fossil fuel usage in 2050 show the futility of limiting CO2 emissions in only the “developed” world (and to “solve” a nonexistent problem at that!). And as others have pointed out, his idea of funneling taxpayer dollars through government development programs is probably the worst possible approach. I thank him for his article, however, and I thank commenters here for a wealth of references.
GM says (September 1, 2010 at 5:47 am): “The reality is that the Limits to Growth study projections from 1972 have been holding up quite well against the actual course of events…”
BWAHAHAHA! Good one, GM!

Gary Hladik said on Global Energy Use in the 21st Century
September 1, 2010 at 11:06 am
GM says (September 1, 2010 at 5:47 am): “The reality is that the Limits to Growth study projections from 1972 have been holding up quite well against the actual course of events…”
BWAHAHAHA! Good one, GM!

If you had actually read what those projections are instead of believing what the propaganda machine has been feeding you, you would not be laughing

larry says:
September 1, 2010 at 10:52 am
GM
That quote was from a book at the time, I have no comment on the accuracy.
If the price of oil goes up consumption eventually goes down. All I was saying was that if the resources arent there the price will go up, and consumption will go down. Solar power is supposed to be price neutral with oil round about 2018 – presumably 3rd world first, due to incident energy. Energy is just not the issue you are making it, and the replacements get cheaper every year.

Price isn’t the issue, in fact it is tragically misleading to think about these things in terms of $ signs. Net energy is what matters, and it doesn’t look good

Why would you not have the resources to make the solar panels? The energy required itself would be a problem nowadays if you used photovoltaics – although I didn’t actually state that.

To begin with, the high-efficiency PV cells use rare earth elements that are in very short supply. But when I say “resources”, I don’t mean just the materials, I mean societal resources in general. What the free market religion tells you is that when the price signal comes, substitutes will be found and the infrastructure will be build. In reality, it doesn’t work that way, because we are talking about infrastructure that will take decades to build, while the price signal will come on a much shorter time scale, and when it does society will most likely not be able to organize itself into building the infrastructure. When the blackouts and food riots start, it is too late.

As an alternative to sending our tax money to frequently-corrupt third world governments, the most productive — and cost-free — measure that could be taken would be to can the EU bureaucracy’s ban on importation of genetically-modified foodstuffs.
There are pest- and disease-resistant strains of grain and root vegetables that have been developed that would greatly increase yields, as well as enhanced varieties of rice that would relieve widespread dietary-deficiency diseases. But none of this is being planted in Africa due to fears that exports to Europe would be cut off.
If we can increase the prosperity of Africa, energy will take care of itself — as long as the sanctimonious greens can be kept at bay.

kdk33 says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:02 am
“No. It is not he duty of American taxpayers to subsidize hostile, corrupt, disfunctional, despotic (the list goes on) thirld world governments.”
Actually, one theory is that violent overthrow (ie war) on despotic, corrupt, disfunctional, hostile governments, though bloody and costly pays off better for us and those being oppressed within those countries, with less long term violence, bloodshed and misery than does sending them money which is stolen by their rulers and used against us. But then, we seem to no longer have the stomach for such endeavors. Worked fine with Japan which had an extremely despotic, violent and hostile situation prior to our 25 year occupation of them. We taught them how to be like us and how to woop us with an economic stick rather than a sword. Unfortunately, their democracy is now suffering from the same corrution now as ours.

Ben D. says:
September 1, 2010 at 10:44 am
No one has claimed the planet has infinite resources.

People like Julion Simon have definitely done that:
“Our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any economic sense.”

You are just repeating mathusian philosophy which has been around for over 2 centuries. If you are going to argue this philosophy, you need to go research it and come up with points that have not been already disproven by economic PHD’s who know more then philsopher’s on economics. Prove it versus just going on the “I am right” band-wagon.

Excuse me, what exactly does a PhD in economics know about the real world?? All he knows is some basic math and a lot of politics disguised as science. The real world, however, is governed by the laws of physics, not by money. Which means that economists should not be allowed anywhere near society’s decision making process, which should be handled by scientists who actually know how the world works. Why is it that economists tend to be on the “Resources not a problem” side, while physical scientists tend to be on the “Resources very much a problem” side? Is it simply a coincidence?
Of course, if you firmly believer that science doesn’t matter and the Universe is governed by the rules of economics (that didn’t exist for 13 billion years and still doesn’t exist in the vast majority of it), then I can’t help you (which doesn’t mean you’re not in a dire need of help)

There are finite resources on the Earth, but for all practical purposes, the classic economical model is that there are enough resources on the Earth for about 100k years of development if not more.

