Since we are watching the plight of the Thompsons in Australia over cow manure, this submission titled “Unsustainable cow manure” on sustainable energy sent to me by Paul Driessen seemed appropriate. I put solar on my own home and a school in my school district. Without “OPM”, they would not have been viable, so he has a point- Anthony
Sustainable, affordable, eco-friendly renewable energy, my eye
Paul Driessen
Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session. It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia.
First, when exactly is something not sustainable? When known deposits (proven reserves) may be depleted in ten years? 50? 100? What if looming depletion results from government policies that forbid access to lands that might contain new deposits – as with US onshore and offshore prospects for oil, gas, coal, uranium, rare earth minerals and other vital resources?
Rising prices, new theories about mineral formation, and improved discovery and extraction technologies and techniques typically expand energy and mineral reserves – postponing depletion by years or decades, as in the case of oil and natural gas. But legislation, regulation, taxation and litigation prevent these processes from working properly, hasten depletion, and make “sustainability” an even more politicized, manipulated and meaningless concept.
Second, should the quest for mandated “sustainable” technologies be based on real, immediate threats – or will imaginary or exaggerated crises suffice? Dangerous manmade global cooling morphed into dangerous manmade global warming, then into “global climate disruption” – driven by computer models and disaster scenarios, doctored temperature data, manipulated peer reviews, and bogus claims about melting glaciers and rising sea levels. Shouldn’t policies that replace reliable, affordable energy with expensive, intermittent, land-intensive, subsidized sources be based on solid, replicable science?
Third, shouldn’t inconvenient sustainability issues be resolved before we proceed any further, by applying the same guidelines to renewable energy as courts, regulators and eco-activists apply to petroleum?
Most oil, gas, coal and uranium operations impact limited acreage for limited times – and affected areas must be restored to natural conditions when production ends. Effects on air and water quality, habitats and protected species are addressed through regulations, lease restrictions and fines. The operations generate vast amounts of affordable, reliable energy from relatively small tracts of land, and substantial revenues.
Wind turbines generate small amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity from gargantuan installations on thousands of acres. Turbines and their associated transmission lines dominate scenic vistas, disrupt habitats and migratory routes, affect water drainage patterns, impede crop dusting and other activities, and kill bats, raptors and other birds, including endangered species that would bring major fines if the corporate killers were oil or mining companies. And yet, wind operators receive exemptions from environmental review, biodiversity and endangered species laws that traditional energy companies must follow – on the ground that such rules would raise costs and delay construction of “eco-friendly” projects.
Kentucky’s Cardinal coal mine alone produces 75% of the Btu energy generated by all the wind turbines and solar panels in the USA, Power Hungry author Robert Bryce calculates. Unspoiled vistas, rural and maritime tranquility, and bald eagles will all be endangered if 20% wind power mandates are enacted.
The Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station near Phoenix generates nearly 900 times more electricity than Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base photovoltaic panels, on less land, for 1/15 the cost per kWh – and does it 90% of the time, versus 30% of the time for the Nellis array. Generating Palo Verde’s electrical output via Nellis technology would require solar arrays across an area ten times larger than Washington, DC.
Building enough photovoltaic arrays to power Los Angeles would mean blanketing thousands of square miles of desert habitat. Once built, solar and wind systems will be there just this side of forever, since there will be no energy production if we let them decay, after shutting down whatever hydrocarbon operations aren’t needed to fuel backup generators that keep wind and solar facilities operational.
Wind and solar power also mean there is a sudden demand for tons of rare earth elements that weren’t terribly important a decade ago. They exist in very low concentrations, require mining and milling massive amounts of rock and ore to get the needed minerals, and thus impose huge ecological impacts.
If mountaintop removal to extract high quality coal at reduced risk to miners is unacceptable and unsustainable – how is it eco-friendly and sustainable to clear-cut mountain vistas for wind turbines? Blanket thousands of square miles with habitat-suffocating solar panels? Or remove mountains of rock to mine low-grade rare earth mineral deposits for solar panel films, hybrid batteries and turbine magnets?
Since any undiscovered US rare earth deposits are likely locked up in wilderness and other restricted land use areas, virtually no exploration or development will take place here. We will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers, like China, which are using them in their own manufacturing operations – and selling us finished wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid car batteries. The United States will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers for renewable energy, just as we rely on foreign countries for oil and uranium.
