Equating Economics, Energy, and Growth
Posted by Gail the Actuary on August 1, 2009 - 10:40am
This is a short essay by John Howe, talking about the connection between economics, energy, and growth. John is a semi-retired mechanical engineer, who is known for his invention of the solar tractor, pictured on his web site solarcarandtractor.com. He is also the author of the book The End of Fossil Energy.
A. Nothing of Substance Moves or Grows without Energy
This includes a body, a bird’s nest, population, a building, a road, or a civilization. Energy is arguably the most important word in the dictionary.
Oil is presently the world’s primary source of energy, providing 40% of all energy and over 90% of transportation fuel. (Fuel is another term for energy.)
Energy is necessary for and can be represented by warmth or heat resulting in a higher temperature over ambient surroundings.
Energy can be accessed from past surplus as food, firewood, a loaf of bread, a charged battery, fossil fuels, fissionable elements, or mass moved to a higher level like a reservoir of water.
Most of the world’s energy came from or is coming via radiation from the sun’s fusion, albeit dilute and sporadic as it reaches the earth. Exceptions are nuclear fission, geothermal, and tidal.
Energy cannot be borrowed from the future. Next week’s food won’t assuage today’s hunger.
B. World Production of Pre-stored Oil has Peaked
This oil represents millions of years of conveniently stored solar energy and photosynthesis.
Conventional (light and easily accessible) oil reached a maximum of over 75 million barrels per day in May of 2005. All liquid fuels including tar sand oil, heavy oil, deep off shore oil, polar oil, natural gas liquids, and bio fuels peaked at about 85million barrels per day in the third quarter of 2008.
These numbers are historic facts as presented by the International Energy Agency and our own Department of Energy. (www.eia.doe.gov)
USA production peaked in 1970 as predicted in the 1950's by M.K. Hubbert. This fact resulted in the “energy crisis” of the seventies and a sharp increase in the price of oil as well as a temporary reduction of world oil production. This setback was quickly resolved and superseded by vast sources of new world oil from our arctic, the North Sea, Russia, Mexico, South America, Africa, and the Mid-east.
There is no evidence that equivalent new resources are available to solve our problems now. There was no great ramping up of oil production, as oil prices rose in the 2002 to 2008 period.
C. We Live in an Economic System Entirely Dependent on Growth
Our prosperity needs the promise of a future return of principal PLUS interest to justify the investment of present principal. This worked well for the last one-hundred years as long as there was always an excess of cheap pre-stored fossil energy available to “fuel” the growth. (For this premise, we will ignore the clouding issue of inflation and speak in terms of real growth.)
D. The Crux: Now that Pre-stored Energy, Represented by Oil, has Peaked and is in Terminal Decline, Growth and our Economic System Cannot Continue
Prosperity, food to feed a growing population, an oil-based transportation system, and new building are all forms of energy dependence, which must now go into terminal decline.
This is a geophysical constraint, not choice or something that can be avoided by changing the laws of physics, political action, increasing demand, or wishful thinking.
Civilization and our cheap-energy lifestyle are on the verge of collapse. The longer we deny the situation and try to perpetuate the past party, the more severe will be the crash and fewer will be our options.
E. One Source of Confusion is the Hidden Price of Oil
If oil is becoming scarce, why is oil less expensive? This is where things become less clear but further thought will shed light.
The price of oil only reflects the delicate balance of multiple transactions between consumers and oil producers. If consumers have declining wealth to offer from past, stored wealth then there is less real value to support ever-increasing costs to produce remaining more-expensive oil.
As more of the world is producing less of everything (especially energy-dependent food) because of energy-curtailed growth, only the decreasing sources of cheap oil are competitive. Out-of-work consumers cannot justify new oil exploration and the remaining expensive, non-conventional sources, which were supposed to save us.
As soon as the economy begins to revive a little bit, the increased demand can be expected to drive the price of oil up until the declining, remaining wealth cannot support the more-marginal, more-expensive sources. Fewer, poorer customers result in fewer, more-desperate suppliers; the only ones who can still produce relatively cheap oil.
The end result is the beginning of the second half of the 200 year oil age. The first half (hardly more than one lifetime) was typified by growth, prosperity, and increased population. The second half can only be the opposite unless we recognize the enormity of our dilemma and quickly initiate emergency damage control and drastic measures such as are summarized in the acronym: LEARN.
• Localization,
• Education,
• Adaptation of solar power (in its several varied forms),
• Rationing (of remaining fossil energy starting with gasoline), and
• Negative population growth (on our terms rather than waiting for more abhorrent catastrophes).
Nowhere in this essay have the terms “global warming”; “climate change”, or “environmentalism” been mentioned. These are obviously related to energy, the hyper-consumptive fossil fuel age, and are of dire concern. It is this writer’s opinion, however, that these issues tend to divert focus from the imminent energy-economic crisis, which is not well understood and conspicuously absent or avoided in the media.
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Thanks, John, for your views. Coming as an engineer, you have a little different "take" on this than some of the rest of us.
My take on "C. We Live in an Economic System Entirely Dependent on Growth" is a little different from yours. I see the issue as the difficulty of paying back debt with interest, although this is clearly related to the ability to earn an adequate return on invested funds.
It seems like with fewer fossil fuels, we are likely looking at much smaller business establishments. Much of the need for debt in the past had to do with economies of scale. These quickly become diseconomies of scale, without much fossil fuels. So the world becomes much different.
People will still set up business--perhaps basket making, or stringing necklaces from sea shells, or selling agricultural goods, or even insuring transit of goods as Lloyds of London did years ago. But the scale of these businesses will be much smaller, and will require much less debt. (Lloyds of London used capital from a large number of investors, but not debt.) The return from these businesses will basically represent a return for the labor involved and the investment in land and simple machinery required. The system will no longer have the leveraging impact of fossil fuels, so will be much different from what we are used to today.
Gail
It seems a simple point, but I don't quite get it yet. You are making a distinction between investment using (or borrowing?) 'unspent' funds, if I understand it, as against investment using speculative 'created' funds? If a bank say, were to speculatively lend on a project more than it, the Bank, had in the way of deposits of 'unspent' funds, it would, in the latter case be taking a different risk on the investment?
Lloyds 'names' (individual investors), again if I understand it, risked more than depositors in a Bank, in the hopes of higher returns? They pooled their investments to take on risks that individual insured projects could fail in part or in whole, but 'betted' that overall there would be net positive return on their committed funds. (Could they borrow funds from elsewhere to commit to LLoyds, or was that against the rules?) Some while ago now Lloyds failed not only to get a net return as a whole, but if I remember correctly permanently lost large fractions of the 'names' funds?
I think I can understand that over-exuberant expectation of overall net returns has a high risk of ending in tears. Which seems to support John's point that we are likely to be permanently in that situation, and that real returns if there is no overall growth will, overall, increasingly be negative? Clearly some projects will still return more than was invested in them.
One issue is that a lot of debt has absolutely nothing to do with investment. You or I buy a car or a house, and finance it. It depreciates in value (apart from inflation). We pay it back later--principle and interest. The reason the current system works as well as it does, is that we have (historically) had an expanding economy. People generally kept their jobs, often got promotions, and were able to pay back the loans, even with interest. Houses and business properties appreciated in value, as more people wanted houses and business properties, helping bid up prices.
Once you take growth out of the system, if works much differently. People tend to get laid off. There is less demand for houses and business properties. The idea of paying for the future with tomorrow's money, that worked so well before, no longer works nearly as well. One could theoretically still have long term loans, but the risk load relating to the default risk would need to be very much higher. With the higher interest rate (incorporating the higher default risk) many fewer loans will be able to repaid (partly because of the higher default rate, and partly because of the deteriorating business conditions over time).
John says
I don't think this is exactly the issue. I agree with you--there will be businesses that have net positive returns of their committed funds. The point is that the debt-based system we have now will work a lot less well, because of the issues mentioned above. Borrowing from the future works a whole lot better when the future is better than today than it works when the future is worse than today.
Regarding Lloyds of London, my understanding is that the "names" were (and still are) required to have a stated net worth. Presumably debt wouldn't affect this net worth. If they lost money on the pool, it was their own money they were risking.
Once you take growth out of the system, if works much differently. People tend to get laid off.
If you have zero-growth, but no decline and no productivity growth, then you don't have lay offs.
If you have productivity growth you'll have layoffs, but
1)that's redistribution of income, not decline. As a whole, a society has more free time. Now, a badly organized society may have some people laid off and others get richer, but that's a different problem.
2) that's almost certainly going to result in overall growth. As workers become more productive, less work is needed, and they're likely to find something else to do that's productive.
If you do not have growth in inputs, then you do not have extensive labor productivity growth, from combining the same amount of labor resource with more natural and equipment resources.
By contrast, if you have purely technical productivity growth, then the economy can grow in terms of output without requiring increasing inputs.
So productivity growth is not the problem ... the problem is that the pure "intensive" economic growth that can be supported by productivity growth alone can not occur at a steady pace, year on year. And that is the kind of growth that the current economy needs, under its current system of institutions.
So, while we can in fact have growth in both quality and quantity of outputs from true technological progress, that is growth that comes and goes in waves, and that is a kind of growth that are current growth-addicted institutions are incapable of coping with.
Now, the growth addiction is not embedded in any single institution alone, and so running with the argument that nominal interest contracts on their own lead to growth addiction is dangerous in two ways.
The first danger is that if the gross oversimplification is shown to fall short of the conclusion, that gives a false impression that the actual problem does not exist. And corporate PR machines are expert at "winning" arguments by attacking the weakest link and thereby tarnishing the rest of the argument by reputation, without ever having to actually debunk the strongest parts of the argument.
The second danger is that it gives the impression that reforming that institution alone will be sufficient to solve the problem, when in reality what is required is "growing" a new system of economic institutions that are able to cope with both periods of economic growth driven by improved technological efficiency and periods of economic stability.
If you do not have growth in inputs, then you do not have extensive labor productivity growth, from combining the same amount of labor resource with more natural and equipment resources.
By contrast, if you have purely technical productivity growth, then the economy can grow in terms of output without requiring increasing inputs.
I don't think this is the case. I believe you're talking about immature markets, not markets like those of OECD countries like the US, or Germany. I think if you look that you'll find that light vehicle, appliance etc manufacturing in these countries has stable or shrinking inputs, and that service industries are the same way.
the pure "intensive" economic growth that can be supported by productivity growth alone can not occur at a steady pace, year on year.
There's an element of truth here, but it's overstated. IT-based productivity improvements have had a certain cycle, but it's more stable than this would suggest.
Ultimately, of course, when a civilization has enough goods and services it will have to do something with the growing leisure time. I think France is doing that reasonably well, Japan a bit less so.
current growth-addicted institutions are incapable of coping with.
And, we get back to my original question: could you explain what you mean by that? I see various inconveniences and troublesome transitions, but nothing that could be described that strongly.
You are trying to go from individual micro-level observations and aggregate up here:
While invention is not clustered, innovation is, so economy wide, purely technical productivity growth does come in waves. Your reference to "IT-based productivity" suggests that you are looking at too high frequency a time scale over too limited a period of time.
You are trying to go from individual micro-level observations and aggregate up here
Not at all. I know what you mean.
While invention is not clustered, innovation is, so economy wide, purely technical productivity growth does come in waves.
Sure. We had railroads in the middle 1800's, electrification in the 1920's, ICE's in the 1930's to 70's, and IT in th 60's to now (as well as others).
productivity growth is not the problem ... the problem is that the pure "intensive" economic growth that can be supported by productivity growth alone can not occur at a steady pace, year on year. And that is the kind of growth that the current economy needs, under its current system of institutions.
So, while we can in fact have growth in both quality and quantity of outputs from true technological progress, that is growth that comes and goes in waves, and that is a kind of growth that are current growth-addicted institutions are incapable of coping with.
What I'm trying to say is
1) in a mature economy, growth will come primarily from innovation, and not from growth in resource inputs,
2) growth from IT innovation is going to continue strongly for quite a while, and
3) lulls in growth are a problem for any form of economy where people want their lives to get better. This is not unique to market capitalism, though I suppose centrally planned economies are more suited to suppressing people's complaints about it.
I imagine that sounds a bit like something that would come from the Enerprise Institute, but nothing's further from the truth. I have no problem with an economy that mixes planning with decentralized markets. For instance, I would strongly advocate a steep carbon tax, which use markets to sharply reduce CO2 emissions and FF consumption.
Gail
Thanks for that.
Yes, the consumer economy. I guess that is why I read that the consumer is responsible for 70% of US GDP.
I'll keep working at the concepts.
best
Phil
Around 70% of GDP consists of consumption spending ... but a substantial portion of that is spending that is driven by income derived from GDP. Its debt-financed consumption that is the source of injections into GDP in "The Consumer Economy", and as income growth for the majority of people has vanished, the "Consumer Economy" required going deeper into debt to maintain the same rate of economic expansion.
And that, of course, is unsustainable over the long term.
A Sustainable Economy could well have 70% of GDP consisting of "consumption" spending, but except for forward finance of efficiency-increasing purchases, almost all of that would be financed by income ... and quite likely, a substantially larger portion of it would go to food and other Basic Needs, and a smaller share to luxuries.
What I don't like about the use of GDP as a sign of economic well-being is that it doesn't include the overwhelming majority of money flows i.e. the investment markets. This fact casts doubt about how dependent on GDP growth our investment markets are. Consumption spending has always been and will likely always be the largest component of GDP but it is only a tiny fraction of all economic activity.
a substantial portion of that is spending that is driven by income derived from GDP
I'm not clear what you mean.
Its debt-financed consumption that is the source of injections into GDP in "The Consumer Economy", and as income growth for the majority of people has vanished, the "Consumer Economy" required going deeper into debt to maintain the same rate of economic expansion.
The world GDP grew strongly for quite some time until 2008. Debt levels varied quite a bit - what time periods and countries are you talking about?
Much of consumption expenditure is determined by the quantity of income received in that period. For that part of consumption expenditure, the quantity is not a determinant of GDP, but rather determined by GDP.
Not all economies can be characterized as "Consumer Economies". The US economy is, of course, the Consumer Economy par excellence ... we adopted Consumer Economy institutions sooner and so they have become most deeply embedded here. But a substantial number of high income economies over the past twenty and thirty years have followed the US in addressing acute or chronic problems with lagging income growth by trying to encourage greater consumer spending through greater consumer indebtedness. Indeed, one of the reasons that the Australian economy was able to avoid a recession in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis was the Howard government's previous policy easing restrictions on consumer credit, and avoided the 2001 recession after the collapse of the dot com bubble as federal and state governments were promoting a house price boom with duelling first time homebuyers grants.
