Denis Frith of Melbourne has a number of comments on the distinction between
an energy unit of solar insolation and an energy unit of gasoline, (where
the energy unit is the Joule.)

These are important issues that must be resolved in order for us to have any
effective understanding of what energy is and does in terms of our interests
now and on into the future.

Anyone wanting to add to the comments, one way or another, are welcome to
join in.

My comments in answer to his comments are set off with >>TR*** <***

Denis Frith's comments are started with >Denis Frith> and end with >


>Denis Frith> Tom: I have raised this subject before without any resolution.
I raise it again because I wish to be sure that I have not got the matter
out of perspective. I have inserted my comments in the relevant extract
from your post.>

  --- Tom Robertson <t1r@...> wrote: >
> Instead, in a gush of blind technological optimism, they say "The
> sun sends as much energy to the earth in an hour as mankind uses
> in a year." as if a Joule of current solar insolation is in any
> way the equivalent to a Joule of gasoline.
>

>Dennis Frith>I do not know how much our difference in view point is
due to using differnet terminology so I will comment on that as well as
the technical issues.

I presume that your 'Joule of gasoline' refers to the chemical potential
energy in the hydrocarbon compounds comprising gasoline. When
ignited, this Joule of energy becomes waste heat. The associated matter
the hydrocarbon compounds) become  carbon dioxide and water. Generally,
useful work is carried out in that process but the result is the same.
A chemical compound from nature's store combines with oxygen in the air
to release the internal energy as waste heat eventually and the material
as gases and water vapor: an irreversible process.

"Joule of current solar insolation" is, I presume, a Joule of energy
in the incident solar photons. It is incoming continuously regardless
of whether it is captured by clouds, plants, water or a PV array. It
heats whatever it strikes. Essentially, it is heat that dissipates to
waste heat, often doing useful work in the process. The Joule has a
precise thermodynamic definition that is the same in each case.>

<<TR***The difference is one of energy concentration, where a Joule of
> gasoline, the product of substantial amounts of ancient sunlight,
> processed by gravity and other forces over millions of years,
> is massively more concentrated than one of sunlight.>>***

>Denis Frith> By this, I presume that you mean that there are more Joules in
a
gallon of gasoline than in the solar energy incident on a large area.
I do not have even rough figures at hand but this certainly is a very
important indisputable point.>

<<TR***Based on data from teh National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the
following web site:

http://www.wattsun.com/resources/insolation_maps/flat_plate.html

The highest (flat plate collecter) solar insolation in the United States is
in the Southwest states in June, when they get 7 to 8 kWh/m2/day which
equals 28.8 Million Joules per day.

A stripper well, which is about as low a fossil fuel energy producer as you
can find, produces less than 10 bbls of crude oil per day over the course of
a year. 10 barrels of oil per day amounts to roughly 65,463,900,000 Joules
per day.

A solar collector producing the gross output of that stripper well would
have to be 2337 square meters in size.

But that is not all.

A Joule is a Joule, whether it comes from a solar collector or a stripper
well, what makes the difference is the work each Joule of energy will do for
us and our economies.

In an Arizona desert, one Joule of heat has to contend with the fact that
the whole place has a pretty high relative temperature and so the power
gradient required to do any work is substantially reduced. Sure there are
technological tricks to get concentrated work out of each Joule in such
places, but it takes a lot of energy to do so.

On the other hand, wherever in the world that stripper well is found, and in
whatever season, the power gradient of that crude oil Joule is relatively
very high, in that you can burn that crude oil right on the spot and get
heat to boil water and run a turbine to produce electricity with at least
six and possibly many times more net yield than of that Joule of flat-plate
collected heat in June in a SouthEastern state of the U.S.

As for the so-called externalities, such as the depletion of limited
resources to polution from exhaust gases, etc. These are all important and
should be considered in any planning for what a place is and does. (Such
issues are easily incorporated into an Odum-based systems ecology model of
any place, with the energy systems diagram process being the primary means
of managing such complexity.)

However, because our main modes of competition are set by the market place
and very conventional ideas about energy that are innocent of knowledge
about depletion, those externalities are external to our ways of living and
doing business.

In fact, not only are we ignoring the externalities, we should really pay
attention to the way all those market mavens are messing with the money
system, a la Enron et all.

And what we "ought to be doing" for any moral reason, simply does not cut
it, as well as I can tell. Listen to the outcome of the Johannesberg
conference--on top of all the conferences in the past. Do we seem to be any
closer to cleaning up the market signals that make us blow off limited
non-renewable resources with consumeritis compounded by all sorts of other
confusions?

I do not think so. ***>>

>>TR***From above: "a Joule of gasoline, the product of substantial
> amounts of ancient sunlight, processed by gravity and other forces
> over millions of years, is massively more concentrated than a Joule
> of sunlight.

>>This is a fact that should be branded on the brain
> of every school kid on the planet, so they are not suckered into
> thinking that their future will be as easy and bountiful as our
> own, today.>>***

>Denis Frith> Ours has been easy and beautiful because we have presumed the
right
to draw down on nature's capital without any provision for the future>

>>TR*** This is also where H.T. Odum's eMergy analysis comes into play. In
> such analysis, the eMergy measure of a current unit of gasoline is
> the product of a "transformity" factor, in which the current Joule
> of gasoline is multiplied by an index for the total amount of energy
> it took to process that ancient sunlight+geological
> processing+extraction+processing+transport+marketing into today's
> fuel.

>Denis Frith> Like many, I cannot see the practical use of eMergy analysis.>

<<TR***Odum's transformity-based eMergy measure provides a relatively
complete and consistent way of establishing the actual "wealth" (as
determined by the work it can do) of extracted resources.

I see eMergy measures in two ways. The first is that they provide us with
the only reasonable accurate means of establishing the present/future
"worth" of fossil fuels.

Second, however, is that simple energy measures are good enough for knowing
the relative merit of current circumstances, tendencies and options.

As for H.T. Odum, what he has done is give us a set of tools that will let
people figure out how and why they may want to deal with the future in a
more effective way.

While many are unable to see it, what eMergy analysis does is let us
determine an index value for available energy resources and the net work
they can do for us in the competitive processes involving our lives at
certain times and places.

You can bet that when folks find out the extent to which the operational
signal quality, e.g., "market measures" of energy and other resources are
messed up, they will be looking for something better. And there will be no
Noble prize for person who finds that it was obscurely sitting there in "not
yet ready for prime time" eMergy all along.

It is worth noting that the Nobel prize only deals in certain disciplines,
specifically in terms of this discussion, the study of "economics." It does
not award work in understanding energy, ecology or their systemic
understanding.

Incidentally, the Crafoord prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences by the same process that awards the Nobel for economics, etc., saw
fit to give their prize to H.T. Odum and his brother Eugene back in 1987.
They won the prize "For pioneering contributions within the field of
ecosystem ecology. The prize amount: $355 000 USD***>>

>Denis Frith> The factors for and against the use of gasoline are:

For
     *high energy density (as already discussed)
     *relatively easy to store and transport
     *source of high temperature heat that can do useful work in a
      variety of engines
     *requires relatively little embedded energy in the process of
      finding the crude oil through to putting the gasoilne in the
      fuel tank
     *it is very cheap in terms of Joules/$ to the user because
      present use is heavily subsidized by the future

Against
     *polluting
     *it is a draw down on natural capital that cannot continue
      because the store is finite
     *its use has enabled the foundations of industrialized
      societies without provision for future upkeep or provision
      of the infrastructure necessary for replacements
     *society is so addicted to its use that sharing the remainder
      around has been the subject of continuing disputation.>

<<TR***While it is sad and in many ways dangerous, the future does not vote
or play in today's market.>>**

>Denis Frith> Solar energy
For
     *continuing input regards of human activities
     *results in the radiation of low level heat to outer space
      regardless of the use to which it is put:
     *non polluting.>
<<TR***Nothing is non polluting, and some solar, such as corn/ethanol
biomass can be downright "dirty" in many ways.***>>

>Denis Frith> Against
     *low level energy that requires appreciable embedded energy
      where it is required to provide goods or services
      very limited potential to replace the use of gasoline>

<<TR*** In other words, low to potentially negative Energy Returned
on Energy Invested.

The bottom line.

We live in a competitive world, where one of the most critical aspects of
how things work has to do with the quality of information (signal quality)
we have and use to know our circumstances, options, and means of acting.

Economics is rapidly demonstrating that it is almost completely disconnected
from any physical reality, particularly to the extent that high-level
finance has created a balloon of money that is independent of any connection
to markets in goods and services.

This does not mean get rid of economics as is promoted for example by the
"Technocrats" but it does mean that economics needs to be put in its proper
perspective regarding the information quality we require in managing the
uncertainty of our times.

Like it or not, systems ecology, incorporating many of the concepts mainly
consolidated by H.T. Odum, allows us to put economics into a proper and far
more accurate context. In in addition, where the systems diagrams let us
manage complexity they also provide a coherent and consistent means of
communication, whereby folks with different points of view and interests can
see the extent to which their concerns are recognized by others, and vice
versa.

Thus, it is my guess (and my bet) that a "systems ecology" treated in terms
of W. Edwards Deming's concept of Quality, (constant learning, constant
testing of what is learned, and constant improvement on the basis of what is
learned and tested) will become the most important tool used by future
competitors.

And for all those who shy at the idea of "competition" let me assure you
that the game is always and everywhere competition. What some offer as
"feel-good" options such as cooperation and altruism, are simply other forms
of competing.

Thus, the only way you can get away from the pervasive and persistent
processes of competition is to lose and lose big time.***>>

Thanks for your response, Nick.

You ask, "Who do you suppose is making the decisions here?"

Since I never met a rhetorical question I didn't like, I will respond.

I think in today's neofascist U.S. Empire there is no clear
distinction between government and big business.  IMO we are in a
kleptocracy that is evolving into a thugocracy, and so long as we are
still ruled by kleptocrats the decisions will be based on fairly
short-term thinking.  (When we come to the thugocrats, the thinking,
such as it is, could become even shorter-term.)