And you pulled this number out of???
Currently we use 35% of the Earth’s land surface for agriculture, cities, and roads, we are wrecking the oceans, killing the terrestrial ecosystems, destroying topsoil, depleting aquifers, we’re at Peak Oil, gas and coal will follow, phosphorus is running out, as are a number of other high-grade ores, and in general, we are on course for complete societal collapse at some point in this century. Where exactly are the resources for 100,000 years of development??

GM and et.al. Please correct me if I am wrong.There are only two “green” energies in the world…..
1) photosynthesis
2) nuclear
And photosynthesis uses nuclear(sunlight).
And as to running out of power…..LOL….there is enough uranium in a little place called Uranium City,Sask,Canada to run ALL the nuclear plants needed for the WORLD,if only we were allowed to build them!

Mr. Fuller,
I respect many of the points you make, but like all of us your crystal ball is cloudy, and we simply do not know what the future will bring. I am puzzled why you seem to almost ignore nuclear power? I have done the math before, and if I remember correctly, there is enough Thorium alone to supply even the most energy comsuming society with electric power for many thousands of years. Thorium reactors are safe from runaway reactions, consume old nuclear bomb materials (U235 and/or plutonium), and the technology is here NOW. Fourth generation Uranium reactors are also very attractive. This does not even consider that many top scientists believe fusion power is only a few decades away at most. Where is the problem with running out of energy?

This is why all that trouble with CO2:
Mauna Loa has erupted 39 times since 1832….just to keep fools believing CO2, measured IN MAUNA LOA, it is increasing because of YOU.
Do YOU still believe that TALE?
Things, as told by “The Group of Rome”, to Al Baby, is like this: The only way to distribute wealth is to make believe to the people of the biggest economy of the world to live poorer lives, which means not to spend that “dirty and sinful” energy.
However, most probably, they have also cheated Al Baby (which it is not surprising). The real issue it is the total control of the world and all its resources by a very small number of people.

GM says: September 1, 2010 at 9:29 am
Mr Lynn said on Global Energy Use in the 21st Century
September 1, 2010 at 6:15 am
If you haven’t heard any rebuttals (as if the claim that the planet has infinite resources needs some sort of rebuttal) that’s because you have either:
1) you have lived all your life in the cave of free market ideology
2.) you have managed the impossible feat of learning how to write/type without ever learning how to read
3) you have never learned basic arithmetics
4) you are in dire need of mental hospitalization
—————————————————————————–
GM. I have read all your posts here and apart from noticing that you are extremely rude to other correspondents (which seems to be your main goal) you are also quite negative. You offer nothing.
Get a life.
Doug

@Ben D.
A sensible comment, thanks.
GW can begin here.

GM says:
September 1, 2010 at 9:29 am
If you haven’t heard any rebuttals (as if the claim that the planet has infinite resources needs some sort of rebuttal) that’s because you have either:
1) you have lived all your life in the cave of free market ideology
2.) you have managed the impossible feat of learning how to write/type without ever learning how to read
3) you have never learned basic arithmetics
4) you are in dire need of mental hospitalization

That’s a rebuttal?
As someone pointed out above, the claim is not that “the planet has infinite resources ,” but rather that coupled with the mind of man the Earth’s resources are effectively inexhaustible. We are constantly finding new pools of oil under land and sea, but if one day we do run out (and if Thomas Gold is wrong about the Earth’s mantle creating more all the time), we can make it from coal, as the Germans did during WWII, or from trash (as Plasco is doing), or grow it from algae or bioengineered plants.
But that’s just oil. What else? Coal? There are hundreds of years worth in the ground. Natural gas? We discovering so much in shales that there’s a glut of it coming. Minerals? Ever hear of recycling? Apart from our deep-space vehicles, not one atom of them has left the Earth, and the oceans are a practically inexhaustible source of elements like uranium and manganese.
And, as Jeremy says (September 1, 2010 at 8:09 am),

The answer has always been space exploration. There’s incalculable amounts of resources off-planet and we know how to survive off-planet, yet instead of spending $30-50 billion a year to have a real space program, we spend $Trillions on propping up our housing values by purchasing public debt. . .

