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Meanwhile the mainstream too often falls into the same hand waving misdirection trap, blaming whoever disputes that human carbon emissions are the main driver of climate change, such as ‘Big Fossil’ interests, are aiming “to sow enough doubt to delay real climate action“.
What “action” is that?
National Resources Defense Council: “NRDC works to dramatically scale up renewable power around the world.”But this requires burning even MORE fossil fuels! Are these people stupid? Ignorant?
Or frankly is the mainstream gaslighting us?
“And so, with their profit margins very much on the line, these [Big Fossil] interests have replaced outright denial with spreading climate misinformation meant to undermine climate science and solutions.“
What solutions? Burn more oil to make windmills? Mine more copper? etc….
Addressing Climate Change Will Not “Save the Planet” – by Christopher Ketcham (The Intercept, 3 Dec 2022)
The dismal reality is that green energy will save not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one domineering species.
According to the co-authors of a Conservation Letters piece, we are “dangerously ignoring” this [global resources and habitat destruction overshoot] reality and instead doubling down on the “distortion” that climate mitigation is all that matters to protecting wildlife. Over the last 30 years, the proportion of scientific papers closely tying climate change and global warming to changes in patterns of biodiversity has “steadily increased,” according to their analysis. Media coverage of climate change in relation to biodiversity has followed suit, repeating and compounding the error. The net result of this “misguided focus on climate change” has been the undermining of conservation science “as an evidence-based scientific discipline.” As Dobson put it to me, “If conservation biologists don’t take a balanced look at the evidence, they can’t claim to be evidence-based.”
The crux of the problem is that mainstream environmentalists have siloed climate change as a phenomenon apart from the broad human ecological footprint, separate from deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, megafauna kill-off, collapsing fisheries, desertification, depleted freshwater, soil degradation, oceanic garbage gyres, toxification of rainfall with microplastics, and on and on — the myriad biospheric effects of breakneck growth. Climate change is “but one symptom of an environmentally dysfunctional system of constant growth of economies and populations,” ecologist William Rees, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia.
“fossil fuel bonanza will be gone and this pale blue dot will only be able to sustain even fewer humans than when it began”… ‘yes Jim, it’s old Malthusian wine in new bottles’… ‘GUARANTEED’…_
– “Malthusian…”
“Someone called Malthus once made a specific prediction that didn’t come true, therefore humanity is invincible”.
You’d never guess there have been five mass extinctions on this planet. Populations can and do crash. Two minutes searching:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soay_sheep&oldid=1124347355#Scientific_study
– The sheep exhibit a phenomenon known as overcompensatory density dependence, in which their population never reaches equilibrium. The population growth is so great as to exceed the carrying capacity of the island, which eventually causes a dramatic population crash, and then the cycle repeats. For example, in 1989, the population fell by two-thirds within 12 weeks.
Note that this is common enough to be a named phenomenon, yet among a certain vocal minority (who typically deny certain parts of science), “Malthusian” is used as a term of dismissal and derision.
Natasha:
– “environmentalists have siloed climate change as a phenomenon apart from the broad human ecological footprint…”
This appears to be your own assumption. First paragraph from the current Extinction Rebellion homepage:
– “Life on Earth is in crisis. Our climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and the stakes are high. Biodiversity loss. Crop failure. Social and ecological collapse. Mass extinction.”
and from Extinction Rebellion’s First Demand:
– 1. Tell the truth – Governments must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency…
Natasha, it’s the corporatocratic media that always miss out the “ecological”. Don’t form your opinions about activist groups from neoliberalism’s mouthpiece. Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain are single-issue campaigns, but at least they’re keeping the pressure on.
So yes, the so-called “mainstream media” (which represents big money, not the mainstream of people) is indeed gaslighting us. Of course it is; when did it ever do otherwise? How could it do otherwise? It is funded by advertising, so it has to preach economic growth. So it leaves the ‘ecological’ out of the crisis, substitutes “emergency” as if the crisis hadn’t been predicted for decades, and makes out that all will be solved by “green” energy and billions of electric cars. Delusion.
But the activist groups aren’t making that mistake, no matter how many times the corporatocratic media misrepresent us as “climate campaigners”.
