Global financial system implosion begins

[Frank Merton]

I've seen places where markets are abolished: North Korea, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Vietnam early after reunification, Stalin. We had to rethink all this. The typical mixed economy where there is significant state presence to prevent monopolistic capitalism but where there is also incentive and freedom for individual and enterprise entrepreneurship is what is working, finally, after all these years. I hate to see it so misunderstood by ideologues.

 

[Falcon]

And you think you know when and when not.

Markets cannot evaluate allocation decisions without price, yet the things we need to allocate are cannot be priced. Markets cannot evaluate allocation decisions regarding distant time outcomes, yet the things we need to allocate have distant outcomes. Markets assume eveything is substitutable, yet we need to evaluate allocation decisions relating to finite, unsubstitutable resources.

Find exceptions to those statements, and you will find political intervention - precisely the process you argue against.

You believe that a device that was only ever intended for making expedient, short term allocation decisions about priceable, substitutable commodities is suitable for making long term allocation decisions about unpriceable, unsubstitutable resources.

Best we don't talk about idealogues.

The issue is not whether we know. The issue is whether we know better than the alternative.

 

[Frank Merton]

You were bleating about the responses to your posts. You did similar to me on another thread when you shut off from a discussion when CIA plots were mentioned. I gave you a starter for references to look at, but you went away.

You are starting to look like someone who is not prepared to look at evidence showing that they are wrong.

You have provided no evidence, just slogans, and now an ad hominem insult. Look in the mirror.

By the way, CIA plots are everywhere. Have you looked under your own bed?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I've seen places where markets are abolished: North Korea, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Vietnam early after reunification, Stalin. We had to rethink all this. The typical mixed economy where there is significant state presence to prevent monopolistic capitalism but where there is also incentive and freedom for individual and enterprise entrepreneurship is what is working, finally, after all these years. I hate to see it so misunderstood by ideologues.

You're misrepresenting - or misunderstanding - what others are saying. Nobody on this thread recently has said that markets need to be abolished. I happen to agree with you about mixed economies, but I would go further than merely preventing monopolies: wherever there is a limited, essential resource, ownership of that resource needs to be collective. If it is not, and private individuals or groups control them, then you don't have free markets at all, and markets become a means for exploitation. There is a balance to be struck here, but the allocation of limited resources is never simply a question of leaving market forces to do their work, because some people are owners and others are not. There is no real freedom for most in such a situation: collective control of essential resources provides freedom.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You have provided no evidence, just slogans, and now an ad hominem insult. Look in the mirror.

By the way, CIA plots are everywhere. Have you looked under your own bed?

Now you're being an idiot. Go back to that thread and follow my links, eh? Those links constitute evidence.

There is more than one way to do an ad hom. Your dismissal of my post as some kind of conspiraloonery followed by leaving the thread, for instance.

 

[ferrelhadley]

I've seen places where markets are abolished: North Korea, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Vietnam early after reunification,

The Texas Railroad Commission.
Standard Oil.
Aramco.
OPEC (when it can enforce its quotas).

Markets can be as illusionary as any other human construct.

 

[Frank Merton]

You're misrepresenting - or misunderstanding - what others are saying. Nobody on this thread recently has said that markets need to be abolished. I happen to agree with you about mixed economies, but I would go further than merely preventing monopolies: wherever there is a limited, essential resource, ownership of that resource needs to be collective. If it is not, and private individuals or groups control them, then you don't have free markets at all, and markets become a means for exploitation. There is a balance to be struck here, but the allocation of limited resources is never simply a question of leaving market forces to do their work, because some people are owners and others are not. There is no real freedom for most in such a situation: collective control of essential resources provides freedom.

I can withdraw on a note of near-agreement here. I should stay away from political threads anyway. They are bad for my health.

 

[Nylock]

Maybe you ought to just stay away from threads where your own certainties are challenged by other posters?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I can withdraw on a note of near-agreement here. I should stay away from political threads anyway. They are bad for my health.

Ok, let's both back down a bit. I understand that from your point of view, you have seen an improvement in life since the introduction of private markets in Vietnam. And I agree with you that some freedom of private economic action is needed. Not everyone on here agrees with that, but I do. But I don't think anyone is arguing for Pol Pot-style totalitarianism. And you'll have to get used to being challenged on here. Debate is robust at the best of times.

 

[Frank Merton]

Maybe you ought to just stay away from threads where your own certainties are challenged by other posters?