Mind you, the effects of the policy also have included an increased in financial stress among Australian Households, but the important thing was that the gravy train kept rolling for Howard's friends in the big end of town.
Hmmm.
I guess the question is, who's borrowing and who's lending?
Above you said: " as income growth for the majority of people has vanished, the "Consumer Economy" required going deeper into debt to maintain the same rate of economic expansion. And that, of course, is unsustainable over the long term."
Well, income rose in the last several years for oil exporters, and fell for importers. World GDP continued to grow at roughly 5% until the credit crunch happened, when the US's housing bubble reduced collateral for CDS borrowing.
World GDP didn't fall because of a shortage of oil, it fell because of an unfortunate distribution of oil (from an OECD viewpoint) which caused a trade deficit.
If oil exporters were willing to accept high levels of debt on the part of importers, they could accumulate a lot of capital to see themselves through the bust period, when their exports fall. If they're not willing to do that, then world growth will be reduced until oil importers ramp up substitutes for oil (mainly electrification of transportation). Ramping up substitutes will take 10-15 years, so growth is likely to be reduced for a while.
Hi Gail... John Howe appeared with Zapata George and Duane on Radio Zapata George, http://www.zapatageorge.com/zapatag/web_radio It was posted June 20, 2009 and he hit on much you posted above.
John, I met and spoke with you at an 'alternative fuels' expo in the White Mtns. a few years ago. It was a pleasurable experience, in spite of all those motorcycles roaring by on the Kancamagus Highway.
I want to use this piece of yours in my writing class for their final research project concerning evolution and energy. The writing here is so succinct and clear that it will supplement the other materials nicely.
Beside, I'll be able to call it "another Mainer speaks about peak oil," so students won't think I'm so crazy.
A marvelously succinct and cogent statement of our current circumstances.
I would also add that I reviewed John's book here on TOD a couple of years ago:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/7/12055/9120
I thought it provides a very good introduction to Peak Oil and the issues that we are likely to find ourselves up against.
Simple and to the point
Here is where I, and many others, would disagree with you. As you have pointed out, oil represents 40% of our energy consumption and a whopping 90% of transportation. This is mostly wasted. So what you really have is an energy source fueling the most wasteful and unnecessary part of our civilization. Why do we do it? Because the oil is there now, it can be used, and so we put it to whatever use we can find.
The market might solve the problem, but it will be messy and will involved winners and losers. Political action seems like the way to go. If we stop giving "cash with your new guzzlers" and stupid bailouts, and start getting serious about decreasing that 90% (which for a variety of reasons discussed on this site, IS possible), we might stand a chance.
Wasting oil on luxurious oversized personal transport is not my idea of a prosperous life.
"Wasting oil on luxurious oversized personal transport is not my idea of a prosperous life."
but it is very addictive and hard to stop
"....but it is very addictive and hard to stop".
It IS very addictive; but it turns out that, far from being hard to stop, it's a WONDERFUL liberation!
I'm still hugging myself with glee every time that I think about it, two years in to the car-free rest-of-my-life. I feel blithe and happy with the situation even when I'm cycling home after midnight, in a sleet storm, in mid-Winter. (Sic!) So long as you have the right foul-weather gear, that's really not a problem. Much more of a serence, Tai-Chi-style joy.
As far as I know I'm not mad. I know this sounds preposterous. But until you've tried it, don't knock it.
Note though that, like Alan Carr's famous 'Easy Way To Stop Smoking', I think that it has to be done with a non-negotiable commitment: Not: 'I'll give it a go and see how it works, and meanwhile the car can sit in the garage.' But: 'Never again, under any circumstances, will I ever go back to owning a car, or any other motorised means of personal transport. The one that I've just ditched is the last one that I'll ever own.'
Don't know why it is, but that absolute decision seems to be what makes it joyful and EASY. (Sic, again!)
This departure from personal motor-transport is going to be forced on millions of us of the Pampered Twenty Percent from now on. So why not embrace it voluntarily, and discover what a truly great gas it is? (Treat that as a pun if you like)
Dude's gotta point.
"...it's a WONDERFUL liberation!"
Which goes to show that experiences vary greatly depending on circumstances and surroundings. Personally, I found going from "no car" to "car", rather than the reverse, to be a liberation, and that despite the expense.
I was liberated from the stupidities of shiftless transit drivers who never could seem to figure out that "noon" meant to depart from the square when the big hand and little hand on the bank clock were both on the twelve, who were relieved from any such discipline by lavish government-guaranteed pay utterly unrelated to performance. I was liberated from utter submission to their feckless whims in the depths of winter when it was too dangerous to try to cycle anywhere (or even walk very far) on the glare ice - a season and time when transit service, never overly reliable even on a fine day, deteriorates to utter uselessness, to a series of lame moronic excuses signifying nothing. I was liberated from imprisonment in the small zone served by transit or reachable (only seasonally, mind you) with reasonable time and effort by bicycle, freed to visit or even live in a far wider world. I was liberated from confinement to employment only in the limited places and hours the transit managers and city politicians happened to feel like serving at any given moment (the rider is not paying the piper so does not call the tune; the general taxpayer pays most of the fare.) I was liberated from the threat of being out of a job every time (normally each May and late August) those places and hours shifted at the politicians' whim.
Most of all I was liberated from a Hobson's choice: remaining where I was (or someplace else like it) but being isolated and having no life once out of university; or else moving back to the big city with its full time comprehensive transit, but also with the incessant press of wall-to-wall people, out-of-control crime, 24/7 noise and congestion, endless hours shot to hell waiting on the random vagaries of buses and trains, and confiscatory taxes and otherworldly rents that would have eaten up all that that was saved by not having the car and more - oh, and with its train drivers who routinely pulled into stations with their faces buried in a tabloid - unsurprisingly it was usually the one that prided itself on maintaining a third-grade reading level - in disregard of their duties.
The future will indeed come willy-nilly, though I'm not nearly as confident in my crystal ball as some other posters, especially the compulsive planners, seem to be in theirs. But for me the expense has been significant but worthwhile, more than offset by lower taxes and housing costs, and by countless hours not gone to utter waste waiting interminably for buses and trains that rarely show up on time and move at only the most glacial pace even once they deign to arrive. Obviously, your mileage may vary considerably.
I don't think that John is saying that political action is bad, or unnecessary--just that it won't overturn the laws of physics.
If we want certain parts of transportation to decline by less than others, or to focus the use of fuels in better ways (a lot less on personal transportation), we likely will need political action.
Me either. Unfortunately, I depend on this waste, and you probably do, too. We can scale back on big cars, but we soon hit a point where the remaining waste is systemic. Then we need to change the system, which is painful.
1. Every food in my supermarket arrived by diesel truck.
2. The products I make for a living aren't required for survival, and are sold in petroleum form, mostly at stores where diesel truck delivery is the only option. consumers live too far away to walk or bike to these stores.
3. I can't afford to live within walking/bicycle distance of my job. It's not just about settling for a smaller place. There exists *no* nearby place cheap enough for me to grow my savings, too.
bmcnet,
Every food in my supermarket arrived by diesel truck.
1.3% of US energy consumption is used to transport food, more energy is used by shoppers driving to the supermarkets.
consumers live too far away to walk or bike to these stores.
They don't have to walk to the stores, they only have to travel to the nearest bus or rail station. Similarly it not a question of being in walking distance of a job, but being able to either car pool, or use mass-transit. Almost everyone lives within 40miles of a job, the all electric range of a PHEV like the Chevy Volt. It's not available yet, but oil is still available so we don't need PHEV's yet either.
Better still Neil, use the futuristic CityZenn to get to and from :-)
I was thinking today that delivering groceries/ect might be a lucrative business in a future where driving to the grocery store is not an attractive option. It could be done on multiple scales depending on the availability of fuel; for example the model is workable with something as simple as a bicycle with a trailer. Because driving to the store to pick up a carload of food is so colossally inefficient, even delivery using a large conventional FF powered vehicle would save FFs. In fact, if you assume that it takes 5 km to drive between clients, you can fit 20 carloads of food in the back of your Hummer H2, and the grocery store is 15 km away, you would only drive (assuming you start close to your clients) 30-40 km to deliver food to 20 people, each of whom would ordinarily drive 30 km to get the same amount of food, although more likely in a much more fuel efficient vehicle. However, not many people own vehicles that burn 1/20th the fuel that even a hummer does (A minivan would be the best choice for such a business), so it seems to me like the fuel that can be saved this way is significant.
Of course, that assumes that BAU sort of continues, which is a bit of an assumption. However, North America's ways of doing things are so incredibly wasteful and stupid, that I think fuel rationing could be dealt with fairly well by sufficiently creative members of the public. If/when fuel rationing hits my locale, this is probably what I will do; after all, it won't be expensive to buy a used SUV or minivan if fuel is rationed (assuming the system allows trading between people of fuel rations/fuel; I would have to charge people in both fuel and money for it to work).
LNC, a business maybe, but not lucrative. You're competing against people doing it themselves where labor costs are zero. You have no moat preventing others from doing the business, so your margin will be tiny. You could also buy a bus and transport the people to the store, but you'd be competing against subsidized agencies.
And I think you would find it far less efficient than you think. Heating oil is delivered by truck in my city, even with "keep full" which allows apparent efficiency and 80+% of the houses with oil heat. Compared to what you are starting with, it's hyper efficient. But I know one of the operators, and it only exists because people can't take their house to the gas station.
I don't mean to rain on your parade. I hope you overcome my objections and prosper. I'm having a heck of a time thinking of post-peak plans for myself, but I keep trying. How do you compete against economies of scale and subsidized corporations that don't need a margin? It's no good to think of a business that will only work for a little while. I want one that will get better as things get worse.
I bought land and plan to pour money into building soil. Then what? It ain't easy.
Keep the ideas coming.
Cold Camel
I agree such a business will not be lucrative if things get really bad but people are creatures of habit and once you are looking after them and doing a good job they will remain loyal customers and pay a little more than the going market rate for your service.Its a good deal because they get a "reliability premium" for the small extra expense.
And once you are established,you potential competitor has very little chance of getting your long term customer,whereas your chance of getting new ones is better than his.
And if things are only tougher than hell and there are still old people around that have some money,you can do very well if you take it seriously. The KEY FACT is that once they quit driving,thier social life dries up.Friends can'T get together any more,and they get scarce as they die off or move to assisted living or nursing homes.
So I was dating this pink Cadillac girl(Mary Kay?) and she goes out of her way to meet old women living alone and VISITS them-cell call I'm in close by we could have some coffee... rather than ONLY making sales appointments.Then she VISITS as she sells,and she doesn't PUSH her cosmetics,but she does skillfully let her friends/customers know that she depends on the income.
So a fifty dollar sale takes an hour or an hour and a half but it's virtually gauranteed repeat business and she makes fifty percent of the gross and her only real expense is her car and wear and tear on her yakity yakker.
She says if you will work STEADY at it,there is absolutely no question you can earn big bucks.
Well, I understand that if things get really bad, obviously the model will fail. However, I was also trying to illustrate the sheer waste in our last-mile distribution systems for key goods, especially food. This is also an example of how a techno-solution (priuses to go to the store) is inferior to a social solution (someone with a large vehicle goes to the store for multiple people).
"Wasting oil on luxurious oversized personal transport is not my idea of a prosperous life."
Under present realities, this aesthetic point barely matters. At item "D", Howe alludes to what does, namely "a growing population". Changes in energy prices or even public policy may well "fix" the problem of "oversized" transport (at considerable cost in safety if lots of people eventually switch to motor scooters) unless we evade the problem by inventing a working Mr. Thorium or Mr. Fusion fairly soon. But the exponentially-growing population ensures that even if everyone cut back to the sort of dire poverty that's widespread even now and that few who are prosperous enough to be able to post here can truly grasp, the problem would not stay fixed.
Demographic models that have the population leveling off have people becoming more prosperous, i.e. economic growth continues and at a faster rate than population growth. Among other things, when people are prosperous, they can afford not to have huge families supplying the sort of heavy manual labor that for the most part, only young adults can provide consistently. So even if some sort of improbable aesthetic puritanism drew us into sackcloth-and-ashes poverty, or, more likely, tyrants wielding sumptuary laws herded us there at gunpoint, the only significant result would be to speed up population growth.
Sumptuary laws are not impossible. The world has had them before, although in truth, their main aim was to help maintain the elevation of the nobility above the commoners (and to judge from the many comments around here excusing the frenetic hyperconsumption of the Al Gores of this world, it would become so once again.) But who's ever going to tell Joe and Jane Sixpack, and their counterparts all across the world, that they can't have just as many kids as they damned well please? Even the modern Chinese tyrants, among the very, very few to try, never applied their limits uniformly, fairly, or (given that they are now abandoning them piece by piece) to any but short-term effect.
We Live in an Economic System Entirely Dependent on Growth
I wonder where this idea originated?
I haven't seen a convincing demonstration that economic growth is necessary to our system - look at 90's Japan, which didn't have economic growth for 10 years. How did they repay loans? Well, interest rates were zero or very close to that. In a steady-state economy, nominal interest rates are simply be the cost of maintaining a (much smaller) financial sector, and consist of a modest and consistent income to the financial sector to pay for that service.
Anybody know who started this idea?
Enormous (and increasing) amounts of cheap energy are required to refine and manufacture the microchips and display of an iPod, which is replaced every year or two.
An iPod's battery requires coltan, a very rare material which is mined in Africa. Its profits fueled a civil war that killed four million people.
An iPod also requires a global mass market 24/7 computer network in order to be useful. In America, this network consumes 10% of overall electricity.
A 70's stereo was replaced far less often, required far less energy to manufacture, and consumes electricity only when it's turned on. Its vinyl records and cassettes are out of fashion, but still work. AM/FM radio still works, too.
The analog media of a 70's stereo was made of petroleum, but very few people owned more than a few records, because the media was relatively expensive. It also was recyclable, though not in practice.
Enormous (and increasing) amounts of cheap energy are required to refine and manufacture the microchips and display of an iPod
I think that's not true.
1) most manufacturing (with the exception of smelting and a few other things) doesn't use that much energy.
1b)Tiny devices like an iPod use proportionately less.
2) manufacturing uses electricity, and little oil.
3) it doesn't need cheap electricity: Germany and Japan do quite well with electricity that's quite expensive by US standards.
Re: Coltan
That may be an interesting limits-to-growth issue, but it's off-topic to energy. FWIW, I've been told that around half the world's production is from Australia - the African production is attractive not due to global scarcity, but due to African slave labor.
An iPod also requires a global mass market 24/7 computer network in order to be useful. In America, this network consumes 10% of overall electricity.
1) I think that 10% is a touch high.
