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Destructive Forces of Success (Part #1: The Math)
Be forewarned: this blog is about some very uncomfortable topics (not the least of which are mathematically based), but if they can’t be introduced at TPM, how are we going to introduce them to the American public?
It is not coincidental that the rise of the so-called progressive or liberal ideas date back to the 17th century, a time just as Great Britain was developing the First Industrial Revolution using coal. The age of machines and harnessed energy liberated humans from being no different than beasts of burdens. Today we live in a world where machines provide so much in the ways of convenience that even the poorest among us have more cheap energy harvest around them than the slave owners from Ancient Rome or the kings who used peasant labor to make their kingdom run.
However, we are fast approaching, the Malthusian scenario where the exponential growth of the Earth’s population of humans is outstripping our means of supporting them. There is not a single example of exponential growth that doesn’t end somewhere – even Moore’s law associated with the explosion of the semiconductor industry has a projected end. To understand the arithmetic behind exponential growth, look at Albert Bartlett’s video (all 8 parts) on YouTube. (A very short article - without the arithmetic - is found here .)
So, we must expect that the exponential growth of humans, too, will come to an end.
The reason is simple: the Earth is finite – therefore it can only hold a maximum number of people on it.
As William Catton discusses in his book OVERSHOOT, it is leaps in technology that allowed humans to increase their overall numbers for a given amount of resources. Unfortunately, our last technology leap, cheap energy brought about by fossil fuels and the industrial revolution it spurred (starting with coal in Britain and moving to oil in the US), is now over.
Peak oil is upon us. This means that the easiest amount of oil has already been pumped from the ground and we are now moving to the hard parts: deeper in the ground, in more inhospitable regions, more refining necessary, etc. Up until now, alternatives aren’t economically feasible. Only now are they beginning to look (maybe) competitive with oil. What does this mean?
It means that the price of energy is never going to get lower than it is today, because if it did with any magical alternative fuel, the alternative fuel would already have replaced oil. As a simple example: oil replaced coal because it was cheaper, burns more efficiently and is generally more useful. It is an easy logical step to recognize that any fuel coming out today will be the equivalent of $5/gal or more - because thats what we are paying for gasoline.
The notion of the world being able to rise to the present lifestyle of the US today, when we, as 5% of the world’s population, use about 25% of the world’s energy, makes no mathematical sense. To get all countries to our standard of living would require five times the world’s current energy usage – and already we are running out.
Nuclear energy is also finite – most people don’t recognize this but it is. It is highly improbably that wind and solar or biofuels can be scaled up to the size needed. Here is a brief summary article on various fuels.
In other words, we are using up the planet ferociously, both in terms of the amount of stuff that we need from it and in terms of the rate we are using it up, preventing the planet from healing from the effects. At Bartlett points out in his video, if the bacteria in a Petri dish doubles every minute, then when the Petri dish is still just half empty, you are a minute from disaster.
Our Petri dish is about half empty. And the clock is ticking.
In the second and final part of this blog, I will discuss implications from this no-win scenario.
It is not coincidental that the rise of the so-called progressive or liberal ideas date back to the 17th century, a time just as Great Britain was developing the First Industrial Revolution using coal. The age of machines and harnessed energy liberated humans from being no different than beasts of burdens. Today we live in a world where machines provide so much in the ways of convenience that even the poorest among us have more cheap energy harvest around them than the slave owners from Ancient Rome or the kings who used peasant labor to make their kingdom run.
However, we are fast approaching, the Malthusian scenario where the exponential growth of the Earth’s population of humans is outstripping our means of supporting them. There is not a single example of exponential growth that doesn’t end somewhere – even Moore’s law associated with the explosion of the semiconductor industry has a projected end. To understand the arithmetic behind exponential growth, look at Albert Bartlett’s video (all 8 parts) on YouTube. (A very short article - without the arithmetic - is found here .)
So, we must expect that the exponential growth of humans, too, will come to an end.
The reason is simple: the Earth is finite – therefore it can only hold a maximum number of people on it.
As William Catton discusses in his book OVERSHOOT, it is leaps in technology that allowed humans to increase their overall numbers for a given amount of resources. Unfortunately, our last technology leap, cheap energy brought about by fossil fuels and the industrial revolution it spurred (starting with coal in Britain and moving to oil in the US), is now over.
Peak oil is upon us. This means that the easiest amount of oil has already been pumped from the ground and we are now moving to the hard parts: deeper in the ground, in more inhospitable regions, more refining necessary, etc. Up until now, alternatives aren’t economically feasible. Only now are they beginning to look (maybe) competitive with oil. What does this mean?
It means that the price of energy is never going to get lower than it is today, because if it did with any magical alternative fuel, the alternative fuel would already have replaced oil. As a simple example: oil replaced coal because it was cheaper, burns more efficiently and is generally more useful. It is an easy logical step to recognize that any fuel coming out today will be the equivalent of $5/gal or more - because thats what we are paying for gasoline.
The notion of the world being able to rise to the present lifestyle of the US today, when we, as 5% of the world’s population, use about 25% of the world’s energy, makes no mathematical sense. To get all countries to our standard of living would require five times the world’s current energy usage – and already we are running out.
Nuclear energy is also finite – most people don’t recognize this but it is. It is highly improbably that wind and solar or biofuels can be scaled up to the size needed. Here is a brief summary article on various fuels.
In other words, we are using up the planet ferociously, both in terms of the amount of stuff that we need from it and in terms of the rate we are using it up, preventing the planet from healing from the effects. At Bartlett points out in his video, if the bacteria in a Petri dish doubles every minute, then when the Petri dish is still just half empty, you are a minute from disaster.
Our Petri dish is about half empty. And the clock is ticking.
In the second and final part of this blog, I will discuss implications from this no-win scenario.
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Here's an article from the New York Times going into more detail on the unsustainability of food production in regards to Malthus.
Oh, the article's from 1914.