To claim any of this is ecologically or economically sustainable strains credulity.
Green jobs will mostly be overseas, subsidized by US tax and energy dollars – other people’s money (OPM). Indeed, Americans have already spent over $20 billion in stimulus money on “green” energy projects. However, 80% of the funding for some of them went to China, India, South Korea and Spain, and three-fourth of the turbines for eleven US wind projects were made overseas. This is intolerable, indefensible and unsustainable. But it gets worse.
Denver’s Nature and Science Museum used $720,000 in stimulus money to install photovoltaic panels and reduce its electricity bills by 20 percent. The panels may last 25 years, whereas it will take 110 years to save enough on those bills to pay for the panels – and by then four more sets of panels will be needed.
As to biofuels, the US Navy recently waxed ecstatic over its success with camellia-based eco-fuel in fighter jets. But the PC biofuel costs $67.50 per gallon, versus $5.00 per gallon for commercial jet fuel.
To meet the 36-billion-gallons-a-year-by-2022 federal ethanol diktat, we would have to grow corn on cropland and wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, to get 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol – plus switchgrass on farmlands and habitats the size of South Carolina, to produce 21 billion gallons of “advanced biofuel.” By contrast, we could produce 670 billion gallons of oil from frozen tundra equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge weren’t off limits.
OPM-subsidized ethanol also means a few corn growers and ethanol refiners make hefty profits. But chicken and beef producers, manufacturers that need corn syrup, and families of all stripes get pounded by soaring costs, to generate a fuel that gets one-third less mileage per tank than gasoline.
Hydrocarbons fueled the most amazing and sustained progress in human history. Rejecting further progress – in the name of sustainability or climate protection – requires solid evidence that we face catastrophes if we don’t switch to “sustainable” alternatives. Computer-generated disaster scenarios and bald assertions by Al Gore, Harry Reid, John Holdren and President Obama just don’t make the grade.
We need to improve energy efficiency and conserve resources. Science and technology will continue the great strides we have made in that regard. Politically motivated mandates will impose huge costs for few benefits. Sustainability claims will simply redistribute smaller shares of a shrinking economic pie.
“Renewable” energy subsidies may sustain the jobs of lobbyists, activists, politicians, bureaucrats and politically connected companies. But they will kill millions of other people’s jobs.
Let’s be sure to remind our elected officials of this along their campaign trails – and on November 2.
” Ate two, you Brutes” He he~
The end game is…. little Nukes, sprinkled about, and though we can do them quite safely now, wadda ya suspect the config will be bid to~
Top Per Capita Automobiles by country
# 1 United States: 765 motor vehicles per 100 p
Is p=people?
We have 765 mv per 100 people?
7.65 mv per person?
Where do people come up with this stuff?
Once more, I don’t believe it.
Ok, US = 300,000,000 people
Ok, so we have 2,295,000,000 mv?
Two and a quarter BILLION motor vehicles? Huh? Does that even sound possible? I don’t know anyone with 7 mv.
Ok, so a truck driver has a car, his wife’s car, a hobby car and a motorcycle. His company has one or two trucks per driver. That’s six. And that’s a lot. More than anyone that I can think of. Most families that I know have one or less than one mv per person. And they don’t drive for a living.
Ok, almost no one that I know has room for 7mv. Couldn’t store them or park them if they had them. Does that count tractors and locomotives? Airplanes?
But still, 2.25 billion?
Don’t we get special credit for having slaughtered all those buffalo? I’m pretty sure the farted too.
I think I see GM’s problem now. Stuck high up there in his ivory tower peering down disapprovingly on
whovillewestern society with their feasting, trinkets, and all their noise, noise, noise! The idea that someone, somewhere might be a having just a little more fun than he is, why that’s just unacceptable. If only there was some way he could put a stop to it!Perhaps though, like the Grinch, there might be redemption in his future.
Cow manure, known by it’s more common name b—s—, is available in abundance in Washington DC.
Ok.
For the State of Florida at:
http://www.flhsmv.gov/html/FactsFigures/0810.pdf
There are:
Licensed Drivers – 15,556,658
Motor Vehicles (includes trailers) – 14,349,941
Manufactured Homes – 394,903
Vessels – 746,862
Total – 15,096,803 (I’m not counting Manufactured Homes (house trailers))
So in Florida there is barely one registered vehicle per licensed driver.