Read John S. Lewis’s Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets. The Moon and the Asteroids are just waiting for us to develop cheaper ways of getting out of Earth’s gravity well (and if we needed more methane than bioengineered plants could make, there’s plenty of it on Titan). Quite literally, the sky’s the limit.
Take your head out of the Ludditic sand, GM, stop with the insults, and look at what your fellow men are truly capable of.
/Mr Lynn

tmtisfree says:
September 1, 2010 at 12:44 pm
@Ben D.
A sensible comment, thanks.
GW can begin here.

Julian Simon was a person who should have never been let out of the straight jacket and allowed anywhere close to a keyboard. The same goes for everyone who believes his writings, which are the equivalent to claiming that if you jump from the 88th floor of a skyscraper, nothing bad will happen to you because by the time you reach the ground you will have learned how to fly. And that’s a very precise analogy.

Mr Lynn says:
As someone pointed out above, the claim is not that “the planet has infinite resources ,” but rather that coupled with the mind of man the Earth’s resources are effectively inexhaustible. We are constantly finding new pools of oil under land and sea, but if one day we do run out (and if Thomas Gold is wrong about the Earth’s mantle creating more all the time), we can make it from coal, as the Germans did during WWII, or from trash (as Plasco is doing), or grow it from algae or bioengineered plants.

OK, tell how can one not use sharp language when faced with lunacy like this??? Each year we are using 5 times the oil we are consuming, and it is getting worse and worse every year. Yes, we are finding oil, but we are replacing less than 20% of what we consume. Is your brain capable of understanding this? Can you even work with numbers?? I have hard time believing it.
How could you ever say that “Oh, no problem, oil is constantly generated in the mantle” when first, that’s not what the science said, and second, the experience of hundreds and thousands of depleted and abandoned oil wells and oil fields all over the world says that even if it was, the rate at which this is happening is hardly enough to keep us going??? Does that fact that the US peaked 40 years ago and is now producing half of what it was producing back then, at much lower EROEI tell you something???
Are you capable of understanding such things as energy flow from the sun, conversion efficiency by photosynthesis, nutrient cycles etc.? If you are not, you have absolutely no right to even talk about biofuels as a solution, and neither does anyone else who doesn’t/is not willing to understand these really very simple things

But that’s just oil. What else? Coal? There are hundreds of years worth in the ground

Again, you pulled these numbers out of???

Natural gas? We discovering so much in shales that there’s a glut of it coming.

Once again, you have zero clue what you are talking about. Shale gas has so many issues, from EROEI, through severs ground water contamination, to, finally, the steepest decline rates ever seen (most wells are abandoned in just a few years). It’s not a solution, and what gas provides right now is hardly the only problem

Minerals? Ever hear of recycling? Apart from our deep-space vehicles, not one atom of them has left the Earth, and the oceans are a practically inexhaustible source of elements like uranium and manganese.

Ever heard of entropy? Apparently not.

The answer has always been space exploration. There’s incalculable amounts of resources off-planet and we know how to survive off-planet, yet instead of spending $30-50 billion a year to have a real space program, we spend $Trillions on propping up our housing values by purchasing public debt. .
Read John S. Lewis’s Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets. The Moon and the Asteroids are just waiting for us to develop cheaper ways of getting out of Earth’s gravity well (and if we needed more methane than bioengineered plants could make, there’s plenty of it on Titan). Quite literally, the sky’s the limit..

Again, you have to be absolutely out of your mind to claim such things. We can’t even send a man to Mars, and we are due for global societal collapse in the next few decades, yet you are claiming that we will mine other planets????????? By now I know that basic reasoning, arithmetics, physics, and mental sanity aren’t your strong points, but I will still encourage you to do the math of how much energy it will require to go to Titan, and transport the methane from there to here (hint: it is a hundreds of times more than the energy contained in that methane). Simply idiotic

Take your head out of the Ludditic sand, GM, stop with the insults, and look at what your fellow men are truly capable of.

