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Like I keep on saying, most problems facing humanity are energy problems. We must harness abundant energy from all possible sources instead of categorically den

Like I keep on saying, most problems facing humanity are energy problems. We must harness abundant energy from all possible sources instead of categorically denying one source or another for ideological reasons. We're not as far removed from the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy as many in the West believe.

hef19898 4y ago
We reached a point at which most of our problems are distribution problems. Those that have too much don't want to share what they don't need, others want more than they already have and as long as you are poor society doesn't care about the things you are in need of.
- zht 4y ago
  To distribute you need energy, no?
  - Teever 4y ago
    Per capita we have surplus of most every material and energy. But the distribution is so lopsided that some end up with too much while some end up with not enough. Adding energy to the system is no guarantee that we will fix the distribution problem. The problem isn't technical, it's social.
  - supertrope 4y ago
    There’s enough energy globally to feed everyone. The problem is food markets don’t function in warzones or some totalitarian countries.
- prottog 4y ago
  > We reached a point at which most of our problems are distribution problems. That's not true at all. The world's average household income is estimated to be about $10,000 a year, meaning that even if you magically solved the distribution problem, people would still only live off of $800 a month. A vast improvement for the global poor that live on a few bucks a day, but certainly not luxurious living. I want everyone in the world to be able to live the life that the average Texan or Swiss does now; I want everyone to be able to feed their families, enjoy a comfortable house with enough room for a garden, go on a vacation or two a year, save for retirement, develop a hobby that might take time and money, and more. I want everyone to be able to live it up every now and then, if they wanted to. I want everyone to enjoy secure property rights and rule of law. I want everyone to be able to have as many children as would make them happy, and for those children to live even better lives. There is nowhere near enough wealth produced yet that this is possible for everybody on the planet. We are very, very far away from no longer having production problems and only having distribution problems.
  - mynameisnull 4y ago
    Average is not valid measure to use here as it's vulnerable to distribution skew.
    - canadianfella 4y ago
      [dead]
    - coeneedell 4y ago
      It actually is a valid measure here because they’re using it to estimate total income.
      - vagrantJin 4y ago
        Thats exactly why its a bad idea to use averages in this particular case.
        coeneedell 4y ago
        Average is total divided by number of people. Therefore total is average times number of people.
  - nly 4y ago
    $ income values are totally and utterly meaningless without context, and so are their averages. $10K/yr is a fortune in Cambodia. Even within the US or another major Western nation you can earn 5x in a major metropolis what a hick in the country earns and they may still have a vastly better standard of living than you. Income is not a measure of real wealth or wellbeing. Period
    - iflint 4y ago
      Agreed that context is extremely important. Income is an imperfect measure of buying power, since prices vary significantly based on geography, but it is still a measure, and in the context of globally traded commodities such as energy or fertilizer it is quite important. The price of oil or fertilizer is likely very similar (if not more expensive) in Cambodia compared to a place like the US.
- justinator 4y ago
  >We reached a point at which most of our problems are distribution problems. This is the point that Buckminster Fuller made decades ago. One day we'll all listen to him. https://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/Fall2013Papers/Purcell/bucky.html https://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/Fall2013Papers/Purcel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ3DXDONKmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ3DXDONKmQ
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Using solar and wind for fertilizer production seems like an obvious win. The prices are plummeting much more quickly than any other energy source, and the main objection — intermittency - can be worked around in this one application. Estimates say “green” pilot plants are still 3-4x as expensive as using fossil fuels, but presumably falling energy input prices and improvements (plus scale) will get us closer.
- Zpalmtree 4y ago
  paying 4x as much is an "obvious win"?
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    If a technology is at the "pilot plant" stage and the major cost input is renewable energy (where costs have dropped precipitously and continue to do so), then 4x doesn't feel like an impossibility. Meanwhile the price of anhydrous ammonia produced using traditional methods nearly tripled between January 2020 and August 2022: the "cost" of relying on continued access to cheap fossil fuel is not low.
- Xylakant 4y ago
  “Can be worked around in this application?” I know folks that do maintenance on the plant that produces ammonia among other things at the BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. They don’t shut this plant down. Maintenance is mostly done during production. If one stage fails, the products of the predecessor stages are usually burned - makes for a pretty spectacular evening sky. It’s likely possible to re-engineer those plants to use an intermittent power source, but it’s far from trivial.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    And the alternatives are what, exactly? Keep basing our technology on inexpensive access to fossil fuels until war or climate problems make that unworkable? Or hope that nuclear-powered hydrolysis somehow becomes more efficient and feasible at the necessary scale? I'm completely open to the second idea, just not convinced that it's less expensive than dealing with intermittency. When you say "it's likely possible, but not trivial" what I hear is: it's a matter of calculating the cost of alternatives and then making strategic investments, preferably as soon as possible (because CO2 emissions are cumulative and we don't have an efficient technology for CO2 removal.)
ravenstine 4y ago