Regards,

Bill



--- In energyresources@y..., Nicholas Arguimbau <narguimbau@e...>
wrote:
> Some people will be hurt by global warming no matter when it
stops.  The rest
> will be helped by global warming if it stops at the right
temperature.  No
> one will be helped by global warming if it never stops.  No one
knows when it
> will stop.  Therefore no one knows it will help them.  Corporations
simply do
> a Laplace transform of future profits with and without the
estimated
> financial costs and benefits to them of regulations imposed upon
them as a
> result of global warming, using k=0.20/yr, approximately.
Therefore the time
> horizon of the analysis assures that regulatory constraints within
that time
> horizon can only have negative effects.  Who do you suppose is
making the
> decisions here?
>
> Nick
>
> wmtamblyn wrote:
>
> > http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?
story=328974
> >
> > North America will benefit from global warming, say researchers
> > By Geoffrey Lean in Johannesburg
> > 31 August 2002
> >
> > Poor countries will suffer massive losses of food production and
> > agricultural land as global warming takes hold but North America
will
> > benefit, a United Nations report released at the summit said.
> >
> > The conclusions – which add a new dimension to the Bush
> > administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate
> > change – show food production declining sharply in up to 73
countries
> > during the next eight years, even as their population grows.
> >
> > It says growing wheat will "virtually disappear from Africa", and
> > decline by up to 95 per cent in South-east Asia and up to 75 per
cent
> > in the Indian sub-continent. Other crops such as sugar and roots
and
> > tubers crops will also decline, though not by so much.
> >
> > The report – prepared by the International Institute for Systems
> > Analysis in Austria for the United Nations – is based on a series
of
> > sophisticated computer models of climate and food production from
> > some of the world's leading institutes in the field.
> >
> > It says that arid areas will get larger in developing countries
> > worldwide. Growing crops will become much harder in Southern
Africa,
> > where another 11 per cent of its total land area "may suffer from
> > severe constraints" on agriculture by the year 2080. Central
America
> > and the Caribbean, Australia, Northern Africa, and the Middle East
> > will also lose available land.
> >
> > Parts of Europe – and particularly Britain, Ireland and Spain –
will
> > lose good land because rainfall patterns will change, bringing
drier
> > summers. But other parts, such as Scandinavia, will gain when cold
> > northern areas warm up.
> >
> > Northern America and Russia will also gain land in that way and
are
> > expected to be able "substantially" to increase production. By
> > contrast, up to 40 developing countries – which are expected to be
> > home to up to three billion people in 2080 – may lose up to a
fifth
> > of their harvests and another 33 would could lose about 5 per
cent of
> > it. Among the most seriously affected countries are Sudan,
Nigeria,
> > Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and
> > Mozambique.
> >
> > The number of hungry people will increase, says the report, and
the
> > world will become even more dependent on the United States for
food.
> > At present, US farmers help to feed more than 100 countries who
> > import its grain and the report predicts developing country
imports
> > will increase by 25 per cent in the next 80 years.
> >
> > Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or
compliments?
> > Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@b...
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Thanks for your response, Denis.

You say, "The description 'sosphisticated models' is designed to
encourage the uninformed to have unwarranted belief in the
predictions."

My concern is that the people who create such models are very likely
among those who take them more seriously than is warranted, and that
the people who advise the Empire's rulers may be as well--or may
abuse the results for the Empire's ends even if they do not have
unwarranted faith in the predictions.

Regards,

Bill



--- In energyresources@y..., "Frith, Denis" <denisaf2000@y...> wrote:
>         I would have no more confidence in the predictions of these
> models than I have in the predictions of AEO2001 (for which I posted
> a detailed assessment). The description 'sosphisticated models' is
> designed to encourage the uninformed to have unwarranted belief in
> the predictions.
>         In my opinion, it is quite likely that there is an
> anthropogenic influence on the climate change. However, there is so
> much uncertainty attached to climate that even experts in the field
> will not be able to answer this question with a high degree of
> confidence. Futher work will tend to reduce the uncertainty but
> cannot eliminate it.
>         I have not examined the available evidence, argument etc
> sufficiently to put much weight on my opinion. I therefore trust the
> TPCC broad findings. Others do not. Detailed predictions like those
> below should be treated with even more care. Unfortunately, often
> they are not. This contributes profoundly to the mmisunderstanding
> that prevails, and obstructs effective action.
>
> Denis Frith
> Melbourne
>
> --- wmtamblyn <wmtamblyn@y...> wrote: >
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?
story=328974
> >
> > North America will benefit from global warming, say researchers
> > By Geoffrey Lean in Johannesburg
> > 31 August 2002
> >
> > Poor countries will suffer massive losses of food production and
> > agricultural land as global warming takes hold but North America
> > will
> > benefit, a United Nations report released at the summit said.
> >
> > The conclusions – which add a new dimension to the Bush
> > administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol to combat
climate
> > change – show food production declining sharply in up to 73
> > countries
> > during the next eight years, even as their population grows.
> >
> > It says growing wheat will "virtually disappear from Africa", and
> > decline by up to 95 per cent in South-east Asia and up to 75 per
> > cent
> > in the Indian sub-continent. Other crops such as sugar and roots
> > and
> > tubers crops will also decline, though not by so much.
> >
> > The report – prepared by the International Institute for Systems
> > Analysis in Austria for the United Nations – is based on a series
> > of
> > sophisticated computer models of climate and food production from
> > some of the world's leading institutes in the field.
> >
> > It says that arid areas will get larger in developing countries
> > worldwide. Growing crops will become much harder in Southern
> > Africa,
> > where another 11 per cent of its total land area "may suffer from
> > severe constraints" on agriculture by the year 2080. Central
> > America
> > and the Caribbean, Australia, Northern Africa, and the Middle
East
> > will also lose available land.
> >
> > Parts of Europe – and particularly Britain, Ireland and Spain –
> > will
> > lose good land because rainfall patterns will change, bringing
> > drier
> > summers. But other parts, such as Scandinavia, will gain when
cold
> > northern areas warm up.
> >
> > Northern America and Russia will also gain land in that way and
are
> >
> > expected to be able "substantially" to increase production. By
> > contrast, up to 40 developing countries – which are expected to
be
> > home to up to three billion people in 2080 – may lose up to a
fifth
> >
> > of their harvests and another 33 would could lose about 5 per cent
> > of
> > it. Among the most seriously affected countries are Sudan,
Nigeria,
> >
> > Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and
> > Mozambique.
> >
> > The number of hungry people will increase, says the report, and
the
> >
> > world will become even more dependent on the United States for
> > food.
> > At present, US farmers help to feed more than 100 countries who
> > import its grain and the report predicts developing country
imports
> >
> > will increase by 25 per cent in the next 80 years.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or
compliments?
> > Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@b...
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
>
>
> http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Messenger for SMS
> - Now send & receive IMs on your mobile via SMS

Responding to Ron Patterson's "7 questions" to my friend Newton: There
aren't really "7 questions" here. Ron just wants it to seem as if his
flailing attacks are organized, somehow. Well, they ain't.

Ron, home recovering from surgery, which I hope went well, seems
profoundly disturbed that Solar Prosperity Corridors is offering a
real-world criticism, and an alternative, to the insane idea for immense
"Solar Power Towers," the first proposed near Wentworth, NSW, Australia.

Could this be serious? A project so large,  based on a
never-before-demonstrated technology?

I love Australia, I really do, and I think I know people there. So I
want them to
grab for the brake on this immense Solar Power Tower scheme! Slow it
down, please, to allow an alternate plan to be presented: a Solar
Prosperity Corridor, Onslow to Brisbane.

  <www.SolarProsperityCorridors.org>

I could bring a million US/Europe tourists to an Aussie "Solar Energy
Theme Park" at some windy spot in the North  ---  Darwin, Eighty Mile
Beach, Onslow, Cape York, where SPTs and SPCs are demonstrated and
compared, on smaller but still significant scales.

We could build a 200 meterTower on the north coast that gathers much
more energy, dollar for dollar, than might the Wentworth site, and we
could have a solar air-conditoned theme park!

~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~

Where is your business plan for such an enterprise?

Who could an investor contace for an opportunity to get in on the ground floor?

~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~

~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~

While Giampietro et al, 1992 say that "carrying capacity" "refers to the limit
to the number of humans the earth can support in the long term without damage to
the environment." a more accurate and useful statement of the concept would be
that "Carrying capacity refers to the quantity of humans at specific levels of
life quality a place can support with security and satisfaction."

This puts the environment in a proper context to human interests. The fact is,
you cannot damage the environment, it is the container that holds everything we
humans are and can be. When we do things that are not in the nature of the
environment, it is we who do such things that will be wrecked, not the
environment. This business of treating the environment as some entity separate
from our lives and interests is useful for fundraising by environmental
organizations, but confuses what is at stake here, particularly where the
environment does an enormous amount of free work for human society (e.g.,
environmental services.)

In other words, treat the environment well and do well, mess it up and you are
lucky to just get messed up.

~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~


Tower power and prosperity corridors notwithstanding:
CARRYING CAPACITY [author unknown]

The term "carrying capacity," long known to ecologists, has also recently become
popular.  It "refers to the limit to the number of humans the earth can support
in the long term without damage to the environment." (Giampietro, et. al. 1992 )
The troublesome phrase here is "without damage to the environment."  One damages
the environment when one kills a mosquito, builds a fire, erects a house,
develops a subdivision, builds a power plant, constructs a city, explodes a
nuclear weapon, or wages nuclear war.  Which, if any, of these things takes
place "without damage to the environment?"

The concept of carrying capacity is central to discussions of population growth.
Since the publication of the original paper, the concept has been examined by
Cohen in a book How Many People can the Earth Support? ( Cohen 1995 ) Cohen
makes a scholarly examination of many past estimates of the carrying capacity of
the Earth, and concludes that it is not possible to say how many people the
Earth can support. Furthermore, any calculated estimate of the carrying capacity
of the Earth may be challenged and will certainly be ignored.

Human activities have already caused great change in the global
environment.  May observes that ( May 1993 ): ...the scale and scope of human
activities have, for the first time, grown to rival the natural processes that
built the biosphere and that maintain it as a place where life can flourish.

Many facts testify to this statement.  It is estimated that somewhere
between  20  and  40  percent of the earth's primary productivity, from
plant photosynthesis on land and in the sea, is now appropriated for human use.

An impact on the global environment of this magnitude is properly the cause for
alarm.

We note that growing populations require growing numbers of jobs and
growing rates of consumption of resources, and the satisfaction of these
requirements is almost always at the expense of the carrying capacity of the
environment.

The inevitable and unavoidable conclusion is that if we want to stop the
increasing damage to the global environment, as a minimum, we must stop
population growth.

It won't be easy.  Jerome B. Wiesner was President of M.I.T. ( 1971-1980 ) and
was Special Assistant for Science and Technology for Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson.  He made a very sobering observation about the conflict between the
needs of humans and the needs of the environment if we are to maintain the
carrying capacity of the Earth.    ( Wiesner 1989 )

There are no clear-cut ways to reconcile economic growth with the measures
needed to curb environmental degradation, stretch dwindling natural resources
and solve health and economic problems.

So, instead of trying to calculate how many people the Earth can support, we
should instead, focus on the question of why should we have more population
growth.  This is nicely framed in the challenge:
Can you think of any problem, on any scale, from microscopic to global, Whose
long-term solution is in any demonstrable way,
Aided, assisted, or advanced, by having larger populations
At the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?

DENIAL OF THE POPULATION PROBLEM

There are prominent political leaders who believe that there is no
population problem.

For example, when Jack Kemp, who was then the  U.S. Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, was informed of a report from the United Nations that told of
resource problems that would arise because of increasing populations, it was
reported that he said, "Nonsense, people are not a drain on the resources of the
planet."  ( Kemp 1992 )

Malcolm Forbes, Jr. Editor of Forbes Magazine had a similar response t the
reports of global problems resulting from overpopulation in both the developed
and underdeveloped parts of the world.  "It's all nonsense." (Forbes 1992 )

Here are two presidential people who reject the notion of limits that are
implied by the concept of sustainability.  Their expressions are consistent
with a prominent refrain in presidential politics: "We can grow our way out of
the problems."