Insults that are well deserved are insults only in the eyes of those who receive them, because usually they also suffer from a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. For the people who can actually see the reality, those “insults” may actually be rather accurate descriptions of the situation

As someone pointed out above, the claim is not that “the planet has infinite resources ,” but rather that coupled with the mind of man the Earth’s resources are effectively inexhaustible. We are constantly finding new pools of oil under land and sea, but if one day we do run out (and if Thomas Gold is wrong about the Earth’s mantle creating more all the time), we can make it from coal, as the Germans did during WWII, or from trash (as Plasco is doing), or grow it from algae or bioengineered plants.

The planet does NOT have infinite resources, per se. It is, however, a closed system — practically everything that was here, is still here. It cycles. CO2 fixed by plants/marine life, to limestone, subduction happens, volcanoes spew out CO2. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The question is how long is it in a useful state and how much?
We are finding new, useful reserves frequently. Some of them more useful than others as costs to recover them are still prohibitive. But they are there.
Personally, I’m for the nuclear power option. It’s clean and cheap. Handled correctly, very safe and low on emissions.
I’m 100% behind a clean, green world. Just not at the expense of killing civilization to get it.

James Sexton says:
September 1, 2010 at 10:28 am
We’re getting a much better “bang for our buck” with fossil fuel subsidies in terms of production, retail and wholesale cost. In other words, it is fallacy to pour more money down a more costly, less reliable, inefficient source of energy. Again, I’m not much on subsidizing private energy industry of any kind, but if you ask me, we’re spending way too much on the renewables for the results we’re getting.
You say, “Fossil fuel industries are already heavily subsidised. Removing these subsidies, would at least level the playing field to allow renewables to compete on a fairer footing…IMHO.”
The renewable energy market is getting almost 30% of the subsidies while producing, 13% of the energy, and that’s with traditional hydro, which I don’t believe is receiving the renewable subsidy. Without hydro, they are producing about 4.5%. Nice, we’re paying so companies can charge us more for electricity.
I’d say renewables wouldn’t even exist without the significant subsidies they get. But, that’s just my opinion, too.”
The current subsidy to the fossil fuel industry comes after generations of publicly subsidised investment in technology and infrastructures, that is why the bang for your buck is relatively cheap. These companise now represent some of the profitable and powerful enterprises in the business world.
Renewable energies need investment to kick start the technology. Efficiency will soon improve and, as the raw resources are not finite, the future outlook for the public investment is likely diminish with time rather than increase as is case for many sources of fossil fuel.
All this in the context of the likely external costs of fossil fuels.
If anyone believes that global warming is at least a risk, then at the very least, let the fossil fuel industry pay for the right to pollute from it’s own purse.

After all is said and done WHAT IF nuclear fusion becomes a practical reality? New discoveries, processes and inventions in energy are being made gradually over time.

“In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story
windows.”
Source – Pdf

See also The Freeman
We really just don’t know how the energy forecasts will pan out in 40 years.

GM? ….is it you who was bailed out?

4 said on Global Energy Use in the 21st Century
September 1, 2010 at 1:40 pm
The crude oil and natural gas markets have a long colorful history. To understand them, one needs some economic theory. The dominant view, of a fixed mineral stock, implies that a unit produced today means one less in the future. This concept is false, whether stated as common sense or as elegant theory.

Due to that inconvenient principle, called the law of conservation of energy and matter, the only way it can be false is if there was another unit of mineral stock created for every unit we use up. Which is not the case. Therefore you are talking BS

Janice said
September 1, 2010 at 11:27 am
Some hydrocarbons are abundant in the solar system. Lakes of liquid methane and ethane have been found on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, confirmed by the Cassini-Huygens Mission. I suspect that before we ever come close to using up our supplies of hydrocarbons and metals, we will be mining various moons and the asteroid belt for the abundant materials that are there.

Another one…
Once again, what would it take for people to figure out that if it will take many times the energy contained in a hydrocarbon to bring it from Titan to the Earth, it makes absolutely no sense to do that?

