7 ms·

The Modern World Can't Exist Without Fossil Fuels

26 points by goatsneez 4y ago

lordkrandel 4y ago
Totally pointless article. Main ingredients of modern life are required to produce the cake as it is now. But nowhere in history we have seen a faster developments in materials science, where Italy leads the way in bioplastics and many more materials are being born everyday like coated insulating paper. So ofc now we can't but use ammonia cement and steel, and that's about to change. The current population has reached 8 billions because of these materials, sure, but we cannot say "impossible" when we think about the future. It was "impossible" to be efficient remotely in 2020, and we've been, without any sort of preparation. When fossil fuels will be scarce, or climate change will impose drastic laws against people's freedom, it WILL be possible and mandatory to change. We've been to the Moon qnd back in 1969, and there is no way we can say it's "impossible" to find solutions in 2022
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Smil has devoted a half-century to study of this question, and is a widely-respected expert across the spectrum. Dismissing his writing as "totally pointless" seems rather hasty. What evidence would you have to support that assessment? Other than wishful thinking and appeal to consequences.
  - lordkrandel 4y ago
    I don't say that he has no right to think that. But it boils down to what conception of the world you have. If we think as "modern life" as dependant on steel based bridges, farming grass to get meat, yeah it will probably be impossible. But that's as conservative as thinking that we are no more Italians if we are European. And it's not. So while he spends 50 years on thinking why some materials are relevant, there are other people spending their lives with a more open mind, thinking how we can adapt and change. And this doesn't change the fact that I read an article full of useless information about processes which will have to change, with no sort of effect on my daily life or routine. So while I'm not critiquing an essayer for doing his job, I still find it rather pointless to have such an article on Time. We all know that if processes require finite resources, there will be problems. So?
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Smil's longer argument (and it's at least book length, arguably multi-book length as he's written about 40 covering aspects of the topic) is that the scale and dependencies of the modern world would be difficult to substitute for. We got here largely by moving off a sustainable track. Humanity used to live lagely sustainably. Unfortunately for those who'd like to return to that state, we've also increased total numbers, and per-capita wealth, far beyond the levels the sustainable track sufficed for. Reversion would proabably be traumatic. That said: most of the transformation is less than a century old, and substantial portions of the world (China, India, Africa) have joined the industrialised world largely in the past 50--75 years. So time-wise we're not so far from it. In terms of carrying capacity and the requirements for maintaining present state without catastrophic collapse, the distance seems much greater. To that extent I somewhat disagree with Smil's relative confidence, though I'll note he's far more informed than I am on the overall state of the situation.
      - lordkrandel 4y ago
        So it's hard to change? You don't say... Do we have any choice about it? No.
        ben_w 4y ago
        Strictly speaking, something can be simultaneously necessary for survival and yet still impossible. While I am optimistic about getting us off fossil fuels, if it turns out they are actually necessary for even one thing, then that thing, whatever it is, logically cannot be in the long-term future of humanity.
        dredmorbius 4y ago
        Agreed very nearly in full. Though on something being obligately dependent on some input or process: if that is one of a very small number of uses and both supply and consequence effects can be managed (e.g., we won't run out of supply in any conceivably meaningful timeframe and we can manage consequences), that usage might persist. Limiting petroleum usage to material feedstocks could be tolerable if: - That occurs at rates such that exhaustion isn't a meaningful risk. - Any environmental impacts, including but not limited to CO2 emissions, are compensated for. Those are themselves both steep requirements, but not utterly inconceivable. The pre-industrial utilisation of natural oil and tar seeps for uses such as lamp oil, sealing ships hulls, and the like, seem to me to have been at least reasonable. It wasn't until we started shipping the material in bulk within and between countries that major problems started emerging. That said: ice-core studies have detected atmospheric CO2 shifts and heavy metal contamination (mostly mercury and lead) dating to paeleolithic times (presumably from deforestation) and Roman mining activities during the Republic and Empire periods. Activities we think of as de minimus may in fact not be.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I didn't even read the article because the headline was so stupid and now it's this Smil guy again? How did he get this reputation for being smart when he's had so many dumb takes on energy? Has he accepted that EVs are viable yet? (edit: having now read the article, no he's still arguing that EVs are bad) Does he really not know that fossil fuels are not required for any of these things. Did he just intentionally lie about it? For what purpose? edit: He contradicts himself at the end of the article, so he knows the headline is false. Is this basically an ad for fossil fuels?