Contrast these two statements with the words of the biologist E.O. Wilson who
has written that: The raging monster upon the land is population growth.  In its
presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.  To say, as
many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor
ideology or land-use management is sophistic.

POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has done many constructive and
beneficial things. The policies, actions, and leadership of the Agency are
crucial to any hope for a sustainable society.  In a recent report from the
Agency, we read: In view of the increasing national and international interest
in sustainable development, Congress has asked the Environmental Protection
Agency ( EPA ) to report on its efforts to incorporate the concepts of
sustainable development into the Agency's operations.

The Report ( EPA 1993 ) is both encouraging and distressing.  It is
encouraging to read of all of the many activities of the Agency which help
protect the environment.  It is distressing to search in vain through the Report
for acknowledgment that population growth is at the root of most of the problems
of the environment.  While the Brundtland Report says that population growth is
not the central problem, the EPA report avoids making this allegation.  But the
EPA report makes only a very few minor references to the environmental problems
that arise as a direct consequence of population growth.

The EPA report speaks of an initiative to pursue sustainable development in the
Central Valley of California: where many areas are experiencing rapid urban
growth and associated environmental problems...

A stronger emphasis on sustainable agricultural practices will be a key
element in any long-term solutions to problems in the area.

There is no way that "A stronger emphasis on sustainable agricultural
practices" can stop the "rapid urban growth" that is destroying farmland!
An emphasis on agriculture cannot solve the problem.  To solve the
problems, one must stop the "rapid urban growth" which causes the problems.
  It is pointless to focus on the development of  "sustainable agricultural
practices" when agriculture will soon be displaced by the "rapid urban
growth."   However, if  "A stronger emphasis on sustainable agricultural
practices" means "stop the conversion of agricultural land to urban or
other  developments," then there is logic to the second of the statements.

With our present social and value systems, it is almost impossible to
maintain agriculture in the face of urban population growth.

In speaking of the New Jersey Coastal Management Plan for the management of an
environmentally sensitive tidal wetland, the EPA report says: The project
involves balancing the intense development pressures in the area with wetlands
wildlife protection, water quality, air quality, waste management, and other
environmental considerations.

"Balancing" sounds nice, but it needs to be recognized that "balancing"
generally means "yielding to."

In the Pacific Northwest: The EPA... is an active participant in these
discussions, which focus on sustaining high quality natural resources and marine
ecosystems in the face of rapid population and economic growth in the area.

These quotations of minor sections of the EPA report make it clear that the EPA
understands the origin of environmental problems.  Thus it is puzzling that the
Agency so carefully avoids serious discussion of the fundamental source of so
many of the problems it is called on to address.

In this thirty page report on the Agency's programs, the term "sustainable
development" is mentioned hundreds of times, and population growth, the most
important variable in the equation, is mentioned just these few times. It is as
though one attempted to build a  100  story skyscraper from good materials, but
one forgot to put in a foundation.

A proposal for the establishment of a "National Institute for the
Environment" ( 1993 ) is being advanced.  If the proposed institute is to
be effective, its mission and charge must include, "Studying the
demographic causes and consequences of environmental problems."  This means
"look at the numbers!"
--------------------------------------------
Machiavellian intelligence and deception are central to human interaction. As a
result of a sophisticated arms race, these facts are very effectively hidden.
--------------------------------------------
Lynn Dohner   San Juan Basin: where carrying capacity is measured in wellheads
                                                per sq.mile.

>>>Denis Frith of Melbourne has a number of comments
on the distinction between an energy unit of solar
insolation and an energy unit of gasoline, (where
the energy unit is the Joule.)<<<

Tom, forgive me for butting in however I am a
non-mathematician who had a hard time understanding
this point myself. It is even harder to understand
when one realizes that energy can neither be created
nor destroyed. That is, the energy in a gallon of
gasoline is not destroyed when you burn it, it just
simply no longer has the ability to do useful work.

Therein lies the difference in a given amount of
energy in bound up in gasoline and an exact same
amount of energy bound up in sunlight. How much useful
work can be extracted from that sunlight verses the
same question when applied to gasoline. There is
little comparison. In fact, to speak of the two as if
they were the same thing is dishonest.

But don’t take my word for it, Ernest Partridge
describes this concept beautifully in the paper
“Perilous Optimism”:
http://gadfly.igc.org/papers/cornuc.htm
If one is really interested in a great description of
this concept, punch up this web page, then scroll down
to the header, about half way through the paper,
titled “The Entropy trap”. Beginning there, and for
the next two or three pages, this principle is
described in such simple terms that even a
non-mathematician such as myself can easily understand
it.

Ron Patterson


=====
“If there is a single book on the subject to engage the enthusiast, silence the
critic, and enlighten the ignoramus, this is it.”

The London Observer in a review of the book: A Green History of the World: The
Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations by Clive Pointing.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com

http://www.carryingcapacity.org/aa1.html
POPULATION: BIGGER IS LESS FREE
by Garrett Hardin

Recently the BIB school of population pundits— "Bigger is Better" — has become
noisier. That bigger is not always better is known to everyone with eyes and a
memory.

An expanding population erodes individual freedom. The freedom people had to
drive their automobiles wherever they wanted to in 1920 has been greatly reduced
since then. Timed traffic signals now tell us when we can move and how fast.
Parking meters tell us where we can leave our cars, and for how long.

When our population gets still larger, we will lose more liberty of movement. At
some level of population, only an elite few will be able to have personal cars.
The rest will have to be satisfied with mass transit.

Liberty of location is also lost with population growth. When a population is
small, businesses, homes and farms can locate on flatland. The increase in real
estate prices that comes with population growth squeezes out first the farms,
then the homes. Deep topsoil is paved over, and farms are relocated on slopes
where the soil is thinner and erosion is greater. Not an intelligent
arrangement.

Anticipating higher populations, a society that was willing to restrict freedom
of location could save the best farmland for farms. Businesses and homes could
use hilly land, where the costs of building is greater but the view is better.

Without such anticipation and rational action, what is called "normal
development" produces such abominations as Silicon Valley where fruit trees
should be growing. Future food production is constricted.

The free growth of cities progressively produces loss of freedom. Every city is
a monument of hope that we can get more people together is a small space without
losing anything significant.

The hope is thwarted. People working in the third dimension of a skyscraper must
come down at rush hours to be squeezed into the two dimensions of the streets
below. The modern city should be called "Bottleneck City."

The costs to freedom of Bottleneck City are many: traffic jams; waste of travel
times; sacrifice of space-demanding amenities like street trees and city parks;
loss of clean air from automobile pollution; crowding of pedestrians; more
hectic psychological pace; and greater per capita cost of security forces.

The Bigger Is Better population pundits seem unaware of a major principle of all
science: the Scale Effect. Growth in size always causes change in properties.
There is no way that a hummingbird can be scaled up to 30 pounds in weight and
still be a hummingbird: It becomes something like a slow flying vulture.

Likewise there is no way that a nation of our size ... can be governed by a Town
Meeting; we have to settle for a representative democracy. Group decisions
become ever more difficult.

A growing population loses one freedom after another. We have passed the level
of economies of scale. From here on out, bigger is not better: Bigger is less
free.

The enduring problem for the nation is this: Which freedoms should we prize
most? Can we agree to restrict certain lesser freedoms in order to preserve the
greater ones? Unless we can find ways to bring population growth to a halt, we
surely shall have to give up one freedom after another.

If we choose the freedoms to be renounced, we maybe able to preserve the more
important freedoms.

Garrett Hardin, Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology, University of
California-Santa Barbara, is the author of a dozen books and more than 200
articles, essays, and reviews on a variety of social issues.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-------------

Fundamental Cause of Energy Crisis=Mass Immigration-Driven Population Growth
California's flawed energy deregulation scheme only masks the underlying cause:
exploding energy demand caused by population growth.

California's per capita demand for electricity actually decreased 5% over the
past 20 years, from 7,292 kilowatt hours in 1979, to 6,952 kilowatt hours in
1999, but in the same period California's population grew by more than 10.6
MILLION!
------------------------------------------------------------
Ancient History Threatens to Repeat Itself
The San Diego Union - Tribune;
San Diego, CA. Mar 21, 2001, by Robert S. Boyd
Abstract:
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/ancienthistory.html
Researchers say the overcrowded cities, water shortages and electricity
brownouts in 21st century California, India and Brazil are ominous reminders of
the fate of ancient Rome, Babylon and the Maya empire.

"Overpopulation was a major factor in making the Maya vulnerable to failure,"
[Vernon Scarborough] told a conference on "The Collapse of Complex Societies" in
San Francisco last month. "The trigger event of the collapse appears to have
been a long drought beginning about 840 A.D."

Intensive agriculture and excessive irrigation led to the salinization of the
Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq.
Scarre said this "ultimately damaged the very landscape these societies were
striving to improve."

Full Text
Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Mar 21, 2001

Historians and archaeologists who study the downfall of ancient civilizations
are warning that parts of the modern world may be heading the way of history's
fallen empires.

Researchers say the overcrowded cities, water shortages and electricity
brownouts in 21st century California, India and Brazil are ominous reminders of
the fate of ancient Rome, Babylon and the Maya empire.

Previous prophets of doom, such as English political economist T.R. Malthus and
the "Club of Rome," which in 1972 predicted that the world's population would
overwhelm its resources, have been proved wrong so far by the rapid progress of
technology. This time, however, some researchers say the complexity caused by
high technology could be mankind's undoing.

The Mayas, who dominated Central America in the ninth century, built elaborate
irrigation systems to support their booming population. But they "suffered from
problems that are startlingly similar to those today," said Vernon Scarborough,
an archaeologist at the University of Cincinnati.

"Overpopulation was a major factor in making the Maya vulnerable to failure,"
Scarborough told a conference on "The Collapse of Complex Societies" in San
Francisco last month. "The trigger event of the collapse appears to have been a
long drought beginning about 840 A.D."

Although many factors, such as war and disease, contributed to the calamities of
antiquity, speakers at the conference singled out two causes: too many people
and too little fresh water. This one-two punch can become lethal, they said,
when environmental problems such as a prolonged drought or a change in climate
put too much stress on a society.

The movement of peoples into big cities such as Rome and Tikal, the Maya
capital, created great wealth, rich cultures and complex bureaucracies that
ultimately proved to be unsustainable.

"Complex societies have been collapsing for 12,000 years -- as long as they have
existed," said Joseph Tainter, an expert on prehistoric American Indians at the
Rocky Mountain Research Station in Albuquerque, N.M.

"High population levels gave early societies a fragility that made them
especially vulnerable to environmental changes," said Christopher Scarre, an
archaeologist from Cambridge University in England.

Search for water

Intensive agriculture and excessive irrigation led to the salinization of the
Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq.
Scarre said this "ultimately damaged the very landscape these societies were
striving to improve."

Now the world is facing an increasingly serious shortage of fresh water.
Although water covers three-quarters of our planet, 95 percent of it is salty
and 70 percent of the rest is locked up in ice.