Throw in all of the unregistered (hobby) cars, railroad engines, tractors, etc and it ain’t gonna equal 90,000,000. That 90 million is the other 6 vehicles per person times the 15 million people in the state. So how many more vehicles. A million. 10 million (I don’t even believe that!).
But one thing’s for sure. It ain’t 119,008,433 (7.65 * 15,556,658)
George E. Smith says: So why don’t we cut the massive overproduction, and save even more farmland from depletion; and save more water and energy. Then we can put that excess farmland back to more natural habitat.
Just because you could grow artificial genetically engineered crops on arable land; doesn’t mean it is a good idea to do so.
George, I like you writing style and mostly agree with you. But I can’t abide this. Please define “depletion”. In my work, we define it as loss of soil at a rate greater than replenishment. We use a formula called the Russell soil loss equation, and includes mathematical factors estimating erosion from wind or water based on soil type, slope, prevailing wind and average velocity, organic matter content, etc. Both state and federal governments cost-share on projects designed to eliminate productive losses from each.
But more importantly, land productivity based on amount of sequestered energy relative to stands of identifiable virgin, native grass and other species-is greater now than before man. Granted, some soils have lowered levels of organic matter in certain season, and some producers have erosion problems, but these people are slowly being weeded out by economic variables (I hear the phrase “that’s the way my pa did it” all too often.
So, IMHO, the question of land use hinges on availability of nutrient additions and on an ill-defined esoteric value, “natural habitat” as you called it. I loved “Dances With Wolves” as much as the next guy (and was born and raised 30 miles SW of Fort Sedgwick), but I have serious objections to the necessity for population reduction simply to restore the Cherokee nation.
Larry Geiger says:
September 22, 2010 at 7:12 am
Top Per Capita Automobiles by country
# 1 United States: 765 motor vehicles per 100 p
Ok, almost no one that I know has room for 7mv. Couldn’t store them or park them if they had them. Does that count tractors and locomotives? Airplanes?
But still, 2.25 billion?
———————————————-
Nationmaster Website made an error. It’s not per 100 people. It is per 1000 people, which would equate to .765 vehicles per person. I just cut and pasted it without scrutinizing the numbers because I was only interested in the rankings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita
“Apparently you are unaware that the first oil boom happened in Pennsylvania. I wonder what happened there since then…” – GM
Actually I was aware that the Quaker State was big oil once upon a time. I’m not sure where you were going with that statement. Pennsylvania is still around… no?
“Anyway, your “logic” is a complete non-sequitur. Just because Texas mines a lot of fossil fuels is absolutely no reason for why people in Texas should be living in McMansions and driving huge SUVs and pick up trucks for tens of miles from and to work. Absolutely no reason.” -GM
I’m starting to think that you make outlandish statements just to get a rise out of people. People can drive big SUV’s or Pick-ups and live in “McMansions” if they can afford it. They’re not really obligated to get your approval first, and believe it or not some people actually find utility in such types of vehicles. You made the silly suggestion that Texas should compact their population like NYC. I pointed out that Texas economy differed greatly from Northeastern big cities and included a lot of mineral mining, ranching, oil production, and agriculture. Anyone can see that this would tend to correlate to a more dispersed population.
Steve Schaper – please provide references for your “proven untapped reserves”, and if possible some comment on how they will be produced. You could send them to me at murrayv3@yahoo.com
Diversity is not only a “green word” but its tenets apply equally to humanity. One of our survival strengths is our diversity in thought, culture, science, religion.
Science, true science progresses in steps just like evolution. We are at a moment in time where another giant step is being prepared.
The strawmen, the scams and fake panics are all falling away, dying in the warm light of honesty. The classic Man Made global warming scam has had its day. The truth promoted by this site is winning the day, but for what purpose. I feel (very non scientific) that it is a regular process, nature identifying the models that dont work and clearing the way for the new.
I see almost every field of science being challenged, new ideas taking shape, new ways of looking at things, doing things, achieving things. But this is not happening in a destructive or negative sense but rather in a positive uplifting way. The potential of these new thought forms is almost infinite. Imagine that.