2) We have plenty electricity, and Peak Oil won't change that.
A 70's stereo ...required far less energy to manufacture
I think that's not correct. Do you have any data?
consumes electricity only when it's turned on
??? An iPod uses negligible electricity.
The 1.7 Kilogram Microchip
It requires an Internet, which in America consumes 10% of overall electricity. That's 15% of electricity consumption in the 1970's.
Well, that's certainly suggestive. On the other hand, we need to have comparable figures for a conventional stereo. If a 2 gram chip uses orders of magnitude more energy (and "uses" isn't the same as "requires "), then it uses as much as a 200 gram comparable item. A conventional stereo weighed what, 30-50 times as much?
I'd be interested in looking at the study: I'd be curious what "secondary" consumption is. Could you send me the PDF for a fair-use review?
Now, I think allocating the consumption of the entire IT infrastructure of the US to iPod entertainment is a bit dodgy. Further, it's not important: we're talking about electricity, which we have plenty of.
The point we're debating here: you claimed that economic growth requires no growth in energy consumption, and used the iPod vs. 1970's stereo as your example.
My counterclaim is that you are ignoring significant externalities, such as the massive energy and water required to manufacture an iPod and maintain its infrastructure.
It's as if you compared a car and horse, and ignored manufacturing costs and road maintenance costs.
You may not realize that an iPod contains more than just one chip. An iPod touch weighs 120 grams, and is mostly chips and battery by weight. That's equivalent to 12kg of conventional materials.
We like to think of high technology as purely innovation, but in reality, it is about leveraging increases in energy and water affordability.
As affordable energy slips away permanently, not only can't the iPod save us - the iPod itself will slip away permanently, because it requires high energy consumption to manufacture and use! :)
you claimed that economic growth requires no growth in energy consumption, and used the iPod vs. 1970's stereo as your example.
Well, actually, I meant to discuss overall material consumption, which may have diverted us a bit. An iPod is obviously smaller in it's final, essential material consumption.
My counterclaim is that you are ignoring significant externalities
Yeah, it looks like my example doesn't prove my point.
such as the massive energy and water required to manufacture an iPod and maintain its infrastructure.
I don't think you've shown that these things are required. For instance, coal plants use a lot of water for cooling - well, cooling can use much less water (at an energy cost), and we're going to replace them with renewables eventually.
Further, we're not talking about "energy", we're talking about oil. Manufacturing doesn't require any oil, though it does use some now.
Remember, the original assertion I was questioning was a broad, theoretical, absolute statement: "oil is necessary".
I'm not sure how else you'd purify silicon or keep the internet turned on, except by consuming energy and water.
I guess your statement makes sense, if you personally believe that energy will get increasingly affordable in the future?
I don't think my time is well spent arguing against that. You might wish to watch Chris Martenson's "Crash Course" if you don't yet know about diminishing returns.
I'm not sure how else you'd purify silicon or keep the internet turned on, except by consuming energy and water.
We're not discussing whether energy is needed, but whether
1) perpetual energy growth is needed, and
2) oil is needed.
if you personally believe that energy will get increasingly affordable in the future?
No, not at all. I'm suggesting that it will continue to be moderately expensive. I would estimate that US electricity costs will never be as high as current German and Japanese costs, and those countries have certainly shown that they can do just fine under such a regime.
This conversation never mentioned oil.
Our money system seems to require this. This video series explains better than i can.
IIRC Germany has some coal, but Japan has almost zero fuel resources. When world fuel exports grind to a halt, I expect Japan to have problems with electricity.
It wont take them that long to build more nukes. I mean global coal reserves aren't going to deplete overnight, and there are going to be very strong price signals beforehand.
Bm,
I've seen this ten percent of the electricity thing before and although it seems high to me I won't quibble.
What I'm interested in at the moment is how much of this ten percent is displacing other consumption,which would throw a lot of light on the subject.For instance how much paper do we save,not mention postage and gasoline ,by banking online?
If I'm at my computer I am not watching tv or killing time by wandering around Wal mart buying more junk.
If I order thru an automated website and delivery tickets are printed automatically and my stuff is delivered w/o my being on the phone for twice as long has energy been saved,or burnt?
Any body who has data out there??????
There's no question that online shopping saves gas - I haven't seen calculations.
You could also save a lot by going paperless, or telecommuting to work. I do both, but very few people do. Video conferencing just recently became good enough to really work - people don't really know that yet, but there's a significant move in the business world to using it.
The potential is huge - it just needs a bit of a push to overcome social inertia.
I think we'd have to look at the massive energy-guzzling components of a 1970s stereo before jumping to conclusions - especially the early 1970s when many still had tubes. The tubes were outright consumables, and some other components, such as capacitors and transformers, tended to deteriorate fairly rapidly. These items all required considerable processing - not so much as a high-end microchip but OTOH the stereo weighed as much as hundreds of iPods. (I don't have enough information ready at hand to make a call on this, I'm just saying I see little chance that it's slam dunk.)
As to coltan, if we are to insist on some kind of airtight moral purity in every object and material we use, I think all of us from richest to poorest, including Africans, are in big trouble. Like it or not, somebody always seems to be at war with somebody else in this wicked world. It also begs the question of how far we ought to go in appointing ourselves as the world's moral police, probably a subject best left to some other blog. I'm just not so dead certain that it's my proper business to pass moral judgment on every shopkeeper I ever visit.
However, metal from coltan (occasionally the niobium, aka columbium, but usually the tantalum) is found mainly in capacitors, mainly in those power supplies that require large capacitance at a small size. One doesn't see as many of those capacitors as one used to, and the ones that are left are physically far smaller. The cheap ones especially have always tended to have unfortunate electrical and even safety properties, so there's been a strong trend towards power supplies that don't need large capacitance. Except as something to beat people over the head with when the real issue aesthetic - some folks here seem to use oil and energy as foils for their weird grudges against modernity itself - I see this as less of an issue than what it could have been made into some years ago.
...and, since manufacturing with high-tech materials requires a few orders of magnitude more resources than low-tech materials, it's possible that manufacturing an iPod consumes about as much resources as a 1970's stereo.
except families today have multiple iPods AND a conventional stereo at home, and the population of America is about 50% higher today than in 1970...
that's an unfair characterization. it's reasonable to consider what would happen if, as oil declines, some unobtainium were to appear and perfectly replace it. this is the consensus expectation of renewables, you know.
look into this issue, and find that the underlying problems are consumption and population. and, consumption is the sine qua non of modernity.
i'm a product of modernity and i'm fond of it. but i doubt it's sustainable, and this is a concern for me as a parent.
Funny, I have a still-working stereo that I bought in 1968 and have replaced only a cartridge (needle, for you young'uns).
Your mileage may of course vary anecdotally: "tended to deteriorate" doesn't mean "every single one failed right away". It depends on many factors including usage - these days much vintage equipment is nearly irreparable since most tube types are not made any more, so it may be turned on infrequently and briefly in order to preserve it. Much depends on local climate, too - stuff of any vintage that breaks down in months or even weeks in the humid tropics can last for decades in the desert, especially if it's shaded from the most extreme heat.
The lifetime of a (consumer) tube was typically quoted as 3000 hours of active use, which is not very long (sure, most of them last for many decades unused.) Other components were sensitive to moisture, so storage in non-air-conditioned rooms in moist climates tended to be unhelpful, as it supported mildew growth in insulating varnishes, and electrical leakage, deterioration, and eventual failure in capacitors.
Nick,
I agree that this statement needs questioning. It really has two parts(1) do we have to have rises in GDP, clearly while our population rises this is desirable. Japan has had almost no net immigration and very low population rises due to a less than replacement birth rates.
In future most OECD countries and China are going to have population declines unless they have net immigration.
(2) the second part is does GDP growth imply energy growth? It seems that we can have GDP growth about 1-2% higher than energy growth so we should be able to have a low level of growth without any energy growth.
The final comment is why do we think that finite FF consumption will limit energy growth, while we have X1000 times the solar energy available that we are presently obtaining from FF?
I agree. Some thoughts:
The world from 2004 to 2008 was growing at 5% rates, with flat oil consumption. Oil isn't magical.
Energy effiency growth for hard goods could probably be maintained at 2% for quite a while - that's only a doubling every 36 years.
Hard goods will be an increasingly smaller part of the economy: growth in services (arts, entertainment, health, education, etc) have very little dependence on energy growth.
For decades, the trend has been for hard goods to become increasingly prevalent. America has more televisions, cars, and gadgets per capita today than ever, and its houses have more area per capita than ever. Not to mention population growth.
When would this trend reverse, and why?
For decades, the trend has been for hard goods to become increasingly prevalent.
First, are you going by your intuition, or have you actually looked at data? If you look at the data, I think you'll find that hard goods sales have pretty much levelled off in the last 30 years: cars, househould appliances, etc. Consumer electronics like TVs are doing a little better, but not as much as you'd think.
2nd, I said: "Hard goods will be an increasingly smaller part of the economy", and it's true. Agriculture used to employ 80% of the economy, now it's 2%. Manufacturing used to dominate, now less than 14% of workers actually toil on an assembly line (and that's not due to outsourcing - the US still makes lots of stuff).
Service work now dominates the economy, and that will only become more so.
You sure are demanding, for someone who provides no references.
In Wikipedia - Passenger Vehicles in the United States we see that cars per capita doubled from 0.41 to 0.79 from 1960 to 2003, while population also nearly doubled.
Let's stop ignoring externalities. Hard goods have been an increasingly small part of the American domestic economy because they are are increasingly manufactured overseas, then imported to America on oil-burning ships, airplanes and trucks.
You're right that cheap fossil fuels enable 2% of the population to feed 98%.
per capita doubled from 0.41 to 0.79 from 1960 to 2003
That's the capital stock, the inventory. That's not sales.
This appears to be a good source.
http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/fedstl/altsales+1
I think you'll find that per-capita sales are flat.
"Hard goods have been an increasingly small part of the American domestic economy because they are are increasingly manufactured overseas,
No. If they were all still manufactured here, it would still be a much smaller % of GDP.
1) you're overestimating how much manufacturing has left. Don't forget plants owned by Toyota, etc.
2) manufacturing productivity growth and flat sales mean falling prices and employment, regardless of the location of the manufacturing.
3) the rest of the economy has grown dramatically, while manufacturing has stagnated.
oil-burning ships, airplanes and trucks
We don't really need airplanes for freight. Ships and surface freight don't requireoil.
True, I should have mentioned world sales, which increased by 700% from 1950 to 2007, while population increased by 250% link.
This doesn't refute your theory that we're "beyond manufacturing," depending on your definition of "we."
Sure we do. How else do we import fresh fruits and vegetables from thousands of miles away? I live 100 miles from America's garlic capital, but local stores stock only Chinese garlic.
your theory that we're "beyond manufacturing,"
Not beyond, just in a mature market for manufactured goods.
depending on your definition of "we."
Right. No one is suggesting that Chinese appliance markets have matured.
How else do we import fresh fruits and vegetables from thousands of miles away?
It is nice, isn't it. Of course, the flip side of the proposition that Canadiand & Venezuelan tar sands can't prevent Peak Oil is that we're still going to have 35M bbls/day 50 years from now - more than enough for the most difficult areas to find substitutes, like aviation. After that, we can leave to the future.
The produce could be irradiated which will keep it in fresh condition for anywhere from several weeks to several months depending on packaging. This allows time for shipments to come by water or rail eliminating the need for aircraft.
Regarding who started the idea, the first one I am aware of is M. King Hubbert. He said a variety of things including:
Perhaps that will help explain the situation better. Japan was operating within a world system that continued to grow. It gave an outlet which prevented collapse. Hubbert point out that the situation leads to zero interest rates. These cannot work, for investment long term. It would be better to put the money in a shoe box.
The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest....A monetary alternative corresponding to a zero physical growth rate would be a zero interest rate. The result in either case would be large-scale financial instability.
But, Hubbert was an oil-industry expert. He wasn't an economist - where did he get this idea? What evidence did he give for it? He refers to "one of its most fundamental rules" - that has an air of authority far larger than something he dreamed up on his own, with no backing or history of ideas behind it.
Japan was operating within a world system that continued to grow. It gave an outlet which prevented collapse.
What outlet? Japanese financial institutions were dealing with zero % interest rates. How did the world economy change that?
Hubbert point out that the situation leads to zero interest rates. These cannot work, for investment long term. It would be better to put the money in a shoe box.
Sure it can work. The monetary authorities keep inflation at 2% and interest rates at 2%: effective rates are zero, and anyone who leaves their money in a box loses out.
"Sure it can work...anyone who leaves their money in a box loses out."
Depends how you define "work", 'cos you forgot the third alternative. If they can't keep it in the box, and it's not worth investing it, then the third alternative is that they consume it right away before it evaporates. Indeed, advocates of demurrage currency seek just exactly that result.
However, there's one tiny little catch. In a world where it's not worthwhile for anyone to make an investment - i.e. to postpone consumption - good luck getting anything done that has front-loaded costs. Wind power or many other public or quasi-public works, for example.
If they can't keep it in the box, and it's not worth investing it, then the third alternative is that they consume it right away before it evaporates.
With interest rates equal to inflation, it won't evaporate.
In a world where it's not worthwhile for anyone to make an investment - i.e. to postpone consumption - good luck getting anything done that has front-loaded costs.
It's a little hard to imagine a world with not growth, but one imagines that it would be very stable, with little dynamic investment, but simply replacement and maintenance.
I imagine some sectors would contract, while others grow and pay returns.
Because if it didn't you couldn't charge interest?
Sure you could. As I said before: In a steady-state economy, relatively very low interest rates are simply the cost of maintaining a (much smaller) financial sector, and consist of a modest and consistent income to the financial sector to pay for that service.
The finance sector would constitute a minor bit of overhead, for which society would pay just as it pays for police and meteorologists. You could call the cost of that overhead interest, or money-management fees, or whatever.
But isn't that why there were usury laws forbidding the charging of any interests? Without a growing economy any interest at all amounts to theft.
isn't that why there were usury laws forbidding the charging of any interests?
I think that's a modern theory, developed in hindsight - it's vaguely plausible, but I don't see any reason why very small amounts of interest wouldn't be perfectly viable.
Without a growing economy any interest at all amounts to theft.
Again, not really. A static economy can still support various kinds of indirect services, including a modestly sized financial sector.
That's awfully dismissive.
Because without growth a borrower can't pay back the interest?
http://beyondmoney.net/tag/usury/
That's awfully dismissive.
Well, I don't see any real historical analysis - no review of ancient texts, say. It appears to simply be a vaguely reasonable hypothesis.
