Abstract
At their roots, territorial conflicts in human and nonhuman species alike are attempts to control more of the products of solar energy conversion. More land means a greater share of incident solar radiation. In human societies, the resulting wealth can be obtained indirectly through the payment of taxes or tribute by subject peoples. This point is pertinent to our energy future, and we have much more to say about it in Chaps. 5 and 6. Solar energy can also be stored underground, and for the past 250 years humans have gained access to vast quantities of compressed and chemically transformed fossil organisms in the form of oil, coal, and natural gas. Without these concentrated stores of solar energy, which we call fossil fuels, the technological triumphs and economic progress of the past 150 years would have been the stuff of deluded imaginations.
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Notes
- 1.
For simplicity, the matter can only undergo chemical, but not nuclear reactions.
- 2.
Some may remember cold fusion, which burst into notoriety on March 23, 1989, when an announcement came from Drs. Fleischmann and Pons at the University of Utah. Both were disgraced and forced out.
- 3.
The IEA study warns that energy used by computers and consumer electronics will not only double by 2022, but increase threefold by 2030. IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said in a press release accompanying the report that the increase was equivalent to the current combined total residential electricity consumption of the United States and Japan. Source: The New York Times, 5/14/2009.
- 4.
The second law of thermodynamics prevents all heat from being converted to electricity. The best coal-fired power stations in the world have efficiencies of 45–48%. The U.S. average for coal-fired power plants was 30% in 2009, down from 37% in 2002. The main reason for this dismal efficiency is the unwillingness of U.S. utilities to upgrade old and decaying power plants. This unwillingness in turn is caused by the requirements of the Clean Air Act, which forces operators to upgrade all the way to the state-of-the-art, if they decide to change anything in an old power plant.
- 5.
It is estimated that Americans dump as trash, and otherwise waste, half of the U.S. food supply.
- 6.
According to the U.S. Dept of Energy, the last reactor built was the River Bend plant in Louisiana. Its construction began in March of 1977. The last plant to begin commercial operation was the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, which came on line in 1996.
- 7.
The EIA accounting for electricity actually produced from photovoltaics in 2007 was 70 MWe of continuous power, www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/wind/wind.html, Table 1.11.
- 8.
From Greek: petra (rock) + Latin: oleum (oil).
- 9.
Suppose that you drive a Toyota Prius that allows you to save half of the money you were spending earlier on transportation. Unless you use the saved greenbacks to ignite wood in an efficient stove, or give them to the poor in Haiti, you will end up buying extra goods and services from less efficient sources, and you will cause more fossil energy to be burned. This way, your cumulative use of fossil fuels will actually increase, even as your rate of using these fuels directly decreases. This is the fundamental quandary facing the “decarbonizing” California.
- 10.
The early agrarian revolution in Europe, as well as the opening of the Americas was well under way by 1650. Clean drinking water supplies spread by the mid-nineteenth century.
- 11.
A quick Google search on January 14, 2011, yielded the following results: “global warming,” 23 million hits; “climate change,” 34 million hits; “Paris Hilton,” 37 million hits; and “iPod,” 262 million hits.
- 12.
See www.iea.org/country/index.asp for the list of the countries, mostly European and all developed.
- 13.
“Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in,” sang Leonard Cohen encouragingly in his Anthem.
- 14.
In most corporate organizations, consistency and timeliness matter, but accuracy does not. Steady demand for petroleum is much easier to extrapolate into the future than supply. One starts with the current consumption rate of petroleum and ratios it simply with the growing population, while making special allowances for the fastest growing economies, such as China, Brazil, or India. In contrast, prediction of oil supply is one of the most complex activities of a modern society and has inherent large inaccuracies. Economists routinely equate energy demand with energy supply. This is wrong and when imaginary bets meet real resources the outcome can be disappointing.
- 15.
According to some, the global production rate of conventional petroleum has entered a 6-year-long “undulating plateau” of about 72 million barrels per day.
- 16.
For example, the long-standing religious conviction of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (now IHS CERA) that a peak of oil production rate must not exist, has yet to be challenged by facts on the ground.
- 17.
In this context, “optimized” means using the best design and technology available to the highest extent possible.
