Ford Transit Gloria Detroiti?

[FamilyWiggs]

Those who despair with a cry of 'It can't be done' had best read up on Olduvai. http://dieoff.org/page125.htm

Well Biff - he's certainly spun out a very simple set of data to incredible lengths. Just 3 teeny weeny problems with his hypothesis:

a) He only uses oil, natural gas, nuclear and hydro electricity in his calculations. There are other energy sources, which will be come increasingly important. Include these and the graphs will look rather different - and less gloomy.

b) He takes no account of increasing energy efficiency; we can increasingly support greater levels of industrial civilisation on lower levels of per-capita energy use. From fire to steam to internal combustion to nuclear, industrialisation and per-capita energy use is not a linear relationship.

c) As Duncan himself admits, instead of the apocalyptic post-industrial phase he predicts, "other scenarios are possible" :roll: . One of those is one where technology comes to our rescue (as it always has to date) and we develop efficient renewable energy sources to continue our development. Duncan's thesis is basically Malthusian - energy resources are finite, therefore once consumed we're done for. Fortunately it doesn't take much imagination to work out that solar energy is (effectively) infinte and our future lies here.

I posted this a couple of weeks ago - this type of machine will be our "salvation". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12051167. After all, plants have spent 4.6 billion years evolving their version of this machine - I doubt we'll come up with anything better. 19% efficieny on that machine would do us.

So, having solved the energy problem, we just need to confront the fact that food for 9 billion mouths is a mite tricky.... :wink:

 

[LadyArowana]

So, having solved the energy problem, we just need to confront the fact that food for 9 billion mouths is a mite tricky.... :wink:

As long as no one is a fussy eater then we could solve 2 problems at once........ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUcFXijEoA0

 

[biffvernon]

Richard Duncan is clearly near the extreme end of energy doom. Much depends on how quickly technologies can substitute for oil. One really does have to appreciate the extent to which the global economy depends on liquid fuels with a very high energy density. I'm actually fairly optimistic about feeding the 9 billion. We do have a lot of slack in the system and food shortages are more about differences in wealth than capability to grow food. How that will improve in the face of collapse of the world economy is a bit tricky to fathom, but the experiments with community farms in Detroit could be valuable.

Flyfisher, you say "All you do is keep stating the problem but not offering any practical solutions."

What if there are no 'practical' solutions? FamilyWiggs quite likes his high energy lifestyle, as do most people, so they will regard a transition to low energy as impractical. If we cannot develop renewables as fast as the fossils decline we will move to low-energy whether we like it or not, practical or not.

And we're timed out on solutions to global warming. It's probably too late to stop the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets Melting - that's most of the densely populated parts of the planet gone. Not in our lifetime but my house has seen more than half of it's time. For the sake of our grandchildren, climate mitigation has to be our duty.

 

[middi]

I do love a "healthy" debate. :wink:
My view is that, like many other great civilisations in our history, ours will " implode" with a catastrophic consequence on loss of lives if we " loose the plot". If out timing in putting faith into furure technology solutions is miscalculated we will only be remembered as a great or naive society by future generations. Short of a cosmic disaster that will wipe out all species the human race will adapt, survive and prosper.
Our problem is that if " implosion" happens because of our possibly miscalculated optimism we will have nowhere to run, explore and adapt, hence more catastrophic.
As a human race we have only one set of cards to deal with, in order to ease our existence it all depends on how we choose to play them

Middi

 

[middi]

Forgot to mention.....

My only worry is that whilst I have faith in the human race to adapt and prosper our track record for calculating the means is appalling and bloodthirsty. Be it by default or by design.
Some may say that it is the process of human evolution and unavoidable, this way of thinking would only confirm the fact the survival of the fittest still stands firm.

A bit of a shame

Middi

 

[Flyfisher]

Sorry Biff, but you're still pedalling too much doom and gloom to convince anyone to change.

It worked for me .

Fair point. I should have replaced "anyone" with "enough people to make a significant difference".

I know a number of people who have left the 'rat race', moved to the country and now run B&Bs. Nothing wrong with that as a lifestyle choice at all, but it's not a sustainable model that will save the planet because they are still dependent on other people with enough money to drive around the country visiting them. That was my point about 'eco-lifestyles' being elitist - it's relatively easy to achieve individually when supported by a large number of other people (typically living a higher-energy lifestyle). It's a bit like the UK reducing its CO2 emissions by having China do all its manufacturing; it might make us feel better but does absolutely nothing to help solve the problem.

 

[Flyfisher]

I posted this a couple of weeks ago - this type of machine will be our "salvation". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12051167. After all, plants have spent 4.6 billion years evolving their version of this machine - I doubt we'll come up with anything better. 19% efficieny on that machine would do us.

I agree entirely. The sun is the only sustainable energy source we have and that article is a good example of how technology can be our salvation.

 

[Flyfisher]

Flyfisher, you say "All you do is keep stating the problem but not offering any practical solutions."