That is nothing more than simply snide. You reveal more about yourself than you tell others with such statements.

 

[elbows]

Anyway who would dare argue that markets have shown an ability to handle the truth of finite fossil fuels? For years stuff ended up priced too cheaply, and when confronted with even limited prospects for increased supply increases, let alone decline, they went off to the other extreme.

I've little doubt that such phenomenon are one of the reasons why various aspects of our economic systems dont really want free and unfettered markets at all, they want them to be rigged in the name of stability, investment certainty, etc.

 

[Falcon]

where there is also incentive and freedom for individual and enterprise entrepreneurship is what is working, finally, after all these years...

"... under assumed conditions of …"

Complete the sentence. What conditions are you assuming? A monotically expanding global economy supported by a temporarily infinite acting energy, raw materials and waste sink resource base? A functioning global political economy providing trade facilities, export markets and debt facilities? The freedom from military invasion for your sovereign unsubstitutable resources? The rule of law, private property ownership rights, and civil stability (It's a long list).

Examine your assumptions, and compare them to current conditions, noting that many are deeply implicit, and currently unexamined.

If the conditions under which enterprise entrepreneurship works are no longer the conditions under which our system operates, then perhaps what you perceive as a situation misunderstood by ideologues is, in fact, evidence of new information from outside your paradigm which might require you to re-evaluate your beliefs (Karl Popper's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is helpful here).

 

[Falcon]

Anyway who would dare argue that markets have shown an ability to handle the truth of finite fossil fuels? For years stuff ended up priced too cheaply, and when confronted with even limited prospects for increased supply increases, let alone decline, they went off to the other extreme.

The market assumes, specifically, that fossil fuel is substitutable. (The requirement that successive substitutes must be of higher EROEI is an outcome of its growth dependence rather than an explicit assumption that neoclassical economists would recognise).

So sunbeams and summer breezes gives way to wood, gives way to charcoal, gives way to coal, gives way to whale oil, gives way to mineral oil, gives way to, well, sunbeams and summer breezes.

There is a flaw in the logic which, in my experience, school children can detect.

 

[Dr Jon]

There were a few economists like Schumacher and Wolff, who defied the mainstream delusional fantasy dressed up as science.

Also see:
Post-autistic economics
New Economics Foundation

 

[Nylock]

That is nothing more than simply snide. You reveal more about yourself than you tell others with such statements.

I refer you to this part of LBJ's reply to you:

And you'll have to get used to being challenged on here. Debate is robust at the best of times.

You started with the snide by totally evading giving any sort of meaningful response to the questions i posed to you and further compounded this by a feeble attempt at closing me off. Yes, you have responded in detail to other posters on the subject of markets but you have yet to clarify your position as to why global warming may be a *positive* thing.

Your ducking of the question by throwing up some mealy-mouthed crap about there being several opinions on the subject and that i ought to read them instead of making assertions just says to me "i have no answer so am going to make assumptions on what you know and hope you'll go away".

Your continued evasion in answering the questions i initially put to you with even a web link or reference to back up your assertion of possible *positives* to global warming reveals an awful lot about yourself as well. Since you live in a city that is vulnerable to the effects of global warming (not to mention your own country in general being identified to be one of the most severely affected places by future global warming events) it makes me wonder just wtf you think may be *positive* about global warming.

So, are you going to give me an answer, or are you going to continue to bob and weave?

 

[free spirit]

Excuse me? I'm just catching up on some of your earnest contributions to the field of reality denial while I've been enjoying the holiday season, but I can't relate this one to anything I've said.

Are you contesting the data <snip>

As is obvious from my post, I'm specifically questioning your specific statement that the energy supply 'is now contracting'.

This is the statement that you have failed to supply any actual supporting data for.

I'm not questioning the fact that EROI has fallen, and continues to fall, I'm picking you up on that one specific statement because you're stating it as fact when you've obviously not got the data needed to support it. Specifically I'm questioning you on whether the falls in EROI in the energy supply chain are yet sufficient to be of more significance than the annual rises in primary energy supply, and you've failed to supply any data that comes anywhere close to conclusively supporting your position.

My problem with you and your fellow travellers in all of this really boils down to you playing the part of the boy who cried wolf. Your going around making such grand claims now without having any substantial data to back them up is going to lead to nobody actually listening at the point in the probably not too distant future when this actually does start to become a reality.