When I meet a sheep with a Doctorate I’ll view them as having human abilities to adapt to change.
Until then I will continue to enjoy their company with roast potatoes, gravy and two veg…_DiggerUK unlike ‘poor dear Oscar’ I detect no intelligence from your sarcastic contribution “the lowest form of [t]wit” mocking the trajectory of fossil fuel depletion:-
“… ‘yes Jim, it’s old Malthusian wine in new bottles’… “
I’m waiting for you to now please give us here in a few sentences some engineering and thermodynamically competent replacement strategies for high energy density fossil fuels that will maintain 8 billion humans alive globally without fossil fuels … ?
I’ve been reading, researching, writing, building small engineering experiments, political organising, and occasionally teaching this topic for 25 or so years, and if you’ve found out something I’ve missed then why not please share it here with us?
For example, please ‘Do The Maths’ – i.e. try reading this link Finite Feeding Frenzy and tell us where the good Dr. Tom Murphy is drinking “old Malthusian wine in new bottles”?
Or how about enlightening us about how the FAN Initiative has got it wrong?
“Feeling a sense of impending doom? In the face of converging and growing crises, civilization is at risk and the planet suffers. The FAN Initiative provides the science needed to help understand and navigate through the threat of biospheric and societal collapse. A strong response from humanity is required.”
Until you supply us here with such refutations, together with details of what you propose as fossil fuel replacements – and drop the sarcasm – the case remains robust that as fossil fuels deplete over the next 100 or so years, most of the humans they have enabled to be alive over the last c250 years be gone. This pale blue dot will only be able to sustain even fewer humans than when it began in the c1750s – yes : GUARANTEED.
Sure, humans can eat other animals, therefore we are gods and will survive the mass extinction we are causing.
This couldn’t possibly be a comfortable but warped perspective indulged in by the last generation to experience the rising side of the fossil fuel consumption curve…
Do the Math: The Ride of Our Lives (5 Jul 2022)
Clark writes:
“Don’t form your opinions about activist groups from neoliberalism’s mouthpiece. Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain are single-issue campaigns, but at least they’re keeping the pressure on.”
How to Beat Propaganda: the Grokking Strategy is how I form my opinions.
“We CAN beat propaganda, but it takes some effort to avoid falling prey to the simple, yet effective, methods that the powers that be (PTB) use to control us. You need first of all to understand that there is no such thing as an “authoritative source.” All sources can be wrong, and many are there to trick you into believing that something is true when it is not. So, you need to listen to everybody and trust nobody. In this way, you can “grok” your information and not be grokked by the PTB.”
“but at least they’re keeping the pressure on” – such indiscriminate easy pressure we’ve seen from XR and Just Stop Oil – e.g. causing traffic jams and gluing yourself to stuff – is misinformed, manipulated, manipulative, as I have detailed many times here above. Briefly:
a) the reliance on business as usual magically enabled by so called re-newables i.e. harvesting low energy density solar energy flows, as if thermodynamics doesn’t exist, to
b) justify aiming for voluntary global reduction of fossil fuel use, but this would
c) simultaneously disable any possible re-newable scale-up,
d) without XR, JSO, and the ‘Green’ movement offering an adult acknowledgement of CERTAIN society civilization and population collapse due to Hubbert depletion mechanisms:… is irrational and dishonest, and destined to fail as it punishes everyone when activists may be better ‘Blowing up Luxury Carbon‘ !!
“The problem with upsetting the orderly conduct of life with attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure in the developed world […] is that it threatens to disproportionately punish those who can least afford it: poor and middle class fuel oil and gasoline consumers.”
“[…] a more tantalizing project, because politically it is more feasible, is for saboteurs to strike at the absurd, obscene carbon gorging of elites – to disrupt unnecessary luxury demand that could be cut off with no pain to people who already have too much. “If we have to cut emissions now,” [Andreas Malm ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’] argues, “we have to start with the rich.” He cites the pivotal distinction, formulated by philosopher Henry Shue, between luxury and subsistence emissions: “The former happen because rich people like to wallow in the pleasure of their rank, the latter because poor people try to survive.”