July 22, 2008 6:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is from right now:
Global Food Crisis
The new world of soaring food prices
WOMEN HIT HARDEST BY FOOD CRISIS
Africa's Last and Least
In poor nations, such as Burkina Faso in the heart of West Africa, mealtime conspires against women. They grow the food, fetch the water, shop at the market and cook the meals. But when it comes time to eat, men and children eat first, and women eat last and least.
* Photo Gallery: Scraping By in Ouagadougou
* One Family's Struggle With the Global Food Crisis
A Global Crisis
The Post explored causes and effects of the world's worst food crisis since the 1970s in a five-day special series.
DAY 1: The New Economics of Hunger
DAY 2: Where Every Meal Is a Sacrifice
DAY 3: Days of Cheap Wheat are Over
DAY 4: Siphoning Off Corn for Our Cars
DAY 5: Clipping, Scrimping, Saving
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/globalfoodcrisis/
July 22, 2008 8:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
A few useful bit for the discussion:
1) Roughly half the world's population lives within a meter or two of sea level.
2) Sea levels are expected to rise during the 21st century. By how much is the question.
3) It's estimated (don't recall where) that we'll see the world's population grow from the current 6.5 billion to somewhere around 9 billion or more by 2050.
4) Similarly, the stocks of "food fish" in the oceans are expected to be nearly depleted by then. Fish is a primary protein source for many people, especially those living in or near coastal areas.
Anyone here read John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up?
July 22, 2008 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't mean this rudely, but seriously, you haven't told us anything we didn't already know.
(Except I'd perhaps quibble with your premise that we're `fast approaching` Malthus' proposition.
(I'd suggest we're way past it.)
July 22, 2008 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
First off, many don't understand exponential growth. The video is worth watching. Secondly, if you look at Desidero's comment above, he is making the point that he find this nonsense. Lastly, this is only part #1!
July 22, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well the thing is that I'm so depressed by all this.
I'm used - we're all used - to the conservatives and right wing dismissing all this because it threatens their existence. What I find most sickening is taking a look at the leaders who purport to care about it. Gore's mansion. You know, he told people to turn up to his lecture the other day on bicycles - and there he was with a retinue of gas guzzlers, including an SUV. Edwards - his mansion; his haircuts (over $2,000 a pop since he'd fly his hairdresser to wherever he was). Clinton actually stealing furniture from the White House. Obama telling that crowd in Oregon that we all had to accept a cut in our standard of living when he'd actually compromised himself with the corrupt Rezko of all people just to get a bloody manion himself.
They are all SUCH hypocrites it simply turns my stomach and I don't believe there's any hope for the world. All the evidence is in that there isn't because the third world has no clout and the great majority in the AIN's are clinging desperately (understandably I suppose given the preponderance of influence on them) to what they have.
I finally gave up the last remnants of hope a few weeks ago when I read that even the majority of Brits now don't believe that climate change is man made - and that's a populace that's had a government for years now that does!
`Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money.`
That 19th century Cree Indian had our measure.
July 22, 2008 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a proud member of the Blame America When It's America's Fault crowd, I believe that America needs to drastically revamp its overall lifestyle (or we'll have it revamped for us, market shock style).
But I also know that our fair nation of 300 million isn't inflating global population by 39%. What's to be done without draconian "one child" policies or similarly unsettling/ineffective measures? Just wait til food shocks make people starve to death?
(not being flip about this at all)
July 22, 2008 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe my post was nation-centric.
July 22, 2008 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many are way ahead of you, clearthinker.
It's called Sustainable Living.
Catch up.
July 22, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is no such thing as sustainable living with exponential growth of humans. Look at the Petri Dish analogy. The finiteness of the earth imposes strict boundaries on the finiteness of the human population.
In part #2, I will examine the consequences of that finiteness.
July 22, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please don't.
July 22, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But I also know that our fair nation of 300 million isn't inflating global population by 39%."
If not for immigrants our population would be declining, but we're still using the lion's share of resources.
"What's to be done ... Just wait til food shocks make people starve to death?"
I think it has already begun. There is clearly a resources grab by multinationals that is being facilitated by the current administration. When times get tough, I wouldn't expect much from the government beyond martial law.
July 22, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems really basic that: a) to conserve the resources we have; and b) to reduce the demands on those fewer resources we will have in the future, we (the global community) will have to limit the number of consumers.
This is an old discussion, but it is much more important now than it once was.
Thirty years ago I,and two friends, made a pact that each of us would have only one child; we wanted to do our bit, as individuals, to address the spectre of overpopulation. We made this pact as 20-somethings living in Manhattan, opting for a simple solution to future overcrowding (as we saw it then, never mind now) rather than just endlessly complaining about the people/traffic congestion and trash on the city's streets. We were, however, only thinking about conserving personal space, and avoiding a Wale-E world of debris -- the thought of actually running out of supply never entered our minds.
Fast forward thirty years. I'd been back several times in the interim, but not at all in the past ten years. Therefore, on a recent foray, I was aghast to discover that the worst images my friends and I projected so long ago were naive, that we underestimated the impact of ever-denser population growth so completely that it was laughable. This, despite the fact that New York still functions more efficiently than most places, given the subways and suburban train lines.
So I'm willing to raise the ante of personal participation to do my part to make the changes we have to make, now.
But a personal commitment is obviously not enough -- although without it we can't get to group consensus. And about that I am disheartened and discouraged. Because even here at TPM, where exceptionally smart people express their views, threads which address these problems tend to wither and die; or worse, they become the object of derision and accusations of doomsday hyberole.
So let's have the requisite discussions that will lead to group discussion.
For starters, and at risk of being "mobbed" I would suggest that it is past time for the government, and the Catholic church, to get over the idea that: a) abstinence works; or b) that resources should be withheld from women who seek birth control or, in a pinch, an abortion. These shifts, even if implemented, will do nothing, of course, to modernize the dogmas of other religions, so many of which seem to believe that their influence is guaranteed only by outnumbering everyone else.