By all means raise the subject up the agenda, call for a metric to be devised and implemented so that global net energy supply can be tracked properly, and discuss what the implications could be, and how effective mitigation measures might be at the point where we do reach a point of net energy decline... but don't do this by making misleading unsupported statements from the outset.

 

[free spirit]

Energy and the Wealth of Nations was published in 2012 - hardly outdated.

Yes, modern cars are much more efficient than those of 20 years ago. However, most people now have to drive further to get to work (and shops, schools, etc.) Even though they're paying more per mile, the miles they need to travel have increased. Modern cars are generally bigger and contain more crap - like the SUV / people carrier monstrosities people with kids seem to "need" these days.

There are also many more vehicles in use.
In the 1970s, it was unusual for a family to have more than one car and many households had no car at all. Now it is unusual for a family to have less than two.

all of which took place in a situation where efficiency was rising and relative fuel costs were falling - this does not apply today, and there's no reason at all to assume that just because people have been able to live further from work, schools etc than they used to due to low fuel costs, that this process won't reverse as higher fuel costs start to bite.

It is going to be a bit like turning an oil tanker around, and will take time just as it took time for the current situation to develop, but when the question posed by the diagram is 'minimum required for civilisation' then it should be fairly obvious that these are the sorts of factors that also need to be factored in as the flipside to the EROI reductions.

There is considerable growth in car ownership (and consumerism generally) in developing economies. The explosion in vehicle numbers I have witnessed in India since 2000 is just staggering - even without the concomitant traffic congestion and air pollution. A similar trend is evident throughout much of the ASEAN region. Then there's China...

I am afraid that increased efficiency - even with increasing energy costs - will have little effect on the global rate of resource use.

I further suspect that if energy taxes were increased to the point where usage was reduced, this will be the point at which people can no longer afford to get to work/shop/school = total economic collapse.

ok, now please explain wtf the majority of that has to do with a diagram you posted about EROI and energy usage in the USA?

stick to the point please.

 

[free spirit]

I have sometimes mentioned 1970's doom scares when arguing with Falcon.

However my point has not been that people were worrying about nothing. My point was to urge caution when seeking to talk about near timescales with a high degree of certainty. Because some of these problems take a lot longer to reach their climax than some would have us believe. It is understandable that a sense of immediacy needs to be fostered in order to take action long before the tipping point is reached, but this has the side effect of providing something of a multi-decade void where skeptics can decide the whole thing is bogus just because the world hasnt crashed and burned before their very eyes.

That pretty much sums up what I've been getting at with Falcons recent assertions about us already being in a situation of global Net Energy decline.

I think such statements should only be made if they can be clearly backed up by hard data for the reasons you give.

 

[Falcon]

Are you contesting the data <snip>

As is obvious from my post, I'm specifically questioning your specific statement that the energy supply 'is now contracting'.

You accused me of not providing you credible references. I asked you to be clear what was not credible about them - I note your failure to reply, and assume you are compelled to accept they are credible.

The references were to specific, time bound, hard data quantifying the relevant parameters - EROEI, primary energy source depletion rate, and unburnable carbon percentage - which, in aggregate, justify the assertion that the net energy supply must now contract. If you really feel you need a graph which shows the future technical hydrocarbon supply truncated at some multiplier proportional to your squeamishness about unburnable carbon (the official figure is 20%), with the balance substituted with energy sources of EROEI <20, converted into Joules to demonstrate that we have less energy in future than we had in the past, then I respectfully suggest that you may not be equipped to deal with what is, in places, a complex subject - there are many more difficult concepts than this to manage. I believe your request for a graph is a fig leaf to misdirect attention from the fact that your request has, in fact, been answered reasonably and falsifies your argument that the energy supply can continue to expand.

I went on to ask you which aspects of those parameters you contested. You refer sketchily to EROEI but, once again, totally fail to acknowledge the problem of hydrocarbon depletion and unburnable carbon on your argument. You never - ever - respond to the challenge and I believe it is because you realise it is fatal to your argument.

So to help us assess the extent to which you deny climate change, please do respond to my questions. Your answers will help me frame mine. Here they were:

2. Are you contesting the IEA data that the underlying depletion rate of the global hydrocarbon system will reach ~10% per annum (a 7 year half rate) within a decade (ref)? Have you shown how your beliefs about rising net energy levels accommodate this?