I mean in all honesty, for example, what could be simpler than collecting all the accumulated temperature data and analyzing it truthfully, accurately and openly. It really is not rocket science. But it could not be done. Case in point, they want USD 100 million to set up 1,000 decent recording stations. USD 100,000 per thermometer. Come on guys.
The same applies to this thread topic, alternative, viable energy, it is not rocket science. The people making it Rocket Science are Politicians, Greens and Corporations. Why? Power Control and Money.
pedex says:
September 21, 2010 at 10:26 am
“coal is also basically in the same predicament, it is depleting and there is no replacement”
Let’s be define things more closely.
Coal that can be extracted at current costs is depleting.
Geologically, there is at least 3,000 billion tons of coal with current global extraction in the neighborhood of 6 billion tons a year.
@Enneagram
‘Cows will consume more energy per capita in its food than the energy you could reclaim from its manure. It is an axioma.’
No it’s not, but it is if you don’t use the over head energy cows. I believe agculture magazine or some such covered this whole stuff several years ago. Some dairy farmer producing both electricity for his 5000 neighbors and natural manure for him self and for sale, and still keeping his farm lands fertilized with minute precision so as not to add extra nitrogen to the rest of the natural cycle. Or maybe it was he generated 5000 KWh from his most natural gas burning. Anyways it’s been done before and it ought to be mandatory for every serious dairy farmer, otherwise the energy in all that crap is going to waste literally, and I believe that is an axiom. 😉
I like having GM (Genus Malthusiasticus) blog here. His semi-hysteric urgency for humanity to take drastic actions to take care of CAGW reminds of what we who are “skeptics” are up against. His is the mindset that is ever present, morphing in outward form from “the coming ice age” to “nuclear winter” to “acid rain” to “species extinctions” to “global warming” to “climate change” to now, “global climate disruption”. His Medieval intellectual ancestors were fixed on the End of Days and the Book of Revelations. Man is evil, infectious, destructive, etc, and must be punished to save himself. Totalitarian means are always prescribed. Those who resist are fools. Calm reason is rejected because destruction is so near.
Oh well.
“”” Tim Clark says:
September 22, 2010 at 8:10 am
George E. Smith says: So why don’t we cut the massive overproduction, and save even more farmland from depletion; and save more water and energy. Then we can put that excess farmland back to more natural habitat.
Just because you could grow artificial genetically engineered crops on arable land; doesn’t mean it is a good idea to do so.
George, I like you writing style and mostly agree with you. But I can’t abide this. Please define “depletion”. In my work, we define it as loss of soil at a rate greater than replenishment. We use a formula called the Russell soil loss equation, and includes mathematical factors estimating erosion from wind or water based on soil type, slope, prevailing wind and average velocity, organic matter content, etc. Both state and federal governments cost-share on projects designed to eliminate productive losses from each. “””
Well Tim; I am not going to try and match Agricultural wits with you; If I had not been a major heavy duty asthmatic growing up as child; I would now be a long since retired filthy rich and happy ex-farmer in New Zealand; but me and Agriculture were completely incompatible.
But even I know that constantly growing the same crop year after year on a piece of land will eventually deplete critical minerals and biological properties of the soil, until eventually almost nothing can be grown; so farmers typically rotate crops, or rotate land in and out of production to give the soil time to recover and replenish the nutrients. That’s part of the reason why slash and burn and clear cutting of tropical rain forests for agriculture is so destructive. Those lands have been growing the same plants for eons, and they have depleted the ground of nutrients down to the level where nothing else will grow there; and what is growing there is sustained by just the natural slow replacement that can occur each year due to rains, and flooding and other natural weather phenomena that bring in soil components form other places. In fact the plants that naturally exist there are those that have evolved to get by with those replacement shipments.
Well I’m sure you know a hell of a lot more about that than I do; I just pick up a hint now and then from the California Central valley Armenian Farmers who have been farming there since the early 20th century.
But anyway; it was in that vein that I referred to “depletion”.
Give the land a break for a few years or decades; instead of ploughing every square foot; just because someone wants to grow solar energy at a very low collection rate in terms of Watt hours per year.
I’m not against people who have combustible residue from their operations such as dairy or beef farms do (and other domesticated farm livestock (NZ has more of those per capita than any other place on earth; 4 million people and something like 60-75 million sheep) using that material to recover some energy. I know that some dairy producers in the Ca. Central valley have some energy recycling operations.