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      What specifically do you see as the contradiction in Smil's summary?
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        > The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels And just in case someone points out that the headline may have been written by an editor: > Fossil fuels remain indispensable for producing all of these materials. But if you keep reading past the advertising copy about how great fossil fuels are. > Synthesis of ammonia and smelting of steel could both be based on hydrogen rather than on natural gas and coke. We know how to do that Well, that's not what your headline says. He does of course continue to try to sandbag this > —but it will take some time before we could produce hundreds of million tons of green hydrogen derived from the electrolysis of water by using wind or solar electricity (virtually all of today’s hydrogen is derived from natural gas and coal). The best forecast is that green hydrogen would supply 2% of the world’s energy consumption by 2030, far below the hundreds of million tons that will eventually be needed to decarbonize ammonia and steel production I can't tell if he's just writing poorly or being intentionally deceptive but the green hydrogen for ammonia and steel wouldn't be part of the global energy consumption, we'd use renewables to provide the electric power for the creation of it and use the green hydrogen as a chemical feedstock. We might also use some of it to generate electricity, but those are two separate things that he's probably intentionally trying to muddy.
  - nemexis 4y ago
    Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Appeal to authority is ultimately based on power or position. Expertise is not authority. It does rely on trust. And it isn't a blanket certification --- just because someone is an expert does not mean that they are never wrong (and I've indicated elsewhere in this thread some areas in which I disagree). However it does suggest that a casual dismissal based on lack of qualification, as was the case in this specific thread, wants for evidence itself. That is, the value of expertise (root word, experience) is a deep familiarity, knowledge, understanding, and trustworthiness in a specific field. One trusts an expert computer programmer, an expert doctor, an expert engineer, an expert pilot, an expert lawyer. Or, in this, case, an expert environmental scientist. I'd mentioned his credentials not as a blanket dismissal of some specific argument against the piece, or an element of it, but that the piece as a whole is "pointless". Smil's experience, knowledge, understanding, and track record strongly suggest otherwise. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority If you follow lordkrandel's other comments to this thread, you may find their own experiential basis, beginning from a clear reading of the article and articulation of their own argument, is lacking.
dredmorbius 4y ago
"If a thing can’t go on forever, it will eventually stop." — Herbert Stein The article is an exerpt from Vaclav Smil's latest book (he has many[2]), How the World Really Works, excerpts, reviews, and interviews of which are appearing in multiple publications. In a world often divided into technological optimists and pessimists, Smil is someone I consider a technological realist. He focuses on what technology has wrought, here focusing on four specific material contributions, steel, concrete, ammonia fertiliser, and plastics. And a clear message is that if these are solely dependent on fossil fuels then we cannot continue in the same path as we have been without them. And in a world where we're unable to continue exploiting fossil fuels, whether due to the environmental impacts of their waste, or the lack of future supplies, the present mode of operation will end. What that means in terms of the set of factors affecting human impacts on the planet --- per-capita wealth and total population --- one or both factors must move. I've been looking at this question reasonably intensely for about a decade, and in a more general sense since the 1970s, when I first became aware of concerns over energy, pollution, and population in the Zeitgeist of that era. One fact I've become uncomfortably familiar with is that there's a great deal about the issue which has not changed appreciably, most especially as concerns the set of options for energy and resources, though there's been some specific progress in areas: computing and communications capacity, solar PV and LED costs, battery technology, and easing of food/population concerns have been among the largest. A chief concern though is that political barriers to effectively addressing the problematique in a manner that avoids catastrophic outcomes seem extraordinarily stubborn. I strongly recommend the works of William Ophusl, notably Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977, 1994) and Plato's Revenge (2011).