In cities, SUVs are loathed by everyone except the people who drive them; and in a city the size of London, a few dozen people could in a short space of time make the ownership of these cars effectively impossible, just by running keys down the side of them, at a cost to the owner of several thousand pounds a time. Say fifty people vandalising four cars each every night for a month: six thousand trashed SUVs in a month and the Chelsea tractors would soon be disappearing from our streets. So why don’t these things happen?
Natasha, there are such actions as the ones you recommend eg. recently various A22 groups disrupted the terminals of private jets; there have been multiple actions against London City airport (over 80% business passengers), disruptions at investment banks and AGMs of various companies; JSO actions at Harrods and Aston Martin. Regarding SUVs, there are the Tyre Extinguishers.
I agree that disrupting luxury carbon is best, but I think you’re being overly critical and expecting too much. Direct action is hugely demanding upon one’s life; people prepared to go so far are in a small minority, and extremely valuable. Andreas Malm’s pipeline sabotage also would hit poor and rich alike. Campaigns like Insulate Britain make perfect sense.
Something I would very much like to see is convergence between the anti-emissions movement and the anti-war movement. Of all the obscene wastes of fuel and production of avoidable emissions, military activity is one of the worst. But preventing such convergence seems to be George Monbiot’s special mission:
Jonathan Cook: How the left became cheerleaders for US imperialism (27 Oct 2022)
Jonathan Cook: A disavowal of George Monbiot’s witch-hunt (27 Apr 2017)
“a) the reliance on business as usual magically enabled by so called re-newables i.e. harvesting low energy density solar energy flows, as if thermodynamics doesn’t exist,”
Natasha, you frequently refer to thermodynamics as a limiting factor. My understanding of solar panels is that it takes a certain amount of energy to fabricate them, approx 200kwh per 100watt panel, and produce approx 1.5kwh per day. After a relatively short time of 133 days they will have paid their energy debt and any energy produced thereafter is “free” from energy debt. I’m not quite sure that that fabrication energy required includes the mining and processing of all the materials required as it’s kinda hard to find that information, at least from my casual Sunday afternoon searching.
Can you elucidate further on the thermodynamic limiting factor you refer to?
I get the fact that I won’t be boarding an electric-powered long haul flight anytime soon due to the energy density of battery stored power but for running my fridge I don’t need energy density. Indeed, most people’s car journey requirements could easily be met by electric vehicles 99% of the time.
“engineering and thermodynamically competent replacement strategies for high energy density fossil fuels”
….In the here and now there is no viable substitute for fossil fuels when working out how to electrify the planet, or provide for its energy needs.
My energy survival plan?…. Nuclear in the main. There are many other ways to neutralise nuclear shortcomings.
Top up with geothermal…. expensive, hydro…. not globally available, tidal…. prohibitively expensive and untested at scale, turning North Africa into a giant solar farm…. geopolitically unstable, air/ground heat exchangers not always applicable.In the here and now shortfalls can only be made up with fossil fuels. Beyond pumped hydro and storage heaters there is no viable, time tested, economic, heat/energy/electric storage reservoirs.
Like it or lump it, we cannot have adequate and reliable electricity or energy supplies without fossil/carbon based fuels in the mix.
The shortcomings of intermittent, unreliable, wind and solar make them unacceptable in the modern world. It’s as daft as employing workers who are allowed to turn up for work as and when they feel like it.
Again, like it or lump it, citizens of this planet don’t want a sackcloth and ashes existence. Neither will the poorer, deprived citizens of this planet tolerate being denied what everybody else has.
Carbon dioxide, both anthropogenic and anthropomorphic, is a non existent threat…_
Clark & Natasha, thanks for an informed discussion, despite your differences, it’s good to see you both considering a very complex issue with grace and impeccable manners. That’s not always the case these days. Natasha, thank you also for the link to Tom Murphy’s blog, which reminds me of Ronald Wright’s essays and the subsequent film – Surviving Progress – only with more maths. Of course, James Lovelock was perhaps the first to caution us on the risk to humanity of atmospheric contaminants and the impact to the biosphere in his Gaia books during the 1970s, but I recall feeling a sense of despair when he announced shortly after that there was nothing we could actually do to avert disaster. As Wright observed, once we degrade the biosphere so that it can no longer sustain us, nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end a bad idea.