It seems my post got lost, so I will try to recreate it.
[no, I trashed it, and will continue to do so on these tangential ideas ~ ctm]

GM says: September 1, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Again, you have to be absolutely out of your mind to claim such things. We can’t even send a man to Mars, and we are due for global societal collapse in the next few decades, yet you are claiming that we will mine other planets????????? By now I know that basic reasoning, arithmetics, physics, and mental sanity aren’t your strong points, but I will still encourage you to do the math of how much energy it will require to go to Titan, and transport the methane from there to here (hint: it is a hundreds of times more than the energy contained in that methane). Simply idiotic
You earn no points, and please begone Mr Troll.
Yes, we can send men to Mars. The reason we haven’t yet is that we simply stopped trying. We knew less about sending men to the moon in 1960 than we knew about sending men to Mars in 1995, yet we haven’t done it. We haven’t done it because instead of NASA’s budget increasing after Apollo, it was decreased. It’s current level is nearly 0.5% of the federal budget. Read that again. Americans spend ~0.5% of their entire federal budget on the future of humanity. That’s like having children as fast as a multi-wived bigamist in Utah while throwing a few quarters at the kids each day for food. It is *pathetic* and you want to hold up a huge banner that says, “oh, we can’t do this, we wont ever do this.” without even acknowledging how little we’ve tried.
Please stop trolling, it’s clear you haven’t fully studied everything you’re commenting on.

GM says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:50 am
“It is the same thing with resources – it is not a wild guess that resources will eventually run out, it follows from the basic nature of reality and the laws of physics. How exactly they will run out is a more complicated question, but we have a pretty good idea based on historical data.”
Wrong!
Resources never run out, rather the price increases until demand no longer exists.
The reason for this apparent paradox is that humans are not stupid. History shows man is highly intelligent and new ways will be found to provide the cheap energy we need. The % of geniuses amongst homo sapiens is slowly increasing over time, along with a slow general increase in intelligence. The larger the population of our planet becomes, so too does the absolute number of geniuses. Look at the way technology has developed in the last 30 years, then imagine – if you can – what we will be capable of by 2040.
History shows that trying to predict the future based on what has happened in the past is foolishness of the highest magnitude. Mankind does not make progress in a linear fashion, instead it moves forwards in a series of leaps and bounds, usually driven be one persons intuitive flash of brilliance. For humanity to try to eke out an existence by trying to ration a supply of dwindling resources would be a recipe for disaster and only by retaining a free market will mankind continue to prosper.

Gail Combs
POPULATION:
The maintenance level for the population is a birth rate of 2.1%
The USA has a birth rate of 1.3% click
France 1.3%
UK – 1.1%;
Canada – 1.0%;
Germany – 0.8%;
Switzerland – 0.9%;
Greece – 0.9%
Georgia – 1.0%;
China – 1.4%;
Paraguay – 2.8%;
Niger – 5.2%;
Cambodia – 2.5%;
Hong Kong – 0.7%

How much credibility does a person who doesn’t know the difference between percentages and total fertility rate have on issues of population???

GM,
“If you had actually read what those projections are instead of believing what the propaganda machine has been feeding you, you would not be laughing.”
Most of us come to this site to learn, not laugh at others. If you have evidence of any Limit to Growth prediction from 1972 becoming reality, please share with us.

RE: GM
Learned long ago not to waste my time, breath or computer on people with closed minds, ie liberals and greenies. They are proof that a little education is a dangerous thing. And don’t forget that anyone can obtain a degree in any discipline, nowdays, if they have the time and money thanks to our liberal educational system.

Tim Clark said
September 1, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Please provide some links for any of the juvenile claims you have made. Here are just a few relatively recent discoveries I found in 15 minutes disputing your beliefs.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2010/3010/ 1.32 trillion barrels in Piceance basin, CO. Strip mineable. EPA won’t let us get to it.
Here’s the Bakken field amount in North Dakota:
http://geology.com/usgs/bakken-formation/bakken-formation-assessment-lg.gif
Google Brazil offshore oil discovery.
Don’t just spew unsupported dogma, give us references or leave.

Well, if you don’t know the basic difference between oil in place and reserves and if you have never heard of EROEI, then I can’t help you. But if that’s the case, which apparently it is, you shouldn’t be opening your mouth because it makes you look extremely silly.