[2] Thomas Homer-Dixon is a political science scholar who seems to be continuing the work: https://homerdixon.com/ https://homerdixon.com/ Global responses over the past two years and counting to a known threat for which well-established response plans existed have made me increasingly pessimistic over how well-prepared we are for the future obligations of a post-carbon age, or its alternatve, a greatly-warmed world. My own background is a mix of physics, environmental studies, urban economics and planning, and economics. That's given me an awareness of capabilities and constraints, but also of what how economics operates. In particular, economic interactions are largely driven by the relative apparent costs between inputs and options. As fuel-based energy has become vastly less expensive than in previous phases of human development, most especially over the past 200 years, energy has replaced other inputs, and made possible and viable practices, applications, and knowledge, that were previously unattainable. As those energy sources increase in costs, including both sourcing and consequence costs, those economics will change in an absolutely dramatic fashion. One of Smil's earlier works, Energy and World History, is among a handful of books which looks at history through the lens of energy sources. Smil (and other authors) divide human time into four periods: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, fossil fuels, and post-fossil fuels. Each is a strongly distinct period, with what are effectively singularity-transitions between them. Changes in energy regimes have effects greater than all but the most cataclysmic astronomical events --- both on the way up and down. In his introduction, Smil writes: This book is an attempt to reduce the comprehension deficit, to explain some of the most fundamental ruling realities governing our survival and our prosperity. My goal is not to forecast, not to outline either stunning or depressing scenarios of what is to come. There is no need to extend this popular --- but consistently failing --- genre: in the long run, there are too many unexpected developments and too many complex interactions that no individual or collective effort can anticipate. Nor will I advocate any specific (biased) interpretations of reality, either as a source of despair or of boundless expectations. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist; I am a scientist trying to explain how the world really workds, and I will use that understanding in order to make us better realize our future limits an opportunities. If you can handle the truth, or don't have access to its alternatives, read this book. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3Asmil%20vaclav https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3As... 2. https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-scarcity-revisited-the-unraveling-of-the-american-dream/oclc/872523631&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s... https://www.worldcat.org/title/platos-revenge-politics-in-the-age-of-ecology/oclc/8162554740 https://www.worldcat.org/title/platos-revenge-politics-in-th... Also available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=william%20ophuls https://archive.org/search.php?query=william%20ophuls
emteycz 4y ago
What's so impossible about nuclear power? Red tape is purely social, not technological issue.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  This section of Smil's book deals specifically with material resources and use. Nuclear power does not directly contribute to the manufacture of steel, plastics, concrete, or ammonia. There are conceivalble processes by which at least some of these might be addressed, and in the case of steel, electric arc furnaces for recycling existing steel are widely used. But direct application is limited. Smil is otherwise generally favourable toward nuclear, though he notes the political obstacles, based on risk perceptions (or miscperceptions) are quite high.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    That's strange. Nuclear is purely an engineering challenge. The political obstacles are a result of poor engineering. For example, radioactive waste was improperly deposited in Germany (Asse) and now nobody wants to be responsible for disposal anymore. Fukushima was also an engineering problem. The backup generators were placed in such a way that they failed during the tsunami. Chernobyl is another example of shoddy engineering. They used a terrible design that was particularly prone to meltdowns and then intentionally ran it in a configuration that caused a meltdown. If the engineers actually did their job correctly there wouldn't be any problems. After all, every new generation of nuclear power plant got safer than the previous ones. If gen 1 and 2 reactors were as safe as gen 3 reactors there wouldn't be any safety problems to necessitate "political obstacles".
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      How do you plan on engineering around poor management, or military bombardment and occupation?
      - emteycz 4y ago
        The same way coal and gas radioactivity is managed It's not as safe as people think. It's spewing much more radioactivity around than actual nuclear power plants.
captainbland 4y ago
The modern world will change anyway. Maybe we need to rethink whether we actually need to be a 24/7, full time work society. Do social media sites need to be available at all times? I think many of us would agree that they would be much improved if they turned off sometimes. In the 1970s, Britain limited the hours almost all industries operated for in response to a fuel shortage. Television stopped at 10:30pm in the evening - is that really a catastrophe? Probably not if you look at it with any real perspective. The three day week is remembered negatively in the media, but maybe this is actually the sort of thing we need to look at as a precedent for a more sustainable world. Maybe the real root of our problems is not in the fuels we use or the way we consume, but in the fact that society is just too busy and does too much, and this uses too much energy. This is what drives us to burn so many fossil fuels and destroy our planet. Maybe a slower society is a more sustainable one.
- deepsun 4y ago
  But we are already down timing 30% of the time, doing nothing useful!
- ianai 4y ago