But it's a start.
July 22, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Correction: "So let's have the requisite discussions that will lead to group discussion." should read: So let's have the requisite discussions that will lead to constructive group action."
July 22, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
You anticipate many of my remarks for part #2. I very much look forward to commenting more here and there with you!
July 22, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's why I occasionally post one of these blogs. You never know if one more person will catch on. But I continue to try -- acting globally... even as I think locally. ;-)
July 22, 2008 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
CT. Your math is wrong, because you're conflating very different things under the term "energy." It's that simple. You say, "It means that the price of energy is never going to get lower than it is today, because if it did with any magical alternative fuel, the alternative fuel would already have replaced oil."
Electricity & liquid fuels such as oil for vehicles have been two very separate worlds for, say, 50+ years. Modern consumer electronics have vastly improved batteries however, and now we see plug-in hybrids and such coming on very very fast. their import? We can now use electricity - and their dozens of energy sources, many of which are renewables - for transportation.
Now. The cost. We have plug-in hybrids here. They get 5 miles per kilowatt-hour. Which here, costs just 6 cents/kwh. Some places, you might pay 12 cents retail, so if I do the math, even compared to a car getting 50 mpg, electricity is massively cheaper than oil. i.e. 60 cents to $1.20 per gallon-equivalent.
Also. The learning curves - i.e. the cost of energy sources over time - for almost every major energy source are extremely well-known, published by the IEA, debated across academic & industry. They all show downward-sloping curves - lower prices over time - except for nuclear. With recent oil/gas/fossil fuel problems, energy generation with those fuels is, as you suggest, becoming more expensive.
But for wind and solar - that is not the case. The most recent wind-farm contract I worked on cost 5-6 cents/kwh - a reduction from 5 years ago, even accounting for the price spike in steel/cement components, as well as negative currency changes. Wind, today, in this - the lowest-cost electricity jurisdiction in North America - is CHEAPER than hydro (the original basis of our low cost power.)
And battery costs themselves are plummeting. Toyota's NiMH batteries, as well as Li-ion costs are well-known, and publicized.
I won't argue population or food with you, this note is just to say that any consequences of yours which pass through your "the price of energy is never going to get any lower" clause will be rendered null and void.
July 22, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Note true. Did the power plants get built on electric power? Are the factories run on battery power? Is the coal mined on electric power?
Non sequitor argument. Or let's put it this way: have you ever seen a battery operated passenger jet?
their import? We can now use electricity - and their dozens of energy sources, many of which are renewables - for transportation.
Before we go on, I want you tell me how cars are made. And the batteries in the hybrids. And the equivalent amount of electricity to replace our fleet of cars on a per year basis.
Let's ground your arguments in real numbers before we proceed, okay?
And before continuing after that, please comment on this statement I made in the blog:
How do you propose to increase the world's current energy production so that everyone can have the standard of living we enjoy in the United States?
July 22, 2008 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sheesh! Formatting error. Correction:
Before we go on, I want you to tell me how cars are made. And the batteries in the hybrids. And the equivalent amount of electricity to replace our fleet of cars on a per year basis.
July 22, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
1. The power plants, and factories and coal mining are done with a mix of fuels - gas/oil and electric (fossil and non.) I was simply saying that, especially after the 1st two OPEC crises, oil is now a very marginal fuel in terms of electricity generation. I could ask the same about how oil is produced - obviously, electricity goes into its making. But my point stands that electricity is no longer a major transportation fuel, and neither is oil a major fuel used in electricity generation.
2. Batteries are most definitely NOT a non-sequiteur argument. They're critical. Why? Because oil's grteat advantage is you can store it, and its high energy/weight ratio. Electricity is really only able to be stored, within grid systems, by hydro-electric plants - which I know very well. The entire electric industry has been ecstatic, for decades, at the thought of STORING it. Because then.... amongst other things, they can EAT the liquid fuel market. Passenger jets are still a minor share of our transportation energy usage, and so, a hard case that in no way disproves the core point - that electricity CAN and increasingly will be drawn over to replace oil in vehicles.
3. You should look up the embodied energy that goes into making cars & batteries. There are loads of LCA studies out there. When I last looked at the ratios, they weren't too tight - unlike ethanol from corn, which CAN, in some cases, be problematic.
4. You say, "Let's ground your arguments in real numbers before we proceed, okay?" This is slightly disingenuous. I gave you real numbers for wind power's costs, and their learning curve rate of cost decline is presently running at around 20% for each doubling of worldwide installed capacity. I also gave you the precise numbers for the rate at which electricity can be put into cars today - even into inefficient retrofit, rather than custom-designed proper PHEV's. And the cost per gallon equivalents. you're the poster, I gave you some real numbers, now.... let's proceed. Can you knock 'em down? I think not. Because I work on the plug-in I described, the fellow next door drives it, and I also work on the wind-farms I described, and their output is publicly available.
5. Nope, the world cannot get to US standards of living IF - please note that - IF it also accepts US levels of inefficiency, and a US energy mix. what I'm saying is that using a cover-all term like "energy" hides everything of relevance. Things such as energy sources, and energy efficiency. You could just as easily have said, Japanese levels of efficiency. At which point, we might only require 2-3 worlds. Still too many, but then if I say, we could easily go to a 50% (or more) mix of wind + solar, we COULD make it work. This troubles me for other reasons, more on the food side, but the energy side is not strong enough to drive any Malthusian math.
July 22, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't show the relative efficiencies of Japan vs the US. In particular, you don't give credence to the fact that Japan, as a country, is laid out much differently than the US -- so many things don't translate. Therefore I don't concede this point. But, for the sake of argument, let's follow you one step further:
Show me how we "could" make it work. With numbers and real estimates, please.
July 22, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Clearthinker, I'd like to. On most days, this is all I work on. But these issues - each aspect of "energy" - run enormously deep. the page here would be covered with dozens of links, each to fairly hefty documents. You know this.
