Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on September 23, 2018
Did the Club of Rome Ever Disavow “The Limits to Growth”? A Story of Ordinary Disinformation
The Club of Rome is inextricably linked to the legendary report that it commissioned to a group of MIT researchers in 1972, “The Limits to Growth.” Today, nearly 50 years later, we still have to come to terms with the vision brought by the report, a vision that contradicts the core of some of humankind’s most cherished beliefs. The report tells us that we cannot keep growing forever and that we have to stop considering everything we see around us as ours by divine right.
Not surprisingly, the report generated strong feelings and, with them, there came plenty of disinformation and legends. Some cast the Club of Rome in the role of a secret organization with dark and dire purposes, others aimed at the Limits report, claiming that it was “wrong” or, worse, purposefully designed to deceive the public. I wrote an entire book on this subject (The Limits to Growth Revisited) — in short, most of these stories are false but some contain grains of truth and all of them tell us something about how we humans tend to react to concepts that they see as negative or catastrophistic. We don’t just deny bad news, we tend to demonize the bearers.
So, there is a peculiar legend stating that the Club of Rome disavowed their brainchild, The Limits to Growth, and, in doing so, they admitted that it had been wrong or an attempt to mislead the public. It is an old legend but, as all legends, it is surprisingly persistent and you can still see it mentioned in recent times (for instance, here and here) as if it were the obvious truth. It is not: it is a good example of how disinformation works.
The origins of the legend go back to Julian Simon (1932-1998), flamboyant defender of economic growth and self-styled “doomslayer.” Simon was a skilled polemicist who used with remarkable effectiveness all the standard techniques of disinformation. So, in his book, “The Ultimate Resource” (1981 edition, p. 286) Simon writes (highlighting mine)
The most compelling criticism of the Limits to Growth simulation, however, was made by the sponsoring Club of Rome itself. Just four years after the foofaraw created by the book’s publication and huge circulation — an incredible 4 million copies were sold — the Club of Rome “reversed its position” and “came out for more growth” [..] The explanation of this reversal, as reported in “Time” is a masterpiece of face saving double talk.
“The Club’s founder, Italian industrialist “Aurelio Peccei, says that Limits was intended to jolt people from the comfortable idea that present growth trends could continue indefinitely. That done, he says, the Club could then seek ways to close the widening gap between rich and poor nations — inequities that, if they continue, could all too easily lead to famine, pollution, and war. The Club’s startling shift, Peccei says, is thus not so much a turnabout as part of an evolving strategy”
In other words, the Club of Rome sponsored and disseminated untruths in an attempt to scare us. Having scared many people with these lies, the Club can now tell people the real truth.
So, where does all that come from? I can’t find on the Web the original “Time” article that Simon cites, but there are other reports available on the declarations that Aurelio Peccei (founder, and at the time president, of the Club of Rome) released in 1976, during a meeting held in Philadelphia. The journalists who interviewed Peccei were impressed by what they perceived as a reversal of previous Club’s policies, to the point that Newsweek titled its report (according to the St. Louis Post) “Has the Club of Rome publicly abjured?” Peccei was said (according to the New York Times) to have stated that, “Naturally, we realize that no-growth is neither possible nor desirable,”
Is that enough to say that the Club of Rome had “reversed its position”? Not at all. There was nothing new in Peccei’s statements. Already in 1973, with a document signed by the executive committee and titled “The New Threshold” – the Club of Rome stated that (referring to “The Limits to Growth” report)
An erroneous image of the Club has, therefore, formed as a group advocating zero growth. Again, the possible consequences of unregulated growth of the industrialized societies and, still more, those which would arise if growth were abruptly brought to a halt, has disturbed some of the less developed countries where, we have already said, the report is all too easily seen as a selfish proposal from the developed world which would still further aggravate the difficulties of the great mass of underprivileged on our planet.
And that is not a “face-saving double talk,” as Simon claimed. It is a necessary consequence of the views of the Club from its formation. Aurelio Peccei had started the Club on the basis of what he called the “problematique” or the “predicament” of humankind. From his first public speech on this subject, in 1965 (you can find it here), it is clear that he saw the problems facing humankind mainly in terms of a fair distribution of the available resources, avoidance of wars, elimination of poverty, health care for everyone, and the like. (see also this post by Irv Mills). Peccei didn’t imagine the future of humankind in terms of a collapse – no, the concept of “overshoot and collapse” of socioeconomic system didn’t exist at that time, it was developed and diffused only in the 1970s by Jay Forrester.
So, the results of “The Limits to Growth” study, with their scenarios of probable collapse, must have been a shock for Peccei and the other members of the Club of Rome. Still, it is clear from what they wrote afterward that they understood the logic and the consequences of the report they had commissioned – they never “disavowed” it.