If we could only use our collective imagination and intelligence and work towards a series of monumental changes in the way we exist, then perhaps the down side need not be so traumatic, but the last three years with the pandemic has clearly shown that even with an tangible existential threat, humanity remains divided and destructive. It’s astonishing that we invest so heavily and creatively in military applications designed to cause great harms, but we neglect the other side of the coin so readily. We are indeed the architects of our downfall.
I doubt that there is a solution other than a sudden and severe depopulation event, which in itself carries significant risks, but I still indulge the fantasy of a utopian future from time to time, where we can enjoy this garden of Eden and replenish the fruits without trashing it for future generations to enjoy. I’m very much with Clark on organised protest, but observe that, in the UK at least, it is not without significant risk to one’s liberty. A fellow inmate during my recent misadventure was convicted after organising a protest in an ancient woodland being felled for HS2. He was a maths PhD graduate with no previous convictions, but is now serving a 4 year anti-terrorism sentence after a police search of his flat revealed a chapter of the Anarchist’s Cookbook on his laptop, that had been emailed to him by someone in the USA. We live in interesting times.
ET asks:
“Can you elucidate further on the thermodynamic limiting factor you refer to?”
Yes. In a nut shell we have to perform whole system analysis, which most fail to do.
Usually due to ignorance, and/or a desire to corrupt messages to suit various ‘interests’ – for example: “Jeremy Leggett is founder and chairman of Solarcentury, a solar solutions company currently the UK’s fastest growing private energy company” whilst being founding member of the “Green New Deal” a UK based political lobbying group pushing the ‘Zero Carbon’ agenda appealing to magical renewable energy infrastructure to be built on UK land that does not exist, with imported hardware made from materials that do not exist in any quantity, (even building sand is in critical sort supply globally) to create electricity that can’t replace the the fossil fuels necessary for renewables to scale up & be built out, and even if these limits do not apply, relying on massive fossil fuelled electricity power generation back-up, or batteries made from lithium that does not exist, for when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow, further rendered silly because the GND crew are all fevered anti-nuclear electricity too! I’ve written a long illustrated essay – see sections 12 to 15 for details and references.
A solar cell array thus can’t and doesn’t exist in the real world only as a sum of its input materials and often vastly underestimated land usage calculations ~vs~ how many days of sunshine somehow pays that debt back, and then magically claiming its ‘free energy‘ from the sun after that date.
In other words we have to do honest whole system EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) calculations, not piecemeal ‘infinite externalities’ corpora£e ma$$aging – hold you hands up Mark Z. Jacobson (see section 11 of my essay):-
Failed Lawsuits : Dozens of Climate & Power-Grid experts judge Non-Nuclear 100% Wind Water and Solar power study “riddled with errors”
Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson [[131]] is one of the most infamous of the lobbyists ‘voices’, who’s “outspokenness and solo style … captured the public imagination” [132] following a series (2009 – 2018) [133] of controversial studies. In 2011 Jacobson began vigorously promoting non-Nuclear ‘Roadmaps’ for 139 countries worldwide via campaigning network 100.org [134] [135] and The Solutions Project. [136]
In 2017 Jacobson filed, then later withdrew a well publicised “unprecedented” lawsuit, demanding $10 million in damages [137] [138] against a group of eminent scientists (Clack et al.) for their study [139] [140] published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that the ‘Roadmaps’ contained “nonsensical” assumptions, with a “staggering scale of modelling errors, inappropriate methods, and implausible assumptions […] seriously impeding the move to a cost effective decarbonized energy system.” For example they “overstated by roughly a factor of ten the ability of the United States to increase its hydropower output” and would require “more than 1,500 square meters of land for wind turbines for each American … a territory nearly twice the size of California” which “render it [Jacobson’s 100.org ‘Roadmaps’ ] unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100 percent wind, solar, and hydroelectric power system.” [141]
ET asks:- “Can you elucidate further on the thermodynamic limiting factor you refer to?”