All I can really do is nail a couple of major examples, ok? Take home heating & cooling (same for commercial & institutional buildings as well.) It uses huge amounts of natural gas, electricity & heating oil. Do we need to do it this way, or is there an obvious technology we've missed. Answer? The latter. The heat pump. Sweden - with housing stock more similar to the US than is Japan - puts heat pumps in 97% of all new housing. All the heat pump does is take heat (or ~coolness, so to speak) out of the air, the water or the ground, and dump it into the building. Yes, they require electricity to run. But they produce 3-5 TIMES that amount of energy out. We are converting apartment blocks, 22 stories high, with less than 1 week's activity. Installers, pipe, and a drilling rig. For an average home, they'd be priced at $15-$30,000 today. But their REAL cost to manufacture and install? Well, we priced buying them off the dock at $2,000. Another $3-$5,000 to drill. But because there's no economies of scale right now, the middle-men are eating it up. the heat itself comes form the earth, which has stored solar energy for years, and a good % of which is replenished annually. More, the urban "heat island effect" actually turns out to also have dumped waste heat UNDER our cities. We had the aquifer under this city tested, and that waste heat - presently "stored" in rock - is worth over $1.1 billion at today's natl gas prices.
That's one example. I'll try to drop a couple more further down. And by the way, Business Week chose this province as being #1 in the world, in terms of taking action on climate change and energy, in 2005. So it's not a backwater.
July 22, 2008 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
clearthinker, I echo quinn's points. I'm not touching your food/population arguments, but your energy arguments appear to be grounded more in speculation about what may or may not be possible, than your more solid population arguments.
To whit, you complain that quinn ignores the costs associated with the creation of power plants, batteries and cars. I don't think he ignores it, but that is beside the point. So it may be the case that, today, it takes so many (let's say 100,000) gallons of gasoline to get a wind farm up and running. So what? (A) This is an initial investment that reaps enormous benefits, and those gallons of gasoline lead to so much more energy production than would be created in a combustion engine. Though the cost of oil won't be going down any time soon, when used to create better energy infrastructure the same amount of oil will result in the production of much more energy. This means cheaper energy, although not cheaper gas. And (B), although the wind farm "starter" investment in energy may be oil today, this need not be true twenty years from now, when energy stored in batteries (and charged by wind power) can be used to construct new wind farms.
Is wind power the answer? Solar? Hydrogen? Hydro? Fusion? I don't know the answer. But I categorically reject your assumption that no power source in the future can again provide us with cheap energy. To paraphrase the first Clarke's Laws: "When a distinguished but elderly blogger states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong."
July 22, 2008 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Again, show me numbers, Allsburg.
Batteries are not as efficient at delivering massive power as the internal combustion engine. Do you expect to see battery powered passenger airplanes?
Who regulates where oil will be used? And to what purpose?
Will batteries move water through pipes throughout NYC?
The civilization you experience today was built on cheap energy: oil. Never mind that the green revolution in food production was based on oil inputs as well.
The US had more coal reserves than oil. Society was already coal based. So how did we get to oil as our main energy source?
Because it was the most economical. You simply can't run many things on batteries... and, in addition, you have to produce the batteries. And you have to look at the energy returned from the battery in relation to the energy used to make the battery.
As far as wind and solar, please look at the article I reference in my blog:
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/%7Epel/environment/energy_pt04.html
If you want to make your case, you need to fill in the numbers like this article does.
July 22, 2008 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some random points, I can't cover 'em all, sorry.
1. Will batteries move water through pipes throughout NYC? In most cities, electricity drives the pumps that move our eater & sewage. in fact, in most municipalities, the single largest point user of electricity is... the sewer/water system.
2. The last Life-Cycle Analyses (LCA's) I looked at showed wind-farms only requiring about ~2 years of their working life to pay off their entire energy debt. Meanwhile, they last for 25 years. I believe Vestas of Denmark - a manufacturer - has some of these studies on their site, or perhaps AWEA. (Am Wind Assocn.)
3. Oil may not be the cheapest energy form, coal may well be. But coal is damned hard to make into a LIGHT, easily transportable vehicle fuel. Batteries, the lead acid ones, weren't gonna make it. But think what the driver of consumer electronics has done. Cell phones, laptops, etc. Lithium Ion batteries even today - and for the best manufacturer of this, and presentation on a website I can think of, look up A123 of Massachusetts. They spun out of MIT and are going big-time. They simply used nano-chemistry to lay down battery surfaces with 1,000 timkes the crevices and such, so the surface area available for charging is greater. Thus, they can carry more charge, and recharge much faster.
Do you lose some energy along the way from generation to driving the vehicle? Absolutely. But it's only ~10-12% through transmission, then another 15% or so through the vehicle. Compare a well-to-wheels efficiency for the ICE of say, ~15-25%.
This stuff is coming fast, and that's because the fundamental physics supports it. Unlike, for instance, fuel cells and such.
July 22, 2008 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
clearthinker, you're impermissibly shifting the burden of proof. YOU are the one claiming that no other energy source could ever be as cheap as oil has been this past century. YOU are the one trying to prove a negative. I'll admit that the future of energy looks relatively bleak. But even you have to admit that peak oil still means there's decades worth of increasingly expensive oil. I'm not going to hazard a guess as to what sort of progress we'll have made on the energy frontier in twenty years. It may well be as you say, but it also could turn out very differently. There will surely be an incredible economic incentive for someone to develop cheap energy.
July 23, 2008 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Allsburg,
My proof about us running out is manifest itself in simple little things:
a) airlines going under
b) home healthcare workers beginning to feel the pinch and outlying regions not being serviced
Things like that. Is hydro saving us from this? Wind? Batteries? You tell me.