But growing farm animals to get energy from their effluent doesn’t make sense to me; nor does putting energy into agriculture to grow ethanol fuel.
When I first started sport fishing the sea of Cortez back in the late 1960s; there were lots of commercial fishing boats; but they had no refrigeration. They went out with long lines and nets and the simply fished up anything and everything. Sharks, marlin, sailfish, tuna; you name it they caught it and threw it in the hold and brought it ashore; not for food; it didn’t survive the trip. They ground it up to make fertilizer so they could grow corn (maize) to make tortillas.
Now how dumb is that; to harvest a perfectly good high protein food material; simply to go right back to the very start of the food chain as fertilizer to grow corn.
Fortunately; recreational sports fishing interests were able to convince the Mexican government that that resource could be better exploited for the people of Mexico, by maintaining its spectacular sport recreational fishing; as well as properly refrigerated commercial food fishing; rather than destroying the whole thing permanently for fertilizer.
Niche renewable energies make a lot of sense; solar PV energy in remote locations saves a ton of infrastructure; if you use the energy locally (off grid); same goes for some wind energy. Farmers have used wind energy for eons. So do you think the farmer gives a hoot about when his windmill decides to pump water for him. He just needs the correct size storage tank; to keep himself in water. But asking that wind to supply energy on demand; just isn’t realistic; and pumped energy (gravity) storage only works in the right locations.
I’m still pretty nimble when it comes to tree climbing; and I bet I can outclimb any whippersnapper; if you send us both up the right kind of Pine tree; but I really don’t want to, in my last days go back to competing with the monkeys trying to gather figs up in fig trees like our ancestors used to. So I’ll stay with the reliable plentiful fossil fuels; thank you .
George E. Smith says:
September 22, 2010 at 11:17 am
I agree with your post. I may have misunderstood your point. The summation of my point, I guess, is most land can be kept productive if new techniques are adapted. However, in some cases, it may not be economical. It’s almost economically impossible to reverse alkalinity (salt deposition).
I was so insensed about this wind power baloney, I decided to write a book on the subject. It is titled “Wind Power Fraud: Why Wind Won’t Work”.
From my calculations, the Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) is 0.29. That means in the lifetime of a wind power facility it will only produce 29% of the energy that went into its design, manufacture, installation, operation, and decommissioning. Wind Power is unsustainable and a complete waste of resources!
“”” Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
September 22, 2010 at 1:51 pm
I was so insensed about this wind power baloney, I decided to write a book on the subject. It is titled “Wind Power Fraud: Why Wind Won’t Work”. “””
Well Charles all one has to do to prove the viability of “wind power” which you dismiss; is to simply put a fence around the wind farm, to keep contaminations; like other energy sources out, and then use the energy outpur of the farm; plus all the raw materials in the universe, in their natural state; to duplicate the wind farm and make a copy of it.
Then whatever energy is left over from the first farm; can be sold at whatever the market will bear.
So you shouldn’t be so negative; when proof of feasibility is so easy to demonstrate.
Well you can apply the very same self duplication principle to any alternative energy source; to establish the viability of such a process.
“”” Tim Clark says:
September 22, 2010 at 1:24 pm
George E. Smith says:
September 22, 2010 at 11:17 am
I agree with your post. I may have misunderstood your point. The summation of my point, I guess, is most land can be kept productive if new techniques are adapted. However, in some cases, it may not be economical. It’s almost economically impossible to reverse alkalinity (salt deposition). “””
Tim, I’m not sure just where you park your John Deere; but it seems to me (near as I can tell) that farmers in California’s Central valley, seem to have some remedial treatment for the salinity problem. It appears to proceed thusly.
The central valley is somewhat like a piece of land floating on a lake of primordial subterranean water. Farmers used to hit water just three or four feet down. I believe my 8 inch Agricultural well submersible pump is down 180 feet, and my smaller house well is down 120. And when I wash my car; I get a brand new coat of Calcium paint on it. So do the farmlands when they have to irrigate with well water.
As the years go by with the relatively normal California drought conditions, the amount of water the farmers can get from the Sierra snow pack melt fluctuates, and they have to make up the difference with well water. They have a choice of pestilence. When they irrigate with “ditch water” they get for free, every native California weed known to Botany; whose seeds come down the canal from all of their neighbors. And when they pump from their wells; well they slowly salt up the surface soil, and they continue changing their crops; till they get to the point where nothing will grow; except cotton; so Californaia grows a hell of a lot of cotton.