Remarkable that you're getting downvoted for this. The availability of energy substrate is almost entirely the reason why there are ~8 billion people today and not just under a billion. Infrastructure wouldn't have scaled this much, and neither would have agriculture, thanks to fossil fuel; both the ability to transport and fertilize crops (see the Haber process) on a massive scale originally became possible because of oil. Restrict the flow of energy and you restrict the growth of civilization. To some, that's a good thing, and others bad. That's not really relevant. Little of what even modern primitivists and luddites value would be possible without energy being harnessed. And yes, energy should come from wherever it makes sense as opposed to the "money for nothing and the chicks are free" attitude the West has in seeking clean energy. In some parts of the world, petroleum will continue to make sense until technology progresses to the point where it no longer does. In other places, solar makes sense and we should go with that. Use nuclear, and use other energy tech to fill the gaps. A nation that produces a lot of sugar cane may decide to use ethanol (see Brazil). Allowing sensible choice and application of energy allows us to try many things out, smooths the transition towards future energy advancements, and improves national security. Instead of focusing on the negatives, we need to give both present and future energy more credit for what it's given us. By constantly finding reasons why a energy tech is bad, we tread water. We're addicted to the "perfect mind-state" and no-human-impact perspective, and it's created an inferior outcome. Those who dote on negatives like "But EV batteries are heavy and not energy dense!" and "But nuclear waste!" and "But it wouldn't be viable without subsidies!" and "But it's not zero carbon!" are focusing on the wrong thing.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  What is the purpose of the growth of civilization?
  - ravenstine 4y ago
    Does it need a purpose?
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
vegetablepotpie 4y ago
Although I don’t know what you’re saying based on your post, I can deduce it based on your comments. Summing up opposition to fossil fuels as being because of > ideological reasons Is so reductive that it is dishonest. I don’t know if you’re downplaying or denying the consequences of human induced climate change, but we are folly to ignore the destruction that it will cause. Leading off a post by assuming ideology a declaration that there are some people who you see as unworthy of making a contribution and should not participate. It is not curious, it shuts down discourse, and it makes it hard for others to understand the point you’re making and why your believe what you believe.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Indeed. For most it's nor ideology, but a genuine difference of opinion regarding how bad CO2 climate change will be in the next 100 years and how easy it will be to mitigate. That said, there's a fairly large degrowth faction who are very underrepresented in debate/discussion forums like this who would genuinely want to reduce energy consumption and fossil fuel consumption even if they didn't cause climate change. I encounter them a fair bit in the real world.
bitwize 4y ago
It's not "ideological" to want to stop setting the planet on fire so we can continue to live opulently and conveniently. Matter of fact, it's most practical to do so. Besides, there is only so much readily extractible fossil fuel anyway, and for some forms (petroleum) we are near or past that limit, after which costs start going up... which can be a real bitch if you're dependent on those forms.
ambientenv 4y ago
It's absolutely a problem - energy blindness [1] - and it is intricately intertwined, along with much more, in the domain of geopolitics [2], something of which recently I've come to have a better and deeper understanding. [1] - https://natehagens.substack.com/p/frankly-3-energy-blindness https://natehagens.substack.com/p/frankly-3-energy-blindness [2] - https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/ https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/
- DrWorldwide 4y ago
  +1 to the nod to Zeihan. He's had OP's point on blast on his free channels (newsletter, YouTube) for at least 12 months now.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Does Maslow's hierarchy include every individual commuting 30+ miles to work by car? Outside of that - the US definitely has enough energy - and probably most of the West including almost all of Europe.
slothtrop 4y ago
As far as I'm aware, ammonia currently can only viably be created with fossil fuels as inputs, for the same reason blast furnaces to smelt steel requires fossil fuels. But to follow where I think you're going, I expect nuclear to be the next most viable
- AngryData 4y ago
  It doesn't NEED natural gas as input, there are other ways, but natural gas as input is saving a massive amount of energy, possibly near 10x current energy input, by not having to split hydrogen from water. And fertilizer production is already one of the most energy intensive processes we have, so increasing that multiple times over is a huge amount of energy. Basically hydrogen production is the limiting factor in producing clean ammonia from the air instead of using fossil fuels, and clean (and cheap) hydrogen production is far from a solved problem.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Ammonia is made with hydrogen. If you are making hydrogen, nuclear biggest putative advantage, its lack of intermittency, becomes much less important. If you are proposing thermochemical watersplitting using nuclear heat to make hydrogen, there is very great reason to be skeptical of that approach (superheated vaporized sulfuric acid, anyone?). These processes have never been practical, and the decline in cost of renewable electricity, and the decline in cost of electrolyzers, makes the thermochemical approaches even less competitive.
- nradov 4y ago
  Ammonia can be produced from any power source. So in theory we could use renewable power to manufacture "green ammonia" for farming. So far that has only been done in small demonstration projects and all the real fertilizer manufacturing is still done using fossil fuels as the main input. https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-fertilizer-to-fuel-can-green-ammonia-be-a-climate-fix https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-fertilizer-to-fuel-can-g...
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    The level of power required is so high that renewables are nowhere near viable at this point.
pydry 4y ago
>We must harness abundant energy from all possible sources instead of categorically denying one source or another Would you not suggest doubling down on the cheapest sources of green energy and dispense with the most expensive and polluting sources? I dont see much point in harnessing tidal energy or coal, for instance. One is very cost effective while the other pollutes massively.
- prottog 4y ago
  I'm certainly not advocating that we pollute for fun. But if the choice is between polluting massively with fossil fuels or having people go cold and starve because there's not enough energy to produce fertilizer and heat people's homes, I'm saying it's downright immoral to prevent the former and cause the latter. I'm not against green energy! By all means, build as many wind turbines and solar panels as we can. We need abundant, cheap, and ideally pollution-free energy; but until we can get there, burn as much fossil fuels as we need to alleviate human suffering and uplift the global poor.
  - soared 4y ago
    > But if the choice is between polluting massively with fossil fuels or having people go cold and starve These are definitely not the choices and using those a basis for logic leads to misguided opinions
    - concordDance 4y ago
      A surprisingly large number of people are wanting us to burn zero fossil fuels in 2035. I don't think they know much about fertiliser production though... (other than that they dislike it and we should use natural farming)
      - pydry 4y ago
        2035 is the goal for carbon free electricity only.
- agilob 4y ago