Decades of oil available? Hardly. Oil per capita peaked in the 70s as shown in this graph I cited in my blog:
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/%7Epel/environment/population_pt04.html#ref
I ask, and not sarcastically, have you looked at the references I linked to in the blog? Oil itself is fast running out -- and if you consider the oil available to the US, it's running out even faster (as net producing nations use more of their dwindling supplies for themselves).
There is a secondary component to all this that several people are ignoring: it's not all energy as I mention. Clean water is already an issue. Oil as inputs into your ag industry is another. You can't replace hydrocarbons for wind when making fertilizers. The list goes on and on and on.
The burden of proof about the world sinking is that it's already happening -- like a ship listing. Do you need it to be underwater completely to believe that the iceberg has been hit?
How do you propose raising standards of living for others when it would take 5 times the present world energy production? You can't make things on average 5 times more "efficient." In fact, much of our machinery is very close to being efficient as it is. In otherwords:
Please sit through the YouTube videos I provided. It talks about how 2-3% annual growth overwhelms you very quickly -- and our economies are expected to grow at that rate.
I repeat: we are using up the Earth at an alarming rate and far faster than it can heal itself.
Some of the arguments here are similar to those who don't believe in global warming, no matter how much evidence you put before them. Please step back and at least consider the links I've taken the trouble to select. At least the arguments are laid out clearly there -- and with credentialed people (I have credentials, but unfortunately anyone can be anybody on the Internet and therefore it's harder for me to make that argument.)
Thanks, Allsburg.
July 23, 2008 1:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not denying:
1) that our population growth must be curtailed;
2) that we are months, not years, away from mass starvation;
3) that our economic system based upon continual growth and expansion of the consumer base is doomed to failure; or
4) that the lack of cheap energy is already in the process of plunging us into a tunnel of darkness and despair concerning items 1-3.
What I object to is your conviction that the tunnel will be endless--that there is no possible energy source that can ever be as cheap and abundant as oil. I remain convinced that, if human beings cannot find such an energy source, it will be because of our limited imagination and intelligence, not because such a power source is inherently impossible.
None of this changes 1, 2, or 3 above, which are plenty of grist for thought.
July 23, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
A tough new row to hoe
The Green Revolution that began in 1945 transformed farming and fed millions in developing countries. But its methods over the long run are proving to be stunningly destructive.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080719.RICE19//TPStory/Environment
July 22, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent contribution, Donal, thanks for stopping by!
July 22, 2008 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know how to link but here is a purported answer to all the problems: vhemt.org! (based in my state of Oregon.)
Not sure whether to laugh or cry...
July 22, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Looking forward to your conclusions. Where lives this elusive "Part 2"?
Malthus, of course, predicted the solution will be simple - "unsustainable" people will die (and currently do).
July 22, 2008 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It will appear in a few days.
July 22, 2008 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
This misses the main fact that distributed opportunity leads to lower birth rates.
As America's humanity catches up to its rapacious appetite, we can enable prosperity at home and around the world for those who now have nothing but nightmares. That will lower birth rates, which will allow for a turning back of overall population growth.
Seems a pretty straight forward and achievable, if extremely narrow, path. It starts with new leadership. If we can raise the bar for politicians and business leaders worldwide, we just might "grow" our way out of this mess.
The only thing that gives me an ounce of hope is that there seems to be the beginnings of a general awakening at the same time that new leadership is emerging in various places.
We live in exciting times for sure, but I wouldn't count us out just yet.
July 22, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of the biggest problems facing us in achieving a more sustainable lifestyle, is that our entire economic system is based on "growth." In order to remain a blue-chip company, it must grow by a minimum of 15% per year. To fuel this growth, we have a massive marketing industry that uses every psychological trick in the book to convince us to buy more; to replace what is not yet worn out, to buy the new style, new car, new everything. Any suggestion that we step away from "hyper consumption" is treated as "antibusiness."
We can all do a mea culpa about our own overconsumption, but we are incentivized in every possible way to consume with abandon. How can we use fewer resources, live more sustainably and leave something behind for future generations without "destroying the economy"? We need to rethink some fundamentals, or we are doomed in the petri dish of life.
July 22, 2008 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we are starting to see a move toward sustainability as a matter of survival. It will take some systemic shocks to really get the trickle to become a flood, but I believe we are moving in that direction.
July 22, 2008 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, absolutely. And here is the further point: the people on the left side of the spectrum are no better, as a group, than the people on the right side. We always want growth, but we have already grown too big.
July 22, 2008 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
GreenDreams:
You asked, "How can we use fewer resources, live more sustainably and leave something behind for future generations without "destroying the economy?"
Since your question is not rhetorical, what suggestions do you have as someone who is obviously knowledgable?
July 22, 2008 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
==Now. The cost. We have plug-in hybrids here. They get 5 miles per kilowatt-hour. Which here, costs just 6 cents/kwh. Some places, you might pay 12 cents retail, so if I do the math, even compared to a car getting 50 mpg, electricity is massively cheaper than oil. i.e. 60 cents to $1.20 per gallon-equivalent.==
The real problem is total available energy vs. total required. Electrical energy, in the quantities available today is cheaper than oil. In the North East, even at the high and rising cost of electricity $0.11/kwh generation plus $0.07/kwh delivery (a bit different than the numbers you cite), it is still cheaper to heat selected portions of your house with electricity than with heating oil.
Total energy required is significantly higher than what can be achieved with the current electric infrastructure. While certainly more can be gotten, the amount of additional required generation and delivery capacity is very daunting, especially considering that the price to build now is much higher than before. Wind power looks attractive, but numbers I have seen place it at a 10% of needed, which is nice, but no cigar. Natural gas is becoming about as scarce as oil and even more expensive, so we shouldn't count on it for electricity. Solar and tidal require truly massive influx of infrastructure development, which is highly dubious today, in the high energy price regime.