What if there are no 'practical' solutions? FamilyWiggs quite likes his high energy lifestyle, as do most people, so they will regard a transition to low energy as impractical. If we cannot develop renewables as fast as the fossils decline we will move to low-energy whether we like it or not, practical or not.

You seem fixated on a low-energy future, Biff, even though you seem to accept that it's not a practical solution for a world with 9 billion people. The fact that it's not practical will obviously make it unacceptable to the vast majority of people, so you'll never convince them - especially as you're only offering a solution for (say) 10% of them, leaving the other 90% to die of starvation. What sort of solution is that?

Surely it's better to advocate a technology-led, high-energy solution, one that could more-or-less maintain current living standards?

And we're timed out on solutions to global warming. It's probably too late to stop the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets Melting - that's most of the densely populated parts of the planet gone. Not in our lifetime but my house has seen more than half of it's time. For the sake of our grandchildren, climate mitigation has to be our duty.

If we're going to have to relocate most of our main population centres anyway, that sounds like a good reason to go flat out on new development for the next century or so to develop the technologies we'll need to sustain us when the fossil fuels have finally gone. Think of the technologies we had at our disposal in 1910 compared with today. Who knows what we'll be able to achieve by 2110, especially since the rate of progress is increasing all the time.

 

[Flyfisher]

As long as no one is a fussy eater then we could solve 2 problems at once........

Ah yes, the Soylent Green solution. :lol:

 

[biffvernon]

You seem fixated on a low-energy future, Biff, even though you seem to accept that it's not a practical solution for a world with 9 billion people. The fact that it's not practical will obviously make it unacceptable to the vast majority of people, so you'll never convince them - especially as you're only offering a solution for (say) 10% of them, leaving the other 90% to die of starvation. What sort of solution is that?

Surely it's better to advocate a technology-led, high-energy solution, one that could more-or-less maintain current living standards?

You can't have a high energy solution when the energy isn't going to be there.

I did say I was more optimistic about feeding the 9 billion than some. Technically, I do think it is possible to do so even in a low-energy future. Whether it will happen, given the way politicians and their electorates behave is another matter, but one has to be optimistic as the only alternative is mass die-off. A 'solution' for 10% is no solution at all - we need a way to allow 100% to survive. Anything less is failure. But we have to do it as fossil fuel production declines and we mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

Advocating the impossible does not make it possible. I prefer to deal with reality and find it's easy to convince those who are ready to accept reality. It's those in denial who are hard to convince.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

You can't have a high energy solution when the energy isn't going to be there.

Biff - why do you keep insisting on this? Given the dizzying technological advances of the past 100 years, even the past 50 years, can you accept that renewable and solar-based energey technologies could be developed that would provide effectively unlimited energy to maintain high-energy industrialisation?

Yes or no?

 

[biffvernon]

The trouble with dizzying technological advance is that it makes people dizzy. For sure, the Sun provides more energy to every square metre of the planet than we can imaginably use and our ability to capture and use it is improving by the day. But new technologies on a world economy saving scale do take a long time to develop. Some people are keen to expand nuclear power, after 50 years of development, just when we become concerned about the supplies of uranium. The photovoltaic effect was first observed by Becquerel in 1839 and the first commercial installation commissioned in 1966 on a Japanese lighthouse. Pv now accounts for about 20 of the almost 5000 Giga Watts of installed electricity generation capacity. And transport fuel is a whole lot more difficult.

The more you look at the numbers the more obvious it becomes that we will not have a technology capable of matching the decline in oil production that we are going to see in our lifetime. A low energy future is not optional, it is a dead cert.

There is a bright lining to that cloud of doom. If we were able, by some magical trick, to conjure up unlimited energy supplies, it is likely that we would behave so stupidly that the planet would be wrecked all the sooner. Peak oil is, perhaps, humanity's best hope for long term survival. We can only hope that in the long term, when technologies have advanced to make power too cheap to meter, that we have developed the wisdom to use it wisely. History does not provide much scope for optimism, but that was all in the past.

 

[biffvernon]

For those not impressed by my hand-waving gestures in the previous post, look up the numbers. First a picture; note the skinny red line with the big arrow pointing it out. That's the renewables contribution to world energy. Note the fat zones of oil, gas, and coal, the finite fossil fuels that we must stop burning to slow global warming and will stop using because one can only burn it once.

The diagram comes an article, Renewables to the rescue? published last June at The Oil Drum, the primary internet portal for discussion of energy futures (the European section of which happens to be edited by my son). The author, Eaun Mearns, is a petroleum geologist turned energy analyst, based in Aberdeen.

Read the article here: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6602

The article followed the publication of the BP Annual Statistical Review, the world's most authoritative (and probably most accurate) set of numbers about the the energy situation. http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622

Euan Mearns' article is short and easy to read. The message is based on sound data and it is stark. I recommend it.
For those with empty lives the discussion in the comments section below the article goes on and on and on....

 

[Flyfisher]

A 'solution' for 10% is no solution at all - we need a way to allow 100% to survive. Anything less is failure. But we have to do it as fossil fuel production declines and we mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

I agree with all of that. What bemuses me is that you never seem to propose any practical solutions.