Vince Causey says:
September 1, 2010 at 2:30 pm
GM,
“If you had actually read what those projections are instead of believing what the propaganda machine has been feeding you, you would not be laughing.”
Most of us come to this site to learn, not laugh at others. If you have evidence of any Limit to Growth prediction from 1972 becoming reality, please share with us.

http://books.google.com/books?id=QRyQiINGW6oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=limits+to+growth+the+30-year+update&source=bl&ots=GncNbKaaiY&sig=dR2eIbJZO_fWnicW0QtSjZKUeGo&hl=en&ei=Fst-TMGFJZDksQO5tr31Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

GM says: September 1, 2010 at 2:19 pm
1) you agree with it, in which case you wouldn’t have posted what you posted
2) therefore you don’t agree with it, in which the one who doesn’t belong to absolutely any kind of discussion is you
Actually, I was waiting for an apology for calling someone who is an aerospace engineer an idiot for suggesting that mankind can go to Mars. I figure since you’re just trolling, I’ll be waiting a long time.

GM says: September 1, 2010 at 2:51 pm
But the long-term carrying capacity of the planet at a comfortable level of lifestyle, and close to 100% recycling, is probably below the 100 million, possibly much lower than 100 million. There are huge uncertainties to any such number, but given what’s at stake, if there is uncertainty, this means that the target should be safely within the lowest estimate
GM. Now I know you are out of your tree.
Doug

“So what are short-term (and by short-term, I mean this century) target should be is a number of people that’s safely within the carrying capacity of the planet (and that will allow the planet to recover from the last 300 years of human terror)”
Admit it , you just don’t like people.
Somebody sold you this bill of goods , and now you are peddling it but I think
most of us here, ( count me in with Jeremy, Tenue, etc) know better than to give credence to this gloom and doom when it is obvious that it goes nowhere.

Jimash says:
September 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Do some calculations. Compare the amount of energy required just to overcome gravity with the amount of energy that could possibly be delivered from distant space. Our solar energy technology may not be cheap, but there are no delivery costs.

Fred,
As I have said it is part of a process.
Once there is a presence in space of an industrial nature, there would naturaly be a fleet of space vehicles that would only need to escape the gravity of the Earth once, and could go and come back many times delivering their cargoes in orbit. With Ion engines
and nuclear electric propulsion.
Getting it to ground requires a fixed installation.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07sep_1/
http://spaceelevatorconference.org/default.aspx
Put that puppy up , get the ions propelling, and we are in business.

GM says:
September 1, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Your arrogance is hard to stand. Since you seem to believe, that this plante can only sustain 100 mil inhabitants:
“But the long-term carrying capacity of the planet at a comfortable level of lifestyle, and close to 100% recycling, is probably below the 100 million, possibly much lower than 100 million. ”
So you want death for roghly 5.9 billion people. Go ahead, be the first, let your word be followed by action – as has been recommended to you before: Say farewell to the planet and stop using up valuable resources.

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/
See that ? it is an inflatable space vehicle.
This is coming. Most of the technologies necessary for doing what I have alluded to, exist already. (inflatables, Ion, robotics )
The Space Elevator is the biggy .

Energy consumption in the United States fell nearly 5% last year, marking the largest annual drop on record, according to an analysis of federal data by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/news/economy/energy_use/

Jimash says:
September 1, 2010 at 4:12 pm
And then what, Genius ?
You are one of those “people are killing the Earth” nuts.
It IS nuts. You DO need help. Take a tip. Everything you know is wrong.

A person who doesn’t understand the concept of EROEI is definitely more competent than me, yeah…

Thomas says:
September 1, 2010 at 3:29 pm
So you want death for roghly 5.9 billion people. Go ahead, be the first, let your word be followed by action – as has been recommended to you before: Say farewell to the planet and stop using up valuable resources.
Uh, let me see, 6.8 billion minus 100 million equals 6.7 billion, not 5.9 billion. But that’s completely missing the point, because the ideas is to actually prevent excessive deaths. You can decrease population by two ways – increase death rate or reduce birth rate. Nobody is talking about the former, the former is the way nature will do it if we don’t and it is what we should be trying to avoid; the only way to do that is to drastically decrease birth rates.