  Do we then close emergency rooms? If no, then where are there people who work in the ER overnight going to to shop or get lunch? What about the poor saps who really can’t sleep and be wakeful at the same daylight hours as the rest of us? How about officers and fire departments? Lots of things that need to be managed don’t conform to timeframes. I sort of agree on your premise, but it’s not a clear cut path.
  - captainbland 4y ago
    I sure hope not. I'm not going to be able to come up with specific policy prescriptions that satisfy every outcome personally. I think it's a case of setting the goal, evaluating individual policies that move towards it, assessing the risks and then trialling them - rolling out the ones that seem to work and discarding those that have unacceptable issues. You can't necessarily do everything that satisfies an aim but you can make big moves in that direction and still get most of the benefit.
vannevar 4y ago
>As a result, global production of these four indispensable materials claims about 17 percent of the world’s annual total energy supply, and it generates about 25 percent of all CO2 emissions originating in the combustion of fossil fuels. So even if we left these critical industries untouched, we could still reduce fossil fuel consumption by 83% and potentially achieve a fourfold reduction in C02 emissions.
- restalis 4y ago
  "So even if we left these critical industries untouched, we could still reduce fossil fuel consumption by 83%" I think these industries are not the most challenging ones about finding carbon-free alternative solutions. One of the most important thing is transportation, and as far as I know, there isn't anything immediately available that can replace the current shipping of goods around the planet. In the future, we may try switch to ships burning iron powder instead, or build massive continent-connecting rail infrastructure (like in Snowpiercer), but for now we'll just have to settle for less than 83% reduction.
Tozen 4y ago
I've never liked the arguments which end up shilling for or giving a pass to the fossil fuel industry, which amounts to destroying our planet. Humans need clean air and water to survive. No matter how indispensable one might think oil and plastics are, if humans destroy themselves because of their usage, then it was not worth it. Just a relatively few humans getting rich from destroying the planet and the future generations of humanity, means it wasn't worth it. There are alternative ways to make plastics (https://hempplastic.com/ https://hempplastic.com/), and hemp is just one example. It's not to say that all kinds of plastics are easily or quickly replaced with alternatives, but it is to say that it's possible to find alternatives. And probably the greater effort and urgency to find alternatives, without interference from oil companies, the greater variety of replacements there will be, and sooner. Maybe there is some minimum point where we just can't replace fossil fuels for a particular product or industry, but much better to get to that point, where we minimally rely on fossil fuels. Let's first make every effort to find alternatives, before saying that's the case. I have a strong suspicion, we could probably reduce reliance far more that many think or want us to discover. Another sneaky part of the pro fossil fuel argument, is since replacing them is hard, let's be really lazy about it and allow them to pollute the air and water at will or for many generations more. As if we or our Earth can afford such. If anything, the correct answer is that greater effort should be made to replace fossil fuels as much as and as soon as possible, because of the great harm they are causing. We should not be lazy, because doing so might be our undoing.
- restalis 4y ago
  "There are alternative ways to make plastics (https://hempplastic.com/ https://hempplastic.com/), and hemp is just one example." Hmm... Thanks for sharing! Regarding bio-plastic, (from my once attended school chemistry class) I only knew about polyethylene, that can be obtained from sugar-producing plants (via alcohol/ethylene), but that being costly may not scale well.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Ammonia! Literally all the buzz in renewables (now that solar being the cheapest energy source in the whole of human history is boring, old news and there's no doubt that EVs and battery production is going to drive prices down to incredible levels) is about Green Hydrogen, Green Steel and Green Ammonia. And that was before gas prices went through the roof. Then the headlines were that it was already cheaper to make Green Hydrogen in Europe due to high gas prices. How out of touch with the energy market do you need to be to lead your "Fossil fuels are irreplaceable" diatribe with Ammonia?
- usrn 4y ago
  Ammonia produces NOx when burned. The pollution is far worse than emissions from fossil fuels. If you really want renewable fuels I think growing and refining algae is probably our best bet right now.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    You don't burn the Green Ammonia, you use it as a chemical feedstock or as a transport medium for Green Hydrogen. For heat or motion you use electricity.
restalis 4y ago
"Similarly, there is no simple way to decarbonize plastic production, and the measures will range from plant feedstocks to more recycling and to substitutions by other materials." Isn't this the area that it made the most sense to have kept the existing easy available hydrocarbons for? As opposed to burning them for fuel, I mean. Is the usage of fossil hydrocarbons resources for raw material in producing plastic still counted as having a carbon footprint? (For the record, I think that in the long term, a solution for producing plastics without relying on fossil resources is necessary, but it doesn't make sense to limit ourselves to that just yet.)
- throwaway6532 4y ago
  This has been my line of thinking too.

