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> burning biomass Murphy goes into this in one of his posts. The energy density of fossil fuels is such that it's hard to convey that vast quantity of biomass

> burning biomass Murphy goes into this in one of his posts. The energy density of fossil fuels is such that it's hard to convey that vast quantity of biomass it takes to equal it. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/#more-3803 https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/#more-...

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smallmancontrov 2y ago
Hence charcoal. It sucks, but on the path of bootstrapping lots of things are going to suck. I'm split on whether or not to read those posts. On one hand, now that I know his credentials, I know it won't be a complete waste of time -- but on the other, I fully expect his analysis to be chock full of infuriating "the way it was done was the only way it could have been done" assumptions that I would disagree with, discover that many before me had disagreed with, to no response because this isn't a dialogue. EDIT: I read the post. I really shouldn't have. He's not just unimaginative in the industrial sense, he's spurred on by terrible objectives. I am going to save my sanity and bail on this before I get suckered into arguing with madness. Still, thanks for the link.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  The problem with charcoal is that the input fuelwood requirements are absolutely immense, particularly where charcoal itself is an input to further industrial processes (e.g., glassmaking, iron forging, steelmaking). Great Britain had cleared its own forests by the 18th century or earlier just producing modest quantities of glass and iron, and was importing lumber from Sweden and the American colonies (both as fuel and structural timber). Vaclav Smil's numerous books go into great detail on the fuelwood demands of iron production. Based on an earlier comment of mine, that's 40--80 kg of source fuelwood per kg of produced iron. Charcoal is renewable but it is far from limitless. In other matters, you're giving Murphy short shrift.
dredmorbius 2y ago
There's an excellent paper, "Burning Buried Sunshine" by Jeffrey S. Dukes (2003) which details just how much biomass goes into fossil fuel resources (coal, oil, and gas), and over what time periods that accumulated. Murphy doesn't cite it, though I'd run across mention of it in Vaclav Smil's books and elsewhere after discovering the paper initially on my own. <https://plus.maths.org/content/burning-buried-sunshine https://plus.maths.org/content/burning-buried-sunshine> <https://web.archive.org/web/20170207103418/https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170207103418/https://dge.carne...> (PDF)

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smallmancontrov 2y ago

Hence charcoal. It sucks, but on the path of bootstrapping lots of things are going to suck. I'm split on whether or not to read those posts. On one hand, now that I know his credentials, I know it won't be a complete waste of time -- but on the other, I fully expect his analysis to be chock full of infuriating "the way it was done was the only way it could have been done" assumptions that I would disagree with, discover that many before me had disagreed with, to no response because this isn't a dialogue. EDIT: I read the post. I really shouldn't have. He's not just unimaginative in the industrial sense, he's spurred on by terrible objectives. I am going to save my sanity and bail on this before I get suckered into arguing with madness. Still, thanks for the link.

dredmorbius 2y ago
The problem with charcoal is that the input fuelwood requirements are absolutely immense, particularly where charcoal itself is an input to further industrial processes (e.g., glassmaking, iron forging, steelmaking). Great Britain had cleared its own forests by the 18th century or earlier just producing modest quantities of glass and iron, and was importing lumber from Sweden and the American colonies (both as fuel and structural timber). Vaclav Smil's numerous books go into great detail on the fuelwood demands of iron production. Based on an earlier comment of mine, that's 40--80 kg of source fuelwood per kg of produced iron. Charcoal is renewable but it is far from limitless. In other matters, you're giving Murphy short shrift.

dredmorbius 2y ago

There's an excellent paper, "Burning Buried Sunshine" by Jeffrey S. Dukes (2003) which details just how much biomass goes into fossil fuel resources (coal, oil, and gas), and over what time periods that accumulated. Murphy doesn't cite it, though I'd run across mention of it in Vaclav Smil's books and elsewhere after discovering the paper initially on my own. <https://plus.maths.org/content/burning-buried-sunshine https://plus.maths.org/content/burning-buried-sunshine> <https://web.archive.org/web/20170207103418/https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170207103418/https://dge.carne...> (PDF)