Tim Williams says:
September 1, 2010 at 1:31 pm
“If anyone believes that global warming is at least a risk, then at the very least, let the fossil fuel industry pay for the right to pollute from it’s own purse.”
Tim, I have a few problems with that argument. First, just for clarity, I don’t believe there is a risk. And, more to the point, I don’t favor subsidies. But even if I did(on both counts), I’d have to ask why just target the fossil fuel industry? Aren’t they simply providing a demand? Let’s target the electricity industry, too. Aren’t the investor own utilities(distribution and transmission) as guilty as the generation companies? The automobile industry, too? What about the gas stations? And aren’t we really kidding ourselves to believe the solar and wind industry don’t emit CO2? You should check the emissions required to build a large wind generation plant. The fact is, there isn’t a single person on earth that isn’t responsible for CO2 emission. The proportional subsidy to to alternate energy is hands down much greater than the “fossil fuel” industry. Another issue, whether you worry about CO2 emissions or not, today, CO2 emissions is analogous prosperity and prosperity is analogous to a higher standard of living. In the future it may not be so, and probably won’t be, but for today, CO2 emissions are why we live longer, healthier, and more comfortable lives. The article stated, “Here in the U.S., our energy consumption per person has been declining for a while, now.” This is true. Currently, we are reaping the benefits of our lower energy consumption in terms of slowing of our productivity and thus our recession. Many of us didn’t see it right away because the GDP includes services(something with no intrinsic or tangible value) into its equation. In the end, though, I agree. Let’s do away with subsidies. I believe any company(fossil fuels included) should rise and fall on their own merits and get off my teat. I simply wasn’t built for the function.

Finally looked up EROEI. Wondered why it means so much to one individual.
Not sure what I learned, but a vigorous discussion is on-going.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/2/114144/2387

@ Smokey:
How many times do I have to point to people in this thread that there is a very significant difference between oil in place and recoverable reserves? Yes, the same kind of interent mythology gets thrown at me time and time again.
This is what US oil production has looked historically:
http://www.mbendi.com/pics/graphs/USA-Lower48.gif
Exactly as predicted BTW. As I also pointed out already, the petroleum geologists tend to be the ones concerned about Peak Oil, the economists tend to be the ones thinking that when price goes up, oil will magically start flowing from shales as it did in Saud Arabia in the 1950s. It doesn’t work that way

GM says: September 1, 2010 at 3:23 pm
It matters very little what your credentials are, what matters is what your posts reveal about your actual competence.
Oh indeed, you are quite right there. So, then in looking over all of your posts and seeing how you consistently presume no one else here has any experience/viewpoint worthy of consideration, [snip]

GM says:
September 1, 2010 at 5:13 pm
This is what US oil production has looked historically:
http://www.mbendi.com/pics/graphs/USA-Lower48.gif
Yeh, GM, no other reason for lower production other than we’re running out. GM, you’re smarter than that.
I live in SE Kansas, a place not known for oil, yet we have a bit under us. I can point to wells that only pump when the price of crude hits $90/barrel. Others, I can point to have been shut down for environmental reasons. Others have been capped for reasons unknown, but what is known is that they were pumping just fine until they turned them off. Further, seeing we haven’t opened a new refinery in about 40 years, there is only so much oil we’re going to be able to pump and process here.
My point is, U.S. oil production is altered by many different concerns other than availability. But, you knew that already.

Doug in Dunedin says:
September 1, 2010 at 6:06 pm
GM says: September 1, 2010 at 3:55 pm
We should do 2 things that we aren’t doing right now:
1. Invest all available resources into technology development
2. Operate under the assumption that those efforts will most likely be futile and bring our numbers and consumption levels safely within the carrying capacity of the planet.
—————————————————————————————
GM Who exactly are we? Is it you, yourself and your shadow? the government of the country in which you reside? The people of the world? Who exactly will be the ones who bring our numbers and consumption levels to what you define as ‘safely within the carrying capacity of the planet’.

“We” refers to the whole species.

I see in another post here at WUWT about a man named James Lee who says on his website ‘FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)’ we see what can happen to people like you —-
He was shot today for wanting to blow people up.

There are mad people on any side of an issue. This is irrelevant with respect to who’s right and who’s not. You don’t see me using Glenn Beck as an example for why right-wing ideology is bullshit, right?
The fact is there is an overwhelming disproportion here, with the people who are concerned about humanity’s ecological overshoot coming from scientific and technical backgrounds, and those people certainly aren’t crazy, while the people who aren’t think everything will be OK, just because it has been OK before, coming from economical and business backgrounds, often with very strong prior ideological commitment to the belief in the omnipotence of free markets and human ingenuity. Who do you trust?