hef19898 4y ago

We reached a point at which most of our problems are distribution problems. Those that have too much don't want to share what they don't need, others want more than they already have and as long as you are poor society doesn't care about the things you are in need of.

zht 4y ago
To distribute you need energy, no?
- Teever 4y ago
  Per capita we have surplus of most every material and energy. But the distribution is so lopsided that some end up with too much while some end up with not enough. Adding energy to the system is no guarantee that we will fix the distribution problem. The problem isn't technical, it's social.
- supertrope 4y ago
  There’s enough energy globally to feed everyone. The problem is food markets don’t function in warzones or some totalitarian countries.
prottog 4y ago
> We reached a point at which most of our problems are distribution problems. That's not true at all. The world's average household income is estimated to be about $10,000 a year, meaning that even if you magically solved the distribution problem, people would still only live off of $800 a month. A vast improvement for the global poor that live on a few bucks a day, but certainly not luxurious living. I want everyone in the world to be able to live the life that the average Texan or Swiss does now; I want everyone to be able to feed their families, enjoy a comfortable house with enough room for a garden, go on a vacation or two a year, save for retirement, develop a hobby that might take time and money, and more. I want everyone to be able to live it up every now and then, if they wanted to. I want everyone to enjoy secure property rights and rule of law. I want everyone to be able to have as many children as would make them happy, and for those children to live even better lives. There is nowhere near enough wealth produced yet that this is possible for everybody on the planet. We are very, very far away from no longer having production problems and only having distribution problems.
- mynameisnull 4y ago
  Average is not valid measure to use here as it's vulnerable to distribution skew.
  - canadianfella 4y ago
    [dead]
  - coeneedell 4y ago
    It actually is a valid measure here because they’re using it to estimate total income.
    - vagrantJin 4y ago
      Thats exactly why its a bad idea to use averages in this particular case.
      - coeneedell 4y ago
        Average is total divided by number of people. Therefore total is average times number of people.
- nly 4y ago
  $ income values are totally and utterly meaningless without context, and so are their averages. $10K/yr is a fortune in Cambodia. Even within the US or another major Western nation you can earn 5x in a major metropolis what a hick in the country earns and they may still have a vastly better standard of living than you. Income is not a measure of real wealth or wellbeing. Period
  - iflint 4y ago
    Agreed that context is extremely important. Income is an imperfect measure of buying power, since prices vary significantly based on geography, but it is still a measure, and in the context of globally traded commodities such as energy or fertilizer it is quite important. The price of oil or fertilizer is likely very similar (if not more expensive) in Cambodia compared to a place like the US.
justinator 4y ago
>We reached a point at which most of our problems are distribution problems. This is the point that Buckminster Fuller made decades ago. One day we'll all listen to him. https://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/Fall2013Papers/Purcell/bucky.html https://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/Fall2013Papers/Purcel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ3DXDONKmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ3DXDONKmQ