26 points by goatsneez 4y ago

Totally pointless article. Main ingredients of modern life are required to produce the cake as it is now. But nowhere in history we have seen a faster developments in materials science, where Italy leads the way in bioplastics and many more materials are being born everyday like coated insulating paper. So ofc now we can't but use ammonia cement and steel, and that's about to change. The current population has reached 8 billions because of these materials, sure, but we cannot say "impossible" when we think about the future. It was "impossible" to be efficient remotely in 2020, and we've been, without any sort of preparation. When fossil fuels will be scarce, or climate change will impose drastic laws against people's freedom, it WILL be possible and mandatory to change. We've been to the Moon qnd back in 1969, and there is no way we can say it's "impossible" to find solutions in 2022

dredmorbius 4y ago
Smil has devoted a half-century to study of this question, and is a widely-respected expert across the spectrum. Dismissing his writing as "totally pointless" seems rather hasty. What evidence would you have to support that assessment? Other than wishful thinking and appeal to consequences.
- lordkrandel 4y ago
  I don't say that he has no right to think that. But it boils down to what conception of the world you have. If we think as "modern life" as dependant on steel based bridges, farming grass to get meat, yeah it will probably be impossible. But that's as conservative as thinking that we are no more Italians if we are European. And it's not. So while he spends 50 years on thinking why some materials are relevant, there are other people spending their lives with a more open mind, thinking how we can adapt and change. And this doesn't change the fact that I read an article full of useless information about processes which will have to change, with no sort of effect on my daily life or routine. So while I'm not critiquing an essayer for doing his job, I still find it rather pointless to have such an article on Time. We all know that if processes require finite resources, there will be problems. So?
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Smil's longer argument (and it's at least book length, arguably multi-book length as he's written about 40 covering aspects of the topic) is that the scale and dependencies of the modern world would be difficult to substitute for. We got here largely by moving off a sustainable track. Humanity used to live lagely sustainably. Unfortunately for those who'd like to return to that state, we've also increased total numbers, and per-capita wealth, far beyond the levels the sustainable track sufficed for. Reversion would proabably be traumatic. That said: most of the transformation is less than a century old, and substantial portions of the world (China, India, Africa) have joined the industrialised world largely in the past 50--75 years. So time-wise we're not so far from it. In terms of carrying capacity and the requirements for maintaining present state without catastrophic collapse, the distance seems much greater. To that extent I somewhat disagree with Smil's relative confidence, though I'll note he's far more informed than I am on the overall state of the situation.
    - lordkrandel 4y ago
      So it's hard to change? You don't say... Do we have any choice about it? No.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Strictly speaking, something can be simultaneously necessary for survival and yet still impossible. While I am optimistic about getting us off fossil fuels, if it turns out they are actually necessary for even one thing, then that thing, whatever it is, logically cannot be in the long-term future of humanity.
        dredmorbius 4y ago
        Agreed very nearly in full. Though on something being obligately dependent on some input or process: if that is one of a very small number of uses and both supply and consequence effects can be managed (e.g., we won't run out of supply in any conceivably meaningful timeframe and we can manage consequences), that usage might persist. Limiting petroleum usage to material feedstocks could be tolerable if: - That occurs at rates such that exhaustion isn't a meaningful risk. - Any environmental impacts, including but not limited to CO2 emissions, are compensated for. Those are themselves both steep requirements, but not utterly inconceivable. The pre-industrial utilisation of natural oil and tar seeps for uses such as lamp oil, sealing ships hulls, and the like, seem to me to have been at least reasonable. It wasn't until we started shipping the material in bulk within and between countries that major problems started emerging. That said: ice-core studies have detected atmospheric CO2 shifts and heavy metal contamination (mostly mercury and lead) dating to paeleolithic times (presumably from deforestation) and Roman mining activities during the Republic and Empire periods. Activities we think of as de minimus may in fact not be.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I didn't even read the article because the headline was so stupid and now it's this Smil guy again? How did he get this reputation for being smart when he's had so many dumb takes on energy? Has he accepted that EVs are viable yet? (edit: having now read the article, no he's still arguing that EVs are bad) Does he really not know that fossil fuels are not required for any of these things. Did he just intentionally lie about it? For what purpose? edit: He contradicts himself at the end of the article, so he knows the headline is false. Is this basically an ad for fossil fuels?
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    What specifically do you see as the contradiction in Smil's summary?
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      > The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels And just in case someone points out that the headline may have been written by an editor: > Fossil fuels remain indispensable for producing all of these materials. But if you keep reading past the advertising copy about how great fossil fuels are. > Synthesis of ammonia and smelting of steel could both be based on hydrogen rather than on natural gas and coke. We know how to do that Well, that's not what your headline says. He does of course continue to try to sandbag this > —but it will take some time before we could produce hundreds of million tons of green hydrogen derived from the electrolysis of water by using wind or solar electricity (virtually all of today’s hydrogen is derived from natural gas and coal). The best forecast is that green hydrogen would supply 2% of the world’s energy consumption by 2030, far below the hundreds of million tons that will eventually be needed to decarbonize ammonia and steel production I can't tell if he's just writing poorly or being intentionally deceptive but the green hydrogen for ammonia and steel wouldn't be part of the global energy consumption, we'd use renewables to provide the electric power for the creation of it and use the green hydrogen as a chemical feedstock. We might also use some of it to generate electricity, but those are two separate things that he's probably intentionally trying to muddy.
- nemexis 4y ago
  Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Appeal to authority is ultimately based on power or position. Expertise is not authority. It does rely on trust. And it isn't a blanket certification --- just because someone is an expert does not mean that they are never wrong (and I've indicated elsewhere in this thread some areas in which I disagree). However it does suggest that a casual dismissal based on lack of qualification, as was the case in this specific thread, wants for evidence itself. That is, the value of expertise (root word, experience) is a deep familiarity, knowledge, understanding, and trustworthiness in a specific field. One trusts an expert computer programmer, an expert doctor, an expert engineer, an expert pilot, an expert lawyer. Or, in this, case, an expert environmental scientist. I'd mentioned his credentials not as a blanket dismissal of some specific argument against the piece, or an element of it, but that the piece as a whole is "pointless". Smil's experience, knowledge, understanding, and track record strongly suggest otherwise. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority If you follow lordkrandel's other comments to this thread, you may find their own experiential basis, beginning from a clear reading of the article and articulation of their own argument, is lacking.