Advocating the impossible does not make it possible. I prefer to deal with reality and find it's easy to convince those who are ready to accept reality. It's those in denial who are hard to convince.

People have a right to be hard to convinced, don't you think? It encourages more detailed thought about the issues and, hopefully, practical solutions. It's not about convincing a small proportion of easily convinced "first adopters" to grow their own veg, only buy local organic food, swap the car for a bike and avoid supermarkets; that's not going to be a "100% solution" is it? So it's disingenuous, at best, to pretend it is.

Let's not keep digging out more data to show why we're doomed unless we change. How about some practical proposals about how the world's population needs to be living by the end of the century and a rough plan of how to achieve it? Even a half-baked visionary plan would be a welcome start.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

can you accept that renewable and solar-based energey technologies could be developed that would provide effectively unlimited energy to maintain high-energy industrialisation?

Yes or no?

The trouble with dizzying technological advance.....but that was all in the past.

So that's a "no", then?

:wink:

 

[biffvernon]

A 'solution' for 10% is no solution at all - we need a way to allow 100% to survive. Anything less is failure. But we have to do it as fossil fuel production declines and we mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

I agree with all of that. What bemuses me is that you never seem to propose any practical solutions.

Maybe that's because there aren't any practical solutions, or at least not that you would deem practical.

People have a right to be hard to convinced, don't you think? It encourages more detailed thought about the issues and, hopefully, practical solutions. It's not about convincing a small proportion of easily convinced "first adopters" to grow their own veg, only buy local organic food, swap the car for a bike and avoid supermarkets; that's not going to be a "100% solution" is it? So it's disingenuous, at best, to pretend it is.

Let's not keep digging out more data to show why we're doomed unless we change. How about some practical proposals about how the world's population needs to be living by the end of the century and a rough plan of how to achieve it? Even a half-baked visionary plan would be a welcome start.

Yes indeed. First step is to convince people that there is a problem. Most people still don't accept that.

And then, Flyfisher, you'd better explain what you mean by 'practical'. As I see it (and for those who do still want more data start with James Hansen who came up with the number I'm about to write) we have two serious problems looming, one that is going to destroy the world economy and the second that could destroy all life on Earth. The first is the decline of oil production. While we must go hell-for-leather on a war-time like footing to build renewable energy capacity now, there's no point deluding ourselves that this will be sufficient. We have to learn to use much less energy. That's the only solution but I'll leave it to you to decide whether you call it 'practical'. The second problem is global warming and the only thing we can do to avoid catastrophe is to get atmospheric CO2 back down below 350ppm (Hansen's figure). That means stopping pretty much all burning of carbon without carbon capture and sequestration (a technology that is yet to be demonstrated) and a massive programme of sequestering the carbon already released. Possible, therefore practical. There isn't a Plan B.

There is little sign of any political will to these things so I remain very pessimistic about the prospects for our grandchildren.

 

[Flyfisher]

There is little sign of any political will to these things so I remain very pessimistic about the prospects for our grandchildren.

As I've said many times, politics and human behaviour are a big part of the issue and both need to be addressed as part of any solution. They might even turn out to be harder problems to solve than the actual scientific and technological ones.

And then, Flyfisher, you'd better explain what you mean by 'practical'.

With respect Biff, you're evading the question again. Never mind what I, or others, think, how about just describing your solution to the problems and your vision of how the global population needs to be living by the end of the century?

 

[biffvernon]

I don't have a solution. The problem is too big and people are too stupid.

Ok, I do have a solution, but I thought I had already given it. All out war-footing type devotion of effort towards renewable energy production and energy conservation so that life is bearable and survivable without burning fossil fuels. Technologies to sequester carbon already in the air need to be rushed out. (Biochar is the most promising.) Farming will have to be mostly organic with very little petrochemical derived inputs. There will have to be much more human labour devoted to food production. In material and energy throughput terms we will be much poorer. Quality of life might not be worse than at present. Remember half the world's population today live off less than $2 per day - they are not the problem. Can we get 'down' to their ecological footprint and still be happy? Maybe. Most of the things we really value, company and conviviality, art, literature, song and dance and PERIOD PROPERTIES do not cost the Earth.

I happen to think that 9 billion people could live on this planet without wrecking it. I doubt that they will. So, actually, there is no solution.

 

[Flyfisher]

I don't have a solution. The problem is too big and people are too stupid.

Is that generally representative of the green movement? If so, we'd better start looking elsewhere for some answers.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I happen to think that 9 billion people could live on this planet without wrecking it. I doubt that they will. So, actually, there is no solution.

But surely the problem is that the population isn't stable at 9bn? I'm less than 40 and I can remember (I think) when the 6 billionth child was born. 9 billion is a lot harder and more resource consumptive to feed than 6 or 4 or 2 billion. But no one in the green movement is saying this very loudly. It's all doom-mongering.

Since many will apparently be underwater, presumably along with a lot of the fertile land, perhaps the problem is problem self-solving?