Smokey says:
September 1, 2010 at 6:02 pm
As oil is consumed, the free market, without regulation of any kind, through competition brings about the desired result, as more cost-effective alternatives replace oil: transistors took over the market for tubes [valves]; kerosene replaced whale oil, etc.

If this was the case, the price of oil would have been steadily rising from the very moment the first well was drilled in 1859. That’s not the case, so apparently the market doesn’t get resources right. So much for that fallacy

The way GM denigrates the free market, I’d bet there’s more than a little public tax money in his paycheck, maybe 100%. ☹

Actually I’m at a private institution 🙂

GM says: September 1, 2010 at 6:17 pm
‘There are mad people on any side of an issue. This is irrelevant with respect to who’s right and who’s not. ‘
————————————————————————————-
You views seem to exhibit characteristics akin to the aforementioned Mr. Lee especially when you distil it down to ‘who’s right and who’s not’.
—————————————————————————–
‘The fact is there is an overwhelming disproportion here, with the people who are concerned about humanity’s ecological overshoot coming from scientific and technical backgrounds, and those people certainly aren’t crazy, while the people who aren’t think everything will be OK, just because it has been OK before, coming from economical and business backgrounds, often with very strong prior ideological commitment to the belief in the omnipotence of free markets and human ingenuity’
——————————————————————————–
I don’t think so. You are simply talking drivel.
You seem to forget that you are advocating that ‘we’ whittle down the world’s population to about 100,000,000 people. You don’t define the ‘we’ (the 100 m) who will deal to the 8.7 b or so of ‘them’, or for that matter how ‘we’ will achieve this. This convinces me that you are (shall we say) rather suspect in terms of possessing rational thinking.
——————————————————————————
‘ Who do you trust?’
———————————————————-
I think that I have conveyed my thoughts about that but in short, not you GM
Doug

GM says (September 1, 2010 at 2:01 pm): “Eastern [sic] Islanders were smart enough to find a way to erect those huge statues … But it didn’t help them to prevent their ecological overshoot”
The Easter Islanders were victims of European invaders, not “ecological overshoot”.
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/EE%2016-34_Peiser.pdf
GM says (September 1, 2010 at 5:30 pm): “Ironically, the continuing and unprecedentedly fast ocean acidification we are causing will most likely result in another such episode soon, if there is any plankton left to rot of course…”
http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/357/357094/folders/273650/2183619BS-meter2.gif

GM,
I agree resources are finite, econ 101. Now what to do about it. Do you suggest bureaucrats decide winners and losers before shortages actually occur. For example, do you suggest that governments should somehow artificially limit oil consumption since you believe peak oil is nigh? If you do that is a different debate and one that you can’t win I think.
I would leave such “decisions” to market forces.

Big Al says:

Actually all of our energy needs could be met by building a Dyson Shell around the sun. The 400 septillion watts that the sun puts out should be enough to supply everyone’s energy needs for the foreseeable future.

I expect the vast majority of that would immediately be used for A/C 🙂
Personally I always preferred Larry Niven’s Ringworld. It was a more achievable structure and still insanely huge.

I don’t think GM should be allowed to post again until he has read every single page and link on this site: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html
All in favor?
GM – how much electricity are you using to carry out this debate? All the buzzing PC’s of those debating you, the Google searches (7g CO2 released per search!), the servers and cohosts. How could you do such a thing to Mother Earth?

Daniel Taylor says:
September 1, 2010 at 7:33 pm
I don’t think GM should be allowed to post again until he has read every single page and link on this site: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html
All in favor?
========================================================
No, he’s fun. He really seems to be a fairly sharp guy.(who’s read too many horror stories and now wets his pants every time he fills up his car.) And he keeps our wits sharp. He’s an honest to goodness Malthusian. Rarely, does one have enough fortitude to admit such lunacy. Most alarmists are closet Malthusians but won’t admit it.
BTW, that is a great site. I’m not sure, but I think I visited it years ago. Memory is a strange thing, but I remember one in the same format with the same content!

“BTW, that is a great site. ”
Yes it is good. Note how the truth is presented in a plain way while lies have to dress themselves up with fancy graphics and sob stories.