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139 comments on 10 Fundamental Principles of Net Energy Analysis
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139 comments on 10 Fundamental Principles of Net Energy Analysis
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It's not lack of, it's misplaced pessimism.
I personally believe that all these "new tech's" and devices are real and doable. I have personally seen some knock you on your ass amazing devices that if developed would have a profound effect on the area of their focus, and yet for too many reasons to list here will never see the light of day. One of the biggest reasons was TPTB couldn't/wouldn/t give it their ble$$ing (not that they had a clue as to the viability).
I just understand that the constraints we face are much bigger than anything we can invent.
The issue is a socioeconomic, cultural problem that is not even the 800 lb chimp in the room. IT'S THE ROOM ITSELF!
Could you please be more precise and specific? Why wouldn't a plug-in hybrid, full EV combined with a wind boom and more nukes (and perhaps some more coal use if needed) work?
Well, actually, they will work. The sooner we slam into the wall the better because there will be bigger pieces left for us bottom-feeders. Not everything will be gray-gooed. I'm starting to understand that a managed, steady decline is likely to be far more devastating - and all-consuming - than a fast crash.
Just for yucks, I reviewed the charts and assumptions in "Limits to Growth: the 30 year update" last night. Yuck. A pain in all the diodes down my left side. I had to put the book down fast.
Any assumption that we can fix or replace any portion of our infrastructure, where that assumption depends on infinite supply of something - fish, petroleum, wood pellets, phosphate, clean water, human ingenuity - they are all wrong. Everything is limited, even the human ingenuity (Tainter). The quality of all resources is declining - another double whammy.
To paraphrase Reagan, Obama and Souperman2, "tear down the room".
cfm in Gray, ME
How do you define "work"? Do you mean, is it possible to build one electric car and power it from wind/nuke/coal?
Or do you mean, replace all the energy provided by 20 million barrels per day of oil (and 20 tcf natural gas), and all the services provided by 200 million+ cars/trucks, ships, aircraft, on a time line of 20 years? Because that is the real challenge.
There are technology issues and rate of growth issues.
From Energy use in the US
Wind and Solar are too small to even display on this graph. The nuke industry is overrepresented here because no new nukes have been built in a very long time. Coal may already have peaked as an energy source (depends a bit on the Illinois basin) Energy Watch Group Coal Report Summery
I agree about misplaced pessimism. For energy we already have the technologies (nuclear, wind and hydro turbines, etc) to produce a high enough energy return to maintain a form of civilisation. This civilisation is unlikely to involve drive-thru KFCs, but then we managed without them for a couple of thousand years before, so I guess we could cope. In terms of total TWs of energy, we cannot perform an instant switch over to the same level of energy use we have at present, though we don't actually need to because: a) fossil fuels won't disappear tomorrow, and b) the greater use of energy efficiency and conservation. However, this time factor is important as the forced reduction in energy use IN SOME NATIONS due to lower available imports (plus lower net energy) will happen too quickly to adjust to without significant pain. But we also have additional ecological overshoot problems - limits to other resources (fresh water, minerals, cropland), ecosystem collapses due to biodiversity loss, and a climate that is rapidly warming to an extent last experienced on Earth 3 million years ago. This is all exacerbated by a human population growing by a quarter of million souls each day (a new Dallas + Boston each week; or a new Glasgow + Edinburgh + Aberdeen each week [I live in Scotland!]). Yet even each of these might be overcome, for example if we instituted a strict one-child policy, urban permaculture, electric rail & cycle priority, waste materials recycling, rainforest protection, fishing controls, land and wealth redistributions, etc, etc. But these won't happen, and that is the reason I'm pessimistic: these are inter-connected problems with a new level of complexity that require a higher level of critical thinking, but our brains have just not quite evolved far enough to consistently deal with this. It could happen, but the probabilities are that things will get tough for most and nasty for some (and that is without any Black/Grey Swans of nuclear weapon launches, disease pandemics, etc).
Misplaced pessimism again, GreenE. Doomers shouldn't project their own shortages of brain power onto the entire population.