Then it seems just when they are on their last legs; we get a bumper snow fall, and the whole State is awash in spring run-off fresh Sierra melt waters.
When that happens; the central valley farmers switch tactics; so they flood their lands with the Sierra snow melt (and weed seeds) and the flooding sort of takes care of the weed seeds; and they can plant Rice in the water; and the whole thing turns into new migratory bird habitat; and shrimps appear from simply nowhere to feed all those birds from Africa.
Well the whole damn valley is laser levelled; with corrections for earth curvature, and soil porosity, so the water can make it to the far corner of the lot, before it is gobbled up in the ground. So they maintain the rice for as long as they have clean mountain water to flood the fields, and most of those surface salts get taken back down below where their crops need to send roots, and whatever rains they get, help with slowly taking the salts even deeper; but eventually the drought conditions return and they have to stop growing Rice (very cheap) and start their whole crop rotation cycle all over again; till they hit the cotton wall again.
I have found it fascinating to watch as I drive through there on my way from home to Silicon Valley to work. I’ve not talked much to the Armenians about it, to find out what the typical crop sequence seems to be; but one way or another they manage to keep it going year after year.
When you get further south in the Kern County Bakersfield area which is hotter and somewhat more arid; they seem to have largely lost the salinity battle, and quite large areas are white with salt deposits; and they don’t seem to do much with it most of the time; but leave it as wild life habitat. Wish I knew more about it; but it is interesting to watch the cycling.
George
GM says:
September 21, 2010 at 5:45 pm
However, it is entropy that really matters, not energy or matter, we just like to talk about energy and resource because they are more immediate and tangible and because most people are too illiterate to understand entropy anyway.
—
Careful. That could be a self deprecating.
—
The human body exists in a very low entropy state, human civilization exists in a very low entropy state (think about all those buildings and infrastructure), so you need constant external source of negative entropy to keep things going (this is why the discussion of EROEI is so important BTW).
—
I can’t go out and grab a chunk of negentropy. Schrodinger should really be shot for even bringing up the concept it’s just that bad. At least he had the good sense to admit that he should really have been talking about Gibbs free energy instead. The entire entropy of the universe is increasing whether or not we burn fossil fuels or have babies and it’s doing it all of the time. Look up the heat death of the universe sometime.
The highest entropy state the planet can be in (without breaking up atoms or anything like that) is a homogeneous mass of elements with equal concentration everywhere.
—
Gravity gets in the way of that unless you want to wait until the entire universe decays to a diffuse iron soup. But then, you really don’t have a planet then, do you? Oh, and your fully mixed planet would also have to be at a uniform temperature.
—
The planet doesn’t exist in such a state, there are pockets of rock with much higher concentrations of certain elements, which what we call ores. Those are in a low entropy state which we can input more negative entropy into and take them to an even lower entropy state of near purity. However, when we use them up and they end up in the ocean, their concentration decreases greatly, and their entropy goes up. To get them back to a low entropy state that’s useful for us, or to use lower grade (higher entropy) ores you need a lot of negative entropy, much more than you would need for high grade ores.
—
Repeat after me. Free energy. How about all of that low grade CO2 being turned into chunky plant goodness? Damn you, photosynthesis! Stop using up my negentropy!
—
Ultimately, the only reliable source of negative entropy we have (unless a technological miracle occurs very soon) is the sun, but the flow is very limited and diffuse.
—
Well at least you understand that we need nuclear power of some kind. Hey, how ’bout fission? Lots and lots of fertile material with proven cycles once we have the need and the resulting political will. And no, I don’t even have to go to thorium, but there’s no physical reason it can’t be made to work. Oh, and since the sun is increasing the entropy of the universe, where is it getting its negentropy from again?
—
So things like infinite economic growth are absolutely impossible,
—
Well given that the universe is finite, that’s kind of a tautology, isn’t it? Unless you’re a Hoyle-ist or one of those M-theory guys and think you could be around for the next big squish/ripple/plunk (what DO they call it?). But then again, I don’t think many people are too worried about infinite growth and there is that pesky heat death thing that kinda doesn’t care how many of us are ever around anyway.