- 18.
The ultimate difference will be at least 400 EJ.
- 19.
See. e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id = 2198
Further Reading
Baum, A.W., Patzek, T.W., Bender, M., Renich, S., Jackson, W.: The visible, sustainable farm: a comprehensive energy analysis of a midwestern farm. Cr. Rev. Plant Sci. 28(4), 218–239 (2009). gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/TheSunshineFarm.pdf. Presents the most detailed to-date discussion of energy and mass flows through an organic farm and shows how competitive this farm is relative to industrial farms
Brown, J.H., et al.: Energetic limits to economic growth. BioScience 61(1), 19–26 (2011). ISSN 0006–3568, electronic ISSN 1525–3244, 2011, news.unm.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Brown-BioScience-2011.pdf. Shows that the monetary “metabolism” of an economy scales with energy throughput just like animal metabolism with body weight
Holland, J.H.: Emergence: From Chaos to Order. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1998)
Allocation of the Holy Father John Paul II: In the Emergence of Complexity in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Page 465–468, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, (1992)
King, F.H.: Farmers of Forty Centuries or permanent agriculture in China, Korea and Japan, Published by Mrs. King, F.H. 1911, also published on the web, courtesy of Steve Solomon, www.soilandhealth.org. The best description of a national organic agriculture 50 years before the term was even known
Lambert, F.: Shakespeare and Thermodynamics: Dam the Second Law!, 2008, shakespeare2ndlaw.oxy.edu. Probably the best, easy-to-understand discussion of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Morowitz, H.J.: The Emergence of Everything – How the World Became Complex. Oxford University Press, New York (2002)
Patzek, T.W., Croft, G.: A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis. Energy 35, 3109–3122 (2010). gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/EnergyCoalPaperPublished.pdf. Nice examples of the emergence of Hubbert peaks and their implications for the global rate of coal production and carbon dioxide emissions
Patzek, T.W., Croft, G.: Supporting online materials to a global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis. Energy 35, 35 (2010). gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/EnergyCoalPaperSOM.pdf
Patzek, T.W.: Thermodynamics of agricultural sustainability: the case of US maize agriculture. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 27(4), 272–293 (2008). gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/Thermodynamics of Agricultural.pdf. An in-depth discussion of unsustainability of modern agriculture and available remedies
Patzek, T.W.: Exponential growth, energetic Hubbert cycles, and the advancement of technology. Arch. Min. Sci. 53(2), 131–159 (2008). gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/PatzekManuscriptRevised.pdf. A nice discussion of unconventional hydrocarbon resources and their impact on the U.S. economy
Patzek, T.W.: How Can We Outlive Our Way of Life? Paper prepared for the ministerial OECD round table on sustainable development, “Biofuels: Is the cure worse than the disease?” OECD Headquarters, Château de la Muette, 2 rue Andre Pascal, 75016 Paris, 12 Sept 2007 www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/61/40225820.pdf. Patzek’s second most popular paper
Patzek, T.W.: OECD dinner speech at the ministerial OECD round table on sustainable development, 11 Sept 2007 gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/OECD09112007TalkFinal.pdf. Everyone stopped eating during that speech and you could hear a mosquito flying
Patzek, T.W.: The Real Biofuel Cycles, Online supporting material to science 312, 1747, 26 June 2006 gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/RealFuelCycles-Web.pdf
Patzek, T.W.: Thermodynamics of the Corn Ethanol Biofuel Cycle, Invited paper in the special issue of Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 23(6), 519–567 (2004) gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/CRPS416-Patzek-Web.pdf. Patzek’s most popular paper ever
Snow, C.P.: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge University Press, London (1959)
Strumsky, D., Lobo, J., Tainter, J.A.: Complexity and the productivity of innovation. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 27, 496–509 (2010). The most in-depth analysis of the inter-dependence of patentable innovation and complexity
Yale Environment 360, Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, focuses on the environmental and social impacts of mountaintop removal and examines the long-term effects on the region’s forests and waterways. e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id = 2198
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Tainter, J.A., Patzek, T.W. (2012). The Energy That Runs the World. In: Drilling Down. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7677-2_3
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