Here's an alternative hypothesis: it wasn't a problem of economic growth, but of underdeveloped financial systems.
First, the use of hard metals for currency meant that the money supply was fixed. Any growth meant deflation in the value of the currency, which created implicitly positive interest rates. If any period of growth meant positive real interest rates, an understandable precaution was to forbid the practice of charging nominal interest.
Second, Joint-Stock companies didn't exist until just a few hundred years ago. That meant that most lending was to individuals - what we would describe today as "micro-lending". Interest rates had to be low - how do you charge .5% when you're lending 10 ducats, and the smallest denomination coin is one ducat?
You seem to assume usury laws were universal - like prohibitions on the eating of pork, they weren't universal. For instance, Christianity forbade it, but not Judaism, so Jewish financiers were necessary in medieval Europe. Judaism has much older roots, in times when growth was lower - why doesn't it forbid interest?
Because without growth a borrower can't pay back the interest?
We're going in circles on this. Why can't we pay a small amount of interest to a banker, just as we pay for trash collection and police? Just because the economy isn't growing doesn't mean it can't support a finance sector (although it would be likely to be pretty small, given the lack of dynamism of such an economy). I think it would help the argument progress if you were to address this response.
Those who recognize the impossibility of perpetual exponential growth and who understand how compound interest is built into the global system of money and banking expect the continuation of periodic “bubbles” and “busts,” each of increasing amplitude until the systems shakes itself apart.
And just who are these authorities? Is there a school of thought associated with this, like the Chicago School, or Austrian ideas?
This blogger is interesting. I don't see any real analysis in this post, though. Are there any others you think would help?
Here's an interesting biography of a pessimist. http://www.worldlyphilosophers.com/july1_sennholz.htm
"Hans Sennholz was also a died-in-the-wool bear who throughout his life was usually more wrong than right about the stock market. He always thought high inflation was just around the corner, and Wall Street was headed for collapse at a moment’s notice.
...He was never comfortable investing in traditional stock and bond markets. He was always predicting a crash in the stock market, so how could he? And he had no ability to make short term predictions about commodity futures, even though he was bullish on gold and commodities. He was burned several times playing the commodities market. "
No, you are the one chasing your tail. You asked why our economic system can't survive the lack of growth. I tell you. Then you interject this new magical economic system that doesn't need growth and repeat the first question.
You never approach these things with an open mind, just an objective. Its tiring.
I tell you.
No, you just insist borrowers can't pay back interest.
Well, maybe we can clarify the disagreement: are you thinking that zero or very low interest rates can't happen in our current system?
I didn't just insist, I tried to explain it to the best of my limited ability (I'm out of my comfort zone talking economics) and tried to link to some arguments that explained it better than I could.
Its pretty obvious 0 interest rates can and have occurred, take the Japanese depression for example. But this occurs in a period of severe dysfunction in the economy and is a desperate attempt to restart growth ie "fix" the economy.
Your mythical steady state economy with a tiny financial system is an entirely different thing and your continued attempts to conflate the two are very disingenuous at best.
Its pretty obvious 0 interest rates can and have occurred, take the Japanese depression for example.
It wasn't a depression, it was an extended period of no-growth: exactly what we're talking about.
But this occurs in a period of severe dysfunction in the economy
Yes, zero-growth was considered severe dysfunction, but again, it's also what we're talking about.
is a desperate attempt to restart growth ie "fix" the economy
True, but it's also the natural adjustment: zero growth causes zero interest rates.
Your mythical steady state economy
It's not mythical, it's very straightforward: interest rates are a reflection on returns on invested capital (nominal rates also add in inflation rates). If ROI goes to zero, then interest rates go to zero. That's just the way it works.
your continued attempts to conflate the two are very disingenuous at best.
Your frustration at my not agreeing with you is making you get personal and ad hominem. Please consider that you might have something to learn.
I tried to explain it to the best of my limited ability
Ah, well perhaps this discussion isn't that useful -- if you don't really understand the economics of this in a detailed way, then it doesn't make sense for me to expect you to be able to explain it.
No it was a period of deflationary depression. It was nothing at all like a no growth economy. I was there. I know from first hand experience.
You are conflating two entirely different things. You obviously know nothing about what happened in Japan if you think the whole world slipping into a similar depression will be honky dory.
I understand what you mean when you say a no growth economy is theoretically possible. But if you think that's what Japan experienced and is still experiencing you are nuts.
No it was a period of deflationary depression.
It was certainly deflationary, especially real estate, but it wasn't depression. Depression is roughly defined as prolonged decline in GDP: We see here http://www.indexmundi.com/japan/gdp_real_growth_rate.html that Japan mostly continued to grow.
It was nothing at all like a no growth economy.
It was certainly very painful, but it actually did slightly better than a no-growth economy. An important point here is that we saw prolonged zero nominal interest rates.
You obviously know nothing about what happened in Japan if you think the whole world slipping into a similar depression will be honky dory.
I never said it would be "honky dory". I just said that I can see no evidence that a prolonged period of no-growth would cause the economy to collapse, or fall apart in some dramatic way.
What did you see in Japan?
Well Nick, I guess I misunderstood what you were saying.
I thought you were talking about a steady state economy more along the lines of what these guys are advocating
http://www.steadystate.org/
Course even they don't know what a steady state economy is going to look like
But I've got to say this is quite a walk back from what you were saying before. You've gone from saying we can grow forever (or as long as we wanted) on the backs of renewable to wallowing in a global depression forever.
In Japan I saw a country teetering on the knife edge of collapse held up only because its export markets were intact.
You have to understand Japan is not like the US. It really has 2 economies. One domestic and one for exports. The former collapsed and the second is what held the country together. The scary thing now for Japan is the second export economy is now falling apart as well.
I'm moved my family from Japan because the future there is just too damn bleak.
What happened in Japan even during their mild depression? Suicideds skyrocketed, Homless middle aged men filled the parks with their blue tarp tents. An entire generation lost to the ranks of the part time (freeters). Their parents killing themselves from overwork (karoushi). All this at a time when Toyota grew to be the largest car company in the world and Pokemon took over america's youth.
You've gone from saying we can grow forever (or as long as we wanted) on the backs of renewable
My view a lot more nuanced than that. I think renewables can provide all of the energy we need, at a reasonable cost. I think we'll still have a somewhat difficult transition from FF to renewables, and I don't think having all of the energy we need will solve all of our problems.
to wallowing in a global depression forever.
I'm not saying that either. My question was simply, if the economy was limited to zero-growth would that necessarily mean some kind of collapse or dramatic problem.
Now, what do I think will happen to GDP? My wild guess: I think the US faces lower growth than we would have had without PO, but not quite the stagnation we saw in Japan. The rest of the world will continue to grow somewhat faster than the US, but perhaps a point or two less than the 5% it has seen recently.
It sounds like stagnation has been very painful for Japan. That makes sense to me. Where did you go?
Now that I understand what you are saying your comments seem more clear. I take back my disingenuous remarks. You are talking about our current economy grinding to a halt without collapsing, No?
If you read back through one of the articles I linked before it talks about due to feedback mechanisms the economy will either grow or collapse and that no growth is an unstable state.
I think you are misunderstanding what happened in Japan. That was a special case. I don't think its applicable to very many other countries and certainly not for the world as a whole.
You are talking about our current economy grinding to a halt without collapsing, No?
Yes, growth coming to a halt, without the economy then declining dramatically (collapsing).
due to feedback mechanisms the economy will either grow or collapse and that no growth is an unstable state.
Well, our economy is unstable at any level of growth - this latest boom-bust is a reminder that we have not yet eliminated the business cycle. it's just the way it is. But, why it should be less stable at zero growth is unclear to me. I can see how the Fed could put the economy through unnecessary cycles through incompetence or bad luck, but why would that beinevitable?
Can you identify the positive feedbacks, and why they should be causing greater and greater boom-bust swings? The article you linked to certainly wasn't specific.
Here you go Nick,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716767112/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/
Rethin,
I'm reasonably familiar with classical, mainstream macro-economics. I'm not aware of anything in classical macro-economics that supports the idea that our economy would fall apart under zero-growth conditions.
The most obvious contributor to instability is the lag-time between the initiation of monetary expansion/contraction and it's effects. Other system lag-times exist for capital investment and changes in desired inventory levels. Positive feedbacks include the herding effects of investment bubbles and investment droughts; investment multipliers; and the positive feedback between deflation and economic decline. These are well known. I'm not aware of any reason to believe they will inevitably increase in amplitude under zero-growth conditions.
What else do you have in mind?
Sorry Nick, what you are asking is beyond my paygrade. I'm an engineer by training not an economist.
All I can off you is what I've seen written again and again.
I'm assuming there is something to this. But I concede that just because an idea is universal doesn't mean its always true. But with extraordinary claims you need extraordinary proof yada yada yada.
Interest demand growth. If you want a finer explanation you are going to have to educate yourself beyond "reasonably familiar" with macroeconomics.
Good Luck
I concede that just because an idea is universal doesn't mean its always true.
Well, the thing is...this really, really isn't universal. As far as mainstream economics goes, this is a fringe, unproven idea.
But with extraordinary claims you need extraordinary proof yada yada yada.
Exactly. This claim that zero-growth causes extraordinary instability is the claim that needs extraordinary proof.
Hmmm...
I'm going to have to go back to my college economics text again cause I thought it was pretty much the other way around.
Let me know if you ever get the answer.
Someone on a fixed income, or even a declining income, can still borrow money and pay it back with interest — just not as much as someone with a rising income.
Yes, an individual can pay it back, but in a fractional reserve system in which money is lent into existence, the group can not pay them all back because there is not enough currency in circulation. The group can only pay back their complete loans if the money supply inflates during the term of the loans. A large fraction of loans could default, the Fed could print money and dump it into the economy or the economic output of the economy could grow. The first option causes bankruptcy for the lenders, the second devalues the currency in hyperinflation and the third is perpetual economic growth with increasing population and consumption of resources. Choose your poison.
If ROI goes to zero, then wouldn't interest rates go to zero?
If rates were zero, loan repayment amounts would be the same as original principal, and repayment would be possible, right?
If you want to rent someone else's money, you'll have to pay for it. If neither party is being coerced, there's no theft.
But that's why there were usury laws. Sometimes people are coerced by factors beyond their control.
There were usury laws because there was a religious doctrine that prevented charging interest and the church was in charge.
It both empowered the Jews and set them up for pogroms.
Yes, but why was that doctrine? And its not just the christian church, even to this day islam has usury laws forbidding interest.
Interest in the way you are thinking about is not the problem. One circumvents usury law by raising the price of the item and allowing monthly payments.
Borrowing $10,000 at 6% interest compounded annually for 10 years from the seller is the same as buying the thing for $17,908 and paying it back in installments of $149.23 / month. The problem with interest is in fractional reserve banking where money is lent into existence, that is, one lends money that one does not have.
Well, really thats only a problem if you've got something against modern banking. Sure there are problems with it but I dont see any credible evidence that alternatives are likely to be much better.
Rethin,
I haven't got time to go look for the anwser,but you sure have turned up a good question.
Every time I have looked into a religious prohitition of a given behavoir I have found that there has been a good reason of some sort for the prohitition.
But in this case I come up blank.
Either I have never thought to look, or I have forgotten.
Since I am an omnivorous and insatiable but also a "random walk " reader I probably just never read any thing that answers the question.
If you find the answer ,please post it!
The profit of the lender should be directly linked to the profit of the borrower.
Equity not usury should be the relationship............. that way they both sink or swim together.
Money should never be able to just multiply based on time. It should have to actually cause real improvement or not be rewarded at all.
Money should never be able to just multiply based on time.
It doesn't. Capital is invested in ways that bring returns, assuming the borrower has a good business plan.
It should have to actually cause real improvement or not be rewarded at all.
That's in fact the way it generally works. If a borrower doesn't get real results from the investment, then the venture fails - after all, they have to repay the loan with real profits.
Ever heard of predatory lending practices???
Read my post again............there should be a direct link to the success of the borrower in order for the lender to succeed. The way it is set up now generally lets the lender confiscate the borrowers assets and hence the loan shark type arrangement. Don't you see the conflict of interest?
Also if the "capital" actually represented previous production then it would at least be closer to fair.
The fact that the banks can just flick a pen and put claims on real wealth or the future labor of the borrower is criminal.
there should be a direct link to the success of the borrower in order for the lender to succeed.
Hmm. So lenders should take an equity stake in a new venture, and take part of the profits? Doesn't that mean that lenders would be demanding an even larger return on their money?
That sounds a lot like the kind of deal that a lot of predatory venture capitalists demand.
Nick,
Maybe he took one course.They teach that in the freshman year.Or maybe he figured it out for himself,it wouldn't be hard for an open minded engineer/professor not afraid to THINK.Or he spent time talking shop with business and econ types.
I have never had a single course that had the word petroleum it it's title but I spend a good bit of time talking about it with people who do.
Maybe he took one course. ...Or he spent time talking shop with business and econ types.
This idea (that growth is necessary to the stability of our economy, due to the nature of fractional banking or something else) isn't in any standard economics class, and AFAIK it isn't in the mainstream business/econ culture.
If there is a school of economic thought this comes from (e.g., the Austrian ideas), it would be nice to identify it.
maybe he figured it out for himself
Then he needs to provide arguments and evidence for it, not simply refer to it as if it were an accepted law of physics.
too many comments!. we get off track .I intended my comment to refer only to his remakks about the money supply uutrunning the supplly of goods and resulting in inflation.They teach THAT in the freshman year.At lesast they did in 68.
And I have heard many a lecture that is off topic.There are visitors who give seminars on stuff thats not mainstrean. etc etc
I intended my comment to refer only to his remakks about the money supply uutrunning the supplly of goods and resulting in inflation
Sure - if we were to have zero growth, money supply would have to be stable as well. If the money supply were mismanaged, we certainly could have inflation.
In a debt based monetary system growth is the only way to prevent economic musical chairs. The problem is the system itself.
But again, why?
We don't seem to have found justification in the difficulty in paying back loans, because interest rates would be effectively zero.
So, why?
Because a loan depends on an increase in wealth to realize the return of the loan. That is true with or without interest. The ability that the banks have to just create fictitious "money" is the problem. If there is zero growth than for every winner there has to be a loser and it is just Peter paying Paul so Paul can pay Peter back so to speak.
The entire banking system has turned into a giant swindle game and needs to be changed or better done away with and replaced by resource/energy based economics.
We are at a turning point in human history and how it is handled is going to make all the difference for the future of the planet.
There is no need for economic growth if there is no growth in population.
Because a loan depends on an increase in wealth to realize the return of the loan. That is true with or without interest.