Basically, alternatives are theoretically possible, but require massive, world-wide effort, in the shortest possible time. I think it may have been possible, if human social development went about a 100 years faster than it did during our real history. At this point, in the midst of a developing energy and food shortage, with world political order in utter shambles, it seems highly unlikely that a massive energy make-over program can be successfully implemented. Add to this the near religous fervor with which most people in position of power and opinion making in the world view continuous economic growth and it would seem to take a miracle for humanity to avoid hard collapse. Add to this a near certainty of social chaos in many places not used to hard living, and any "transition" to "neat plug-in hybrids" seem like wishfull thinking.
This is well known to people who practice practical engineering - the solutions "space" is so small, it can't be stable. It is known, but unachievable.
I hope I am wrong.
July 22, 2008 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is the issue of speed and range of a full charge vs full tank to consider. There is also the differential of the cost of a battery (and it's disposal considering the toxins) vs the cost of an internal combustion engine. When these are included, I believe your numbers will show not much of a price difference, which agrees with estimates I have seen showing pretty much a "wash" -- which is why hybrids are only now beginning to take hold in the public. In other words, hybrids weren't economically practical over the life of a car until gas started approaching $4-5/gal.
Where is "here" that you refer to?
July 22, 2008 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is Manitoba, Clearthinker. Hybrids, you have to remember, are a NEW technology. Developed in the US largely - a lot of work at UCDavis, by Dr. Andy Frank - look up his work, he's worth it - when the Big 3 didn't take it up, Japan did. the key is that a hybrid has TWO platforms on it. That is revolutionary. Electricity can now be produced from waste energy in the car, but also, add a plug and expand the battery, introduced from the grid.
Yes, $4/gas gives you substantial savings now. But think of this. The cost of hybrids had to be recouped EARLY. It is falling every single year. Strip out the extras they plunk into hybrids to take advantage of the relatively affluent early adopters, and the real deal costs are $2000-$3000. This from the Big 3, EPRI (electrical research, UCDavis and others.) A great study on hybrids and plug-in's was put out last year or so by Alliance Bernstein, a big investment house. Wonderful inside stuff. Great story of touring a Toyota plant making the Prius. all they had to do was add 11 motions and 3 parts (or close to that, this is from memory), adding 90 seconds, to change the actual assembly line.
Sorry no links from me tonight guys, I'm bushed is god's own truth. Come at me later, and I can try and find some, ok?
July 23, 2008 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
90% of all daily commuting can be handled by the range on existing electric vehicles of around 200 miles. With high-speed chargers, they can be recharged to 80% capacity in about 30 minutes.
Perfect solution? Not by many magnitudes, but take even half of the gas-burning cars off the road and we are moving in the right direction. More adoption leads to lower prices and more innovation.
What's with all the doom and gloom and pessimistic outlook based on more than debatable conclusions and "fuzzy" math?
(I say fuzzy math because your numbers can't account for any changing inputs, which will surely be at increasing speeds as the situation becomes more visible to more people.)
July 23, 2008 6:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Only one point here dimitry. We've run the calculations on how much electricity it would take to replace our ENTIRE passenger vehicle fleet (including light trucks & SUV's) with electricity. the answer is a shocker - just 10%-20% of existing electrical load. Why is that s shocker? Well, adding 10% wind is basically now legislated by our states and regions and nation-states. Many are targeting 20%, 30%, 50%. A single 2.5 MW wind turbine - produced by GE, Siemens or Mitsubishi, can produce 8-10,000 plus Megawatt-hours annually. That's 8-10 million kwh's, ok? Remember above, where we could get 5 miles per kwh in a plug-in today? There's your math. Now, an average vehicle in the US probably travels 15-18,000 miles a year, if I remember right. So we need 3,000-3,600 kwh's per car-year then. We can therefore divide and get, 2000 to 3,000 cars, entirely off oil and of fossil fuels, for ONE new wind turbine erected. There are lots of complexities in this, transmission, hours when charging takes place, capacity factors of turbines, size of batteries etc. - but that quantum is the right one.
Must go. Hope this contributed.
July 22, 2008 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
==But I categorically reject your assumption that no power source in the future can again provide us with cheap energy.==
I often see this optimism, and it is nice that so many people are so optimistic.
The problems is that not every problem has a solution.
Physical reality, in contrast with economic reality doesn't function by human laws. Physical laws are merciless.
There is absolutely no reason to assume that you are correct. No reason to assume you are not.
Generally, in closed systems, resources eventually end. Humans have been quite smart and have been buring more and more things over the few tens of thousands of years we had control over fire. However, socially, we have remained quite similar to our ancestors of 20,000 years ago (from an evolutionary point of view).
What we need to do now is to make a sudden evolutionary jump into a completely new paradigm - a much more cooperative and less competitive environement. Historically, the last such paradigm shift occured when the tribes migrated out of Africa and over tens of thousands of years learned to live in small agricultural communities, which was required for our survival. We need to achive something similar, in terms of scope, in...a couple of decades...at most.
July 22, 2008 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would love to be proved wrong, but it is hard to imagine something as versatile as oil being introduced in the economy for it's basic cheapness.
Oil is concentrated, liquid sunshine. It is trivial to transport, relatively easy to refine (at least the light, sweet stuff that has been our source for the past 125 years). It also provided the basis for the petrochemical industry, giving us plastics, fertilizer and pharmaceutical inputs. Even if "cracked" down to methane, it's still useful!
One of it's worse byproducts, CO2, is not even inherently a toxin!
And we've used up half of it -- and that was the easy to get at, light, sweet half.
Bummer.