That doesn’t mean that they didn’t work at integrating the Limits results within their worldview. They surely noted that “The Limits to Growth” had an obvious limit: it aggregated all the world’s national economies into average parameters. As a consequence, “zero growth” as a global policy would have meant maintaining the economic gap separating the rich and the poor country. And that was not what Peccei and the others had in mind. Hence, Peccei’s statement in 1976 “Naturally, we realize that no-growth is neither possible nor desirable,” In one of their later reports, they said that the Limits, “is a beginning and not an end.” That is the origin of the other 1976 statement by Peccei “the limits‐to‐growth report had served its purpose of “getting the world’s attention.”
And here we are: no lies, no disavowal, no scare tactics. What we have, instead, is a stark reminder of how disinformation works. Note the narrative technique used by Simon: he says that “Having scared many people with these lies, the Club can now tell people the real truth.” You need about 3 seconds to deconstruct this statement and note how it makes no sense: if the Club successfully told lies to the public, why should it stop doing that? What could the Club possibly gain by publicly confessing of having lied to the public? But narrative follows special rules: what we have here is a typical trope of many modern movies: at some moment, the villains may explicitly confess their crimes (sometimes called badass boast) out of pure arrogance, typically in order to humiliate the good guys. And it is one of the problems we have: we can’t distinguish reality from narrative anymore: it is the dark art called “creating one’s own reality.”
And now? Nearly 50 years have passed since the Limits report was published and it is safe to say that most people remember it the way it was presented by the propaganda of the 1990s, as a “wrong-headed” study (if they remember it at all). But does that mean that it has been forgotten forever? While it is true that “Google Trends” doesn’t show any increased interest in the “Limits” itself, there is growing interest in the concept of slowing down economic growth or avoiding altoghether. And “The Limits to Growth” is showing a remarkable return of interest in the scientific literature. Does that means we will see a return of interest in it also in the mainstream debate? Why not? After all, in the long run, truth always beats disinformation.
____________________________________________
Here is the article on the St. Louis Post about Peccei’s declarations, with several errors resulting from OCR, but overall readable
Time magazine wrote recently in an essay on futurology, “Men hunger for predictions as they hunger for bread in a famine.” The starving have recently been thrown a few loaves by the self-appointed prophets of the twentieth century. The oracular prophecies out of the computer have been muted since the oil crisis of 1973 broke the back of their optimistic curves of growth. The guild of soothsayers fell out of favor. Now after a long penitent silence they are making a comeback. Herman Kahn, director of the Hudson Institute and an unshakable optimist, has published a new study of the future entitled. “The Next 200 Years.” His conclusion is that in the year 2176 the world population will have reached a total of 15 billion and will be living comfortable with a per ants than were predicted for 1975. The Wall Street Journal says the dreams of unlimited energy, cheap nuclear-generated electricity, fivefold increase in farm yields and the final victory over cancer before the end of the century can be forgotten. The “revised future” looks somewhat different. By the year 2000 food will be three times as dear as it is now, hot counting currency inflation. Automatic highways will not be built. At best, automobiles will have a more efficient fuel consumption. The super-jumbo jets with 1000 seats will not be flying by the end of the ’70s, but at the earliest, by the ’90s. The future was being revised in Philadelphia also. “Has the Club of Rome publicly abjured?” asked Newsweek, in view of its new slogan. The club, a loose association of about 100 industrialists and academics from various countries, has been regarded so far as a stern warning against too optimistic forecasts. If the present growth trend continues, it said in 1972, the limits of growth would be reached sometime within the next 100 years. Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome, denied in Philadelphia that its members had put themselves forward as capita income of about $20,000. Kahn’s collaborator, Edmund Still-man, in a study commissioned by a French private bank, prophesies a particularly rosy future for the French. Very soon after 1980 France will overtake West Germany in production of goods and services to become Number One in Europe. The “Club of Rome,” which in 1972 postulated the “limits of growth” and attracted powerful criticism, has come up with a slightly less pessimistic view of the world. Its new motto is “organic growth” and the optimistic slogan for its latest congress in Philadelphia was “New Horizons for Humanity.” In a 10-part series the Wall Street Journal discusses which of the prophecies made 10 years ago have come true and which of them have to be corrected. The paper’s researchers have found that the biggest mistake made by the futurologists has been their projections of population growth. On the one hand a birth explosion and a declining death rate in the developing countries have combined to increase the total world population much faster than anticipated. But in the United States, for instance, the trend is reversed. Already now there are 12,000,000 fewer inhabit advocates of zero population growth. Their study “Limits of Growth” which has sold in the meantime, 2,000,-000 copies was only intended, he says as a shock and a way of directing public attention to the problems. “Naturally we realize that no-growth is neither possible nor desirable,” he said. According to the modified formula, developed by the West German, Prof. Eduard Pestel, and his American colleague, Mihailo Mesarovic, what is needed now is “directed growth.” “The important thing is in which way growth takes place, with what technology and in what branches of the economy,” said Professor Ervin Laszlo of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. The outlines of a new world economic order are being drawn up in a new study commissioned by the Club of Rome from the Dutch economist and Nobel prizewinner Jan Tinbergen. Working with 20 other experts, he expects to have it ready by autumn of this year. The rough outline was already plain in Philadelphia larger currency reserves for the speedier financing of development projects in the Third World, stricter control of the multinational concerns and a world-wide co-ordinator of energy ‘Men hunger for predictions as they hunger for bread in a famine . . .