A billion people lack adequate clean water, according to Peter Gleick, director
of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in
Oakland.

Water-borne diseases kill 10,000 to 20,000 children every day, said Gleick,
author of a report "The World's Water, 2000-2001."

Lessons ignored

People all over the globe are abandoning small towns and villages and jamming
into metropolitan areas, especially in poorer, Third World countries.

By 2015, population experts predict, there will be 28 "megacities," each with
more than 10 million people. The Tokyo region is already home to more than 26
million people. Bombay, India, is expected to grow from 18 million to 26
million; Los Angeles from 13.1 million to 14.1 million; New York City from 16.6
million to 17.4 million.

To be sure, modern cities enjoy more advanced technologies than ancient
metropolises. Nevertheless, the problems of crowding, pollution, crime and
sanitation that overwhelmed populous societies in the past threaten to do so
again, especially in less fortunate parts of the world.

"The lessons from history, or prehistory, are usually inconvenient and painful
to deal with and easy to ignore," Scarborough said.

In the 1990s, over 95% of California's population growth resulted from mass
immigration.

Mass immigration also accounted for more than 70% of the United States' 3.2
million annual population growth in the 1990s. Over two-thirds of that was from
legal immigration, that is resulting from laws passed by the federal government.

More people added to the population (even with reduced per-capita consumption)
inevitably results in more demand. This means that "solutions" that address the
supply side of the energy crisis will not solve the problem.

Non-renewable energy supplies, such as oil, coal, and natural gas (used to power
plants generating electricity) are running out. At the current rate of use,
commercial quantities of oil worldwide will be exhausted by 2050.

Thus, we must transition to alternative renewable resources.

Available clean, alternative energy supply sufficient to meet increasing demand
is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. For example, hydroelectric power
is already providing the U.S. with 11% of its electricity, but energy from this
source is limited to a maximum contribution of 13% because the most suitable
sites for dams are already occupied. There are problems associated with other
alternative energy sources as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpts from:
Food, Land, Population and the U. S. Economy
by
David Pimentel
Cornell University

Mario Giampietro
Istituto Nazionale della Nutrizione, Rome
1994

The Issue of Scale

The study of demographic growth and economic development is polarized by two
contrasting schools:(i) the neo-Malthusians, who view population growth as a
negative factor in economic development; "A development policy without a
population program is like mopping the floor with the water turned on" (P.
Bukman, quoted in WDF, 1989, p.1); and (ii) the cornucopians, who consider
population growth a positive factor in economic development; "The ultimate
resource is people-- skilled, spirited, and hopeful people-- who will exert
their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and so, inevitably, for the
benefit of us all" (Simon, 1981, p. 348).

  The polarization is related to the different importance given to the two
factors, natural and technological capital, that determine the external pressure
on society. Neo-Malthusians, in general ecologists, consider only the
limitedness of natural capital, whereas Cornucopians, in general economists,
focus on the ability to improve human-made, technological capital. At the very
root of the disagreement is the issue of scale. When population size is not put
into relation with the environment in which society is operating, it is
impossible to assess whether an increase in population size is a positive or
negative event. For example, in the United States between 1800 and 1900, the
doubling of the population definitely improved technological capital and the
ability to make better use of the abundant natural resources available,
resulting in a better standard of living. On the other hand, a doubling of
China's current population will undoubtedly result in a major ecological
disaster and most probably in a collapse of its socioeconomic structure. Already
less than 0.08 hectare of arable land is available per capita in China to
produce food.

  Some economists (e.g., Simon, 1981) challenge the idea that an increase in the
size of economic systems can ever induce a negative effect on their performance.
They argue that improvements in internal organization will always lead to a
larger technological capital and overcome potential difficulties generated by
the tightening of natural capital available per capita. Ecologists, on the other
hand, point out that even apparently 'free' resources, such as clean water and
air, become scarce when human numbers expand relative to environmental
processes.

  Economics describes the accessibility of resources in terms of labor hours
required to buy them, but does not consider their biophysical cost in terms of
energy. In economic terms the cost of resources in developed societies, such as
the United States, is low because these systems employ techniques of
environmental exploitation that use huge amounts of exosomatic energy subsidies.
Thus, the low economic cost is based on a high productivity of labor in society
that in turn is based on a high biophysical cost for that society. High labor
productivity implies a large throughput of energy and other resources, which
means a large environmental impact. The more the economic costs are decreased by
economic growth through economies of scale and more technological inputs, the
larger is the flow of natural resources consumed by the economic system as a
whole.
----------------------------------------------------------
Lynn Dohner - San Juan Basin, but willing to relocate to a prosperity corridor
as soon as land title disputes are resolved, would prefer a view lot.

In a news conference on 11 October 2001, President George W. Bush
said "we learned some very important lessons in Vietnam."

All members of the U.S. armed forces should take a moment and
familiarize themselves with the important lessons that George Bush
learned during the Vietnam War. Since war in Iraq is inevitable,
let's do everything we can to encourage the men and women of the
U.S. armed services to follow the example of their Commander-in-
Chief when called upon to go into battle.

In May 1968, American soldiers were dying in Southeast Asia at a
rate of about 350 per week. George W. Bush was twelve days away from
losing his student draft deferment when he abruptly decided that he
should join the 147th Fighter Group of the Texas Air National Guard.
In spite of the very long waiting list and having only scored the
lowest acceptable grade on the pilot aptitude qualification test,
this son of a Houston-based congressman managed to enlist on the
same day that he applied, and a special ceremony was staged so he
could be photographed swearing in for duty. According to George W.
Bush's former commanding officer, Bush "said he wanted to fly just
like his daddy."  Other members of the Texas Air National Guard at
the time included the aide to the speaker of the Texas House and at
least seven members of the Dallas Cowboys professional football
team; Bush's 147th Fighter Group was known as the "Champagne Unit"
because it also included the sons of future Senator Lloyd Bentsen
and Texas Governor John Connally.

Immediately following a `surprise' promotion to second lieutenant,
Bush was put on inactive duty status and spent more than two months
in Florida working for Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate,
Edward J. Gurney. When he wasn't handing out Gurney press, Bush
returned to Houston for weekend Guard duty. In early 1970, Bush
rented a one-bedroom apartment at the exclusive Chateaux Dijon
complex in Houston, a building with six swimming pools where Bush
played all-day water volleyball games and dated many of the single
women who lived there.

In 1973, Dubya went AWOL from the National Guard to start at Harvard
Business School, eight months short of his full six-year hitch.
Bush's acceptance into Harvard Business School surprised some, since
he had graduated from Yale a full five years before.

Urge enlisted men and women to do like Bush did: avoid combat at all
costs, hang out, sleep late, and lead an active social life; when
called upon to fight a war for your great nation, see if you can to
pull political strings in order to avoid the infantry and chose
instead to spend two years in flight training in San Antonio and
another four years in part-time service in your home state. If you
lack the ruling-class connections, than you should be obliged to do
whatever you can to follow the lead of your Commander-in-Chief:
cheat, lie, malinger, and go AWOL.
Desert while you can; killing and dying for the ruling-class is for
chumps.

The price of NG rose more than $1, in an almost continuous fashion for 3
months -from February '02, then settled back a little over the next several
months.

As of Friday 8/30 the close, the January 2003 futures are pricing NG at
about $4.05; Dec. '02: about $3.90. September '02, $3.29. Thus, some
increase is anticipated by market risk takers.


Probably means little.

Dell Erickson
Minneapolis.



At 05:55 PM 08/30/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Well, Oklahoma Natural Gas has decided to offer consumers the chance
>to lock in the price of $4.31/dekatherm for natural gas this winter.
>The most recent cost on my bill was about one dollar less per
>dekatherm.
>
>Any thoughts from any of the natural gas experts on the list about
>this?

Thanks, Lynn.  I think the correct URL for this article is
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/bigger.html