Boy, I still don't understand. If I borrow $100 at no interest, then I repay $100 - no need for an increase in wealth, right?
But if there is no growth in the pie than it is being taken from somewhere else and is just a shuffle. For you to obtain the $100.00 one of 2 things has to occur. Either it comes directly out of someone else savings or it is printed and injected. The second does not result in an increase in wealth but inflation.
But if there is no growth in the pie than it is being taken from somewhere else and is just a shuffle.
Well, sure, overall money supply and loan amounts would have to stay stable. Monetary authorities would have to enforce that, primarily through reserve requirements.
So, why couldn't that happen?
Nick said: "I haven't seen a convincing demonstration that economic growth is necessary to our system"
Try taking Chris Martenson's Crash Course. It is a convincing, for some, demonstration that economic growth is necessary to our system.
I've reviewed it. It's pretty well written, but many of its points are unsupported. In this case, I didn't see anything to show that economic growth is necessary to our system.
17c says "Distributing ever-larger shares of money during a period of constant growth is a pleasant job that enjoys broad political and popular support. Operating in a world of declining energy is an utterly new prospect for every single political and financial institution. It makes the science of meeting unlimited demand with limited resources even trickier, if not impossible, if the system is not up to the task."
This could be said about communism, fascism or capitalism. It's not very specific to "our system".
Again, it says "if the system is not up to the task."
Well, is it or isn't it? If not, why not?
Could you point out a specific unit in the course that I missed?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in chapter 17c he says that without an exponential increasing money system...
Well, if you look closely, he's not saying that the economy needs growth, he's saying that the economy needs oil. The inflation is just a symptom (and also depends on mismanagement of the money supply, rather than being a necessary result).
Nick,
If you've taken the whole course, not just the chapters on peak oil, and still don't agree that our economy needs growth, then I don't think there is much anyone here can say to convince you. Chris Martenson spent several years putting the course together, so if his research and explanation doesn't convince you, I don't think anything will.
If ...still don't agree that our economy needs growth
Oh, I think most growth is desirable. The question is whether there is something inherent to the design/structure of our economy that means that a no-growth economy is necessarily going to crash or malfunction very, very seriously.
I myself have an itch that won't go away and that can't be scratched because somehow I also think that the proposition that growth is absolutely necessary has something wrong with it.I just can't figure out what,exactly.The emperical case is pretty airtight,no question.
Maybe what every one is saying,w/o really specifically saying/realizing it, is that our ecomony as it is currently organized around fractional banking cannot work w/o growth.That's one thing.
Saying that there CANNOT be a more or less steady state economy that provides a reasonable standard of living for everybody -so long as the population is not growing ,or maybe growing only very slowly,IS ANOTHER THING ALTOGETHER.
I myself have not seen anything that PROVES to my satisfaction that such an economy is not possible.
There is a furniture company nearby that is doing ok ,actually working ot and upgrading .The key to thier success ,according to the production manager ,who is a chilhhood friend and a nieghbor,is that the owner has reinvested his profits over the years in his plant rather than real estate and other businesses that look like greener grass.So he doesn't NEED TO BORROW MONEY.If there is in his words enough potential profit to be made financing this business , with something left for the owners of it...
Maybe he's saying that if the bank is satisfied earning seven percent loaning him money to run his business and feel like that is a safe and reasonable thing to do,then really the safe and reasonable thing for him to do is OWN OUTRIGHT FREE AND CLEAR whatever he can,and refrain from trying to earn even more.He is satisfied with himself as his own creditor at seven percent.
He owns everything free and clear and finances nothing,so I'm told.
And the plan is that when things turn around HIS plant will be up and running with the five hundred best and most experienced and dedicated furniture workers working under one roof ANYWHERE.
He's seen downturns before.
But this one.....?????
At least he will be the last man standing in his line of work.
The emperical case is pretty airtight,no question.
hmmm. What are you thinking of? Japan was ok with no growth for quite a while. France seems to be pretty good at retaining long vacations, and shorter hours to spread the work around.
No question we've had some periods of recession that were painful. But that was decline.
"our ecomony as it is currently organized around fractional banking cannot work w/o growth."
But I'm saying that I don't see a good argument for this. interest rates can go to .1%: enough to pay of the overhead of a small finance sector, just like we pay for the overhead of meteorologists and police. Or, rates go to zero, and we call them money management fees.
If banks can't create money bt lending more than they have on deposit,which IS FRACTIONAL RESERVE banking,then things would be so different that I don't think we should refer to them as the "same" economy.
And as I understand it,the only way the depositors can be repaid-thier own money returned plus interest- is gradually out of an ever growing stream of interest income.
I wish there was a really good nontechnical book on my shelves about fractional reserve but there is not.
Reccomendations,anyone?
I think you are just picking nits.
He doesn't say all possible economies need growth (they may, but that's not what he's driving after). He's saying that *our economy*, the one that's tied to exponentially growing energy supplies, *needs growth*. Pull the oil and the growth stops and you get what he outlines above.
That's pretty much what Hubbert was saying further up thread as well.
That said, I suppose you could invent/implement a whole new kind of economics that's not tied to a growing resource base. Good luck with that.
picking nits.
Not at all. this is a very different different question. As I said above, the question is whether there is something inherent to the design/structure of our economy that means that a no-growth economy is necessarily going to crash or malfunction very, very seriously.
Pull the oil and the growth stops
I think oil isn't quite that magical, but that's a whole different argument.
He's saying that *our economy*, the one that's tied to exponentially growing energy supplies, *needs growth*.
Oh, I think most growth is desirable. But why would it be "needed"?
You and I are talking different things. Its not a question of if a no growth economy is possible. The question is can our economy survive no growth.
Growth is needed to pay back interest on loans.
Since you read chapter 17c you should have seen this
Its not a question of if a no growth economy is possible. The question is can our economy survive no growth.
I agree. There are two questions here, and the one we're talking about is the second: "can our economy survive no growth?".
Growth is needed to pay back interest on loans.
No. If interest rates go to zero or .1%, then interest costs become perfectly affordable in a static economy. It's just overhead,like police or meteorologists.
17c says: who in their right mind loans more and more money to someone whose earnings are all but guaranteed to decline?
That's not a question of zero-growth, that's a question of decline. That's a different question.
Obviously, if the US economy declines that will be painful. Perhaps such a decline would hurt our perceived credit-worthiness, oil exporters would stop buying t-bills, the US dollar would rise sharply, long-term interest rates would rise, imports would decline and exports would rise, and Americans would be 6% (the amount of our trade deficit) poorer than they are today.
Wait...the changes in imports/exports have already happened. I guess what's left is the headwind from high long-term interest rates, that would make recovery from the decline difficult.
Is any kind of collapse required? I don't see it. Plus, this is just the US. What about Europe, which has a good trade balance? What about Russia, that's an exporter? What about Asia, which is a net lender, not borrower?
You are just running around in circles Nick. You are talking about a whole new economy again. The existing economy/monentary system is not at all set up for this.
Rethin,
Consider that the total economy of the US is only some $14 trillion dollars, while the total credit market debt of the US is more than $49 trillion dollars. Lop off a few zeros and round things off, and this is the same as a bank loaning 500 thousand dollars for a home against a salary of 140 thousand dollars.
Debt doesn't have to be repaid in one year or even 10 years, many people have mortgages x3 or x4 yearly salary, if they are paid off over 30 years that's paying back 10% of salary/year as principal. It's only a problem in a high interest rate environment, but then nominal salaries grow over time.
My question is, who in their right mind loans more and more money to someone whose earnings are all but guaranteed to decline?
Many banks lend reverse mortgages to retired people because their incomes have declined. It's not about income it's about assets or the ability to pay back the loan. It the loan repayments are only 5% of income a declining income is not an issue. It they are 50% of income it is an issue.
And you can do that because the economy grows.
Now that Pre-stored Energy, Represented by Oil, has Peaked and is in Terminal Decline, Growth and our Economic System Cannot Continue
I also wonder where this idea originated?
It would seem to predate the transition of wind and solar electricity to affordability.
Do we have a historian of Peak Oil ideas who can answer this?
Interest in its own right is not the source of growth addiction ... interest can be paid out of a fixed income in a stable steady state.
Interest is, in other words, a claim on a share of income.
It is, rather, interest on loans taken out by commercial corporations in pursuit of profit (which is the only firm reason a board of a commercial corporation can advance for taking out a loan) ... which is to say, using fixed rate interest bearing loans for leverage.
Suppose for simplicity that a loan has an interest rate of 10%, and the business plan calls for a 20% surplus (and that surplus, note, does not necessarily require economic growth ... it can be in the nature of a rent on a scarce resource or favorable market position).
So 120% return yields 10% profit and 10% interest income.
Now, suppose that there is a 5% growth in return. 105% of 120% is 126% return ... 16% profit and 10% interest income.
So 5% growth in return leads to 60% growth in profit.
Even if the 5% growth is of the bogus sort, in that it required a 10% increase in externalized costs ... or, as we recently saw, a massive increase in systemic financial risk because it involved pushing the finance sector as a whole into a Ponzi finance position ... those earning profit incomes can still easily see themselves as better off as a result of the growth.
There is an interesting article about Moore's law that was discussed a couple of days ago in Drumbeat. It said:
Mr. Howe is among the deluded. His site advertises a solar tractor, which is a joke. There is no way batteries of any kind are going to power a tractor as liquid fuels would.
Therefore it is painfully obvious that Mr. Howe is a techno-utopian with some silly ideas about keeping business-as-usual going with solar power. That, of course, is not going to happen ever.
It would be a laugh to see how many square miles his 'solar tractor' would plough before the batteries went dead.
In the future beyond oil it will be human hands or animals that do the ploughing. It will be tough work. It will be slavery. There will be no solar panels, there will be no fission, fusion, windpower or any other currently-discussed 'alternative energy'. Biofuels will be a long-lost dream of stupidity.
Roads of all sizes formerly paved will be toxic wastelands of crumbling poisonous asphalt leaching toxic heavy metals and carcinogenic polynucleic aromatic hydrocarbons into the ground.
Instead there will be a long, long emergency of warfare, poverty, and a painfully slow dieoff of the human-parasite's numbers until they are less than one-tenth of today's. During this process, electric tractors will be nowhere in sight.
What will be in sight is rotting collapsing buildings and other monuments of fossil-fuel infrastructure, tents, shacks and shanties, starving, fighting people, ditches of contaminated brown water full of toxic wastes and diseases once thought to be exterminated. Certain places in the Third World are an excellent preview of what's to come for the formerly-endowed nations.
The air will be filled with the noxious odor of burning plastic or tires - whichever is available - as people make the most efficient use of what fuel there is left for heating, cooking and sterilizing infected water.
You are a harsh critic, but you are spot on. I did my due diligence on Mr. Howe and came to the same conclusion. His appeal is to those who don't notice the fundamental flaws.
I disagree with your analysis of poisonous asphalt and noxious fumes from plastic and rubber. In my experience, nature has a way of healing itself. Pollution isn't one of the horsemen.
But otherwise I really, really don't like your post. It matches my judgment too closely.
The other interesting aspect is that you can write such pessimistic fare and not offer a solution. People so want a hook to hang their hope on. It takes guts to be honest. I'm sure you, like me, wish you could end your posts with something positive. Nice, gutsy post.
Cold Camel
Strewth...
Though I agree BAU is set for a decent shake-up (hopefully not to your level of prediction) - and that a solar tractor seems a bit of a stretch - I do kind of like the idea of solar golf carts. Then again, perhaps a slower pace of life is also a pipe dream.
We have a way to go yet anyway, don't we? Still plenty of oil left, massive gas reserves, sugar-cane to ethanol, etc. Still time to get the message out?
Regards, Matt B
I don't know about "plenty" of oil and gas. How do you propose to get the message out? After years of trying, many people in the peak oil movement or the ecology movement have been trying for years. But what is the overriding aim of governments around the world? To get economic growth back on track.
What needs to happen to get the message out?
I always get a kick out of people saying a battery powered tractor would not work. I use a tractor quite regularly and battery systems would match tractors better than most other vehicles. Unlike an auto or a long haul truck, tractors desire weight. We routinely fill tires with water, add wheel weights, add weights on the front etc.. The net result is that between a HUGE diesel engine, HUGE transmission and transfer case, 60 gallons of fuel and excessive additional weights we have about 12,000 pounds of weight we can use for a drive system which would electrically run our 18,000 pound tractor. In wheel motors are light but have tremendous torque. Giant Battery Co. sells a battery which will supply 70 KWH of stored lead acid power in a 3000 pound battery for about $7000. Four of them would provide 12000# of weight and 280 KWH of power. Combined with the existing frame and tires it would run about 50% as long as it does with 60 Gallons of fuel. Since I only use about 20-30 gallons per day that would not appear to be a hardship. By the way this is a tractor that originally cost me over $60,000 so the costs are likely to be similar to build one like this.
While I agree that diesel power is better for plowing applications, many tractors and farm machines are run at significantly lower output during the bulk of the day, towing trailers, digging dirt, etc. I have a 25000 pound excavator which could easily be operated with a similar system. It typically only uses 15 gallons per day. When weight is an advantage why wouldn't batteries work?
Treeman;
Thanks for the testimony. Maybe there's a campfire post in your experience with the E-Tractor sometime?
In any case, I hope you keep coming and posting this evidence when the E-Tractor DeTractors are tossing out their theories.
Best,
Bob
While I agree that diesel power is better for plowing applications
Why is that? Electric motors provide much better torque than ICEs. Think of electrodiesel freight trains.
I think he just means if one's tractor is going to be battery-based. Heavy Plowing might be far more cumbersome unless you had interchangeable battery packs nearby or some sort of cabling to power such rigs from the grid or other stationary power-source.
Well, I agree that interchangeable battery packs nearby or some sort of cabling might be helpful, but he said:
"Combined with the existing frame and tires it would run about 50% as long as it does with 60 Gallons of fuel. Since I only use about 20-30 gallons per day that would not appear to be a hardship."
He doesn't seem to think range is a problem.
How many times can you cycle these batteries ?
I am of the opinion that while it IS possible to run farm equipment on batteries,diesel is for the time being far more practical.
And while it is undoubtedly possible to build a tractor to incorporate such big and heavy batteries into its construction I don't think you will succeed in converting your existing tractor.I have read about a couple of very small row crop types that have been converted,some of them here on this site,but most tractors are constructed in such a way that all the major components are also load bearing chassis parts.Take the transmission out and you have the front third and the rear third left and nothing in the middle,so to speak.
And i'm out on a limb here not bieng an electrical man but I don't think you are going to build electric motors that will both fit inside the wheels and put out the kind of torque needed to put that much horse power to the wheels using direct drive.At working speeds tractor wheels tuurn pretty sloooow.Some serious gear reduction will most likely be needed.That would allow the rpm of the motor to be increased as needed.
