Letters to the Editor
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how about a little reality for a change?
Mr. Leonard accuses me of being a peak-oil doomer.
Some days, I probably am one such.
But, since doom-saying leaves little room for discussion, on most days I just wish people like Mr. Leonard--whose heart appears to be in the right place at least--would discuss the fossil-fuel situation like an adult and a realist. Start with Jay Hanson, for instance. Read these excerpts from an unfinished draft paper and then give me a *legitimate* counter-argument. Not a bunch of unsupported bs resulting from confirmation bias. A real argument. Let's have it.
Let's quit talking about the end of fossil-fuels like a bunch of addled five-year-olds (stop confusing abstraction with reality--that'd be a great start) and start talking about it like people who'd really like to do something about it.
Chas
ENERGY, HUMAN NATURE, AND REALPOLITIK:
Creators and Destroyers of Civilizations
By Jay Hanson
The purpose of this paper is to explain, as simply as possible, the three major forces that create and destroy civilizations: energy, human nature, and "realpolitik" (practical politics). If you want to know what's going to happen to your family in the next few years, do your homework. No one is going to tell you what's coming. It's up to you. It's not going to be easy.
Your mind is not like a general-purpose computer that can switch from Word, to Excel, to Autocad instantly; instead it's an extremely complex collection of "wetware" (neurons, dendrites, endocrine responses, neurotransmitters,receptors, etc.). If you want to understand the problems faced by our society today, you must literally grow new wiring in your brain. Depending upon your age, health, occupation, and the amount of time and energy you invest in learning, it will require at least months or possibly several years for you to obtain understanding of the simple concepts presented in this paper.
ENERGY LAWS
Energy laws can not be repealed like man-made laws and they apply everywhere in the known universe. Moreover, energy laws place strict limits on what a society can do.
THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
The First Law tells us that neither capital nor labor nor technology can "create" energy. Instead, available energy must be burnt to transform existing matter (e.g., oil), or to divert an existing energy flow (e.g.,wind) into more available energy. In other words, Alan Greenspan can not print energy.
THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
The efficiency of energy supply systems is limited by the Second Law of thermodynamics which was described over 150 years ago by Sadi Carnot. The Second Law tells us that heat is lost (energy is wasted) at every step in the economic process. The engines that actually do the work in our economy (so-called "heat engines"; such as diesel engines) waste more than 50 percent of the energy contained in their fuel.
[snip]
NET ENERGY - ENERGY IS BURNT PRODUCING ENERGY
[snip]
Energy "resources" must produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks" (this is known as the "net energy" principle). It takes a specific amount of energy to lift a specific amount of oil out of the ground and to overcome gravity - and the higher the lift, the greater the energy requirements. The most concentrated and most accessible resources are produced first; thereafter, more and more energy is required to find and produce resources. At some point, more energy is spent finding and producing energy than the energy recovered - and the "resource" has become a "sink".
OFFICIAL LIES
Today, as a matter of policy, the US government lies about energy resources. In 1999, the US Geological Survey admitted that energy resources are limited by "net energy", but declined to consider it in their five-year study released in June 2000. Instead, USGS chose a much more optimistic methodology that even they admit is not realistic.
[snip]
LIMITS TO GROWTH
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF GLOBALIZATION
and the untimely death of billions of unsuspecting people
There is an enormous difference between the net energy of the highly-concentrated fossil fuels that power modern industrial society and alternative energy resources. Every day, people burn the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plant matter that grows on land and in the oceans over the course of a whole year. No so-called "renewable" energy system has the potential to generate more than a tiny fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels!
In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 10^18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota." In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals!
The inevitable decline of global oil production means that the energy available to global society will inevitably fall too; it means the consumer civilization is now over. The withdrawal of fossil fuels from agriculture means that crop yields could fall 90 percent - with a corresponding 90 percent reduction in the number of living people. Some studies suggest the long term carrying capacity (carrying capacity without fossil fuels) of Earth is a billion or less. The following two paragraphs explain why this civilization will end:
Imagine having a motor scooter with a five-gallon tank, but the nearest gas station is six gallons away. You can not fill your tank with trips to the gas station because you burn more than you can bring back - it's impossible for you to cover your overhead(the size of your bankroll and the price of the gas are irrelevant). You might as well put your scooter up on blocks because you are "out of gas" - forever.
It's the same with any economy: if one must spend more-than-one unit of energy to produce enough goods and services to buy one unit of energy, it will be impossible for anyone to cover their overhead. At that point (< 20 years), every country's economic machine is "out of gas" - forever. At that point, money and company stocks are worthless.
[snip]
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Looking into Hanson and Dukes
Hey Chas,
I've seen that paper before, and thanks for posting parts of it here. I think it _would_ be useful to engage on some of the issues. I'm going to read the Dukes paper Hanson references and see if I can contact him to talk about his data is being interpreted. Rather than follow up here, I'll probably post about it, I'm hoping tomorrow or early next week.