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Using solar and wind for fertilizer production seems like an obvious win. The prices are plummeting much more quickly than any other energy source, and the main objection — intermittency - can be worked around in this one application. Estimates say “green” pilot plants are still 3-4x as expensive as using fossil fuels, but presumably falling energy input prices and improvements (plus scale) will get us closer.

Zpalmtree 4y ago
paying 4x as much is an "obvious win"?
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  If a technology is at the "pilot plant" stage and the major cost input is renewable energy (where costs have dropped precipitously and continue to do so), then 4x doesn't feel like an impossibility. Meanwhile the price of anhydrous ammonia produced using traditional methods nearly tripled between January 2020 and August 2022: the "cost" of relying on continued access to cheap fossil fuel is not low.
Xylakant 4y ago
“Can be worked around in this application?” I know folks that do maintenance on the plant that produces ammonia among other things at the BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. They don’t shut this plant down. Maintenance is mostly done during production. If one stage fails, the products of the predecessor stages are usually burned - makes for a pretty spectacular evening sky. It’s likely possible to re-engineer those plants to use an intermittent power source, but it’s far from trivial.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  And the alternatives are what, exactly? Keep basing our technology on inexpensive access to fossil fuels until war or climate problems make that unworkable? Or hope that nuclear-powered hydrolysis somehow becomes more efficient and feasible at the necessary scale? I'm completely open to the second idea, just not convinced that it's less expensive than dealing with intermittency. When you say "it's likely possible, but not trivial" what I hear is: it's a matter of calculating the cost of alternatives and then making strategic investments, preferably as soon as possible (because CO2 emissions are cumulative and we don't have an efficient technology for CO2 removal.)

ravenstine 4y ago

Remarkable that you're getting downvoted for this. The availability of energy substrate is almost entirely the reason why there are ~8 billion people today and not just under a billion. Infrastructure wouldn't have scaled this much, and neither would have agriculture, thanks to fossil fuel; both the ability to transport and fertilize crops (see the Haber process) on a massive scale originally became possible because of oil. Restrict the flow of energy and you restrict the growth of civilization. To some, that's a good thing, and others bad. That's not really relevant. Little of what even modern primitivists and luddites value would be possible without energy being harnessed. And yes, energy should come from wherever it makes sense as opposed to the "money for nothing and the chicks are free" attitude the West has in seeking clean energy. In some parts of the world, petroleum will continue to make sense until technology progresses to the point where it no longer does. In other places, solar makes sense and we should go with that. Use nuclear, and use other energy tech to fill the gaps. A nation that produces a lot of sugar cane may decide to use ethanol (see Brazil). Allowing sensible choice and application of energy allows us to try many things out, smooths the transition towards future energy advancements, and improves national security. Instead of focusing on the negatives, we need to give both present and future energy more credit for what it's given us. By constantly finding reasons why a energy tech is bad, we tread water. We're addicted to the "perfect mind-state" and no-human-impact perspective, and it's created an inferior outcome. Those who dote on negatives like "But EV batteries are heavy and not energy dense!" and "But nuclear waste!" and "But it wouldn't be viable without subsidies!" and "But it's not zero carbon!" are focusing on the wrong thing.

hotpotamus 4y ago
What is the purpose of the growth of civilization?
- ravenstine 4y ago
  Does it need a purpose?
  - hotpotamus 4y ago

vegetablepotpie 4y ago

Although I don’t know what you’re saying based on your post, I can deduce it based on your comments. Summing up opposition to fossil fuels as being because of > ideological reasons Is so reductive that it is dishonest. I don’t know if you’re downplaying or denying the consequences of human induced climate change, but we are folly to ignore the destruction that it will cause. Leading off a post by assuming ideology a declaration that there are some people who you see as unworthy of making a contribution and should not participate. It is not curious, it shuts down discourse, and it makes it hard for others to understand the point you’re making and why your believe what you believe.