Some of the costs of the batteries would be offset by lower maintainence costs of course and you can charge up for a lot less that the price of the equivalent amount of diesel most likely.
We might see some serious electrical tractors in the near future.They sure would be a fine way to use up some night time wind,especially if you could hang onto your diesel and use it anytime you get gaught in a dead battery pinch-like needing to run straight thru hot seating drivers in front of a storm or catching up after a heavy rain ,etc.Sometimes tractors need to go more or less non stop for a few days or even a few weeks sometimes.
They sure would be a fine way to use up some night time wind,especially if you could hang onto your diesel
That would make the most sense. This would be comparable to the Chevy Volt, which will use electricity for 80% of its miles travelled, and will be as efficient as a Prius for the rest, thus using 10% as much gas as the average vehicle on the road.
Fail. This would be a successful deduction only if oil was the only source of energy.
As is we have trillions of tonnes of fissionables and 10^17 watts of energy raining down on the earth alone.
Dezakin: try digging those dilute radioactive minerals out of the ground with your hands, or a shovel. Then refine them by slow cooking over a fire like Marie Curie did before she died of radiation poisoning.
The vast amount of qualitatively unique and quantitatively dense fossil-fuels used to mine the dilute nuclear fuel-containing minerals, grind them up and refine them into fuel for nuclear plants is an enormous subsidy by itself, though of course such a break isn't enough either...
The nuclear industry is so inefficient that even the massive subsidy provided by cheap fossil fuels isn't enough to keep in running - it also relies on enormous pork from the public-funds trough including direct and indirect subsidies such as insurance, liability limitation, etc. Private markets would never fund them without these things anyway.
As for solar, it's ridiculously expensive now (even at the current low price of oil), doesn't produce the liquid fuel the world is set up to use, and will only cost more as the cheap oil which subsidizes its manufacture loses cheapness.
Try the reply button to keep threads isolated.
Why wouldn't I just use an electric dragline powered by a nuclear power plant?
We can do the accounting if you like, but now you're getting into the world where we aren't slaves in some post apocalyptic nightmare anymore. Which is it? Nuclear cant compete with fossil fuel because its too abundant? Even though France runs 80% of their grid off of it...
You need to start learning how real mining is done.
"If you take the whole fuel chain as one piece, nuclear power produces large quantities of global warming gases because millions of tons of rock and ore need to be mined to get the uranium out of the ground. And it has to be crushed, using more fossil fuels"
"At the moment, uranium is enriched at Paducah, Ky., where they have two 1,500-megawatt filthy, old, coal-fired plants to produce the electricity to enrich the uranium. Also, 93 percent of the CFC 114 gas released in the United States is through leaking pipes at that plant in Paducah. CFC not only destroys the ozone (layer) and is banned under the Montreal Protocol--and the nuclear industry is being grandfathered from that--but it also is a potent global warmer 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. There are other such gases released during the production of uranium fuel"
from: Nuke power not so clean or green
http://news.cnet.com/Nuke-power-not-so-clean-or-green/2008-11392_3-61898...
As for your second paragraph, I don't quite understand your point. Indeed France may get 80% of their energy from nuclear... and how much is the public and cheap oil subsidizing that?
Get your facts straight:
Gambling on nuclear power: How public money fuels the industry
http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/gambling-nucl...
Uranium mining, like mining of most other minerals, is crucially dependant on heavy machinery powered by fossil fuels to move enormous volumes of raw ore. Beyond the dismal environmental contamination produced by such large-scale toxic activity, it is totally subsidized by cheap oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Mining_techniques
That vast amount of work will never be done by human nor animal power. It can only be done by lightweight, energy-dense, portable liquid fuels, ie. oil products. Cheap oil products.
Not it doesn't. Many use electric draglines and milling machines. The fact that many mines use diesel trucks is often simple logistics of the area.
Cheap oil isn't subsidizing hardly any of it. France uses nuclear power plants to do uranium enrichment, and the uranium mining itself consumes an inconsequential amount of energy, less than 1/500th than is produced in the power plants. You could use synthetic gasoline produced from nuclear power plants if you really needed it at that rate.
Now if you're suggesting people would sooner starve to death than give power plants loan guarantees and insurance caps...
Again you are a fool. It isn't about the energy, its about the quality. Uranium mines will never be run on electricity, any more than the article's fanciful electric tractor. Electric tractors will only plough Fields of Dreams. Those are the ones in Dreamland; there aren't any on this Earth.
Energy isn't some magic abstract number that's interchangeable with various uses. Instead it is a catch-all term for a quantity that occurs alongside many other qualities in certain matter.
Mining today runs on cheap oil (reality check, do some research so you don't embarrass yourself). There is no replacement for cheap oil. There will be no electric tractors or massive dump-trucks, graders, etc. Besides the failing airline industry, mining is the most oil-addicted industry in the world, and the one least likely to ever function under any other non-liquid-fuels regime due to the remoteness of its operations, heavy vehicles hauling enormous loads, and low energy density of any alternative to liquid fuel which together spell doom for most any mining operation, never mind one so wastefully inefficient and environmentally toxic as Uranium mining.
Past the mining, all that ore has to be trucked or trained (diesel) to a plant where huge volumes are ground up using electric grinders (powered by coal more often than not in the US), processed and refined down in the most intensive and complex system until it is fuel-ready.
The nuclear energy system ALREADY has net negative ROI, never mind when the fossil fuels that subsidize it become more expensive, and the people subjected to taxes to fund its unfundable operations decide to revolt or are no longer paying taxes.
Loan guarantees, loans, and all other public subsidies are costs, socialized on the public. Conveniently they aren't added into the 'cost' of nuclear energy.
You need to recheck your reality calibration level. You are heavily deluded about the future of energy, nuclear in particular. It has no future. And I haven't even started into the cost of reactors (again publicly insured and subsidized), containment of waste (again publicly insured and subsidized) - an unsolved problem as of yet - and of course Peak Uranium.
As with most so-called 'alternative energy' schemes, it turns out to be cheaper to make guns and blow people's brains out to reduce the excess population than to implement these energy 'sources' which are invariably energy sinks.
The entire nuclear 'industry' is an artifact of cheap oil and of course public pork-barrel subsidy, including the military-industrial complex to which it owes its existence. Along with these things, it will disappear along with the cheap oil from which it came.
Oh this is rich!
"The Rossing mine produced 3037 tonnes of Uranium in 2004, which is sufficient for 15 GigaWatt-years of electricity with current reactors. The energy used to mine and mill this Uranium was about 3% of a GigaWatt-year. Thus the energy produced is about 500 times more than the energy required to operate the mine."
At that rate of return in mining you could have a nuclear power plant that electrolysizes hydrogen and runs it across cobalt catalysts with CO2 to make diesel fuel to run these mines, if for some reason they had to run all of them on diesel fuel; Which by the way, you dont. Many large mines are run off of the electric grid because its more cost effective.
So costly that France has lower electricity prices than just about anywhere else in europe.
Except that putting it in dry storage casks works perfectly well.
And now we get into something totally ridiculous. I assume you can only mean uranium depletion. There are 40 trillion tons of uranium througout the earths crust, and 120 trillion tons of thorium. In the once through cycle, looking at the numbers from Rossing, you could run the entire world at the energy intensity of the united states for tens of thousands of years before even getting into breeder regimes. With breeders you could run for a million years before the fuel ran out if your limit of burn was not melting the planet in waste heat.
Doom by energy depletion is popular fantasy here, but its completely unsupportable. Stick to something unprovable like crop monoculture diseases, war, social collapse or some other soft science nonsense.
You have made nothing but rhetorical and theoretical arguements while quoting ZERO sources. It is sad but your posts reflect nothing but intellectual masturbation.
Show me some mines that run on nothing but nuclear energy, then you can start telling me how cheap nuclear energy is.
Again you are making the mistake of interchangeability of energy, and not counting the real cost of substituting nuclear-generated electricity - if possible even - for liquid fuels.
In fact, run the whole fuel cycle and make the reactors using no energy but that which comes from other reactors, then you can start to estimate the real cost.
Tell me why if nuclear is so great that private investment won't touch it without taxpayer-guarantees?
None of these things are going to be happening because the public isn't going to be paying for the money-losing, uninsurable nuclear industry for much longer, any more than a farmer would buy an electric tractor.
As for peak Uranium, how much of those tons are economically accessible with oil at its current cost? Never mind what oil will soon cost. Receding horizons, baby, receding horizons.
Really, could you disagree without such scatalogical snarkiness?
But since you asked:
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeEnergyLifecycleOfNuclear_Power
No, I'm not. Principles of synthesizing liquid fuels have been known for a century now, and can be done from chemical building blocks and energy input. In this case, water, limestone, and electric power. Capital costs for all are easy to estimate given there are synfuel plants running now by Sasol that use coal instead of limestone for the carbon source and thermal inputs.
Either you're arguing that civilization is going to collapse without power, and all alternatives to nuclear power aren't going to be competitive because they'll all be depleted or you're talking about how nuclear power isn't competitive with coal in the current regulatory environment.
Several billion tonnes at the least from shales that dont have to have serious overburden removed.
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/UraniuamDistribution
Dezakin said:
As someone who has lived within 200km of Sasol's Secunda plant and suffered the appalling pollution, you have no idea how bad this option is. I mean, the pollution is so friking bad you can see it easily from space. If we tried to use nukes to make liquid fuels, and it turns out to be anywhere as bad as this, forget it. Dezakin, make sure your technofix involves clean solutions that can exist without filthy-to-make liquid fuels.
Please understand this is only for the sake of argument about what is possible, not what is desirable. I'm only arguing, not advocating here.
For instance I think its obvious that CTL will become more common as oil prices rise faster than coal prices, but I don't necissarily think its good.
"There are 40 trillion tons of uranium througout the earths crust, and 120 trillion tons of thorium."
If you have the resources to dig it up and refine it.
same for FF , do you have the resources to mine and refine it, etc ??
Here's some pictures of REAL-LIFE Uranium mines, note the EQUIPMENT used:
http://www.cna.ca/curriculum/cna_can_nuc_hist/images/rabbit_lake2.jpg
[That's a very rich ore mine btw.]
Massive tunnels dug out with oil-based machines in the Karatau Uranium Mine:
http://www.miningtopnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Uranium-One-to-A...
Massive uranium mine stripped from surface with diesel-powered machinery:
http://xs124.xs.to/xs124/08064/1umine5541.jpg
Heavy machinery at Energy Resources of Australia's Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory. Picture: Bloomberg
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6562253,00.gif
The Ranger mine in Australia is a prime example:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Ranger_3_open_pit.jpg
Massive excavations only possible with motile liquid-fueled vehicles - graders, scoopers, grinders, crushers - to recover millions of tons of low-grade ore which must be further processed in the most energy-intensive system.
More massive excavations at Rabbit Lake Uranium mine:
http://ees.nmt.edu/~dulmer/NMCEP/upitmine.jpg
From "How is Uranium Mined?"
http://ees.nmt.edu/~dulmer/NMCEP/NMCEP%20Nuclear%20Energy7.html
This heavy machinery will never run on batteries. The cheap oil that keeps them running today is a massive subsidy to nuclear energy, one of its 'external costs' as economists call them.
Furthermore, as mining turns to ever lower-grade ores buried deeper in the ground, even more fossil-fuels will be consumed by thirsty machinery in order to extract and process it.
As for some dream-system of using electricity to make liquid fuels, first nobody's found a way to do it large-scale to run such machinery, second what experiments have been done are grossly inefficient. The level of waste in the system even today is disgusting, and luckily such schemes will never have a chance of a positive ROI.
Like a snake eating its tail, the nuclear industry can only continue if it is artificially supported; when that support fails it eats itself up leaving the public with the costs of disposing of its toxic, radioactive wastes.
Oh no, never.
http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/used_equipment/lnh/lnh1.html
Sasol allready does it large scale. The only thing you change is electrolysis for water shift reaction to get the hydrogen.
Your reply does not address the inefficiency of making liquid fuel from total synthesis by electricity.
Your reply does not show that electric-battery powered machinery is either economic nor even feasible for uranium mining.
Furthermore,
"No insurance company has ever agreed to insure a nuclear power plant. A nuclear plant is too risky to insure. Congress had to step in and pass a law that limits the owner's liability (called The Price Anderson Act of 1957. You and I, dear taxpayer, are the industry's insurance). And regarding competitiveness, Nuclear News, the American Nuclear Society's magazine of March 2005, had this to say:
"Nuclear advocates have made it clear in recent months that even if all regulatory matters were settled ... the actual ordering and building of new power reactors would depend heavily at first on financial incentives to reduce the cost burden to those organizations that build the first plants."
So much for competitiveness.
Since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, operating nuclear power plants include a huge new vulnerability. Because of insurmountable safety and technical challenges, and public resistance to siting of a federal repository for radioactive wastes, the government has failed to reclaim spent nuclear fuel from any of the 103 operating nuclear power plants. Consequently, spent fuel continues to be "temporarily" stored at each plant site, by the plant owner, in water-filled, spent-fuel pools. These pools are now recognized as a nuclear terrorism hazard."
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0430-24.htm
The arguments of those hopelessly lost in dreams of wish fulfillment and continuation of business-as-usual are easily shot down like fish in a barrel. Reality is a harsh taskmaster.
Now perhaps we can return to the topic at hand: those wonderful electric tractors, which if they are lucky will survive long enough to become museum-pieces of a deluded age, before being looted for their metals and other constituents by the residents of a depleted and desperate age to come.
Hell, I dont have to. liquid fuel inputs in uranium mining are so tiny it could be less than 1% efficient and still be a huge win. It just doesnt matter.
You dont use batteries. Its a mine, a static site. You hook up draglines to the grid. Its cheaper that way, and thats what most large mines do. You allready use electric milling machines which consume more energy than most of the other mining processes.
Hey, you're still thinking civilization is going to fall. You think regulatory insurance caps are going to be an issue when people are starving to death?
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I don't see any Uranium mine in the world using what you are referring to. Therefore it is your fantasy, please keep it to yourself.
Conveniently, you're not counting the cost of transport or refining either.
Conveniently, you're not counting the enormous public subsidies to build, insure, and operate nuclear plants. There would be NO NUCLEAR PLANTS if it was not for governmnt (read: public) intervention & subsidy.
Conveniently, you're not counting the enormous costs to contain and guard nuclear waste for the thousands of years it takes to become 'safe'.
Considering you have no support in this forum you are sounding more and more like a shill for the nuclear industry.