—
and it doesn’t take much knowledge or understanding to figure that out, yet the people (usually economists) who like to talk about the “base of the resource pyramid” don’t possess even that rudimentary understanding of things
—
Absolutely hilarious. Here you are whining about all of the entropy humanity is producing and you’re completely oblivious to the entropy the sun is producing. Here’s a hint: it makes far more entropy in 1 sec than humanity has in it’s entire history. An MIT and Caltech grad should be able to comprehend that…
Until you’re willing to actually produce some real physical limitations –maybe prot rot, haven’t heard about that one in a while; or would you prefer the Big Rip?– to proven nuclear power for the foreseeable future and back up these claims of lack of economy and time, it’s just so much hot air.
Oh, and trying to resort to degree pedigree really is a sign of desperation.
Energy is what we make of it. Consider Climate Science, totally discredited as they cannot even maintain a simple temperature record and analyse it. Similarly Economics, very detailed very exact but they cannot nor will not discuss the source of their “science’ money, for to do so would totally destroy their whole field.
Do we have the same situation with Energy. What is energy? The answer to that question has some very interesting but disturbing implications.
Physics has a lot to answer for.
GM;
Should you still be following this thread I would like to relate a personal story to you.
The smartest man I have ever known was a guy named John Carlson, long since passed. He had a grade six education. Though never having apprenticed, he made his living in my home town mostly as a welder. But he could walk into a machine shop and fabricate parts when he needed to as well. Sometimes he did electrical work, and he was a pretty good auto mechanic as well. The oil patch knew him well, he could solve almost any problem.
In the 1970’s, we started to see oil wells producing heavier (thicker) oil. At coffee row one day, the oil patch boys were complaining that standard pump jacks weren’t designed for heavy oil. They went up and down at a constant rate. Since the downstroke relied on the weight of the sucker rod in the well to push the assembly down, in a heavy oil well it would often descend only a few inches before the upstroke started. Pinning the assembly to the pump jack head wouldn’t work as the motors they used had no where near the power required to drive the assembly downward, and would have crushed it any any event if they did have the power to drive the assembly downward at the same rate as it went upward.
John figured he could fix that. He said he’d need a lot of specialized parts, access to a machine shop, but he could build a pump jack that went down at one speed and up at another. Keep in mind that this was the 1970’s, programmable controllers hadn’t emerged yet, so this was a feat unto itself.
Some of the oil patch boys decided to fund a prototype, and over the next few weeks he built it. There were other companies trying to do the same thing and it was agreed to do testing on all the models at the same well to see how they performed versus a standard pump jack and versus each other.
The “big oil” pump jacks arrived on semi-trailer flat beds. John’s arrived in a pickup truck. The other pump jacks performed with various results, but only marginal improvements to production and well pressure. John’s pump jack blew them all away. It was all hydraulic, and the speed of the upstroke and downstroke could be adjusted independantly. Within a few hours it had built more well pressure than any of the other models had in two weeks. They never found out how much pressure it could build, the bottom of the well blew out first. The oil companies were lined up around the block with orders.
Interesting thing about John, he was a highly religious man. He advised one morning that he had a vision the night before in which his deity had advised him that his invention was evil. He’d gone to the shop later that night and destroyed his own pump jack.
I remember the engineers from various oil companies sifting through the parts, trying to reconstruct how the darn thing worked. One guy, a mechanical engineer with more letters behind his name than the alphabet, showed me a part he was looking at. I remember what he said. “Not only can I not figure out what this thing was for, it wouldn’t matter if I could. I can’t for the life of me even figure out how he machined these channels in this valve.”
There are two morals to this story GM. The first is that there is a gulf of difference between theory and practice. John with his grade six education had done what big oil, with millions of dollars in R&D, and expertise out the yinyang could not. The second is that John truly believed that he had a vision and was visited by his god. Despite being a self taught metallurgist/engineer/machinist/welder/physicist whose practical knowledge easily outstripped the state of the art in industry as well as academia, John believed his vision was real. Perhaps it was, but I am betting someone like you GM would attribute it to some deep rooted psychological fear of success. I’d tend to agree with you. The point however, is that degrees don’t make you smart any more than not having them makes you stupid, and there is no telling what oddities people as intelligent as John Carlson believe to be true.