dredmorbius 4y ago

"If a thing can’t go on forever, it will eventually stop." — Herbert Stein The article is an exerpt from Vaclav Smil's latest book (he has many[2]), How the World Really Works, excerpts, reviews, and interviews of which are appearing in multiple publications. In a world often divided into technological optimists and pessimists, Smil is someone I consider a technological realist. He focuses on what technology has wrought, here focusing on four specific material contributions, steel, concrete, ammonia fertiliser, and plastics. And a clear message is that if these are solely dependent on fossil fuels then we cannot continue in the same path as we have been without them. And in a world where we're unable to continue exploiting fossil fuels, whether due to the environmental impacts of their waste, or the lack of future supplies, the present mode of operation will end. What that means in terms of the set of factors affecting human impacts on the planet --- per-capita wealth and total population --- one or both factors must move. I've been looking at this question reasonably intensely for about a decade, and in a more general sense since the 1970s, when I first became aware of concerns over energy, pollution, and population in the Zeitgeist of that era. One fact I've become uncomfortably familiar with is that there's a great deal about the issue which has not changed appreciably, most especially as concerns the set of options for energy and resources, though there's been some specific progress in areas: computing and communications capacity, solar PV and LED costs, battery technology, and easing of food/population concerns have been among the largest. A chief concern though is that political barriers to effectively addressing the problematique in a manner that avoids catastrophic outcomes seem extraordinarily stubborn. I strongly recommend the works of William Ophusl, notably Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977, 1994) and Plato's Revenge (2011).[2] Thomas Homer-Dixon is a political science scholar who seems to be continuing the work: https://homerdixon.com/ https://homerdixon.com/ Global responses over the past two years and counting to a known threat for which well-established response plans existed have made me increasingly pessimistic over how well-prepared we are for the future obligations of a post-carbon age, or its alternatve, a greatly-warmed world. My own background is a mix of physics, environmental studies, urban economics and planning, and economics. That's given me an awareness of capabilities and constraints, but also of what how economics operates. In particular, economic interactions are largely driven by the relative apparent costs between inputs and options. As fuel-based energy has become vastly less expensive than in previous phases of human development, most especially over the past 200 years, energy has replaced other inputs, and made possible and viable practices, applications, and knowledge, that were previously unattainable. As those energy sources increase in costs, including both sourcing and consequence costs, those economics will change in an absolutely dramatic fashion. One of Smil's earlier works, Energy and World History, is among a handful of books which looks at history through the lens of energy sources. Smil (and other authors) divide human time into four periods: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, fossil fuels, and post-fossil fuels. Each is a strongly distinct period, with what are effectively singularity-transitions between them. Changes in energy regimes have effects greater than all but the most cataclysmic astronomical events --- both on the way up and down. In his introduction, Smil writes: This book is an attempt to reduce the comprehension deficit, to explain some of the most fundamental ruling realities governing our survival and our prosperity. My goal is not to forecast, not to outline either stunning or depressing scenarios of what is to come. There is no need to extend this popular --- but consistently failing --- genre: in the long run, there are too many unexpected developments and too many complex interactions that no individual or collective effort can anticipate. Nor will I advocate any specific (biased) interpretations of reality, either as a source of despair or of boundless expectations. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist; I am a scientist trying to explain how the world really workds, and I will use that understanding in order to make us better realize our future limits an opportunities. If you can handle the truth, or don't have access to its alternatives, read this book. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3Asmil%20vaclav https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3As... 2. https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-scarcity-revisited-the-unraveling-of-the-american-dream/oclc/872523631&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s... https://www.worldcat.org/title/platos-revenge-politics-in-the-age-of-ecology/oclc/8162554740 https://www.worldcat.org/title/platos-revenge-politics-in-th... Also available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=william%20ophuls https://archive.org/search.php?query=william%20ophuls