Finally, you have not yet informed us how wonderful our lives will be with the electric tractors. After all, if the enormous energy put into mining tons of Uranium ore can so easily be deliverd by your magic 'draglines' through deep pit-mines and tunnels, then surely such things would make flat-land farming easy too, obviating the need for a battery-powered tractor. But, you haven't mentioned that so I thought I'd remind you to mention it to stay consistent with your message.
To keep everyone else updated on your magic electric draglines:
"Electric drive systems were only used on the larger mining machines, most modern machines use a diesel-hydraulic drive, as machines are seldom in one location long enough to justify the cost of installing a substation and supply cables."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragline#Draglines_in_mining
And of course since the subject is a system not just a component, you can only win such an argument by substitution of every component. In fact it is only possible to measure the true cost of such a fanciful scheme with complete substitution.
You really ought to keep your message focused. Either civilization is going to fall because all fossil fuels are going to disapear in which case we really wont be worried about regulatory issues like insurance caps, or it isn't in which case nuclear power is just competing against all the other baseload power sources. Now if you want to suggest that nuclear power might have a hard time competing against coal baseload for the next fifty years, I'm with you there because coal is just so damned cheap; But you're mixing your message up.
You're worried about the cost of transport of nuclear fuel now? Seriously? Do you know how energy dense this stuff is?
Get another hobby horse; Stick with what all the other doomers here complain about, systems complexity overwelming us, food production falling because of soil erosion and monocultures, superbugs showing up to replay the black death or some other unprovable nonsense.
Again we hear more rhetoric from you but no evidence as I took the time to research.
How energy dense is raw ore? The majority of transport energy goes into moving raw ore, not the completed product as your argument clearly suggests {it wasn't specific enough so how about being more specific about your statements in the future?}.
My advise to readers of this thread is to conclude the obvious: Mr. Dezakin has no leg to stand on and is living in a fantasy world. He provides no evidence to back up his arguments but relies on rhetoric rather than factual evidence.
He has no understanding of how Uranium mining works (I provided photos and evidence of the quantitative and qualitative requirements of the process), has not replied to my refutations of his last set of arguments (if they can be called that, being rhetorical and speculative as they are), and his latest post is devoid of any explanation of how his scheme might work. He asks a question but doesn't provide an answer, which indicates that he is either too lazy to research the answer, or has no confidence that a favorable answer can be found.
To repeat my basic statements:
1. Uranium mining is heavily dependant on fossil-fuel powered machinery.
2. Mining in general is the most heavily dependant on the qualitative nature and quantitative cheapness of fossil fuels.
3. The nuclear energy industry is totally reliant on government subsidies [read: taxpayer giveaways] and is unable to function - even insure itself against disaster - without public guarantees and specific legislation.
4. The nuclear energy industry cannot provide the qualitatively unique hydrocarbons that it requires for its own continuation, those which today oil is providing, and no scheme to do so has yet suceeded.
5. The nuclear industry is totally reliant on the thermal cycle for conversion of heat to electricity. The thermal cycle loses 50% of its energy in the best case during conversion. Furthermore, thermal cycles require coolant, and lots of it. The energy that can be extracted is proportionate to the temperature difference between hot and cold sides.
Cooling requires very large volumes of water, preferably fresh, which entails building plants beside rivers or oceans. Ocean water is saline and corrosive, necessitating much higher construction costs and ongoing maintenance.
Building plants next to rivers or oceans means that a containment failure will contaminate large bodies of water.
6. The problem of nuclear waste both in mining (which has so far been an environmental disaster), and in disposal of end-cycle waste, has not been solved.
Any one of these reasons is enough to take down the industry; only constant Government intervention to pay off cleanup costs, socialize liabilities, and otherwise massively subsidize this toxic industry keeps it alive.
Isocromax, I tend to agree with you, but could you please clean up your language? It really weakens your argument when you go for personal attacks. I like your pit-bull style, but respect your intellectual opponents. If you don't respect DZ, ignore him. If you don't respect the rest of us TOD readers, why are you posting here at all?
DZ, you went WAY over the top with this doomer dish. TOD is not about proving anything. There is no proof in science. Plate tectonics and evolution can never be proven. TOD is about predicting the future. Make your predictions.
If nuclear power is as cheap as you think, nukes should be popping up like weeds somewhere. That where is going to thrive economically. China perhaps? You can't blame environmentalists if China doesn't build nukes. If France's nukes work so well, why aren't they still building them? They could become the powerhouse of Europe and put Saudi Arabia out of business with liquid fuel exports. I'm not being facetious. France could be rich.
If nowhere builds significant nukes than perhaps you are wrong. Admit it.
I don't see an answer. I see poverty as our best possible outcome. All the optimists need to eat crow and shut up if the three horsemen start riding again. Solve Egypt, solve Pakistan, solve Haiti and I'll shut up.
Cold Camel
I'm only arguing the scalability of nuclear power here. Weather or not society will scale nuclear or any other fossil fuel alternative is a seperate argument; Sure I often argue that society will, but thats a hell of a lot more difficult to prove than the raw numbers of nuclear power scalability. Maybe society wont because of overshoot, depleting aquifers, war, crop failures, or whatever. I can make arguments by analogy and history on those but I cant make the same sort of projections as can be made about the raw scalability of nuclear energy. Its demonstrably scalable to the terawatt scale.
Then I'll admit coal is even cheaper. If no one builds nukes while no one can afford coal, I'll offer a mea culpa; If I haven't starved to death that is.
Nuke power is not making a comeback, except maybe in China. There must be a fundamental reason nobody builds nukes, otherwise Toshiba would be putting up nukes somewhere, and that “where” would be booming. The same is true about any other energy source, fossil fuel or not. I follow trends. Where's the non-subsidized growth?
China is booming. We can learn by watching. China’s boom is coal based, not nuke. Maybe there is enough coal to fuel the next generation. Unfortunately coal is not a liquid transportation fuel, and Sasol is a side game.
Every industrialized nation the world over has the desire to be self-sufficient in energy but they are becoming more dependent upon imports. Why is this? Either oil is too cheap, or the alternatives are too expensive.
If oil is too cheap, then we will make a transition to alternatives eventually, smooth or rough. This appears to be your argument and your frustration comes from the chance we are missing the boat.
If alternatives are too expensive, then we won’t make the transition no matter what. When the price of oil rises, the economy will falter. Alternatives will remain a sideshow.
I don’t know where you live, but nukes are being decommissioned in most of the world. Reality trumps theoretical argument. We are not switching to alternatives, we are involuntarily powering down. The trend is not our friend. Need and ability are not enough. Egyptian and Pakistani scientists are plenty smart enough and the nations have so few needs they could certainly afford to build their way out of poverty. But poverty exists and is growing. Go to any small struggling nation with your theory and pull them out of the dark ages using internal resources. But if it doesn’t work in the small nations, quit pretending that the leading nations are different.
A successful alternative should have been building market share for the last 20 years, like oil did in the depression. To pin your actions on a technology that has languished on the sidelines for decades seems suicidal. I’m not suicidal.
Cold Camel
I am no fan of nukes, but you have a LOT of bad information about mining. Much is Electric Powered. Go back and look at the Wiki article it will tell you that. I clicked your link because your info sounded wrong.
Here is an actual quote from the Wiki article:
"Most mining draglines are not diesel-powered like most other mining equipment."
Here are some typical draglines
http://www.bucyrus.com/draglines.htm
Typical are around 1500 HP, 4160V systems. The last 1000 feet or more runs on super-sized extension cords we call dragline cable. That makes the machine mobile. It is stepped down in the field from overhead lines, typically 25 kV or less. We run the power lines across the countryside MUCH cheaper and faster than liquid fuel could be brought continually to a site.
After the dragline, the material usually hits a conveyor -- also electric. Those can go for miles.
btw, as far as Electric Tractors -- Built one myself a few years ago. Runs fine. Electric Motors run thousands of hours more than a diesel can and cost much less to operate. Which is another reason the draglines run on Electric Power.
I wonder if it from a selfish point of view is best to argue aginst this nonsens or encourage it?
This kind of reasoning about the impossibility of solutions can set up whole populations for demand destruction in a kind of collective suicide. That could be a fast way of lowering the global environmental load and leave a lot of cheap resources to be picked up by those who dont buy this crap and keep their intellectual and physical tools in good order.
But it would be amoral to encourage you and let good tools and opportunities be destroid.
Mines are easy to electrifie since the work sites are small, farming is harder to electrifie since the fields are large and not worked over constantly.
Commercial mining of zinc has even been made with compressed air as the primary power supply. With air hoses to the drilling machines, air powered loaders of small railway carts, air locomotives pulling the ore carts with air stored in a preassure tank and air lanterns where the airflow spins a tiny turbine that turns a dynamo that powers the lightbuld. This system unloded into a fixed infrastructure of electricity powered ore crushers and hoists to the surface. The same kind of infarstructure would of course be even easier to use in an above ground mine. This is roven to be doable on a 1940:s the technology level since it has been done.
You can do it more efficient with modern technology and also dramtically lower the worker exposure to unheatly dust and noise.
Hey Magnus,
Good to have a return to sanity on this. Thanks.
As far as the morality portion, I R more the Engineer than Philosopher, but I do agree that morality is a portion that should be checked on all aspects of design, build and plans for afterward, as well. That is why I am no fan of Nukes.
As well as why I jumped into Electric Farming. Figured we could do with less transportation and other Oil sourced fun -- but Food was and is a more serious matter. If we go electric on the farm, everyone can still eat.
One part you have a little backwards --
"Mines are easy to electrifie since the work sites are small, farming is harder to electrifie since the fields are large and not worked over constantly."
While putting to electricity to mining tends to be a very practical and doable thing in many cases, it can be even more practical to do with farming. If you think about it, a mine is a one time event. The resources are there, they are taken out, and then the site is left (hopefully with a least some remediation).
While a mining operation can spread out over decades, it is an end-game process. In regards to small -- many mines tend to be pretty large. Our open mines for Lignite (low grade Coal) in Texas spread out over 1000s and 1000s of acres in a one time open, remove, backfill, and cover of the site. We have one mine that ran out so long, it has an 11 mile conveyor just to get the material back to the plant.
Farming, on the other hand, is done over (and over and over) on the same site. Putting electric power to large area farming is even kind of "old school" if you think about Center Pivots. With those a single electric machine covers 100s of acres. Generally they are all electric powered, as well. Electric pump on the water portion, and electric motors driving the wheels around the field, and many cover their entire site once a week during a low-rain season.
Even without irrigation and just seed-bed prep, planting, cultivation, fertilizer, and then harvest. a single farming site is typically 100% repeatedly passed-through several times in a single season. It is all that re-work of the same site that makes full electric both practical and cheaper than diesel.
I do like your mention of compressed air systems. We are looking at using compressed air (and vacuum) for moving grain (corn, wheat and soybeans) from the field with a Center Pivot type operation. If a system can pump water under pressure to a field, it can suck grain back along a similar path, and allow the Harvester/Combine system to be much simpler, lighter and less energy consumptive than the present monster dedicated-use machines.
As far as power source systems, I am not really too interested in batteries, from what I have seen. From what I have seen Batteries = Expensive, higher maintenance, very lossy, and limited life.
Solar Thermal seems like it has some of the best return for the effort with some of the lowest negative side effects. One acre can give 250 kW -- about 250 HP in practical application, which more than covers the load applications of a large tractor.
Dual use of the pipes is not a bad idea! Its good to get the combine off the fields since it compresses the ground lowering yields. The intresting part is the miniature combine being pivoted around and how it attaches to the pipe system, sucking the cereals or even all of the biomass if it is finely chopped is old and proven technology.
You could also resurrect a function that were included in very old combines. They harvested small weed seeds alongside the cereals to get them of the fields. This function were deleted when efficient weed killers were developed but that race is likely to sooner or later be won by the weeds.
Magnus,
Well thank you very much.
That is some good thinking.
-----------------
Usually the details get one of three responses:
A. Huh?
or
B. Nothing will do no good, no way out, we are all Doomed!
or
C. If we use a Fusion Reactor . . . (totally out-of-touch impractical tech).
In short -- Just totally out of touch with how to practically solve practical problems.
-----------------
So if I am following you correctly, you are saying to consider chopping and sucking up everything, back to a central point (or an edge row, if using a linear system) and separate the "wheat from the chaff" at the central point.
I can see many advantages to this. The remote traveling end of the field equipment could be MUCH simpler -- no need to have a cylinder and grates (which break up the cob or seed pods), nor blowers/spreaders to handle the straw.
On the central point it could do the separation and even sterilize or pasteurize the remains (to kill weed seeds and pathogens) before composting (or whatever) the remains.
Damn fine thinking, there, Magnus!
If you would a like a more detailed discussion of some of these topics (without all the wack-a-doodle this thread has turned into) try this link -- it is a discussion I took part in a year ago before I started building some of this stuff. Some pretty good details in there >>>
http://terraverde.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-renewable-electron-econom...
Yes, that is exactly what I mean. You happened to hit on a well developed part of my technological toolbox, so manny problems can be solved if you look at them as material flows and
I know a little about farming.
Back to the hard stuff, I am trying to write a book that covers the edges of my complete thinking about these issues in an effort to influence my local society and today I got it up to 90 A5 pages.
I have no experience with center pivot but I have been around piping systems used to move solids.They are absolutely worthless at more than a few feet if you are depending on vacuum.
You can use a big and very energy hungry fan to BLOW SOLIDS THRU PIPES but there are lots of problems and where its done there is usually somebody around constantly to deal with stopups.If for some reason the power fails for even a few seconds in can take hours to get the pipes cleared so you can get started again.
You obviously can't use a water slurry to bring things IN from a field.Mixing in some chemicals with the irrigation water on the way OUT is another story of course.
Looks like a tough row to hoe from here.
Ok, the whitepapers with the kind suction blowers I have been around a little goes up to aprox 100 m of pipe.
you might move a VERY SMALL QUANTITY of light fluffy materials thru a large diameter pipe that far by means of a vacuum.There's just not much energy to be captured on a long pipe by pulling the air out of one end and depending on ambient air pressure to push both the air and the product thru the pipe from the other end.
If the pipe is large enough to flow a lot of air,the air moves too slow to move the product.If it is small enough to make the air move fast enough to carry the product along,friction between the pipe and the air captures most of the energy.In furniture plants the longest runs of vacuum piping that I have seen that carry large amounts of fine sawdust and wood shavings are less than fifty feet long.Anything longer uses a centrifugal air pump that develops a vacuum to pull the dust to the pump ,always less than fifty feet, generally less than ten feet,and from there the shavings and air mixture is PUSHED by the same pump at fairly high velocity to the destination,which may be as much as four or five hundred feet away.Longer "push" runs might be possible.I'm not a specialist in ths sort of thing.Just relating what I've seen.
oldfarmermac --
That is some very useful perspective there, thank you.