July 22, 2008 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
==Only one point here dimitry. We've run the calculations on how much electricity it would take to replace our ENTIRE passenger vehicle fleet (including light trucks & SUV's) with electricity. the answer is a shocker - just 10%-20% of existing electrical load. Why is that s shocker? Well, adding 10% wind is basically now legislated by our states and regions and nation-states. Many are targeting 20%, 30%, 50%. A single 2.5 MW wind turbine - produced by GE, Siemens or Mitsubishi, can produce 8-10,000 plus Megawatt-hours annually. That's 8-10 million kwh's, ok? Remember above, where we could get 5 miles per kwh in a plug-in today? There's your math. Now, an average vehicle in the US probably travels 15-18,000 miles a year, if I remember right. So we need 3,000-3,600 kwh's per car-year then. We can therefore divide and get, 2000 to 3,000 cars, entirely off oil and of fossil fuels, for ONE new wind turbine erected. There are lots of complexities in this, transmission, hours when charging takes place, capacity factors of turbines, size of batteries etc. - but that quantum is the right one.==
There are now 251e6 cars in the United States today. At an average "load" of 2,500 cars/turbine, we would need 100,000 turbines built to carry our newly purchased fleet of electric vehicles. And of course we would have to buy the vehicles (251e6 x $20k = $5000 trillion). We would have to build the turbines (100,000 x $3 million = $300 trillion).
In addition, your numbers on the amount of electricity required to power up an electric fleet seems off:
100,000 turbines x 10,000 mwh annually = 1e6 gwh
Total US power generation in 2006 was 4.2e6 gwh.
Current rate of electric power growth is ~2% annually.
Above numbers show that in order to switch to electric passenger vehicles near term, in addition to truly awe-inspiring costs and infrastructure development (100,000 LARGE turbines), we would need to increase our electricity production by 25%. Since our GDP is $13 trillion dollars, it seems very far fetched that such an enterprise can every be undertaken even in the best of times.
==All the heat pump does is take heat (or ~coolness, so to speak) out of the air, the water or the ground, and dump it into the building. Yes, they require electricity to run. But they produce 3-5 TIMES that amount of energy out==
A harmless misprint? More energy out than in, forver? Hmm...
July 22, 2008 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
==And of course we would have to buy the vehicles (251e6 x $20k = $5000 trillion). We would have to build the turbines (100,000 x $3 million = $300 trillion).==
I should have stuck to scientific notation, I don't know my billions from my trillions well.
The national cost of an electric car fleet is $5 trillion, while the turbines will set us back a mere $300 billion. Since our current GDP is $13 trillion, it will be a truly massive undertaking. In addition consider that the economy must remain strong during this emergency transition, social order intact, food supply stable and both energy and resource depletion must not interfere too much with our projects.
Humanity have never attempted anything on the scale we are are talking about. Lets all wish us luck - we will need it.
July 23, 2008 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well stated. This is what happens when numbers are presented. The argument is well grounded and assumptions become much clearer.
July 23, 2008 1:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I got to take these one at a time, so bear with me, ok? It's late here! The car fleet cost cannot be run off against this proposal as a net new cost, you guys know that. So that bit is unfair. North America's car fleet turns over something like every 8-12 years I beleive, depending on where you live and how the economy's doing, etc. So, since I AGREE, this cannot be done in 1 year, you're looking at a transition. Do it over 10 years, as the cars age, and you are knocking down oil use fast - especially on top of other changes we're seeing, transit ridership up, unnecessary miles down - and within a short time, we're moving. But 10-20 years to complete the car turnover, yes.
You cannot run this number up against a single year GDP though, ok? That's not fair. Just take the normal ANNUAL spending by Americans on new cars, turning over as per always, and you get.... that's right.... roughly the amount that Dimitry listed, divided by ten (if we use 10 years.)
Believe me guys, I'm not saying we're not facing a crash - I think we are. But saying that adds nothing but panic right now. People will panic soon enough anyway, if it falls apart. I'm just working to find ways ahead and through. And no, plug-in cars won't be the only ways, ok?
July 23, 2008 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok. Wind. You came up with 251 million cars, Dimitry. that may well be right. I don't believe the 15,000 miles per car figure can work then. Logically, that's roughly 45 miles per car per day. Fine. but 251 million? That would mean one car pretty much per every American (~300 million.) So I'd have to doublecheck whether it was per family. i.e. The average miles per car and number of cars definitions match. You came out with 25%. The stuff we did, once the definitions were matched up, was 10%-25%. A variance, but no order of magnitude. So, we'd have to refine that.
Here's what I want you to think about on wind though. We're contracting for a 300 MW wind-farm. They can put it in in one year, on one site. Buffett already has huge wind-farms in Iowa, and Texas is rolling them out. The scale of these things is increasing in the same way as cell phones shrank, right? Same curve. So we take 100,000 turbines as our upper end, worst case. (Possibly to be adjusted with our car numbers, right?) Now, do this:
1. Do it over 10 years. We need to put in 10,000 a year.
2. The wind-farm we put in 5 years ago was 1.65 MW turbines, by Vestas. So their size has gone up - their output - by 50% in 5 years. this will continue, as they're already testing 3 and 4 and 5 MW machines. So assume that some growth continues, say 10% a year. On average, over 10 years, you'd see the machines work at 2.5 X 1.5 times present output, or - 3.75 MW's. So we're down around 7,000 MW's a year needed.
3. Spread that across 50 states. Since maybe 15 of them have lousy wind or are too small, let's say 35, ok? (Forgetting even offshore wind potential right now.) 7,000 divided by 35 - we need to put 200 turbines into each of those 35 states a year. I think the math here is right, correct me if not. We have, for instance, over 40 sites with active developers who came forward for our last RFP. 70+ sites with met towers up. Each of these sites are capable of 300 MW's today, which is 120 turbines of 2.5 MW size. At 3.75 MW's, we could site roughly 70-80 on these same geographic areas.
So now we are down to the issue of - can we find 3 sites worth developing, across an entire continent, in each of 35 states?
What you can see is that rather than shove all these figures up into massive global numbers to terrify people - and yes, they scare everyone, me included - people are going to want and need ways out. Breaking things down into workable plans helps.
If I then added in public transit, and people no longer taking stupid trips, some urban intensification, we could easily begin to see total oil use from transportation dropping by 10%.... 20%..... 30%... No, this doesn't solve things if all the oil is shut off tomorrow. But it makes as much sense as does expanding rail and so on. We just can't do that in 1 year either. Not with our burbs. So I say, set these things on 10 year horizons, and work like hell.