Regards,

Bill


--- In energyresources@y..., ldohner@c... wrote:
>
>  http://www.carryingcapacity.org/aa1.html
> POPULATION: BIGGER IS LESS FREE
> by Garrett Hardin
>
> Recently the BIB school of population pundits— "Bigger is Better" —
has become noisier. That bigger is not always better is known to
everyone with eyes and a memory.
>
> An expanding population erodes individual freedom. The freedom
people had to drive their automobiles wherever they wanted to in 1920
has been greatly reduced since then. Timed traffic signals now tell
us when we can move and how fast. Parking meters tell us where we can
leave our cars, and for how long.
>
> When our population gets still larger, we will lose more liberty of
movement. At some level of population, only an elite few will be able
to have personal cars. The rest will have to be satisfied with mass
transit.
>
> Liberty of location is also lost with population growth. When a
population is small, businesses, homes and farms can locate on
flatland. The increase in real estate prices that comes with
population growth squeezes out first the farms, then the homes. Deep
topsoil is paved over, and farms are relocated on slopes where the
soil is thinner and erosion is greater. Not an intelligent
arrangement.
>
> Anticipating higher populations, a society that was willing to
restrict freedom of location could save the best farmland for farms.
Businesses and homes could use hilly land, where the costs of
building is greater but the view is better.
>
> Without such anticipation and rational action, what is
called "normal development" produces such abominations as Silicon
Valley where fruit trees should be growing. Future food production is
constricted.
>
> The free growth of cities progressively produces loss of freedom.
Every city is a monument of hope that we can get more people together
is a small space without losing anything significant.
>
> The hope is thwarted. People working in the third dimension of a
skyscraper must come down at rush hours to be squeezed into the two
dimensions of the streets below. The modern city should be
called "Bottleneck City."
>
> The costs to freedom of Bottleneck City are many: traffic jams;
waste of travel times; sacrifice of space-demanding amenities like
street trees and city parks; loss of clean air from automobile
pollution; crowding of pedestrians; more hectic psychological pace;
and greater per capita cost of security forces.
>
> The Bigger Is Better population pundits seem unaware of a major
principle of all science: the Scale Effect. Growth in size always
causes change in properties. There is no way that a hummingbird can
be scaled up to 30 pounds in weight and still be a hummingbird: It
becomes something like a slow flying vulture.
>
> Likewise there is no way that a nation of our size ... can be
governed by a Town Meeting; we have to settle for a representative
democracy. Group decisions become ever more difficult.
>
> A growing population loses one freedom after another. We have
passed the level of economies of scale. From here on out, bigger is
not better: Bigger is less free.
>
> The enduring problem for the nation is this: Which freedoms should
we prize most? Can we agree to restrict certain lesser freedoms in
order to preserve the greater ones? Unless we can find ways to bring
population growth to a halt, we surely shall have to give up one
freedom after another.
>
> If we choose the freedoms to be renounced, we maybe able to
preserve the more important freedoms.
>
> Garrett Hardin, Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology, University of
California-Santa Barbara, is the author of a dozen books and more
than 200 articles, essays, and reviews on a variety of social issues.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
>
> Fundamental Cause of Energy Crisis=Mass Immigration-Driven
Population Growth
> California's flawed energy deregulation scheme only masks the
underlying cause: exploding energy demand caused by population
growth.
>
> California's per capita demand for electricity actually decreased
5% over the past 20 years, from 7,292 kilowatt hours in 1979, to
6,952 kilowatt hours in 1999, but in the same period California's
population grew by more than 10.6 MILLION!
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Ancient History Threatens to Repeat Itself
> The San Diego Union - Tribune;
> San Diego, CA. Mar 21, 2001, by Robert S. Boyd
> Abstract:
> http://www.carryingcapacity.org/ancienthistory.html
> Researchers say the overcrowded cities, water shortages and
electricity brownouts in 21st century California, India and Brazil
are ominous reminders of the fate of ancient Rome, Babylon and the
Maya empire.
>
> "Overpopulation was a major factor in making the Maya vulnerable to
failure," [Vernon Scarborough] told a conference on "The Collapse of
Complex Societies" in San Francisco last month. "The trigger event of
the collapse appears to have been a long drought beginning about 840
A.D."
>
> Intensive agriculture and excessive irrigation led to the
salinization of the Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Scarre said this "ultimately
damaged the very landscape these societies were striving to improve."
>
> Full Text
> Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Mar 21, 2001
>
> Historians and archaeologists who study the downfall of ancient
civilizations are warning that parts of the modern world may be
heading the way of history's fallen empires.
>
> Researchers say the overcrowded cities, water shortages and
electricity brownouts in 21st century California, India and Brazil
are ominous reminders of the fate of ancient Rome, Babylon and the
Maya empire.
>
> Previous prophets of doom, such as English political economist T.R.
Malthus and the "Club of Rome," which in 1972 predicted that the
world's population would overwhelm its resources, have been proved
wrong so far by the rapid progress of technology. This time, however,
some researchers say the complexity caused by high technology could
be mankind's undoing.
>
> The Mayas, who dominated Central America in the ninth century,
built elaborate irrigation systems to support their booming
population. But they "suffered from problems that are startlingly
similar to those today," said Vernon Scarborough, an archaeologist at
the University of Cincinnati.
>
> "Overpopulation was a major factor in making the Maya vulnerable to
failure," Scarborough told a conference on "The Collapse of Complex
Societies" in San Francisco last month. "The trigger event of the
collapse appears to have been a long drought beginning about 840
A.D."
>
> Although many factors, such as war and disease, contributed to the
calamities of antiquity, speakers at the conference singled out two
causes: too many people and too little fresh water. This one-two
punch can become lethal, they said, when environmental problems such
as a prolonged drought or a change in climate put too much stress on
a society.
>
> The movement of peoples into big cities such as Rome and Tikal, the
Maya capital, created great wealth, rich cultures and complex
bureaucracies that ultimately proved to be unsustainable.
>
> "Complex societies have been collapsing for 12,000 years -- as long
as they have existed," said Joseph Tainter, an expert on prehistoric
American Indians at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in
Albuquerque, N.M.
>
> "High population levels gave early societies a fragility that made
them especially vulnerable to environmental changes," said
Christopher Scarre, an archaeologist from Cambridge University in
England.
>
> Search for water
>
> Intensive agriculture and excessive irrigation led to the
salinization of the Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Scarre said this "ultimately
damaged the very landscape these societies were striving to improve."
>
> Now the world is facing an increasingly serious shortage of fresh
water. Although water covers three-quarters of our planet, 95 percent
of it is salty and 70 percent of the rest is locked up in ice.
>
> A billion people lack adequate clean water, according to Peter
Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development,
Environment and Security in Oakland.
>
> Water-borne diseases kill 10,000 to 20,000 children every day, said
Gleick, author of a report "The World's Water, 2000-2001."
>
> Lessons ignored
>
> People all over the globe are abandoning small towns and villages
and jamming into metropolitan areas, especially in poorer, Third
World countries.
>
> By 2015, population experts predict, there will be 28 "megacities,"
each with more than 10 million people. The Tokyo region is already
home to more than 26 million people. Bombay, India, is expected to
grow from 18 million to 26 million; Los Angeles from 13.1 million to
14.1 million; New York City from 16.6 million to 17.4 million.
>
> To be sure, modern cities enjoy more advanced technologies than
ancient metropolises. Nevertheless, the problems of crowding,
pollution, crime and sanitation that overwhelmed populous societies
in the past threaten to do so again, especially in less fortunate
parts of the world.
>
> "The lessons from history, or prehistory, are usually inconvenient
and painful to deal with and easy to ignore," Scarborough said.
>
> In the 1990s, over 95% of California's population growth resulted
from mass immigration.
>
> Mass immigration also accounted for more than 70% of the United
States' 3.2 million annual population growth in the 1990s. Over two-
thirds of that was from legal immigration, that is resulting from
laws passed by the federal government.
>
> More people added to the population (even with reduced per-capita
consumption) inevitably results in more demand. This means
that "solutions" that address the supply side of the energy crisis
will not solve the problem.
>
> Non-renewable energy supplies, such as oil, coal, and natural gas
(used to power plants generating electricity) are running out. At the
current rate of use, commercial quantities of oil worldwide will be
exhausted by 2050.
>
> Thus, we must transition to alternative renewable resources.
>
> Available clean, alternative energy supply sufficient to meet
increasing demand is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. For
example, hydroelectric power is already providing the U.S. with 11%
of its electricity, but energy from this source is limited to a
maximum contribution of 13% because the most suitable sites for dams
are already occupied. There are problems associated with other
alternative energy sources as well.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Excerpts from:
> Food, Land, Population and the U. S. Economy
> by
> David Pimentel
> Cornell University
>
> Mario Giampietro
> Istituto Nazionale della Nutrizione, Rome
> 1994
>
> The Issue of Scale
>
> The study of demographic growth and economic development is
polarized by two contrasting schools:(i) the neo-Malthusians, who
view population growth as a negative factor in economic
development; "A development policy without a population program is
like mopping the floor with the water turned on" (P. Bukman, quoted
in WDF, 1989, p.1); and (ii) the cornucopians, who consider
population growth a positive factor in economic development; "The
ultimate resource is people-- skilled, spirited, and hopeful people--
who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and
so, inevitably, for the benefit of us all" (Simon, 1981, p. 348).
>
>  The polarization is related to the different importance given to
the two factors, natural and technological capital, that determine
the external pressure on society. Neo-Malthusians, in general
ecologists, consider only the limitedness of natural capital, whereas
Cornucopians, in general economists, focus on the ability to improve
human-made, technological capital. At the very root of the
disagreement is the issue of scale. When population size is not put
into relation with the environment in which society is operating, it
is impossible to assess whether an increase in population size is a
positive or negative event. For example, in the United States between
1800 and 1900, the doubling of the population definitely improved
technological capital and the ability to make better use of the
abundant natural resources available, resulting in a better standard
of living. On the other hand, a doubling of China's current
population will undoubtedly result in a major ecological disaster and
most probably in a collapse of its socioeconomic structure. Already
less than 0.08 hectare of arable land is available per capita in
China to produce food.
>
>  Some economists (e.g., Simon, 1981) challenge the idea that an
increase in the size of economic systems can ever induce a negative
effect on their performance. They argue that improvements in internal
organization will always lead to a larger technological capital and
overcome potential difficulties generated by the tightening of
natural capital available per capita. Ecologists, on the other hand,
point out that even apparently 'free' resources, such as clean water
and air, become scarce when human numbers expand relative to
environmental processes.
>
>  Economics describes the accessibility of resources in terms of
labor hours required to buy them, but does not consider their
biophysical cost in terms of energy. In economic terms the cost of
resources in developed societies, such as the United States, is low
because these systems employ techniques of environmental exploitation
that use huge amounts of exosomatic energy subsidies. Thus, the low
economic cost is based on a high productivity of labor in society
that in turn is based on a high biophysical cost for that society.
High labor productivity implies a large throughput of energy and
other resources, which means a large environmental impact. The more
the economic costs are decreased by economic growth through economies
of scale and more technological inputs, the larger is the flow of
natural resources consumed by the economic system as a whole.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Lynn Dohner - San Juan Basin, but willing to relocate to a
prosperity corridor
> as soon as land title disputes are resolved, would prefer a view
lot.

Our Moderator asks for a "business plan" and a contact person for
investors wanting "to get in on the ground floor" of Solar Prosperity
Corridors.
                We don't work that way, Tom!  We are a non-profit,
501(c)(3) educational group, with a package of ideas we hold up to the
world as a mirror, saying,
    "Look at youselves, people, compare what you are (Towers), with what
you could be (Corridors)!  If you'd but ratchet up courage to wrest
power away from your Energy Masters and operate your own energy, water,
food production and transport systems, you might gain sovereignty over
your lives."
                We want people to march non-violently down to the seats
of power and say, "Here we are, and we will be running things now. If
you can't work with us, please leave.'
           Isn't that easy? Nobody gets excited, riled-up or hurt. We
just start governing ourselves, determining our own futures. That's only
proper, is it not? We have spent several million years getting ready to
do this. The Sun is up there for a couple of billion years more. So for
God's sake, lets do it!
            If, somehow, our Energy Masters refuse to yield, then we must
set up rows of guillotines in public squares, to lop off a few heads. It
is terribly sad that a  few people must go, but it is our duty as
sovereign people to control how we produce and use energy.
          That's your "business plan," 
Mister Moderator! Let those who won't cooperate with people power, won't
invest in our future, forfeit their heads!
         NTE  Galveston Island ~29n,95w


~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~

Sounds to me like you folks' game plan is just about the same as that promoted
by every tyrant that has ever walked the face of this planet.

~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~

|>  Responding to Ron Patterson's "7 questions" to my friend Newton: There
|>  aren't really "7 questions" here. Ron just wants it to seem as if his
|>  flailing attacks are organized, somehow. Well, they ain't.

Tulkin, you ignorant ****.  [ ;-DDD ]

Although Ron can be quite "firm" in his quest, it seems to me that
actually answering his [and others'] questions might be a more productive
defense than this one.

vcz

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man,
but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson

www.residentbush.com

Hello ER:

Saturday, August 31, 2002, 4:27:05 PM, Nicholas Arguimbau wrote:

NA> Some people will be hurt by global warming no matter when it stops.  The
rest
NA> will be helped by global warming if it stops at the right temperature.  No
NA> one will be helped by global warming if it never stops.  No one knows when
it
NA> will stop.  Therefore no one knows it will help them.  Corporations simply
do
NA> a Laplace transform of future profits with and without the  estimated
NA> financial costs and benefits to them of regulations imposed upon them as a
NA> result of global warming, using k=0.20/yr, approximately.  Therefore the
time
NA> horizon of the analysis assures that regulatory constraints within that time
NA> horizon can only have negative effects.  Who do you suppose is making the
NA> decisions here?

NA> Nick

At some point in the distant past, all the carbon currently locked up in
the ground was freely available in the atmosphere. When was that, and
what were conditions like at that time?

b

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by jmstrause@....