[quote]
I have been around piping systems used to move solids.They are absolutely worthless at more than a few feet if you are depending on vacuum.
[/quote]
All sound fair enough. The vacuum is of particular interest in sucking into the system -- probably a few feet at most. Presently Combine/Harvesters are mechanical pickup only -- if the dried plant scoops into the head, it is in. If not it is lost.
[quote]
You can use a big and very energy hungry fan to BLOW SOLIDS THRU PIPES but there are lots of problems and where its done there is usually somebody around constantly to deal with stopups.If for some reason the power fails for even a few seconds in can take hours to get the pipes cleared so you can get started again.
[/quote]
Good points again. I had figured (relatively) dry grains (such as corn, wheat, and soybeans) -- would suck and blow through pipes without a great deal of fight. The added concept of sucking and blowing everything through like Magnus suggested will need some more serious study. My larger concern than "stuck" (I can make them self-clearing) is for "blow outs." A ruptured pipe or broken joint could dump hundreds of bushels (meaning thousands of dollars) quite quickly.
As far as energy hungry (and equipment expense) you have to keep in mind the present systems used are even more so. A new combine/harvester is around $250K and has a hungry diesel engine. And it requires a full-time operator in the seat. We do not have to be real creative when those are our numbers to beat. :)
On the balance side of things, we are talking about using 1 acre or so for Solar Thermal and that is the hundreds of horsepower of available electric power on the site, so overall, this should be Net Zero energy once operating.
Do you or anyone have any idea of the design numbers needed? Or even rough "shotgun" numbers? Let's say we were doing a 1/4 section field -- a 160 acre square -- about 2640 x 2640 feet -- so to get down the radius, let's say we are blowing 1300 feet down a 4" pipe. Any idea how much energy that takes? And we would use booster blowers along the path? Again, available power should not be a real limiting factor, as we will have 480-volt, 3-phase all down the center pivot arm.
philo,
Sorry I have no figures and I am niether a real engineer(although I understand most of the principles involved)nor a tradesman knowledgeable about this particular field.I HAVE worked on many short term industrial shutdown/maintainence jobs as a welder/mechanic as this is a good way to pick up a few bucks and new skills in the off season..
My gut feeling is that a thousand feer is way to far to push corn or wheat reliably in large quantities thru a pipe in an air slurry.It would be far easier to electrify the combine with a giant cord than manage the pipe imo.And combines /harvesters can off load on the fly to the trucks that will deliver the grain anyway,saving loading trucks at the delivery end of your pipe system.
I don't think operators wages are high enough to worry about getting rid of them just yet,and I suspect operators will get cheaper as more and more people hunt fewer and ffewer jobs over the next few years.
Dezakin,
Don't want to get in the middle of this, but as you do routinely post on nuclear power I've been meaning to ask what you make of some of the recent bids for new plants in Turkey & Ontario.
Turkey
21 cents/kWh
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/finance/10824979.asp?scr=1
Ontario
$10,800 / kW
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/665644
The Turkish bid seems to have been egregious price-gouging. Even the revised bid of 15 ¢/kW·h is very high.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLE36758620090714
The Ontario bids are puzzling. There's no breakdown of the $26B AECL bid, but the Areva bid reportedly
CA$7.8 billion for 3,200 MW is US$2,200/kW, which seems too low, while $15.8 billion for "the rest of the plant" seems absurdly high.
According to Dan Yurman,
http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-aecl-down-for-count.html
I'm totally ignorant on the situation in Turkey and not qualified to comment.
For Ontario, I've looked over it recently and from my best guess its a very high bid because they were looking for bid guarantees rather than estimates in a regulatory environment that has seen large cost overruns before. I honestly expect north american nukes to be very expensive for the next decade if any are built because of the long atrophy of skilled contractors and engineers in the industry. AECL seems to have problems making inexpensive CANDUs in Canada from the history of it.
Everyone I know seems to be a bit puzzled by the Ontario bid situation. Weather they need the capacity, the outrageously high bid, the poor transparency of competitive bids, the rejection and the perception political theatre. There might be some horse trading going on for coal or natural gas capacity behind the curtains or something but that might just be me being paranoid.
Indeed, on the Rossing web site, the 2008 annual report claims production of something like 4,000 tons of uranium oxide yearly.
But, this is unenriched uranium oxide, or yellowcake, which is 85% uranium. A ton of this contains about 40 MegaWatt-hours of energy if burned conventionally. 4,000 tons would yield 18 MegaWatt-years - about 0.1% as much energy as you claim.
If your claim is 1000x what it should be, and if I can debunk it so easily, this website you've been quoting may not be a good source of information.
Anyway, if it were true as you say that uranium mining produces 500x the energy it consumes, common sense suggests that nuclear would have supplanted oil by now. Oil has never been that profitable, even in the best of times.
I dont know where you get this idea. A 1 GW electric light water reactor consumes about 200 tonnes of unenriched ore per year, which after enrichment is 40 tonnes of fuel. 4000 tonnes of uranium oxide is 20 GW years electric, not 18 megawatt years.
Its because people confuse energy return with financial return. They arent the same.
You're right, and my source was bad.
This argument is a two-edged sword: even if uranium mining were to generate 500x the energy it consumes, the financials may not work out.
After doing the research necessary to understand your claim better, I'm reminded that there simply isn't enough uranium to sustain modern living long enough for my grandchildren to enjoy it.
As for breeder reactors, well they all seem to be mothballed right now. They say it's due to "financials." ;)
I can imagine a future with fast breeders everywhere, but the risks are such that this would require a truly profound level of social control. I'm not sure humanity would make that trade-off.
Sure. Coal is still cheaper in total costs.
Oh there's certainly enough uranium. Rossing mine is roughly 300ppm ore, and theres several hundred million tonnes of uranium of that ore grade in the crust in sandstones, shales and so on. Thats enough to last the once through cycle several hundred years, and we can readily go to lower ore grades, do reprocessing, and enrich tails.
Yep. Uranium is just to cheap and plentiful. If a breeder reactor is going to compete, it will have to do more than conserve uranium.
Dezakin,
In THEORY I tend to agree with you BUT as a practical matter we can't make the transitions you speak of fast enough to prevent collapse ,most likely.
And although it has not yet happened on a truly world wide scale "crop monoculture diseases" could definitely take out a crop world wide. Even two crops,but one would be enough to trigger a very hot war.
Disease and war are amply demonstrated facts and most certainly should not be mentioned with "and some other soft science nonsense".
It is very likely that a truly dangerous disease will emerge SOMEDAY and thin us out like the first hard frost thins out flies.Sonething like h1n1 but with a REAL mean streak-not a paltry one or two percent fatality rate max like killer flu.
If it arrives before the end of the tourism era,it will be all over the world possibly before anyone really knows whats what.
Economics, Energy, and Growth is always a part of our lives wherever we may go
These silly shouting matches are annoying. Zealots are annoying and non productive.
However with sufficient nuclear energy we can break zealots down into diesel and use them for haul truck fuel...
You mean the zealots on both sides?
title24: let me revise your statement in order to project it into the future - I'll break it down into its three constituents for clarity:
"Economics is always a part of our lives wherever we may go, today and in the future"
"Energy will be less a part of our lives wherever we may go in the future"
"Growth will not be part of our lives in the future"
Ahh, that sounds better. Though economics is an internal cycle (if we omit those nasty 'externalities' that economists sometimes mention), energy and growth are two things which are and will continue to decline until they reverse into negative territory.
The results of this reversal will be nasty, and no amount of electric tractors (or heaven forbid, electric golfcarts) will reverse it.
Salk wrote a book, "The Survival of the Wisest", which discusses the growth vs no growth issue and describes what has to be accomplished to convert from a growth to stable system. The discussion is based more on principles than on practical actions but shows the thought process of a person trained in biological science. The discussions on TOD cover exactly the material contained in an introductory environmental science text. These have been around for at least 20 years but do not seem to have made it into very many peoples thoughts. At least the ideas are now being engaged. Living in the Environment by Miller is probably the gold standard of these texts.
oldchuck: Either I'm blind or I'm missing your factual contribution to the discussion. All I hear is your whining.
If you have something to contribute, something worth listening to, how about typing it out for us? Then we can talk about it.
Iso;
Your comments on this thread today have been repeatedly belligerent and insulting.
I hope YOU find a way to be in a constructive conversation here without that tone. You made some good points, but there's no need to cap them off with putdowns and impudence. It effectively hijacked the thread so that now it reads like so much of the other Internet noise.
Chuck's comment made perfect sense to me, and said what I was thinking, too.
Bob
jokuhl,
I second that, Iso's behavior has detracted from this post.
Neil Howes( not a relative of John)
I disagree. Truth seeking which is the basis for all science does not care about popularity or PC speaking/writing. I've found the exchange of great interest, and hardly a distraction. Sometimes in heated debates, things get personal. It's unfortunate (and human), but there is no reason to discount or attempt to discredit the messenger. I don't know who precisely is correct, but I intend to reread, check the links posted, and do some research on my own.
If nuclear is out of reach as Iso implies, then we are truly going to have some rough times ahead. Social aspects to this energy crunch that can be quantified BTW are widespread discouragement and system breakdowns, including critical parts scarcity. Try getting anything techical done in a third world country today. Sure it's possible, only it takes about 10X longer and much more effort. That's the future I fear.
MANY times in such heated arguments, the personal attacks destroy any truthtelling that the original argument was trying to advance. It overtakes and completely sidelines the real information. It's not "PC" or Popularity. It's civility and self-control.
Being brutal doesn't guarantee you are being brutally honest.
I agree with Iso on the unsustainability of Nuclear, but I don't find any refreshing honesty in a writing approach that has so little self-restraint, AND, the last thing Nuclear Opponents need is more of this kind of petulance. Just opposing Nuclear at all already gets one irrationally labeled as 'Irrational'.. let's keep that tag unsubstantiated, Ok?
Most of the power we are going to need will come from us, and not burning out will depend on our ability to keep ourselves under control.
Krishna, the Charioteer, corralling the wild horses that draw the chariot. ..or not. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070909022241AAN5NB3
Bob
.. and as far as 'discounting or discrediting the messenger' is concerned, think about that line carefully for a moment.
The whole objection is that this poster has him/herself been discounting and discrediting their opponents, and with that, sidelining the issue.
Don't conflate that behavior with 'the basis for all science' .. the scientific approach would fall apart with such adolescent lack of discipline.
Best,
Bob
Well if Nuclear is so viable why aren't they building them? Wasn't it Ontario which recently cancelled 2 nuclear power plants being built, infact they haven't even paid back the debt for their last nuclear reactors.
To replace oil use with Nuclear, we have to construct 2,600 nuclear power plants each operating at 1.1 Gigawatt capacity. Lets spread this over a period of 30 years. That means one has to come online every 4.5 days. It's simple math. If we have to do it in 20 years it comes to one power plant going up every 2.8 days.
Of course this doesn't account for the 3% Growth that the world bank says is a must for the global economy. So we'll need double the amount of nuclear power in 24 years. So 5,200 plants.
We must begin building NOW, not tomorrow, not a few days from now or a few years. BUT NOW.
But wait? The US government has committed 23.7 Trillion dollars in implicit and explicit support for the US banking system according to a 226 page report by the Special Inspector General of TARP Neil Barofsky. We face an earth shaking financial disaster if that bluff is actually called by the markets.
If the US tried to raise even a third of that amount, the system would crash and printing wouldn't help much as then why would the Saudi's sell oil to the US for worthless pieces of paper.
The game is rigged - against you, me and civilisation. We are our own worst enemy.
I think it has a bit to do with the fact that coal is so much cheaper and most of the world doesn't have the French expertise with nuclear power to make it as competitive. I pretty much expect the first ten new nukes in north america to be built this side of decades to be very very expensive. No one really wants to be first shouldering that kind of cost.
Well, it can be done, but it certainly doesn't have to. We're not running out of coal or oil overnight so we can ramp up nuclear power plant production over several decades, and we'll only do this if price signals from rising coal prices or carbon taxes push in that direction. France shows its certainly possible.
Were you trying to reply to a different post?
I feel that Nuclear will NOT be viable.
It depends on a complex fuel cycle, and so far, the reactors are massive, complex constructions that require heavy maintenance and countless highly specialized parts.
There is political and economic complexity that can provide any number of bottlenecks and 'above ground factors' that the industry will not be able to avoid ..
Cooling Demands
Waste Management
OverCentralized, prone to monopolistic business practices, and puts more pressure on a strained grid, while distributed generation can help moderate such pressure, or at least leave communities with viable backup power in emergencies.
Watta Mess!
Bob
If nuclear power were viable on the 1970:s I expect it to be viable in the 2020:s.
Back then even small countries could build a complete supply chain and why should it be impossible to repeat that?
Which Countries?
I would propose that even small countries were ultimately downstream from a world awash in oil energy, such that Hardened or High-tolerance Engineered Materials, Control Electronics and Software, Transport Infrastructure, a level of Global Security under the protective halo of a Cold War, and overall Global Economics were there as a baseline support for that development and sustenance.
Part of my contention is that while Nuclear claims to PROVIDE this Baseload, Steady Energy, it is also completely dependent UPON uninterruptible energies for an environment that will support it. Afraid I won't have much proof until after the fact.. but the recent troubles in Vermont, Germany, Japan, Scotland and France in keeping things running, not leaking and generally in good order might tend to support this concern.
(Congrats on your writing..)
Bob
The one I know a lot about is Sweden but it seems there were the same kind of development in at least Switzerland. Ok, there might have been only one small country where there were industries who could make all of the design and all advanced parts.
Hey VK,
What is the math behind your model?
"To replace oil use with Nuclear, we have to construct 2,600 nuclear power plants each operating at 1.1 Gigawatt capacity."
Thanks.
Hey Phildo,
The link is here http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2320, I am not as well informed on Nuclear as some of the other poster,s but even if we assume all the problems away we need a serious global crash building exercise in Nuclear and then we have to convert our entire transport fleet to electric cars.
Currently Nuclear power plants take between 2-5 years to construct. We need to rapidly cut that back to less then a year and begin powering up the electric cars. But the economic crisis leaves me with a sick feeling inside that it might be to late as all the money has been blown on bets, wine, women and song.
Agreed.
As it is, I have enough difficulty sorting the "bull from the tish" generally (that may not be an expression:)). Furthermore, this site has been of great value and comfort these past months.
How many "Flag as inappropriate"s does it take to clear such threads?
Regards, Matt B