Yes see this essay I wrote sections 11 – 15
The links to the essays and solar arrays don’t work, Natasha.
Hi Shibboleth, The links I gave above (to <achive.org> where I published my essay) all seem to work OK from my computer i.e. I can view the .pdf file online in my browser – I just checked them again today … ?
Here’s a link to download the .pdf where all the other links I gave above are, which all work, (unless the content linked to has been removed since I wrote the essay in 2019)
Fortescue looks toward greener mining with 240-tonne electric truck.
Seems some mining companies are looking at their mining infrastructure and looking for ways to electrify the huge trucks.Thanks ET,
The “15-tonne prototype power system” (battery and electric engine) being tested by Fortescue in its T264 mining truck delivers 1.4-MWh = 1877-BHp. An empty T264 mining truck weighs 176 tonnes and can carry 240 tones of payload.
The “2,700-hp diesel engine” (D9812 Diesel motor) that is being replaced weighs 8.6 tonnes and delivers a peak 3620 BHp.
The “prototype power system” is thus twice the weight (15 tonnes ~vs~ 8.6 tonnes) for half the power (1877-BHp ~vs~ 3620 BHp) i.e. about a quarter the energy density of a diesel motor.
This will not improve since battery energy density is near maximum allowed by the laws of physics.
Since Fortescue fail to tell us (i.e. rendered and invisible externality) where or how the “prototype” electricity is generated or delivered for remote location recharging, they appear to be exhaling the “net zero” PR propaganda myth machine smoke and mirrors game that John Deere Electric Swarm Tractors ignited a few years ago!
Natasha, your comparison is not quite fair; you’ve quoted the +peak+ power for the diesel engine, but the +rated+ power for the electric; the diesel engine will surely fail if used continually at its peak power. And you’ve calculated the energy density for only the power systems rather than the truck as a whole.
I’m actually rather impressed with the electric truck’s advertised figures (though the reality may well fall short, of course). There is also the simplicity and increased working life of electric systems to be considered.
None of this makes the solution to humanity’s predicament simple or easy. However, it may be feasible, so let’s try <3
Natasha, this seems to have cheered up our good professor Tom Murphy a bit:
I hope it will bring you a little optimism too.
Thanks Clark, Yes it was a back of envelope calculation using quoted figures I could readily find online. The broad point stands: electricity “storage technologies” are close to electrochemical energy density limits (~ 2 MJ/Kg), and are an order of magnitude or so less energy dense than fossil fuels (~40 MJ/Kg), and don’t scale up in size: batteries are OK for physically small devices like mobile phones, that deliver low power loads but are still more than 50% battery by mass.
I’m aware of PLAN (Planetary Limits Academic Network) not sure they can effect any change of direction in world affairs much different to the crash of civilization by end of this century – but hopefully bend the trajectory to the least harm and pain possible for all …
Mixed sizes of crushed rock can range from 1.6 to 2.2 tons per cubic meter.
The “15-tonne prototype power system” (battery and electric engine) being tested by Fortescue is being fitted into a T264 mining truck that can carry 240 tones of payload = circa 2 tons / m3 = 120 m3.
The D9812 Diesel motor being replaced by the “prototype power system” = circa 10 m3 (cubic meters) (2.661 x 1.777 x 2.125 m) = 8% of payload volume (plus fuel tank).
The “15-tonne prototype power system” (battery and electric engine) = circa 14 m3 (cubic meters) (3.6 x 1.6 x 2.4 m) = 12% of payload volume.
So what Natasha. It can’t run for as long on a “full tank” and takes longer to refuel/recharge and its payload is a little reduced. Electrical power can replace diesel power with some compromises and a few advantages, maintenance being one.
The obvious question is where will the electricity to power it will come from. My own answer to that is that it has to be mainly nuclear but that’s not a popular view.Also, Natasha, I asked you previously to define what you mean by the term “Thermodynamically Competent.” Now, I am imagining you rolling your eyes at this impertinent question but I have searched and found no comprehensive definition. You may think that the term speaks for itself but I disagree. Obviously, I can comprehend what it might purport to mean but I would like to know what you mean by it, in your own explanation without referring me to what others say or links to websites.