3. Are you contesting IEA data that we are 5 years away from the threshold of irreversible climate change on the current (hydrocarbon) capital investment trajectory (ref), leaving 80% of our remaining hydrocarbon reserve base technically unburnable (ref)? Have you shown how your beliefs about rising net energy levels accommodate this?

And make sure you answer this, as clearly as you can please:

Please feel free to be as explicit as you can in demonstrating your belief that a world that currently depends on hydrocarbon for 60% of its total energy requirement and 90% for the specific global transportation technology underpinning it, that must leave 80% of remaining hydrocarbon reserves in the ground, and substitute the balance by strictly yield-limited, manufacturing- and operating-energy intensive "renewable" technologies in a timescale imposed by both the hydrocarbon depletion and 5 year climate change trajectories, is not - in any sense that matters to the thread - undergoing a massive reduction in net energy availability.

From your answer I'll be clearer which parts you deny and can provide an answer which denies you any further room for pointless sophistry on an argument that our energy supply is expanding as climate change enters the point of no return.

Or don't. I believe the point is made to anyone except a climate change denier. The debate has moved on and there are more interesting things to discuss - if you disagree, then just disagree and leave it there.

 

[free spirit]

Whoops. Awkward little snip there. I had asked you some specific questions which, once again, you are unwilling or unable to clarify your position on. Your answers will help me frame mine. Please don't avoid and misdirect. Here they were:

Forgive me for wanting to get clarity over your original statement before allowing you to divert the discussion.

I see you're intent on actually avoiding having to clarify your position on that specific statement though, but I hope it's been noted by anyone interested that you've failed to back up your statement with hard data.

1. Are you contesting the data the EROI of the major fuel types powering the global industrial manufacturing and agriculture processes, specifically that fuel powering 90% of the critical global transportation processes, has fallen from 100+ to <20 in recent years and continues to fall as we substitute "conventional" fluids for arctic, ultradeepwater, tar sand and food based fluid substitutes?

I'd query some of the specifics of that statement, such as the claim that it's fallen from an EROI of 100 in recent years - I doubt it's been at 100 on average for at least half a century probably significantly longer, but I don't disagree with the broad idea that the EROI of oil has been falling, is falling and will continue to fall from a starting point of above 100 early in the 20th century to below 20 now (probably), and will continue to fall as the easiest fields continue to decline and more energy intensive sources of production take their place.

Are you contesting the legitimacy of a large body of academic and popular literature which argues that all so-called renewable energy technologies are subjected to strict physical limitations that constrain their yield in relation to the energy invested in their manufacture and operation? (ref)

am I? Well I haven't been so far as far as I can remember. Post up links to what you're on about, or explain what you're talking about and I'll be sure to let you know if I agree or disagree with it though.

If what you're basically saying is that the EROI figures for most renewables (other than hydro and tidal) are significantly lower than the historic norms for conventional fossil fuels, but higher than for most unconventional fossil fuels, and still well within the threshold of useful EROI figures, then yes I'd broadly agree with that position. You'll note though that this is in contrast to your own repeated assertion that the EROI for solar is lower than 1, a statement that simply isn't supported in any way by the academic literature other than 1 mid 90s study that was based on several false premises that makes it wrong.

Have you shown how your beliefs about rising net energy levels accommodate this?

Have I shown this? to a degree, would you like me to show it now?

EROI figures only give one part of the picture, as for electricity generating renewables their energy is directly transformed into electricity, whereas the energy from gas and coal that it replaces is subject to a 30-60% thermally efficient conversion rate after the standard EROI figures have been calculated. So it'd be wrong to make a direct comparison with the basic EROI figures.

To put this into context, let's take best case scenario for gas powered electricity production, with a starting point of an EROI of 20:1 for gas production, and a thermal efficiency of 63% (the highest currently available). Now, to actually compare figures we have to convert them to being the same thing, so an EROI of 20:1 would mean that 5% of the energy content of the gas was lost in it's production, then on top of the 37% of the energy content of the gas was then lost in the conversion process to heat, giving a total loss of around 42%.

This can be converted back to an EROI figure of around 2.5:1

The EROI figures for solar PV are in the region of 8:1, and for wind can be in the range of 15-20:1.

so it's obvious that even comparing the best case scenario of electricity production from gas that the EROI figures for renewable generation are a significant improvement.

In reality, the renewables are actually replacing gas generation from the least efficient single cycle gas plants as they're increasingly being phased out, so the figures are even more favourable to renewables than that.

2. Are you contesting the IEA data that the underlying depletion rate of the global hydrocarbon system will reach ~10% per annum (a 7 year half rate) within a decade (ref)?

I don't know if I question the IEA data or not as you've not posted a link to it, but I'd strongly suspect that this data only relates to oil, so I'd question your reference to the global hydrocarbon system in relation to those figures.

3. Are you contesting IEA data that we are 5 years away from the threshold of irreversible climate change on the current (hydrocarbon) capital investment trajectory (ref), leaving 80% of our remaining hydrocarbon reserve base technically unburnable (ref)? Have you shown how your beliefs about rising net energy levels accommodate this?

I think such statements are a load of bollocks, as we're already well passed the point of avoiding irreversible climate change, we're just on the slippery slope now of determining how bad that climate change is going to be.

I agree that we need to leave as much of that hydrocarbon potential in the ground as possible, which in essence has been my position for the last 20 years. I disagree that there is any set figure for what is and isn't acceptable, and I specifically don't think it's even slightly helpful to propose figures that are entirely unrealistic as targets - ok if they were proposing those figures 20 years ago then there might have been a possibility of them being hit, but there is literally zero chance that we're going to hit that 80% figure, so doing what you do, and using that figure as if it has any actual relevance to the amount of energy that's going to be available to the economy in 5 -10 years time is a nonsensical starting point.

We are going to breach those IEA figures, we are probably going to experience climate change at around the upper bounds of the estimates as a result. Yes we should do everything possible to reduce the carbon intensity of the global economy as rapidly as practicable, but it'd be counter productive in several ways to argue for a policy that would basically destroy the world economy at the same time as removing the ability of the world economy to actually move to a long term sustainable situation.

Please feel free to be as explicit as you can in demonstrating your belief that a world that currently depends on hydrocarbon for 60% of its total energy requirement and 90% for the specific global transportation technology underpinning it, that must leave 80% of remaining hydrocarbon reserves in the ground, and substitute the balance by strictly yield-limited, manufacturing- and operating-energy intensive "renewable" technologies in a timescale imposed by both the hydrocarbon depletion and 5 year climate change trajectories, is not - in any sense that matters to the thread - undergoing a massive reduction in net energy availability.

You're again operating under the mistaken assumption that the logic of climate change and the requirement to keep fossil fuels underground as much as possible is currently having any significant impact on the net energy available. In the actual real world of what's happening now, this is having negligable impact on the global energy supply - as clearly demonstrated by the rush to use shale oil as soon as the economics allowed for it.

You accused me of not providing you credible sources. I asked you to be clear what was not credible about them - I note your failure to reply.

Actually I was asking you for data, and you failed to supply any other than 1 graph which didn't really hold up to scrutiny when I investigated it.

 

[free spirit]

The references were to specific, time bound, hard data quantifying the relevant parameters - EROEI, primary energy source depletion rate, and unburnable carbon percentage - which, in aggregate, justify the assertion that the net energy supply must now contract. If you really feel you need a graph which shows the future technical hydrocarbon supply truncated at some multiplier proportional to your squeamishness about unburnable carbon (the official figure is 20%), with the balance substituted with energy sources of EROEI <20, converted into Joules to demonstrate that we have less energy in future than we had in the past, then I respectfully suggest that you may not be equipped to deal with what is, in places, a complex subject - there are many more difficult concepts than this to manage. I believe your request for a graph is a fig leaf to misdirect attention from the fact that your request has, in fact, been answered reasonably and falsifies your argument that the energy supply can continue to expand.

oh, you've edited your post to include a massive straw man.

When I ask you to provide evidence to support your statement that the energy supply is already contracting, this in no way should be taken as implying that I believe that the energy supply can continue to expand indefinitely.

You made a specific claim, I asked for specific data to support that claim, you instead supplied a list of non-specific references that maybe support the general idea that EROI levels are falling, but not your specific claim that they're failing significantly enough to result in an actual net energy reduction yet when global primary energy levels are increasing fairly rapidly.

 

[ymu]

Quite right. As Richard Feynman said of social sciences 'Where are the laws?'

Managing to dismiss all of medical science at a stroke. It's a magnificent sneer, but it is actively harmful.

Feynman dismisses scientific approaches to the most important questions that affect our lives on a human timescale. It is implicitly determinist, when the social sciences rely on understanding the role of chance and teasing out the complex relationships between things.

Without the methods we've developed for the social sciences and medicine it would be impossible to study climate change.

The failures of those sciences which cannot draw hard conclusions in the way that physics does are down to their complexity and their susceptibility to political influence. When it is easy to falsify results or manipulate conclusions, it is easy to find people willing to be bought off. It's exactly the same story in medicine as in economics as in climate science.

We don't need people dismissing these sciences as worthless, we need people getting to grips with the complexities so that it is harder for well-funded charlatans and self-serving politicians to fuck us over, using our own ignorance against us.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's exactly the same story in medicine as in economics as in climate science.

I don't think it is. The relevance of the Feynman quote to this thread is the way that FM was talking about economic forces as if they were like physical laws. They are not. And they are not anything like climate science either. Economic outcomes are the result of a complex interplay between human minds. As such, it is impossible to separate them out from the workings of our minds. It is impossible to have an amoral economic theory, for instance, because economic outcomes are affected by morality. That's not true about physics or climate science.

That isn't to dismiss economics as worthless, but it does set certain limits on the kinds of things that you can say – and arguments that you can prove - in economics. And as I said, in the context of this thread at the time of that question coming up, it was relevant. I would argue that many of the worst mistakes in economics have come from treating it as if it could be a hard science - that mythical 'rational man', for instance, in whose name so many rotten theories and worthless mathematical formulae were created.

 

[ymu]

Yes, you are limited in what you can say for certain in medicine, economics and climate science because the scope for useful experimentation is limited. What works in the lab does not necessarily work in the human body or in the atmosphere.

Of these three, medicine has the most freedom to experiment - but those experiments won't come up with the nice neat results Feynman likes because people differ a lot more than atoms and the experimental context is a great deal more variable than a lab.

Economics (specifically macro-economics) is reliant on natural experiments - there are lots of different economies and historical records of what they did, from which some conclusions can be drawn.

Climate science cannot do any experiments at all and it has no natural experiments - we only have one planet.

The harder it is to come up with cast-iron conclusions, the easier it is for political considerations to distort the results. And that ranking above probably does reflect the degree to which truth can be suppressed/delayed. The harder it is to prove that a particular analysis is correct, the easier it is to ignore the information if it is inconvenient for those in power.

 

[free spirit]

The following table shows how EROI figures from 20:1 down to 1:1 relate to the percentage of energy that's used in it's extraction.

The 2012 BP statistical review puts the world primary energy supply growth rate in 2011 at 2.5%.

For the decline in EROI to be offsetting that sort of growth rate in primary energy suppy the EROI would have to dropped massively in that year eg from around 20:1 to 13:1.

I don't dispute that EROI figures are falling, but I do dispute that they're falling on average by anything like that rates needed to turn a 2.5% increase in primary energy supply into a decrease in net energy available to the rest of the economy - frankly it's a ridiculous assertion as things stand currently, though that doesn't mean that it won't happen at some point in the future.

EROI % energy used in production
20 5.0%
19 5.3%
18 5.6%
17 5.9%
16 6.3%
15 6.7%
14 7.1%
13 7.7%
12 8.3%
11 9.1%
10 10.0%
9 11.1%
8 12.5%
7 14.3%
6 16.7%
5 20.0%
4 25.0%
3 33.3%
2 50.0%
1 100.0%

 

[free spirit]

Climate science cannot do any experiments at all and it has no natural experiments - we only have one planet.

that's not really true.

The basis of climate science is very easily falsifiable, and is supported by lots of experimental data to determine the warming potential of the different gasses.

It's mostly the feedback mechanisms that are hard to draw up falsifiable experimental hypothesis for, which is why there's very little dispute about the eventual direct warming potential from x amount of increased CO2 concentration, but significant dispute about what this will actually result in in the real world once the feedbacks are factored in.

 

[Dr Jon]

all of which took place in a situation where efficiency was rising and relative fuel costs were falling - this does not apply today, and there's no reason at all to assume that just because people have been able to live further from work, schools etc than they used to due to low fuel costs, that this process won't reverse as higher fuel costs start to bite.

It is going to be a bit like turning an oil tanker around, and will take time just as it took time for the current situation to develop, but when the question posed by the diagram is 'minimum required for civilisation' then it should be fairly obvious that these are the sorts of factors that also need to be factored in as the flipside to the EROI reductions.


ok, now please explain wtf the majority of that has to do with a diagram you posted about EROI and energy usage in the USA?

stick to the point please.

Oh dear oh dear. Round and round we go eh?

Maybe we inhabit different universes? I can't remember fuel costs actually falling over the past 20 years. Any levelling off of raw material costs was made up for by tax increases.

You think that people are able to "choose" to live further from where they worked? In the great car-dependent suburban-developments-with-no-future (Milton Keynes, anyone?) I suppose this may be the case, but many people have found that when local industries are closed down, the only work they can find is much further away. The same goes for shops (small, local shops close as out-of-town hypermarkets steal their business) and schools (as local schools are closed and replaced by larger mega-schools some hours journey away)

The point about increasing global demand has nothing (directly) to do with decreasing EROI, twit!
It has everything to do with increasing demand on a shrinking supply, which you seem to believe is expanding due to efficiency improvements. I posted the EROI chart to illustrate (i) the declining EROI of hydrocarbon fuels as reservoirs pass peak and (ii) the pitiful contribution made by renewables and manufactured petroleum substitutes.

A gaping chasm in world energy supply will become apparent as we start down the other side of the bumpy plateau.

 

[ymu]

that's not really true.

The basis of climate science is very easily falsifiable, and is supported by lots of experimental data to determine the warming potential of the different gasses.

It's mostly the feedback mechanisms that are hard to draw up falsifiable experimental hypothesis for, which is why there's very little dispute about the eventual direct warming potential from x amount of increased CO2 concentration, but significant dispute about what this will actually result in in the real world once the feedbacks are factored in.

I made an explicit distinction between lab and real world experimentation.

It's a huge problem in medicine. What works in the lab rarely works in the human body and there are no shortcuts. It is precisely the complexity caused by feedback mechanisms and the like that make it impossible to translate directly from the test-tube to the real world.

And that difficulty - the need for assumptions to be made in models, the uncertainty in the results - which is inherent in these types of science is what creates space for politicking. That is why it took us a long time to prove the link between smoking and lung cancer, and it's why it took us a long time to prove the link between carbon emissions and climate change.

If Feynman's attitude had taken hold, we'd be able to prove neither.

 

[free spirit]

I can't remember fuel costs actually falling over the past 20 years. Any levelling off of raw material costs was made up for by tax increases.

I used the phrase 'relative fuel costs' for a reason, but I'll explain more fully as I suppose I wasn't entirely clear. I was referring to the relative inflation adjusted cost per mile after efficiency gains are taken into account.

At the point in the early 80's when the theory you linked to was developed efficiency gains were actually coinciding with reduced fuel prices as well (reducing after the 70's oil shocks and the start of north sea oil), so the net result was that the per mile costs of driving fell rapidly, and as a result people started driving much more than they previously had done. This was when the theory you refer to was born. For reference, fuel prices in the UK fell by around 25% in the mid 80s (inflation adjusted).

There has been around a 45% increase in inflation adjusted fuel prices in the 25 years from 1989-2004 in the UK, but the fuel efficiency of new cars... well actually I can't seem to find the exact data, but I'm pretty sure that the like for like fuel efficiency of new cars went up by more than 45% in that 25 year period, meaning the cost per mile would have reduced as people bought more efficient cars.

There's been a 55% increase in fuel prices from 2002-2011, and I'm pretty sure the fuel efficiency of new cars hasn't increased by 55% in that time period, so the actual cost per mile is increasing even if people buy a new more fuel efficient car.

That's what I'm getting at.

inflation adjusted fuel price stats for the UK are on page 16 http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/...341-quarterly-energy-prices-december-2012.pdf

You think that people are able to "choose" to live further from where they worked?

Maybe not everyone, but yes the trend during the period of reducing per mile driving costs was for people on average to live further and further from their workplace, and this was largely facilitated by reducing per mile driving costs.

Millions of people made the choice of living in new suburban developments miles out of the cities they worked in instead of a house close to their workplace precisely because the travel costs involved were relatively low.

I'm well aware of the problem related to these car based developments being very badly served in terms of options for reducing car usage - eg bad bus services, no local shops, schools etc etc. hence my turning around an oil tanker reference. But it should be possible to reverse the process over time with the right policies.

Note that the government's over the last 20 years have only really taken on board one aspect of the environmentalists arguments on this in terms of raising fuel costs via higher fuel taxes. They've yet to do much significant on the other side of the coin in terms of improving access to cheap, good quality public transport, and using the planning system to create more bike / walking / public transport friendly estates instead of the car orientated estates we have now. Change that, and a reduction in vehicle miles is a near certainty when per mile car costs are also increasing.

It has everything to do with increasing demand on a shrinking supply

supply isn't shrinking though, as I've spent a while pointing out.

 

[free spirit]

Some actual figures. Free spirit is right in one thing: energy efficiency in OECD countries has appeared increased slightly in recent years. But that is attributed to exporting energy intensive economic processes from OECD to non-OECD countries then failing to account for the embodied energy in reimported finished goods.

You've missed the fact that the diagram Jon had posted related only to the USA, so I responded with efficiency figures that also related only to the USA - fwiw Europe and Japan are already at least a decade ahead of the US in car efficiency terms.

You'd also probably have noticed that I specifically didn't use the energy intensity of the economy figures for my rebuttal, specifically because I'm aware that a significant part of the gain made in those figures has been down to energy intensive industries being exported. It's not true though to assert, as you do, that this energy intensity improvement is entirely down to exporting energy intensive industries - that's as much a misrepresentation of the true position as would be using the figures without making any allowance for the export of industry.

That said, I'd also have to point out that the energy intensity figure for the entire global economy has been falling consistently for at least the last 20 years, and is now 24% lower than it was in 1990 (not that it's a perfect metric).

But here is the real hole in his analysis: OECD countries consumes 4 times more energy per capita than non-OECD countries. So of course we've been able to make some energy efficiency improvements.

But the OECD population is only 17% of world population and is growing at only 0.4% per year. Non-OECD is 83% and growing at 1.0% per annum. (Sources: IEA, EIA, CIA world fact book).

Just bringing the 83% of the world that doesn't enjoy our energy use (read: "standard of living") up to only half of ours would require 1.45% per annum energy growth increase for 2 decades.

There is no basis to Free Spirit's assertion that modest energy efficiency improvements observed in OECD countries translates into reduction in global energy demand, even if OECD gains were real.

I'm pretty sure I've made no such assertion. I posted up the figures for the recent reduction in vehicle miles as direct evidence to contradict the simplistic Khazzoom-Brookes postulate analysis that Jon had posted up, which IMO only actually applies at times when the energy prices is low enough, and rising slowly enough that the efficiency gains result in actual cheaper per mile travel, and shouldn't apply to a situation where the oil price is rising faster than the efficiency gains.

Obviously modest efficiency gains in OECD countries aren't going to result in a significant global reduction in energy demand, and I'd be very surprised if you could find anywhere that I've said otherwise.

What could make it possible to cope with a future situation of global net energy reduction though would be a complete step change in the efficiency of the use of energy across the board in both OECD and developing nations, resulting in a significant ongoing reduction in energy consumption in OECD countries, as well as a rise in consumption in the rest of the world, but with the rest of the world effectively skipping the energy inefficient technologies and developing their economies based on latest generation energy efficient technologies which then insulate their economies from ongoing rises in global energy prices.

I'd also envisage a reversing of the globalisation trend of the last few decades as the transport costs of shipping goods back and forth around the world increase to such an extent that the economics of the situation mean that manufacturing closer to the final market is the more economic option.

I'd also have to point out that OECD countries are significantly further from the equator on average than developing countries, and a significant proportion of OECD countries energy consumption is for space heating, so on average non OECD countries wouldn't need to be matching that aspect of OECD countries energy consumption (although there is likely to be increased demand for cooling in those countries, this at least is well matched with solar energy production patterns).

Note that I'm not saying this will automatically happen, I'm saying that it could happen if our governments and if we all collectively take the right policy decisions to make it happen.

In fact, we can easily work out how much technological improvement we'd need to achieve in order to maintain zero net energy growth under conditions of rising population growth and affluence. Defining E=Energy demand, P=Population, A=Affluence (GDP/person) and a technology factor T=Energy demand/unit of per capita GDP. Population is increasing 0.9% per annum (source: UN); per capita income growth has been rising at 1.4% per annum (Source: Jackson "Prosperity Without Growth" p.79). Then energy intensity has to fall by (0.9%+1.4%=) 2.3% per annum, effectively halving by 2040.

The energy intensity of the world economy has dropped by 24% from 1990-2011, in a period when energy was relatively cheaply available.

Is it really that unrealistic to suggest that it might be possible to double that rate of change in a situation where energy costs have increased significantly?