You sir remind me of John. Highly intelligent, articulate, and though you hold the degrees John did not have, your belief system if firmly rooted in a notion that is based mostly on faith and theory, not on practical knowledge.
It didn’t become clear to me what your view of Peak Oil is, but because your story had a lot to do with it, let me just state the obvious which is that no amount of people like your John could put more oil in the ground. It could increase the fraction of recoverable reserves by some percentage, but that merely delays the inevitable.
I didn’t mention the credentials because I like to boast with them, in fact I get very annoyed when people use the argument from authority to support any position, the most egregious case being using Nobel laureates who hold some cranky views as a support for those cranky views (Nobel laureate X believes in God, therefore God exists, Nobel laureate Y is an AGW skeptic, therefore AGW is BS, etc.).
The only reason I mentioned them was because I was making the point that in our anti-intellectual society that sort of credentials does not help at all when you are trying to communicate to the common folk truths that are in contradiction with his beliefs and require some sacrifice from him. In such cases the “who are you to tell me” knee jerk reaction boosted by the deeply-rooted distrust of intellect and education kicks in and no amount of evidence you present can help you at that point.
GM
Titan, (The moon) no dinosaurs there but loads of hydrocarbons plus loads of deadly global warming methane but guess what, no global warming.
A distraction, i think, not but firm evidence that all is not as it is expressed to be.
And as an aside, denying evidence, is in common law, a fatal flaw.
GM;
I was making the point that in our anti-intellectual society that sort of credentials does not help at all when you are trying to communicate to the common folk truths that are in contradiction with his beliefs and require some sacrifice from him.>>
Despite your protestations in regard to flaunting your credentials, your comments about “the common folk” and the manner in which you present your arguments clearly suggest that you consider yourself to be of superior intellect, at once looking down your nose at the lower intelligence of the great unwashed and at the same time frustrated that they cannot grasp what is such an obvious truth to you. You have concluded that the rejection of your arguments is rooted both in distrust of the intellectual class to which you belong, and in an inability of the “common folk” to put aside their belief systems when confronted with the facts of your theory. You have missed my point.
In theory, the problem you propose is real. Resources are finite and will be depleted. In practice however, the problem doesn’t exist. The solution that your propose works in theory. In practice it is immoral at best, and a descent into the worst inhumanities in history at worst.
The first moral of my story was that there is a vast gulf between theory and practice. You argue from theory. The rejection you get from the common folk whose intelligence you casually dismiss is rooted in practice. Is there an end to entropy? Of course. Shall we regulate our population today because the universe will run out of energy in 100 billion years or so? Don’t be silly. The sun which provides our planet with energy will die long before that. Should we regulate our population today because our sun will die 5 billion years from now? Don’t be silly. Is there peak oil and can guys like John put more in the ground? Of course there is and of course they can’t. But as many in this thread have pointed out to you, we are not limited to oil alone. Is the energy we can extract from this planet finite? Of course it is. Shall we regulate our population today because we will run out of oil/coal/uranium/thorium and a host of other alternatives 1,000 years from now? Don’t be silly. For practical purposes, there is little difference between 100 billion years and 1,000 when it comes to planning the collective future of the human race. The distinction between the two exists almost exclusively in theory. The common folk live their lives almost exclusively in practice.
The second moral of my story was that despite a towering intellect, John believed with every fiber of his being in a deity for which he had no evidence actually existed. It was the guiding principle in his life, and he threw away more than one opportunity to capitalize on his inventions, each time because he had a vision in which his deity gave him guidance to destroy what he had built. The only thing in John’s life that was theoretical was his faith, and it trumped his practical knowledge every time.
GM, you are as wedded to your theory that civilization will collapse due to resource depletion as John was to his belief that he was being visited by god. You can see clearly the truth of your theory, you despair, as John did about his religion, that others cannot see the same thing. John would have scoffed at your theory for many of the reasons presented to you by others in this thread. It is meaningless in practice. You no doubt would have scoffed at John’s belief in his regular visits from god. Having passed on some time ago, I expect that John’s theory regarding life after death has met with practice and been either vindicated or falsified. Your theory may one day too be vindicated or falsified. But it will make little difference to you because you will have tested John’s theory regarding life after death for yourself centuries before that.
You are wedded to a theoretical problem to which you propose an impractical and immoral solution. The common folk reject you on that basis. As we should.