emteycz 4y ago

What's so impossible about nuclear power? Red tape is purely social, not technological issue.

dredmorbius 4y ago
This section of Smil's book deals specifically with material resources and use. Nuclear power does not directly contribute to the manufacture of steel, plastics, concrete, or ammonia. There are conceivalble processes by which at least some of these might be addressed, and in the case of steel, electric arc furnaces for recycling existing steel are widely used. But direct application is limited. Smil is otherwise generally favourable toward nuclear, though he notes the political obstacles, based on risk perceptions (or miscperceptions) are quite high.
- imtringued 4y ago
  That's strange. Nuclear is purely an engineering challenge. The political obstacles are a result of poor engineering. For example, radioactive waste was improperly deposited in Germany (Asse) and now nobody wants to be responsible for disposal anymore. Fukushima was also an engineering problem. The backup generators were placed in such a way that they failed during the tsunami. Chernobyl is another example of shoddy engineering. They used a terrible design that was particularly prone to meltdowns and then intentionally ran it in a configuration that caused a meltdown. If the engineers actually did their job correctly there wouldn't be any problems. After all, every new generation of nuclear power plant got safer than the previous ones. If gen 1 and 2 reactors were as safe as gen 3 reactors there wouldn't be any safety problems to necessitate "political obstacles".
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    How do you plan on engineering around poor management, or military bombardment and occupation?
    - emteycz 4y ago
      The same way coal and gas radioactivity is managed It's not as safe as people think. It's spewing much more radioactivity around than actual nuclear power plants.

captainbland 4y ago

The modern world will change anyway. Maybe we need to rethink whether we actually need to be a 24/7, full time work society. Do social media sites need to be available at all times? I think many of us would agree that they would be much improved if they turned off sometimes. In the 1970s, Britain limited the hours almost all industries operated for in response to a fuel shortage. Television stopped at 10:30pm in the evening - is that really a catastrophe? Probably not if you look at it with any real perspective. The three day week is remembered negatively in the media, but maybe this is actually the sort of thing we need to look at as a precedent for a more sustainable world. Maybe the real root of our problems is not in the fuels we use or the way we consume, but in the fact that society is just too busy and does too much, and this uses too much energy. This is what drives us to burn so many fossil fuels and destroy our planet. Maybe a slower society is a more sustainable one.

deepsun 4y ago
But we are already down timing 30% of the time, doing nothing useful!
ianai 4y ago
Do we then close emergency rooms? If no, then where are there people who work in the ER overnight going to to shop or get lunch? What about the poor saps who really can’t sleep and be wakeful at the same daylight hours as the rest of us? How about officers and fire departments? Lots of things that need to be managed don’t conform to timeframes. I sort of agree on your premise, but it’s not a clear cut path.
- captainbland 4y ago
  I sure hope not. I'm not going to be able to come up with specific policy prescriptions that satisfy every outcome personally. I think it's a case of setting the goal, evaluating individual policies that move towards it, assessing the risks and then trialling them - rolling out the ones that seem to work and discarding those that have unacceptable issues. You can't necessarily do everything that satisfies an aim but you can make big moves in that direction and still get most of the benefit.

vannevar 4y ago

>As a result, global production of these four indispensable materials claims about 17 percent of the world’s annual total energy supply, and it generates about 25 percent of all CO2 emissions originating in the combustion of fossil fuels. So even if we left these critical industries untouched, we could still reduce fossil fuel consumption by 83% and potentially achieve a fourfold reduction in C02 emissions.

restalis 4y ago
"So even if we left these critical industries untouched, we could still reduce fossil fuel consumption by 83%" I think these industries are not the most challenging ones about finding carbon-free alternative solutions. One of the most important thing is transportation, and as far as I know, there isn't anything immediately available that can replace the current shipping of goods around the planet. In the future, we may try switch to ships burning iron powder instead, or build massive continent-connecting rail infrastructure (like in Snowpiercer), but for now we'll just have to settle for less than 83% reduction.

Tozen 4y ago

I've never liked the arguments which end up shilling for or giving a pass to the fossil fuel industry, which amounts to destroying our planet. Humans need clean air and water to survive. No matter how indispensable one might think oil and plastics are, if humans destroy themselves because of their usage, then it was not worth it. Just a relatively few humans getting rich from destroying the planet and the future generations of humanity, means it wasn't worth it. There are alternative ways to make plastics (https://hempplastic.com/ https://hempplastic.com/), and hemp is just one example. It's not to say that all kinds of plastics are easily or quickly replaced with alternatives, but it is to say that it's possible to find alternatives. And probably the greater effort and urgency to find alternatives, without interference from oil companies, the greater variety of replacements there will be, and sooner. Maybe there is some minimum point where we just can't replace fossil fuels for a particular product or industry, but much better to get to that point, where we minimally rely on fossil fuels. Let's first make every effort to find alternatives, before saying that's the case. I have a strong suspicion, we could probably reduce reliance far more that many think or want us to discover. Another sneaky part of the pro fossil fuel argument, is since replacing them is hard, let's be really lazy about it and allow them to pollute the air and water at will or for many generations more. As if we or our Earth can afford such. If anything, the correct answer is that greater effort should be made to replace fossil fuels as much as and as soon as possible, because of the great harm they are causing. We should not be lazy, because doing so might be our undoing.

restalis 4y ago
"There are alternative ways to make plastics (https://hempplastic.com/ https://hempplastic.com/), and hemp is just one example." Hmm... Thanks for sharing! Regarding bio-plastic, (from my once attended school chemistry class) I only knew about polyethylene, that can be obtained from sugar-producing plants (via alcohol/ethylene), but that being costly may not scale well.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Ammonia! Literally all the buzz in renewables (now that solar being the cheapest energy source in the whole of human history is boring, old news and there's no doubt that EVs and battery production is going to drive prices down to incredible levels) is about Green Hydrogen, Green Steel and Green Ammonia. And that was before gas prices went through the roof. Then the headlines were that it was already cheaper to make Green Hydrogen in Europe due to high gas prices. How out of touch with the energy market do you need to be to lead your "Fossil fuels are irreplaceable" diatribe with Ammonia?

usrn 4y ago
Ammonia produces NOx when burned. The pollution is far worse than emissions from fossil fuels. If you really want renewable fuels I think growing and refining algae is probably our best bet right now.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  You don't burn the Green Ammonia, you use it as a chemical feedstock or as a transport medium for Green Hydrogen. For heat or motion you use electricity.

restalis 4y ago

"Similarly, there is no simple way to decarbonize plastic production, and the measures will range from plant feedstocks to more recycling and to substitutions by other materials." Isn't this the area that it made the most sense to have kept the existing easy available hydrocarbons for? As opposed to burning them for fuel, I mean. Is the usage of fossil hydrocarbons resources for raw material in producing plastic still counted as having a carbon footprint? (For the record, I think that in the long term, a solution for producing plastics without relying on fossil resources is necessary, but it doesn't make sense to limit ourselves to that just yet.)

throwaway6532 4y ago
This has been my line of thinking too.