concordDance 4y ago
Indeed. For most it's nor ideology, but a genuine difference of opinion regarding how bad CO2 climate change will be in the next 100 years and how easy it will be to mitigate. That said, there's a fairly large degrowth faction who are very underrepresented in debate/discussion forums like this who would genuinely want to reduce energy consumption and fossil fuel consumption even if they didn't cause climate change. I encounter them a fair bit in the real world.

bitwize 4y ago

It's not "ideological" to want to stop setting the planet on fire so we can continue to live opulently and conveniently. Matter of fact, it's most practical to do so. Besides, there is only so much readily extractible fossil fuel anyway, and for some forms (petroleum) we are near or past that limit, after which costs start going up... which can be a real bitch if you're dependent on those forms.

ambientenv 4y ago

It's absolutely a problem - energy blindness [1] - and it is intricately intertwined, along with much more, in the domain of geopolitics [2], something of which recently I've come to have a better and deeper understanding. [1] - https://natehagens.substack.com/p/frankly-3-energy-blindness https://natehagens.substack.com/p/frankly-3-energy-blindness [2] - https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/ https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/

DrWorldwide 4y ago
+1 to the nod to Zeihan. He's had OP's point on blast on his free channels (newsletter, YouTube) for at least 12 months now.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

Does Maslow's hierarchy include every individual commuting 30+ miles to work by car? Outside of that - the US definitely has enough energy - and probably most of the West including almost all of Europe.

slothtrop 4y ago

As far as I'm aware, ammonia currently can only viably be created with fossil fuels as inputs, for the same reason blast furnaces to smelt steel requires fossil fuels. But to follow where I think you're going, I expect nuclear to be the next most viable

AngryData 4y ago
It doesn't NEED natural gas as input, there are other ways, but natural gas as input is saving a massive amount of energy, possibly near 10x current energy input, by not having to split hydrogen from water. And fertilizer production is already one of the most energy intensive processes we have, so increasing that multiple times over is a huge amount of energy. Basically hydrogen production is the limiting factor in producing clean ammonia from the air instead of using fossil fuels, and clean (and cheap) hydrogen production is far from a solved problem.
pfdietz 4y ago
Ammonia is made with hydrogen. If you are making hydrogen, nuclear biggest putative advantage, its lack of intermittency, becomes much less important. If you are proposing thermochemical watersplitting using nuclear heat to make hydrogen, there is very great reason to be skeptical of that approach (superheated vaporized sulfuric acid, anyone?). These processes have never been practical, and the decline in cost of renewable electricity, and the decline in cost of electrolyzers, makes the thermochemical approaches even less competitive.
nradov 4y ago
Ammonia can be produced from any power source. So in theory we could use renewable power to manufacture "green ammonia" for farming. So far that has only been done in small demonstration projects and all the real fertilizer manufacturing is still done using fossil fuels as the main input. https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-fertilizer-to-fuel-can-green-ammonia-be-a-climate-fix https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-fertilizer-to-fuel-can-g...
- slothtrop 4y ago
  The level of power required is so high that renewables are nowhere near viable at this point.

pydry 4y ago

>We must harness abundant energy from all possible sources instead of categorically denying one source or another Would you not suggest doubling down on the cheapest sources of green energy and dispense with the most expensive and polluting sources? I dont see much point in harnessing tidal energy or coal, for instance. One is very cost effective while the other pollutes massively.

prottog 4y ago
I'm certainly not advocating that we pollute for fun. But if the choice is between polluting massively with fossil fuels or having people go cold and starve because there's not enough energy to produce fertilizer and heat people's homes, I'm saying it's downright immoral to prevent the former and cause the latter. I'm not against green energy! By all means, build as many wind turbines and solar panels as we can. We need abundant, cheap, and ideally pollution-free energy; but until we can get there, burn as much fossil fuels as we need to alleviate human suffering and uplift the global poor.
- soared 4y ago
  > But if the choice is between polluting massively with fossil fuels or having people go cold and starve These are definitely not the choices and using those a basis for logic leads to misguided opinions
  - concordDance 4y ago
    A surprisingly large number of people are wanting us to burn zero fossil fuels in 2035. I don't think they know much about fertiliser production though... (other than that they dislike it and we should use natural farming)
    - pydry 4y ago
      2035 is the goal for carbon free electricity only.
agilob 4y ago