For all those folks who believe commercial nuclear power is going to be part of
the "answer" to the future of energy, I think this article makes it very clear
that it cannot be left to corporate hands to run them. I guess that if we are to
have nukes at all we are going to have to take the "commercial" out of the
equation. And ASAP too.
I have an acquaintance that works at a So. Cal. nuke after being trained in the
nuclear navy. He said that he believes that the Navy runs a "tight ship" with
their nuclear power plants, which run on bomb grade material vs. commercial
plants which run on about 3 1.225885e-308nriched fuel, because their operators
(and the officers) have to live and sleep within a few feet of the reactor. He
thought commercial nukes would have less emphasis on profits and more on safety
if some proportion of the Boards of Directors were required to be "on site" at
all times and had to sleep there too.
John.

jmstrause@...


Ohio Atomic Plant Is Investigated Over Acid Leak

September 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS






CLEVELAND, Aug. 31 - Federal regulators are investigating
accusations that the owner of a nuclear plant where acid
nearly ate through a six-inch-thick steel reactor cap
altered records about the damage, the company said.

Todd Schneider, a spokesman for the company, FirstEnergy
Corporation, said the utility was cooperating with the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission but he would not provide
details of the investigation at the Davis-Besse plant near
Toledo.

"Allegations of altered documents and records are part of
this investigation," Mr. Schneider said.

The plant has been closed since engineers discovered in
March that boric acid had nearly eaten through the steel
cap on the reactor vessel. It was the most extensive
corrosion ever found on a nuclear reactor in the United
States and led to a nationwide review of all 69 similar
plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said the leak that
caused it should have been spotted as long as four years
ago. An agency spokesman, Jan Strasma, would not confirm
that officials were investigating whether FirstEnergy had
altered records.

A coalition of 14 environmental and nuclear watchdog groups
is urging the agency to order an independent review of the
plant.

A coalition spokesman, David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer,
said investigators told him that the agency was studying
whether FirstEnergy backdated videotapes, falsified
documents and withheld a photograph to make damage seem
less severe than it was.

Workers removed the damaged reactor head on Thursday and
were to begin installing a replacement. The plant is
expected to be operational by October, Mr. Schneider said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/national/01NUKE.html?ex=1031897896&ei=1&en=4cd\
238f5d78002b9



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Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

|>  Tulkin, you ignorant ****.  [ ;-DDD ]

Hey, Mr. Moderator  --  No fair! Now everyone'll think I called him an
"ignorant fuck" rather than that I was reminded of an old SNL routine...

And, when did "slut" become a word too shocking for a bunch of
"scientists'" tender sensibilities???

Just askin' is all,
vcz

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man,
but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson

www.residentbush.com

BANGI: The Government is targeting 5% of the country's electricity output
from the Grid Distribution System to be supplied by renewable energy sources
by 2005. 
Malaysian Energy Centre chief executive officer Dr Hassan Ibrahim said
harnessing energy from renewable sources was necessary to lessen Malaysia's
dependence on fuel sources such as oil and gas, which were depleting. 
"Five percent from renewable sources is the target under the Eighth Malaysia
Plan. Our gas sources may deplete after about 40 years, while oil after 10
years. 
"Therefore, we have to diversify and seek other sources," he told Bernama. 
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2002/9/2/nation/energys&sec=nation

cheers
brent(canada)



_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

B wrote:
>>>At some point in the distant past, all the carbon
currently locked up in the ground was freely available
in the atmosphere. When was that, and what were
conditions like at that time?<<<

Well, not exactly, there was a lot of terrestrial
carbon that was released by volcanic action. But it is
true that most of the carbon found in the earth’s
crust was once in the atmosphere in the form of carbon
dioxide. The early atmosphere was almost nothing
except carbon dioxide and water vapor, and it was very
hot.

“Hadean ("Hades-like") Era
This era begins about 4.6 billion years ago with the
formation of Earth from dust and gas orbiting the Sun.
During this era the surface of Earth is like popular
visions of Hades: oceans of liquid rock, boiling
sulfur, and impact craters everywhere! Volcanoes blast
off all over the place, and the rain of rocks and
asteroids from space never ends. It is hard to take a
step without falling into a pool of lava or getting
hit by a meteor! The air is hot, thick, steamy, and
full of dust and crud. But you can't breathe it
anyway: its made of nothing but carbon dioxide and
water vapor, with traces of nitrogen and smelly sulfur
compounds!”  SNIP

“Archaean ("Ancient" or "Primitive") Era
This era begins about a billion years after the
formation of Earth, and things have changed a lot!
Mostly everything has cooled down. Most water vapor in
the air has cooled and condensed to form a global
ocean. Even most of the carbon dioxide is gone, having
been chemically changed into limestone and deposited
at the bottom of the ocean. The air is now mostly
nitrogen, and the sky is filled with normal clouds and
rain.”

From:
http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/msese/earthsysflr/cambrian.html

Or, do a Google search on “Precambrian Carbon” and get
a lot more details.

Ron Patterson


=====
“If there is a single book on the subject to engage the enthusiast, silence the
critic, and enlighten the ignoramus, this is it.”

The London Observer in a review of the book: A Green History of the World: The
Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations by Clive Pointing.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com

>    From: tulkin@...
> Subject: Australia SolarTowers v. Corridors,
>
> I could bring a million US/Europe tourists to an Aussie "Solar Energy
> Theme Park" at some windy spot in the North  ---  Darwin, Eighty Mile
> Beach, Onslow, Cape York, where SPTs and SPCs are demonstrated and
> compared, on smaller but still significant scales.
>
> We could build a 200 meterTower on the north coast that gathers much
> more energy, dollar for dollar, than might the Wentworth site, and we
> could have a solar air-conditoned theme park!

If you can, you had better get started soon.  The solar tower people are
building up a pretty good head start on you, and their actions speak louder
than your words.

"To talk is nothing,
to plan, very little,
to do, everything"

- Chinese proverb

It was called the Carboniferous Age.
jb



----- Original Message -----
From: "b" <b@...>
To: "Nicholas Arguimbau" <energyresources@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 12:42 PM
Subject: Re[2]: [energyresources] Might this explain the U.S. position on
Kyoto etc.?


> Hello ER:
>
> Saturday, August 31, 2002, 4:27:05 PM, Nicholas Arguimbau wrote:
>
> NA> Some people will be hurt by global warming no matter when it stops.
The rest
> NA> will be helped by global warming if it stops at the right temperature.
No
> NA> one will be helped by global warming if it never stops.  No one knows
when it
> NA> will stop.  Therefore no one knows it will help them.  Corporations
simply do
> NA> a Laplace transform of future profits with and without the  estimated
> NA> financial costs and benefits to them of regulations imposed upon them
as a
> NA> result of global warming, using k=0.20/yr, approximately.  Therefore
the time
> NA> horizon of the analysis assures that regulatory constraints within
that time
> NA> horizon can only have negative effects.  Who do you suppose is making
the
> NA> decisions here?
>
> NA> Nick
>
> At some point in the distant past, all the carbon currently locked up in
> the ground was freely available in the atmosphere. When was that, and
> what were conditions like at that time?
>
> b
>
>
>
> Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments?
> Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@...
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

OK, Tom, you compare us to a "tyrant,"   which means you see us as
usurpers of common sovereignty. Do you really mean that?
       We see common sovereignty as a  democratic ideal, an ideal that we
support.
       This means that we see solar energy like water, belonging to all
of us.  In Towers, solar energy becomes a totalitarian force. But in
Corridors, it is close to the people, more accesible. This is tyranny?
        Tulkin, Corpus Christi

~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~

Yes, it is tyranny. In your case it may (and may not) be a tyranny of innocence,
but it is a tyranny no less.

Human experience demonstrates over and over that when power flows in the context
of human interest, if full knowledge of that flow is not both recognized and
judiciously shared among all participants, tyrannies of one kind or another
emerge.

Other than your broad-brush proclamations, who knows what you actually propose,
including yourselves?

~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~

with the fleets of nuclear ships and subs, is spent
fuel disposed of on those things?
Any cases of dumping it in the big blue or what?
Robert



--- JMSTRAUSE@... wrote:
> This article from NYTimes.com
> has been sent to you by jmstrause@....
>
>
> For all those folks who believe commercial nuclear
> power is going to be part of the "answer" to the
> future of energy, I think this article makes it very
> clear that it cannot be left to corporate hands to
> run them. I guess that if we are to have nukes at
> all we are going to have to take the "commercial"
> out of the equation. And ASAP too.
> I have an acquaintance that works at a So. Cal. nuke
> after being trained in the nuclear navy. He said
> that he believes that the Navy runs a "tight ship"
> with their nuclear power plants, which run on bomb
> grade material vs. commercial plants which run on
> about 3 1.225885e-308nriched fuel, because their
> operators (and the officers) have to live and sleep
> within a few feet of the reactor. He thought
> commercial nukes would have less emphasis on profits
> and more on safety if some proportion of the Boards
> of Directors were required to be "on site" at all
> times and had to sleep there too.
> John.
>
> jmstrause@...
>
>
> Ohio Atomic Plant Is Investigated Over Acid Leak
>
> September 1, 2002
> By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
>
>
>
>
>
>
> CLEVELAND, Aug. 31 - Federal regulators are
> investigating
> accusations that the owner of a nuclear plant where
> acid
> nearly ate through a six-inch-thick steel reactor
> cap
> altered records about the damage, the company said.
>
> Todd Schneider, a spokesman for the company,
> FirstEnergy
> Corporation, said the utility was cooperating with
> the
> Nuclear Regulatory Commission but he would not
> provide
> details of the investigation at the Davis-Besse
> plant near
> Toledo.
>
> "Allegations of altered documents and records are
> part of
> this investigation," Mr. Schneider said.
>
> The plant has been closed since engineers discovered
> in
> March that boric acid had nearly eaten through the
> steel
> cap on the reactor vessel. It was the most extensive
> corrosion ever found on a nuclear reactor in the
> United
> States and led to a nationwide review of all 69
> similar
> plants.
>
> The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said the leak
> that
> caused it should have been spotted as long as four
> years
> ago. An agency spokesman, Jan Strasma, would not
> confirm
> that officials were investigating whether
> FirstEnergy had
> altered records.
>
> A coalition of 14 environmental and nuclear watchdog
> groups
> is urging the agency to order an independent review
> of the
> plant.
>
> A coalition spokesman, David Lochbaum, a nuclear
> engineer,
> said investigators told him that the agency was
> studying
> whether FirstEnergy backdated videotapes, falsified
> documents and withheld a photograph to make damage
> seem
> less severe than it was.
>
> Workers removed the damaged reactor head on Thursday
> and
> were to begin installing a replacement. The plant is
> expected to be operational by October, Mr. Schneider
> said.
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/national/01NUKE.html?ex=1031897896&ei=1&en=4cd\
238f5d78002b9
>
>
>
> HOW TO ADVERTISE
> ---------------------------------
> For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
>
> or other creative advertising opportunities with The
>
> New York Times on the Web, please contact
> onlinesales@... or visit our online media
> kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
>
> For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
> help@....
>
> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
>
>
> Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints
> or compliments?
> Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at
> t1r@...
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>


__________________________________________________
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http://finance.yahoo.com

In John E. Lewis' posting of Pimentel "U.S. Could Feed 800 Million People With
Grain That Livestock Eat, Cornell Ecologist Advises Animal Scientists " -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases%5c1997%5c08%5c970812003512.htm
  it quotes a figure of 26:1 for egg production, where the ratio represents the
energy consumption to protein output,

i.e. 26 units of energy input for 1 unit of protein output

My intuitive understanding is that laying hens are the most efficient producers
of human consumable (non-plant) protein in the form of eggs. I am sure I have
read elsewhere that this was so (sorry I have no references).

Even accounting for full life-cycle costs I don't see how a hen that produces
say 200 eggs per year from 6 months to 2 and a half years old is worse in energy
input/protein output efficiency than a pig or turkey slaughtered only for meat.

Does this accounting also calculate the chicken manure produced as inputs for
growing feed (or other vegetables for human consumption) and the 2 or 3 year old
hen can be used in soup! with the left over bones and feathers used also as
inputs?

rough calculations: (orders of magnitude only! and using metric units)
INPUTS:
grain consumption for hen from birth to 2.5 years = 150kg
water consumption = 200 litres (also add evaporation = 200 litres?)
Plus cost of housing hens

OUTPUTS:
400 eggs at 55g average = 22kg of eggs (30% - 50% protein ??)
I'll guess 1kg meat for your chicken soup (any other non-edible parts to be
composted)
Manure 100kg in 2.5 years (if left to dry out for a while this would be less)

I think I have been quite generous.
In addition to grain and "layer pellets" (less than the above calculation), my
chooks (Hens) eat a lot of kitchen scraps as well as grass/weeds and insects. I
have a chook dome (enclosure) that is moved around every few weeks, leaving me
with a weed free and fertilised area in my backyard for a new crop of
vegetables.

Also I get about 250 eggs per year per hen at an average closer to 60g each.

I don't know the energy inputs for the grain and layer pellets, but I would
guess my set-up would be in the 2:1 To 10:1 range as opposed to the 26:1 figure.

Anyone care to comment on the 26:1 ratio?

Ilan.
38 ° S



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James Lownie says the Tower folks have a head start and we are only
talking. I guess that proves that greed is a better motivator than
common sense.
       Let them build their Tower! Our group is simply telling the people
of Australia that starting a Corridor in Onslow would be a better
expenditure, in any category one might name, except concentrated energy.
And concentrated energy benefits the few, while distributed energy
benefits the many.
    We like this comparison! It is so damned obvious, isn't it? And such
outrageous symbolism!
NTE, Galveston Island, ~29n.95w

The principle subject at the Earth Summit is sustainable
development with the main issues being protecting the environment and
eradicating poverty.
      The attitude is taken that development can be sustained, even
though the main foundation for much of the development in recent
centuries has been based on the draw down of oil from the
irreplaceable store that nature has built up over millions of years.
There is little talk about the timely replacement of oil.Renewables
are mentioned but not realistic amount and time scales. The depletion
of oi will have a major effect soon. Current usage is 30 bbl/y. By
2040 it could well be down to something like 10 bbl/y. I would have
thought that an item like this would have been near the top of the
agenda. The depletion of water is. Why not oil.
      The other major item that is missing is the population
explosion.
It has a major effect on poverty. Sustainable development is not
possible with diminishing resources and expanding population. Hence
increasing povert. It is even starting to hit the industrialized
nations.
       Can anyone tell me how such a collection of supposedly
intelligent people could get the fundamental problems facing global
society so out of perspective?

Denis Frith
Melbourne

~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~

Here is a try.

Notice how often here on EnergyResources Group we run into conflicts and
confusions that should have been resolved from the get go.

We are a society that for many hundreds of years has been rewarded for "doing
things" with substantial disincentives for anyone asking the larger questions
like: what are we doing, what are the consequences, and how can we know what to
do better than we now do.

As a well hidden consequence, our intellectual intellectual traditions are
functionally blind to the knowledge processes required to know our world and
what we should be doing to gain a secure and satisfying future.

In other words it is not that there are no options other than what we are
exercising at this time, but that the viable options are not being made
available in ways that "the people" can understand and work with in any
effective way.

And the sad part about all this is that the uncertainty we will increasingly
know is for the most part, unnecessary--as I hope the EnergyResources Group,
along with other places, will increasingly attempt to demonstrate.

~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~

[Why should we want to back-up small amounts of wind power with
additional natural gas, when in fact there is already natural gas
fired peaking capacity available?]

> http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/briefing_notes/note02.shtml
>
> "
> ...
> These costs are a considerable problem for Intermittent Renewable
> Sources as even with state of the art forecasting techniques, they
are
> still in imbalance by 30-40% [2]. ... By comparison
> forecasting electrical consumption is very advanced with typical
> errors in the range of only 2-5%.
> ...
> That gives this wind farm a net negative unit value of -0.41 p/kWh.
> Hence, the most profitable way of operating this wind farm over the
> last week would have been to switch it off."

Peaking power plants, as the name implies, only run at peak times.
Wind turbines run, whenever the wind blows. Therefore, they will also
often supply power when peakers are switched off (say at night) and
they are in competition with baseload, eg nuclear power.

But there is no fuel saving in switching off nuclear power plants for
a few hours and saving fuel is the only benefit available from small
amounts of wind power [1].

Consequently, if wind turbines simply get added to an existing
generation mix that has coal/nuclear as baseload, and natural gas for
peaks, they'll only save natural gas, when the wind blows during peak
times.
When the wind blows at night, however, there is no point in switching
off nuclear power. While coal is more expensive than uranium, large
coal fired plants still get few cost savings from being switched off
for a few hours.

Saving some natural gas at peak times (say a quarter of the time) when
the wind blows (say 25% of the time), is a pretty bad deal considering
the large capital cost of the wind turbines. It means that instead of
operating your peakers for 6 hours per day, you do so for 4 and a
half.  And to save fuel during that one and a half hours, you've got
to spend $1000 per kW, ie twice the capital cost of the peaker plant
itself.

To make any sense at all, wind turbines should be able to displace
other generation most of the time when the wind blows. And that means
full back up with natural gas, ie also at night. And that in turn
means, even building 1 GW of wind turbines would tend to make sense
only, if you also build 1 GW of baseload natural gas.

Most of the US does not use natural gas for baseload. I think only
California does that already (and that's a situation that ought to be
changed rather than cemented by building wind turbines that only make
sense, when they are backed up by natural gas).

Heiko, England

[1] AWEA have argued that there is some small capacity benefit from
wind turbines, as the wind may be blowing just when some other plant
is experiencing an unplanned outage

I received this article from Jenny Goldie of the
Australian population list. I thought it an absolutely
fantastic article so I decided to pass it along to the
Energy Resources list.

Ron Patterson

Will humanity be left home alone?
Aug 30
John Gray, New Statesman

According to Edward O Wilson, the greatest living
Darwinian thinker, the earth is entering a new
evolutionary era. We are on the brink of a great
extinction the like of which has not been seen since
the end of the Mesozoic Era, 65 million years ago,
when the dinosaurs disappeared. Species are vanishing
at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than
they did before the arrival of humans. On present
trends, our children will be practically alone in the
world. As Wilson has put it, humanity is leaving the
Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the
Eremozoic - the era of solitude.

The last mass extinction has not yet been fully
explained. Many scientists believe it to have been the
result of meteorites whose impact suddenly altered the
global climate, but no-one can be sure. In contrast,
the cause of the present mass extinction is not in
doubt: human expansion. Homo sapiens are gutting the
earth of biodiversity.

The lush natural world in which humans evolved is
being rapidly transformed into a largely prosthetic
environment. Crucially, in any time span that is
humanly relevant, this loss of biodiversity is
irreversible. True, life on earth recovered its
richness after the last great extinction; but only
after about 10 million years had passed. Unless
something occurs to disrupt the trends under way, all
future generations of human beings will live in a
world that is more impoverished biologically than it
has been for aeons.

Given the magnitude of this change, one would expect
it to be at the centre of public debate. In fact, it
is very little discussed. Organizations such as the
World Wildlife Fund press on with their invaluable
work, and there are occasional reports of the
destruction of wilderness; but for the most part,
politics and media debates go on as if nothing is
happening. There are many reasons for this peculiar
state of affairs, including the ingrained human habit
of denying danger until its impact is imminent; but
the chief reason is that it has become fashionable to
deny the reality of overpopulation.

In truth, the root cause of mass extinction is too
many people. As Wilson puts it in his book
Consilience: "Population growth can justly be called
the monster on the land." Yet according to mainstream
political parties and most environmental
organizations, the despoliation of the environment is
mainly the result of flaws in human institutions. If
we are entering a desolate world, the reason is not
that humans have become too numerous. It is because
injustice prevents proper use of the earth's
resources. There is no such thing as overpopulation.

Interestingly, this view is not accepted in many of
the world's poor countries. China, India, Egypt and
Iran all have population programs, as have many other
developing nations. Opposition to population control
is concentrated in rich parts of the world, notably
the US, where the Bush administration pursues a
fundamentalist vendetta against international agencies
that provide family planning. It is understandable
that rich countries should reject the idea of
overpopulation. In their use of resources, they are
themselves the most overpopulated. Their affluence
depends on their appropriating a hugely
disproportionate share of the world's non-renewable
resources. If they ever face up to that reality, they
will have to admit that their affluence is
unsustainable.

Another reason for denying the reality of
overpopulation is that the growth in human numbers is
extremely uneven. In some parts of the world,
population is actually declining. This is strikingly
true in post-communist Russia. A precipitate fall in
public health and living standards has led to a
virtually unprecedented population collapse, which is
set to accelerate further as an African-style AIDS
die-off triggered by the country's enormous numbers of
intravenous drug users begins to take hold. In other
countries, such as Japan, Italy and Spain, declining
fertility is leading to zero or negative population
growth. Such examples have given currency to the silly
notion that overpopulation is no longer an issue -
that, if anything, it is a slowdown in population
growth that we should be worrying about.

But while human numbers are falling in some parts of
the world, in others they are exploding. The
population of the Gulf States will double in around 20
years - against a background of nearly complete
dependency on a single, depleting natural resource.
Again, despite China's admirable one-child policy, its
population will go on growing for much of this
century. Globally, the human population will continue
to rise for at least a century - even if worldwide
fertility falls to replacement level tomorrow. In
1940, there were around two billion humans on the
planet. Today, there are about six billion. Even on
conservative projections, there will be nearly eight
billion by 2050.

Eight billion people cannot be maintained without
desolating the earth. Today, everyone aspires to live
after the fashion of the world's affluent minority.
That requires worldwide industrialization - as a
result of which the human ecological footprint on the
earth will be deeper than it has ever been. If the
living standards of rich countries can be replicated
worldwide, it is only by making further large inroads
into the planetary patrimony of biological wealth.

Rainforests are the last great reservoirs of
biodiversity, but they will have to be cleared and
turned over to human settlement or food production.
What is left of wilderness in the world will be made
over to green desert. This is a bleak enough prospect,
but what's worse is that it is a path from which there
is no turning back. If a human population of this size
is to be kept in existence, it must exploit the
planet's dwindling resources ever more intensively. In
effect, humans will turn the planet into an extension
of themselves. When they look about the world, they
will find nothing but their own detritus.

There are many who claim to be unfazed by this hideous
prospect. Marxists and free-market economists never
tire of ridiculing the idea that other living things
have intrinsic value. In their view, other species are
just means to the satisfaction of human wants, and the
earth itself is a site for the realization of human
ambitions. These self-professed rationalists are prone
to the conceit that theirs is a purely secular view of
the world; but in thinking this way about the
relationship of humans to the earth, they are in the
grip of a religious dogma. The belief that the earth
belongs to humans is a residue of theism.

For Christians, humans are unique among animals
because they alone are created in the image of God.
For the same reason, they are uniquely valuable. It
follows that humanity can behave as lord of creation,
treating the earth's natural wealth and other animals
as tools, mere instruments for the achievement of
human purposes.

To my mind, such religious beliefs have caused an
immense amount of harm, but at least they are
coherent. It is perfectly reasonable to think humans
are the only source of value in the scheme of things -
so long as you retain the theological framework in
which they are held to be categorically different from
all other animals. But once you have given up theism,
this sort of anthropocentrism makes no sense. Outside
the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it is practically
unknown. The view of things in which we are separate
from the rest of nature and can live with minimal
concern for the biosphere is not a conclusion of
rational inquiry. It is an inheritance from a single,
humanly aberrant religious tradition.

The fashionable belief that there is no such thing as
overpopulation is part of an anthropocentric
world-view that has nothing to do with science. At the
same time, there is more than a hint of
anthropocentrism in Wilson's suggestion that we are
entering an age of solitude. The idea that, unlike any
other animal, humans can take the planet into a new
evolutionary era assumes that the earth will patiently
submit to their inordinate demands. Yet there is
already evidence that human activity is altering the
balance of the global climate - and in ways that are
unlikely to be comfortable for the human population.
The long-term effects of global warming cannot be
known with any certainty. But in a worst-case scenario
that is being taken increasingly seriously, the
greenhouse effect could wipe out densely populated
coastal countries such as Bangladesh within the
present century, while seriously dislocating food
production elsewhere in the world.

The result could be a disaster for billions of people.
The idea that we are entering an era of solitude makes
sense only if it is assumed that such a world would be
stable - and hospitable to humans. Yet we know that
the closer an ecosystem comes to being a monoculture,
the more fragile it becomes. The world's rainforests
are part of the earth's self-regulatory system. As
James Lovelock has observed, they sweat to keep us
cool. With their disappearance, we will be
increasingly at risk. A humanly overcrowded world that
has been denuded of much of its biodiversity will be
extremely fragile - far more vulnerable to large,
destabilizing accidents than the complex biosphere we
have inherited. Such a world is too delicate to last
for long. There are good reasons for thinking that an
era of solitude will not come about at all. Lovelock
has written that the human species is now so numerous
that it constitutes a serious planetary malady. The
earth is suffering from disseminated primatemaia - a
plague of people. He sees four possible outcomes of
the people plague: "destruction of the invading
disease organisms; chronic infection; destruction of
the host; or symbiosis, a lasting relationship of
mutual benefit to the host and the invader".

The last two can be definitely ruled out. Humankind
cannot destroy its planetary host. The earth is much
older and stronger than humans will ever be. At the
same time, humans will never initiate a relationship
of mutually beneficial symbiosis with it. The advance
of Homo sapiens has always gone with the destruction
of other species and ecological devastation. Of the
remaining outcomes, the second - in which
over-numerous humans colonize the earth at the cost of
weakening the biosphere - corresponds most closely to
Wilson's bleak vision. But it is the first that is
most likely. The present spike in human numbers will
not last.

If it is not forestalled by changes in the planet's
climate, we can be pretty sure that Wilson's era of
solitude will be derailed by the side effects of human
strife. Resource scarcity is already emerging as a
factor aggravating tension in several regions of the
world. In the coming century, it is set to be one of
the primary causes of war. A world of eight billion
people competing for vital necessities is highly
unlikely to be at peace. On the contrary, it is
programmed for endemic conflict. New technologies may
blunt the edge of scarcity by allowing resources to be
extracted and used more efficiently. But their key use
will be to secure control over dwindling supplies of
oil, natural gas, water and other essential inputs of
industrial society.

The internet originated in the military sector.
Information technology is at the heart of the
revolution in military affairs that is changing the
face of war by powering the new generations of
computer-guided missiles, unmanned planes and the
like. Only a couple of years ago, a host of air-headed
publicists was proclaiming the arrival of a weightless
world. The reality is just the opposite. The Gulf war
was won with computers, and they will be critically
important in any attack on Iraq. In that sense, it is
true that information technology will be the basis of
prosperity in the 21st century. But its main
contribution will not be to create a hypermodern,
knowledge-driven economy. It will be to enable
advanced industrial states to retain control of the
most ancient sources of wealth -the world's shrinking
supplies of non-renewable resources.

In the past, war has rarely resulted in a long-lasting
decline in human numbers. But in a highly globalised
world, it could have a new and more devastating
impact. With a hugely increased population reliant on
far-flung supply networks, large-scale war in the 21st
century could do what it has frequently done in the
past: trigger food shortages, even famine.
Globalization no more engenders world peace than it
guarantees an unending boom. It simply magnifies
instability.

Summing up his view of the future, Wilson writes: "At
best, an environmental bottleneck is coming in the
21st century. It will cause the unfolding of a new
kind of driven by environmental change. Or perhaps an
unfolding on a global scale of the old kind of
history, which saw the collapse of regional
civilizations, going back to the earliest in history,
in northern Mesopotamia, and subsequently Egypt, then
the Mayan and many others scattered across all the
inhabited continents except Australia." Wilson's "new
kind of history" would involve a worldwide revolution
in attitudes and policies. This would include
universal access by women to the means of controlling
their fertility, abandonment of the belief that there
is a natural right to have as many children as you
like, and a basic shift in attitudes to the
environment in which it is accepted that our fate and
that of the rest of life on earth are inseparably
linked. These are the minimum conditions for the new
kind of history of which Wilson writes.

Unfortunately, one has only to list these conditions
to see that they are unrealizable. There cannot be a
sustainable balance between natural resources and
human needs so long as the number of people continues
to increase, but a growing population can be seen as a
weapon. Many Palestinians and Kurds view having large
families as a survival strategy. In a world containing
many intractable ethnic conflicts, there is unlikely
to be a benign demographic transition to a lower birth
rate.

The examples we have of societies in which population
has declined in the absence of a big social crisis
cannot be replicated worldwide. A policy of zero
population growth requires universal availability of
contraception and abortion, and limits on the freedom
to breed; but the authority that could impose these
conditions does not exist.

Humans have a long history of mass killing, but have
rarely chosen to regulate their numbers intelligently
and humanely. If population declines, it will be as a
result of war, genocide or the kind of generalized
social collapse that has taken place in post-communist
Russia. The increase in human population that is under
way is unprecedented and unsustainable. It cannot be
projected into the future. More than likely, it will
be cut short by the classical Malthusian forces of
"old history". From a human point of view, this is an
extremely discomforting prospect; but at least it
dispels the nightmare of an age of solitude. The loss
of biodiversity is real, and very often irreversible.
But we need not fear a world made desolate by human
proliferation. We can rely on Homo sapiens to spare us
that fate.

John Gray is professor of European thought at the
London School of Economics and the author of Straw
Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals


=====
“If there is a single book on the subject to engage the enthusiast, silence the
critic, and enlighten the ignoramus, this is it.”

The London Observer in a review of the book: A Green History of the World: The
Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations by Clive Pointing.

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com

Odum's books are somewhat difficult. The basic idea behind solar emergy, as I
grasp it, is that there is, in a gallon of gasoline, a boatload of embodied
sunlight.

In an earlier post, Odum said that a joule of gasoline contains 60,000 solar
emjoules.

My quite rough calculations suggest that if you emptied a one gallon
container of gasoline into your car, and set the container on the ground,
that it would take something like 15,000 years for the container to intercept
60,000 joules of sunlight.

Note, however, that a solar joule and a solar emjoule are not the same thing.
I think Odum is trying to get at the complete embodied energy of the gasoline
with the emjoule, picking up the refining, delivery, etc, not just the
biological process that produced the crude.

Do we have an emjoule or Odum expert on the list? Can someone confirm that
this is the case?

Randy Udall
Carbondale, Colorado

I saw a story in the NY Times about a website that takes bets on the future,
way in the future. The site Longbets.org is supposedly designed to "sharpen
long-term thinking on issues of social or scientific significance...". The
minimum bet is $1000.

One bet that caught my eye; "By the year 2015 solar electricity will be as
cheap or cheaper than that produced by fossil fuels."

Anyone want to place a bet? (on either side)

John

~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~

Given that, with energy, one could say we bet our lives. I would like to pull
such activity out of the domain of gambling.

We try to make intelligent decisions on the best information available. Yes,
odds are involved but they are ones we have an opportunity to reduce, thus we
should not be seen as gambling.

As for the "By the year 2015 solar electricity will be as
cheap or cheaper than that produced by fossil fuels."

This could be true, but it will mean that our society functions with a base in
concentrated energy that is a very small fraction of what we know now, and there
will be no highly concentrated energy artifacts, like cars, planes, industrial
agriculture, etc.

~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~

I always prebuy the propane for my manufacturing business and the oil I use to
partially
heat my home. Over the last 4 years, I haved saved money. Last year, my prebuy
of
propane did not save me much because of Sept. 11th and a mild winter depressed
winter prices.

Natural gas has been going up the last few months and all we have to have in N.
America is a normal winter weather wise and the NG price will be going up as
Simmons
suggests. We have not had a colder than normal winter here in New England for
many
years.

David Blittersdorf

On 30 Aug 2002 at 17:55, Robert Waldrop wrote:

> Well, Oklahoma Natural Gas has decided to offer consumers the chance
> to lock in the price of $4.31/dekatherm for natural gas this winter.
> The most recent cost on my bill was about one dollar less per
> dekatherm.
>
> Any thoughts from any of the natural gas experts on the list about
> this?
>
> i'm going to be getting a lot of questions about whether people should
> take this and run with it, and since Simmons seems to be thinking
> there will be another gas price spike this year, I'm throwing this out
> for discussion.  It's not a big issue for our personal household, as
> we don't heat with natural gas, all we get from that is hot water and
> cooking.
>
> So what do y'alls crystal balls say?
>
> Robert Waldrop, OKC
>
>
>
>
>
> Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments?
> Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@...
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

David Blittersdorf
NRG Systems, Inc.
110 Commerce Street
Hinesburg, VT 05461 USA
Tel: 802-482-2255
Fax: 802-482-2272
email: davidb@...
Web:http://www.nrgsystems.com

JMSTRAUSE@... wrote:
>> This article from NYTimes.com
>> has been sent to you by jmstrause@....
>>
>>
>> He thought commercial nukes would have less emphasis on profits and
>> more on safety if some proportion of the Boards of Directors were
>> required to be "on site" at all times and had to sleep there too.
>> John.

The application of that rule in all aspects of human society would
solve a plethora of ills!

b