Is there any alternative?
Goodnight gentlemen/ladies. I hope this helped. We'll continue at some point, ok?
July 23, 2008 2:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for saying all this so I don't have to. I am not sure how anyone can debate the issue in such absolutist terms.
They discount the effects of change on how fast new change occurs moving forward. They don't take into account all the numbers shifting on what will be a weekly basis at some point.
Many comments seem to strip all context out of the situation. They then describe our problems as insoluble once people and historical precedence are removed.
Very odd process of reaching conclusions.
July 23, 2008 7:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Really appreciating your contributions here, Quinn! Despite your fatigue, your logic is coming through clear as a bell and helping to round out this discussion.
July 23, 2008 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
No question, wind is a promising alternative, as is solar, geothermal and tidal.
The problem is not, as I said a narrow technical one. There is a possible solvable problem of cost and scale - your numbers suggest 600 million dollar expenditure per year per state, just for generation infrastructure, plus more for distribution and, of course, a lot more for the vehicles themselves. This alone seems daunting.
The bigger problem, as I said, is assumption of favorable conditions. This is a hard one for Western people to come to grips with. Your posts are filled with good, optimistic numbers - RFPs, responses, site selections, etc. This pressuposes a healthy, happy economy, with companies and capital looking to invest in energy, electric vehicles, distribution, etc. and plenty of advanced manufacturing capacity, just waiting to be tapped. However, any significant economic shock will lead to most of these assumptions not being true - try building a windfarm with a food shortage, large scale devaluation of money and a global recession, spiced up with state mercantilism and resource wars.
And, in the end, technical solutions to a current severe hiccup in the continuous economic growth theory will only delay the inevitable - system unsustainability in a closed control volume.
July 23, 2008 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
==But they produce 3-5 TIMES that amount of energy out==
I see what you mean - this is the best case scenario - like cooling via geothermal in the north east. This wouldn't be the case heating in the winter.
We looked at geothermal for our church and were advised that as a retrofit it is not a serious player due to very high costs. It appears to gain popularity in new developments, though I would definitely be concerned about maintenance.
July 23, 2008 12:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interestingly, the best hope of truly efficiently deriving energy from the sun is not photovoltaics -- which still have a long term rate of payback for energy required -- but solar thermal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
Of course, this is for heating homes -- it's doubtful you can scale it for manufacturing of goods, or running transportation systems.
July 23, 2008 1:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's no magic machine. There are dozens of sites out there. Heat pumps produce, regularly, in the thousands of units, installed today, COP's of 3 (i.e. efficiencies of 300%) - and yes, that's in Winter. In Summer, in cooling mode, they measure differeently, it's called SEER. The energy is not magically created" by the machine, that's not what heat pumps do. They transfer it from the ground, water, air - into the house.
Your point on the quoted cost to your church is exactly what we work to change, every day. Think of it this way. A heat pump is a fridge. Fridges doing exactly this. Take heat, compress it into some medium and transfer it out. How much does your fridge cost? Now... add a well to it. Should that, upsized somewhat obviously, cost you $20-$30,000? No. We had quotes from Waterfurnace and other big manufacturers at $2000 (that's for the in-home unit, the well is separate, ok?) We have entire apartment complexes with these built in already. I'm too tired to add much more on this, but you can chase some of the names.
July 23, 2008 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
My understanding with geothermal is that the well has to be very deep, and it is quite expensive to dig in the midst of developed infrastructure. In addition, in the winter, in areas which are cold, the efficiencies are not great. In other words, great for cooling, less good for heating. That seems reasonable given the differential between desired temperature and the available sink temperature - more work needs to be done by the pump.
Again, the problem is not the lack of technical solutions, but rather the time frame, expense and required economic/social stability for a make-over. A larger problem still is the expansion model of human life, based on "steady growth forever" economic model. Even with efficient heating/vehicle technologies, one can't expect perpetual increases in EVERYTHING to be unnoticed by our ecosystem.
In other words, this is not a narrow technical problem, but a large systems problem.
July 23, 2008 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
P.S And clearthinker my friend. If this doesn't convince you that this is what I'm doing for a living, and here in Manitoba, this energy/carbon stuff 24/7, with TPM as the occasional joy/torment of my existence... I donno what will! This is no game for me, and I am no creation of another!! However you feel about that though, cheers and goodnight.
And we can swap some links in the coming days, ok?
- quinn esq.
July 23, 2008 2:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I love this place. I know of no other that has this caliber of discourse.
There's no doubt, there are no easy solutions. But chunking it out into manageable bits works wonders to make the choices easier.
One point on geothermal. It's not just one thing. I think many think of it as drilling into magma or something. A greenbuilder friend of mine uses ordinary plastic pipe laid at foundation level to warm winter air and cool summer air as it's drawn into the home. That's geothermal, with no well. A heat exchanger captures outbound heat and it's stored for hot water use or in winter, in-floor heating.
Overall, achieving a sustainable lifestyle is more than technology. On a social/political level, we need good governance, that manages our resources for the public good, not for private gain. Achieving that probably requires getting corporate influence out of public policymaking. Unfettered corporate greed can't continue to be the driving force in our quest for a long term future.
On a technology level, we have many small steps that can combine to realize sustainable energy usage: conservation (!), wind, solar, biofuels (though not corn) and new technologies like the starch to hydrogen developments I have mentioned before.
http://greendreams.wordpress.com/2007/07/07/hydrogen-from-starch/
"Sustainable and renewable" needs to become our #1 value in making all purchasing decisions, as individuals and as a nation.
For those concerned, as am I, about an economic meltdown, well that will reduce consumption painfully, but it's not an excuse to avoid progress on sustainability. Indeed, in hard economic times we have especially strong needs to conserve, make our own energy, grow our own food, etc.
July 23, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink