Saturday, December 19, 2020

Table of Contents

On ERoEI as a Measure of Feasibility

 

ERoEI* as a Measure of Feasibility

 

Comment on Computing ER and EI

 

Why We Need the Concept of Emergy

 

Definition of Emergy

 

Five Ways to Compute ERoEI

 

Missing Components of ERoEI

 

Additional Concerns about Recycling

 

What Is the Energy Cost of Pollution?

 

The Fundamental Principle of Ecology

 

Time Delay and Spacial Separation for ERoEI

 

Renewable Energy

 

ERoEI* Redux

 

The following posts provide the easiest explanation for the shabby treatment this thesis has endured at the hands of those with a vested interest in the status quo. The truth, however, continues to be the truth.

 

Why We Need a Planned Economy

 

Not all planned economies are the same.

 

Capitalism, Marxism, and Dematerialism

 

Comment on the Austin ASPO Conference

 

Recent posts in no particular order


We Need a New Monetary System: The complete essay as far as I got


Sustainability, Quasi-Sustainability, and Feasibility


Albert Bartlett''s Exponential Lecture



Gail the Actuary almost gets it right.


My Answer


More distractions from three point sustainability platform


The Recycle Problem redux


A Discussion of Planned Economies that Began on the Google Group America 2.0


Special Characteristics [of a monetary system] Needed to Avoid Economic Collapse


Wealth sharing is necessary and philosophically correct.


Letter to Pedro A. Prieto for the Energy Resources Yahoo Group (including Denis Frith and Kermit Schlansker)

 

 

  

Pedology

 

Thank you, Erik, for providing specific conditions regarding an important ancillary requirement to achieve ERoEI* = 1.0. In fact it was the lack of a scientific theory of soil preservation that drove the invasion of the New World by our predatory ancestors and fugitives from a Europe the soil of which had been abused to the point of exhaustion. There is no more "New World"; so, pedology and other sciences are essential.

However, there is nothing like the difficulties of renewable energy which in fact subsumes pedology. We must not let those who wish to preserve the status quo prevent us from recognizing the economic changes required by the well-understood definition of sustainability by presenting imaginary complications for purposes of their own.

Perhaps they now have comfortable livings; and, therefore, wish to avoid moving on to the next political stage.

Friday, December 11, 2020

More discussion about more discussion

 

You know I have begun to regret my latest remarks. I think you may be right and I may be wrong. Nevertheless, I can't help applauding your last suggestion, inasmuch as the pedestrian posts that play into the hands of the business-as-usual Ponzi scheme are driving me nuts.
I took a look at mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/... and you can guess that I resent the single word "Sustainability" which they have no right to employ. I regret even more the outcome of a legal action to make them stop using that word. After all, if I should go into court with mathematical evidence that proves that none of their suggestions will work but mine will, the judge should order them to cease and desist from all such claims regarding sustainability unless they are congruent with mine. Nearly every statement made on that website is a falsehood or a preamble to a falsehood.
I wish you luck in luring all the bright young well meaning and creative spirits to a new venue. And, perhaps due to your bright idea, I might move along to a political forum where sustainability is the leading political promise. Oh, please, read https://www.dematerialism.net/ to show there is no hard feelings. You can leave a comment to indicate the point where you couldn't stand any more even if it is at the end
Tom Wayburn, Chemical Engineering, BS University of Michigan, 1956, PhD University of Utah, 1980

Thursday, December 10, 2020

More discussion

 

Amelia Delgado added an answer
Very interesting discussion about a concept which should be straightforward for the sake of humanity. firstly a concept calls for consensus. Currently sustainability is clearly defined and linked to the SGDs (see UN documentation). yet some of the views herein presented seem more or less biased. e.g. “So I think "sustainability" is a just a buzzword that decision-makers use to excuse just any politics they want to put forward (good or bad). The word itself is often used just  as a decoration, without any true meaning. In this situation it makes little sense to define the word properly....” - at least the SDG related to responsible production and consumption is disregarded, as is the first 2R on REDUCE-REUSE and Recycle (at last); WE CANNOT afford business as usually, it is not sustainable- that means this way, our constructs (beliefs) will not perdure much longer over reality. green industrial policies and climate action is urgent .... global efforts on innovative solutions 💪 (a better utopia than insisting on business as usual, as dreams are better than nightmare, and humanity has advanced in pursuing dreams

Thomas Wayburn
Thomas Wayburn added an answer
Good for you. You understand. The SDGs are absurd. They manage to sound wonderful but pin nobody down to anything by avoiding quantities. Moreover, they do not require de-growth of populations or de-growth of economies of the rich nations. Further they do not require an end to capitalism, which is your point. The 'manifesto', which conjures up the old left, most assuredly will demand political change. But it is precisely political change that I proved is necessary to achieve sustainability. Cutler Cleveland excluded me from the encyclopedia of Earth because I was "too ideological" without realizing that not to be ideological is to be ideological. Yes, there are no such claims that political change is essential to make ERoEI* greater or equal to 1.0. But, it is difficult to see how to raise it to 1.0 or greater any other way.
I believe I have proved that no economy that retains any important feature of capitalism can be sustainable. Perhaps you can prove I am wrong. If not, you will have diligently investigated the issue and found my conclusion correct. The only rational behavior is to get busy with the recommended changes as time is short.

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Brainwashing in schools

 

I should first point to my admittedly sketchy notes on De-schooling in Dematerialism:

But my principal complaint is that normal class curricula never mention the limits to growth and the impossibility of perpetual growth in a finite world. Posterity is never imagined to be a territory to which everyone has an equal right. Please think about this and then think about overpopulation and why the failure to discuss it constitutes brainwashing (in the ironic sense, of course, as children’s minds need to be washed).

Community ERoEI

 

Since I was unable to find a table of the distribution of energy costs among material, labor, and expenses for various manufactured objects, I decided to select objects to pretend to manufacture according to distributions of my own choosing. My first object that I shall manufacture shall be known as (0.3, 0.3, 0.4).
Moreover, as I am indicating a methodology that is to be used on as yet unknown systems, I shall assign a separate labor cost for each labor syndicate arbitrarily in emergy units. For example, the collection of all medical doctors in the community is one syndicate and the set of all farm laborers is another. In each enterprise in which an object is manufactured for export or in which a natural byproduct is prepared for export after some portion is consumed within the community if it makes sense to do so, the fractional representation of each syndicate is associated with the fractional representation of each economic sector
in a distribution as close to optimal as a consensus permits. In a real life situation these distributions will be known from long experience and the portions to be exported will depend upon the net emergy in case ERoEI* is greater than 1.0, as it will be in the hypothetical example, inasmuch as ERoEI* < 1.0 leaves us nothing more to do except all those things I mentioned earlier to raise ERoEI* - mostly to do with altering the political economy.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Our Fatal Flaw

Undoubtedly, the human race has to overcome the inclinations that assisted survival 10,000 years ago or thereabouts but which are worse than undesirable today. Despite the difficulties of doing this (some would say improbability), the nearly impossible task of providing truly sustainable renewable energy remains to be completed. Chief among the obstacles is the difficulty of maintaining sufficiently large storehouses of vital material resources that can be replenished from the remaining world supply without drawing down the residuum faster than prudence permits. This is a physical barrier to sustainability; however, there seems to be a psychological barrier that is preventing otherwise reasonable people from adopting ERoEI* to satisfy the critical need to be able to determine if and when sustainability has been achieved. ERoEI* greater than or equal to 1.0: result = sustainability; ERoEI* < 1.0: result = unsustainability. That's it. So far, no other technique determines sustainability.
It goes without saying, of course, that sustainability does not prevent war, epidemic disease, and many other paths to extinction. It just means that the human race could survive.
 
Let me mention, either in contradistinction or in support of the fatal flaw just discussed, Albert Bartlett's famous dictum that the most serious failing of the human race is its failure to understand the exponential function.   See the blog entry  http://eroei.net/bartlettexp.mp4 
or http://eroei.net/bartlettexp.wmv

Net energy analysis for Mark III economy

 

Since I was unable to find a table of the distribution of energy costs among material, labor, and expenses for various manufactured objects, I decided to select objects to pretend to manufacture according to distributions of my own choosing. My first object that I shall manufacture shall be known as (0.3, 0.3, 0.4).
Moreover, as I am indicating a methodology that is to be used on as yet unknown systems, I shall assign a separate labor cost for each labor syndicate arbitrarily in emergy units. For example, the collection of all medical doctors in the community is one syndicate and the set of all farm laborers is another. In each enterprise in which an object is manufactured for export or in which a natural byproduct is prepared for export after some portion is consumed within the community if it makes sense to do so, the fractional representation of each syndicate is associated with the fractional representation of each economic sector
in a distribution as close to optimal as a consensus permits. In a real life situation these distributions will be known from long experience and the portions to be exported will depend upon the net emergy in case ERoEI* is greater than 1.0, as it will be in the hypothetical example, inasmuch as ERoEI* < 1.0 leaves us nothing more to do except all those things I mentioned earlier to raise ERoEI* - mostly to do with altering the political economy.

Sunday, December 6, 2020

This is a brief reply to the composer of the unfortunate title to which I do not subscribe.

 





Re: Wind & Solar Are Wrong Path Pt. 2

Postby TomWayburn » Mon 07 Dec 2020, 02:05:34

Assuming purveyors of wind and solar do accurate eMergy accounting in their respective sectors, I would like to compare these eMergy balances with the petroleum balance for the State of California. Perhaps renewable energy is subsidized by fossil fuels as I suspect ERoEI-star (ERoEI*) accounting might reveal. However, someday we shall have true renewable energy. That day has not yet come, I believe.

Friday, November 27, 2020

My Answer

Given economic and population de-growth, ERoEI* is the unique indicator of sustainability. We all know that sustainability can be contravened by war, pestilence, plague, and so-called acts of God; but, this does not invalidate the simple statement or its usefulness. We have practically agreed that the term "sustainable development" refers to incorporeal or spiritual development. Who else will agree that the simple statement about ERoEI* completes the answer to Jayanta's original question? ERoEI* is defined at https://eroei.blogspot.com/ and/or https://www.dematerialism.net/

 

So, you don't think GDP is useful. It may not represent Quality of Life, but I cannot get along without it. Please don't advocate something (like getting rid of GDP) that, apparently, you don't know how to use. Now, Doug, admit you did not read Wikipedia article on thought experiments. The whole point is that, given de-growth which goes without saying, ERoEI* is all you need. Everything you claim is not in it IS in it.
 
 
Now, William, you really know how to hurt a fellow's feelings. You have recommended a book to me that I am almost positive is full of ideas that won't work and besides is an insult to me. I can have it read to me at no cost except time; but, I can't believe that it won't be a waste of time. Perhaps 40 years ago I would have heard something new in a book like that. While it brushes lightly upon reducing population, I saw nothing in the table of contents that suggests de-growth or an end to capitalism, dechrematistics, markets, or private profit. And, the title is so promising. I suppose ERoEI is discussed somewhere in the book, but is almost certain to be wrong. The reason his book is available from Amazon etc. is that the powers that be don't want it to work. If you don't like what I wrote (never mind how it's written), please attack it directly so I can explain why you are wrong.

 

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

More distractions from three point sustainability platform

 I think you folks ought to challenge me directly if you don't believe the three conditions that must be met to prevent collapse and die-off in the sense of the late Jay Hanson and other visionaries who used to haunt the Peak Oil forums. Now, a mere seven years ago people had been convinced we were on the cusp of Peak Oil. Something had to be done by the owners of the world. (Perhaps they are only excessively rich, powerful, and privileged.) Commerce was flooded with venture capital to squeeze the junk oil out of deep earth porous media regardless of the harm to the environment and the likely bursting of the bubble soon, but not before the believers in Peak Oil lost patience and stopped listening to forecasters of doom. Tune in to peakoil.com, theoildrum.com. and ourfiniteworld.com to get a completely different point of view. Here's a comment from an apology I felt it necessary to offer to Gail Tverberg at OurFiniteWorld.com which got repeated on PeakOil.com. I reposted it on my blog at https://eroei.blogspot.com/ as I do with everything I write. Whether you check that out or just read Alain's comment doesn't matter to me. After Alain's comment (below), I'll come to the point of this post:

Alain Le Gargasson on Mon, 23rd Nov 2020 7:30 am <br /><br />Endless recycling is not possible for several reasons:<br />Even if you had infinite energy this does not guarantee you infinite raw materials, the circular economy is also a large consumer of energy and an impossibility in the medium term for several reasons:<br />· We still have a loss on melting metal, example: recycling case of aluminum beer cans, of the recovered quantity only 95% is available again.<br />There are thousands of steel alloys with noble metals: niobium, vanadium, tungsten, chromium, etc., only two classifications when it comes to recycling, carbon steel which will be used in construction as medium steel and l ‘stainless steel. Which never go back to the original use,<br />· Automotive industry, on average 10 years of life. For recycling, draining liquids and melting in an electric furnace, mixes up to 10 alloys of steel, copper from the electrical circuit, aluminum engine casing and combustion plastics.<br />· Disperse use, metal oxides used as colorants in paints (walls, prints, plastics, cosmetics, fireworks, etc.). The most emblematic case is titanium oxide, a universal white dye (paints, resins, cosmetics, toothpaste, etc.) 95% terminated in landfills, rivers and seas. Nanotechnology prevents recycling like the silver used in socks to prevent odors. Mobile phone with more than 40 different mendeleiev table elements (nano elements).<br />· Natural wear: Today, for example, in the streets, asphalt contains a higher concentration of palladium or platinum than certain mines, due to the exhaust of cars, copper and zinc from tires.<br />• No substitute for copper for electrical conductors, nickel for stainless steel, tin for soldering, tungsten for cutting tools, silver or platinum for the chemical and electronic industry, phosphorus for agriculture etc …<br />Agriculture: totally disperse, diesel from 100 to 150 liters per cultivated hectare, limestone in the correction of agricultural land, fertilizers (NPK- nitrogen, potash, phosphorus) phytosanitary products (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides …) which will end up in rivers and sea, as well as arable land due to erosion.<br />Renewable energies, wind turbine of 5 MW 1000t of steel and concrete at the base, 250t of the steel mast, the 50t of the 3 blades of fiberglass, carbon fiber and plastic resin, permanent magnet motor, in steel alloy with neodymium. Photovoltaic panel, with gallium, indium, selenium, cadmium or tellurium. Today not recyclable.<br />· Everything that spins needs lubricant. 50 million tonnes / year.<br />The improved return to life in 1800 is therefore assured around 2050 with a maximum of 1 or 2 billion inhabitants. In a constrained world, you can forget about democracy and going back to slavery.
Alain Le Gargassonhttps://peakoil.com/generalideas/tom-wayburn-and-gail-tverberg-discuss-eroei
************************************************
I want the same things as all of you want in the social, moral, ecological, and spiritual realms; but, these things are distractions if we don't do what is necessary to preserve humanity long enough to achieve them. (1) Reduce the population to some sort of optimum; (2) decrease economic activity, especially chrematistics, in the spirit of turning Earth into a garden; and (3) develop renewable energy technology of sufficient scope. We will know that we have achieved this last when ERoEI* is greater than or equal to 1.0. If ERoEI* < 1.0, we are on the way to collapse and die-off. Think of what Alain has written. Of course, I might be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it.

Monday, November 23, 2020

The Recycle Problem redux

I do not agree with Antius and I believe what I have written about ERoEI* is sufficient to reject ERoEI* of 43 for anything. My computations and lucubrations are all over the internet and depend upon all of you to review because I have no desire to deal with the corporate-controlled journals and the peer-review system I have been very much a part of and which I investigated to my own satisfaction and found unsatisfactory.

However,Alain Le Gargasson has raised a serious and very real concern. I agree with him except for a few mitigating facts, which you can bet are going to save my thesis if I have anything to do with it. I have already thanked Denis Frith for pushing me closer and closer to a complete solution. Let’s face it: Denis had a better grip on the difficulty of solving the recycle problem than I did. There I said it and Denis is OK in my book.

BUT, I don’t have to solve the recycle problem for everything – only the renewable energy candidate under investigation. Lately, I have decided to investigate the case of tellurium. Begin by establishing a rule: No one gets a new panel without returning the old panel or the pieces of it. I’ll report myself unless Alain wants to do it and report on https://eroei.blogspot.com/ .

Remember too that we may have any number of years before we have to come up with a workable plan for recycling most things. As for structural metals, I would argue that the heat of fusion is an upper limit for the cost of recycling. If you recall, I expect that most of the structural and delivery components are amenable to do-it-yourself and decentralization. But, if not, they are going to sink a whole lot of systems whose purveyors don’t even take the trouble to compute ERoEI* they are so over-confident.

I guess https://www.dematerialism.net/CwC.html was not so far ahead of its time that I couldn’t take another look at it after fifteen years. But this is not merely another opportunity to complain about how shabbily I have been treated by the scientific community. I don’t suppose my socialist,communist,syndicalist, and dechrematisticalist sympathies had anything to do with it.

Tom Wayburn

“Any society that permits private profit is doomed.”

 

Saturday, November 21, 2020

An Apology to Gail Tverberg

 

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

June 11, 2013 at 8:03 am

The minimum ERoEI has to be a whole lot higher than 1.0. I am not sure what the right number is. I suspect it is something close to 9.0; certainly at least 5.0. The calculation leaves out way too much. In particular, it does not properly charge for energy which is generated by front-end inputs (it does not handle timing at all). It does not consider the need to generate a high enough return to support the need for government.

The idea of moving an economy to lower and lower ERoEI does not work. This is what leads to collapse.

 

First of all this is meant to be an apology for my inexcusable, childish, pathological, lousy, no good, furshlugginer posts reproduced at the end of this apology so that I never forget my 15 minutes of madness.   And I almost never get angry.  In my defense, I shall argue briefly that I was provoked.

Just the other day I realized something I had left completely out of account:  My readers may not be familiar with thought experiments and don’t know how to use them or interpret them.  Therefore, many of them might find it useful to read the brief Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

 

 

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 11, 2013 at 8:26 am

Gail,

Obviously, you have not read the material I have made available. Until you do, it is unfair, misleading, and wrong to make these kinds of comments. All of that is taken care of, even the energy costs of the technology’s share of government. The Principle of Substitution covers many of your objections. Yes, absolutely, sustainability is possible for ERoEI* = 1.0. This is the case of the Autonomous Alternative Energy District supporting itself and exporting nothing. Do you think I would make a mistake about this? Of course, I did not cover every detail; but, you can see how to handle anything that comes up by how it has been done in some other category.

 

The above explanation just about covers it, except Gail reminds me that a little more emphasis on taxes might help not hinder the case for discarding American-style so-called capitalism.  In my earlier article  “On Capitalism”, I pointed out that the movie The Trouble with Harry reminded me of capitalism.  If you remember, the trouble with Harry was that he was dead.

But, the thing that set me off, was Gail missed completely what was so ingenious about my thought experiment, namely, that it constituted a constructive proof of just whose living expenses should be included in the energy-invested term and whose should not.  Moreover, it showed how to make ERoEI truly useful as a tool to determine sustainability or not.   I am just one old man who has spent most of his life pursuing other goals; but, during the last 30 years or so, I have served the human race without concerning myself too much with the extent to which it will be appreciated or even accepted.  But, this thought experiment is the real deal.   I know it; and, you will know it too if you just let it tell you what it can.  By the way, check out the figure that indicates ERoEI decreasing toward collapse:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


·                     Gail Tverberg says:

June 13, 2013 at 12:53 pm

I told Charlie Hall (in my talk at the Biophysical Economic conference at the University of Vermont this week) that the current average EReEI of society is too low–it is leading to collapse in the near term. If we are to prevent collapse (which I don’t really think is possible), we need to be raising the average ERoEI. The current average ERoEI of society is clearly a lot higher than 1.0, no matter how it is defined.

I don’t know where you are coming from, but it doesn’t make sense to me. As society becomes more complex (what Tainter talks about) the cost of government becomes greater both absolutely and relative to other costs. This strongly suggests that after a certain point, average ERoEI needs to be increasing to prevent collapse.

Gail doesn’t understand that the thought experiment is contrived so that the cost of government and other business costs (including interest on debt and private profit – and the energy budgets of the profiteers) go in the Energy-Invested term.  So, yes, the ERoEI can be precisely equal to 1.0 under the strange circumstance where the stakeholders know all of the other relevant numbers and, therefore, how much to take for themselves.  They are entitled to live from the work they do even if it is not very much.  People know better than to quibble about who did what.

Suppose none of the proceeds are exported and all the energy investment data is known and sums to EI’.   If the Energy Recovered is known for the entire life cycle, then ER- EI’ can be distributed to the stakeholders leaving ERoEI = 1.0 exactly and everything paid for. 

Of course the Energy Recovered is used by the community where it was generated.  Is there a problem with that?   One notices that in this exercise everything of value is measured in emergy units, which in my system are electricity-like units such as emjoules or emkilowatt-hours.  This is not a personal practice.  I’ll tell you when I am doing something that only I do.

 

·                     thomaslwayburn says:

June 13, 2013 at 6:39 pm

Charlie doesn’t understand either. It seems that many people have trouble getting their heads around this idea. I think, if you read this very short piece a couple of times, you will get it. I am not that much smarter than the rest of you. Part of the problem is that I put a number of items in the energy-invested term that are not strictly investments. In fact, normally, analysts do not debit the process for inconveniences of time and space, or the necessity to convert some portion of the energy produced to another form with a low efficiency process. They do not charge the process for environmental degradation or resource depletion.

[from http://dematerialism.net/eroeistar.htm ]


Let us suppose that a group of people representing all of the trades and professions wishes to support itself completely by relying on a single alternative, renewable energy technology for all of its energy needs. Let us suppose further that all of the natural resources necessary to do this are available within the Autonomous Alternative Energy District (AAED) [and the repositories of such natural resources can be retained at steady state from the detritus of the AAED including superannuated installations of the technology].


Nothing is imported from outside the District whereas energy and only energy is exported. If a man needs a car to drive from his home (in the District) to his job (in the District), the car is built, maintained, and fueled in the District. If his wife is sick the doctor in the District will treat her with medicine made in the District from chemicals produced there from raw materials mined there and subsequently recycled agressively. The ERoEI of the new energy technology is the total energy produced, ER, divided by the quantity ER minus the quantity EX, where EX is the energy exported; i. e., EX = ER – EI. If the District is able to export any energy at all the ERoEI ratio exceeds one and the technology is feasible – at least.

In the case of a single energy technology, the energy produced by each technology can be assigned a transformity of unity and the value of emergy is quantitatively the same as the Gibbs availability, which, at room temperature, is the Gibbs free energy. I prefer to report emergy values in units of emquads rather than quads, emjoules rather than joules, etc. Thus, the units of transformity are emquads per quad, for example. [snip]


If this doesn’t make sense to you, think harder. I mean it. This is important. If you don’t understand it, you don’t understand sustainability. There are a lot of people addressing the multitudes who don’t know what they are talking about. Don’t be one of them. I heard a lot of silly stuff in Austin at the ASPO conference. I couldn’t begin to speak as there is too much they don’t know. The finiteness of the world is just the beginning. You must close the energy balance in terms of consumption as well as production. If the AAED does not export energy, ERoEI* is at most equal to 1.0. If the District needs to import energy to keep going, ERoEI* is less than 1.0. Thus, if all of society is in the collapse phase, it is because the composite ERoEI* for all energy technologies properly matched is less than 1.0.

·                     John Christian says:

June 14, 2013 at 2:01 am

Its possible to make a lot of nice calculations around utopia like distribution of energy and resources, but I do believe Gail is more rooted in our current predicament for the finiteness we encounter in the industrial civilization. That the current set of living arrangements will hit a steep decline curve soon due to our misuse of resources. I also think she is sober in the way that she knows you can’t really turn enough people to believe in this utopia when so many of us cant even embrace simple ideas within socialism and sharing of wealth. I do believe many of us here knows whats wrong with the system and have all kinds of ideas how to improve it – but there is no chance we will be able to implement a fraction of these before a complete and utter collapse. Small pockets within society might find a better lifestyle more in pact with the limits of nature and approach some sort of equilibrium with how much you take out of it and how much you give back.

From a mathematical point of view there is also the unavoidable concept of entropy which cannot be left out in any processing of resources. Stuff rust and decay, and take a form that is very hard to recycle unless you have a fantastic device that gathers atoms and reassemble them in a clean form. The best engine for recycling today is the organic one with how soil, plants, animals interact with water and air. Any single species impact on his planet has been fine tuned over millions of years shaping synergies where the nature is somewhat self sustainable as long as no single species “take over”. Homo Sapiens (a name we don’t deserve) has basically been raping and pillaging this natural world for resources in a way that is just insanely destructive on a planetary scale. We have also bred our species completely out of proportions so no matter how much you plan to conserve, recycle and aim for renewables – continued breeding will require a substantial number of us to become part of the soil again. No doubt for us to have any chance at all to find some sort of equilibrium with the planet again we need to cut our numbers dramatically. The question is whether we do it willingly or not – realistically I cant see any other option besides the finiteness of the planet forcing the population down. That might start with an oil or energy shock or it might be because of major climate change incidents as the Arctic is thawing and releasing massive amounts of methane and CO2 to the atmosphere.

John Christian probably believes a good deal of the same things I do (or visa versa), but this is not about some utopia.  It’s a very good way to understand what should go into the energy-invested term. 

Suppose I started with Houston, Texas, and made a list of all the full-time workers and other stakeholders who get 100% of their livelihoods from Energy Plant X (not forgetting the wives and children).  I might compile a list of energy either of the type produced or transformed into the type produced.  But, many of their fellow citizens spend a small part of their time (energy) serving these Plant X workers, like the dentist and the man at H & R Block.   But, that’s a hell of a tangle.  How will I ever compile a list of energy expended on behalf of Plant X much less list the pro-rata portion of the energy budget of the man who cuts the hair of the man who shines the shoes of the man who does the taxes for the Plant X worker.

Suppose, however, that energy is the only product of District A in Houston.  Everyone either works for Energy Plant X or depends upon it for a livelihood.   Everything other than energy that is produced in District A must be part of the cost of producing energy.  We know exactly what to do.  Let’s consider additional products and districts.

 

We don’t need to know exactly who belongs to each district.  We need to know how much of each product including energy is produced and we need to have a number that describes the labor density for each product.  Finally, we need the total production for the city.  We may need some further description of the economy; but the result we seek can be a rough approximation and still be good enough to determine sustainability or not.

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 11, 2013 at 1:55 pm

Gail,

Please do not assume that you know what I am going to say and that, therefore, you don’t have to read it. What I have said is very different from what you seem to expect. You made an unfair criticism of ERoEI* replete with numerous incorrect statements. An ERoEI* = 1 corresponds to the Autonomous Alternative Energy District of http://dematerialism.net/eroistar.htm supplying all of its own needs and exporting nothing. In my blog at http://eroei.blogspot.com/   I indicated how each of your objections can be handled. I didn’t specifically mention that the costs of government appear in the energy-invested term; but, you should realize how that would be done by analogy with the specifics of other details I offered as examples. I thought I answered your objections previously, but I can’t find my answer on your blog. Sorry if this is a repetition.

 

Gail’s next comment is what set me off.  You cannot imagine how enraged I became.   She thought I was describing how things work.  My definitions are not different  from the standard definitions except in the more  technical aspects of the problem to which I did not expose her.   The only possibility that Gail failed to consider was that perhaps I am right and, perforce, everyone else is wrong.

 

In any case, Gail, I apologize for my outburst.  It is not likely to happen again.  The world will eventually adopt my definition of ERoEI* or one that is even more like my definition than mine is.   It doesn’t matter that someone else will take credit for it or simply say they always did it that way.   I agree with nearly everything you say.   But, they also  say that you always hurt the one you love.

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

 

June 13, 2013 at 1:38 pm

I am sorry but I do not have time to figure out your personal view of how things work, with definitions different from the standard ones. It is difficult enough dealing with standard definitions.

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 13, 2013 at 6:51 pm

Gail,

You are hopeless. You don’t want to learn anything you don’t already know and most of that is irrelevant or wrong. The rest of you know where to find me.

·                     Jan Steinman says:

June 13, 2013 at 7:42 pm

Tom, if you need to have a superior attitude, at least you can be civil!

Gail does a lot of good. Calling someone “hopeless” because they are unwilling to cater to your whims is hardly a way to make friends and influence people.

 

Jan, you are right.  I am ashamed of my outburst.  The Autonomous Alternative Energy District is one of the best ideas I ever had.  Naturally, I expected a much different reception for it.  It’s a good thing there’s no  crying in chemical engineering.

·                     Scott says:

June 13, 2013 at 8:01 pm

Jan, I think Tom sees something that he is having trouble communicating to the group and perhaps he is frustrated by that. I wish I could understand all the things he has written, I get some of it but much of it hard for most of us to grasp. I noticed we do have several doctors of science writing on the site and I hope they stay with us so I can try to understand their thesis. Sometimes scientist fail to understand the human aspect of things since they are hung up on math and facts. I would like to understand Tom’s ideas and I hope he stays with us but try to post in a way that we can understand as I have very little college.

I am trying to write so as to be more easily understood.   A lot of my difficulties come from years of writing only for myself.

·                     Thomas L Wayburn, PhD in chemical engineering says:

June 14, 2013 at 3:22 am

My definition of ERoEI* corrects all the defects of the standard definition which is what the critics of ERoEI usually complain about. But, you already know everything that you need to know. You don’t need no stinking scientific progress. I have been ahead of all you Peak Oil superstars no matter how late you jumped on the bandwagon. They tell me that I am hard to understand. What did you expect? It is always thus with true genius. I am afraid I shall have to give up on Gail Tverberg, the entertainer, who has no business addressing public policy. The rest of you know where to find me.

This is one of the worst things I ever wrote.  Perhaps it’s because I like and admire Gail so much.   Sorry Gail.  I don’t suppose you would let me take you to dinner.

[snip]

 

 

And, that's the way it ends.  I suppose I should contact Jan Steinman whom I know from The Solution Magazine and its ancillary activities; but, I see a catering to "notability" there too and I am reasonably certain no good will come from that quarter.  They are not sincere.  I appreciate Scott's defense of me.  I am afraid I am writing for a rather select audience.  As time goes on, it seems that fewer and fewer understand me until, I suppose,  I shall be writing for no one.  By the way, I am not sure I am a "true genius".  But, I'm not sure I'm not.  As I said to Albert Bartlett, average intelligence is decreasing; but, the single highest intelligence, corresponding to the right-most point under the bell curve that can accommodate a complete human being, is getting higher.  There must be many people much more intelligent than me.