Cassandra’s legacy by Ugo Bardi
41 Comments on "Did the Club of Rome Ever Disavow “The Limits to Growth”? A Story of Ordinary Disinformation"
energy investor on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 12:18 am
The Club of Rome is obviously behind AGW and the formation of the UN’s IPCC with the objective of wealth redistribution.
It was and still is the only group capable of influencing the award of Nobel Peace prizes to those supporting the re-distribution (Obama, Gore-Pachauri). It is well-supported by the globalist elites. The management of the news flow about climate could not otherwise be so effectively implemented.
IMHO the only way this carbon-taxing AGW fraud on the taxpayers of the OECD can be unwound, is for the climate to cool so significantly during the coming Grand Solar Minimum that the public cry “foul”.
I regard “the Limits to Growth” as the most important book of the 20th century. I read its 2004 follow-up and understand that MIT still has their “use by” date for our civilization of 2040.
Regardless of its recommendations, I still agree that eventually, we cannot have continued exponential growth in a finite world.
And no-one knows how to properly address this fact.
All alternatives are too unpalatable to large sections of the global community, hence the resort to the UN IPCC’s wealth sharing mechanisms.
As the late Prof. Bartlett said (something like), “the biggest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”
Unfortunately, mathematics also applies to humans too and so denial is not a viable long term plan.
Anonymouse1 on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 1:25 am
You’re a busy one tonight, are’nt you marmatard?
Cloggie on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 2:03 am
Another slap in the face of the doomers:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180822-this-jordan-greenhouse-uses-solar-power-to-grow-crops
Basically the Dutch model (2nd agricultural exporter in the world, after the US), but with more sun and thus higher temperatures. Water no longer matters in greenhouses, you only need “homeopatic quantities”.
The Jordanians are going to save a lot on transporting and cooling cost. Nice employment opportunity too for locals, agriculture doesn’t require high IQ.
Boney Joe on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 2:40 am
Anonymouse1 (not the handle hijacked by former paultard)—
Brother, I always look for your posts. You’re a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant cesspool. You are one of the few who does not mince words and calls it the way it truly is. Keep up the good work.
Davy on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 5:12 am
“You’re a busy one tonight, are’nt you marmatard?”
Gimp, are you capable of making an intelligent comment or is all you can do is play obsessive social media games. Go hang out on facebook. The last comment out of you was on lithium and it was ok but that does not make up for the month worth of your dumbass social media material.
Davy on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 5:13 am
“Brother, I always look for your posts. You’re a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant cesspool. You are one of the few who does not mince words and calls it the way it truly is. Keep up the good work.”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Get a hotel room.
Davy on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 5:17 am
“Basically the Dutch model (2nd agricultural exporter in the world, after the US)”
Neder as far as total production it does not even compare. You are a postage stamp county just because you export a lot does not make you an AG powerhouse you think you are.
I AM THE MOB on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 6:12 am
Kavanaugh Friend Mark Judge Reportedly Admitted to ‘Taking Turns’ Having Sex With Drunk Girl
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kavanaugh-friend-mark-judge-reportedly-022054154.html
onlooker on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 8:12 am
The Limits to Growth studies are one of quite a number of warnings humanity has had from the scientific community of the danger of continuing the model of Capitalism and growth. Well, not only is the worst case scenarios beginning to manifest but they are getting ever closer. Oh and Julian Simon shut up. Human intellect the prime resource eh? You are an idiot.
Anontarded1 on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 8:28 am
aswange (pbuh, swt) et al.
SpaceX confirms it WOULD launch military weapons into space ‘for the defence of the United States’ DM
thank you supertard elon musk. i’m very sorry you lost heather heard but you doing good. i never let go of my supertard. i’m very sad supertard cody wilson has fallen.
if supertards want me to increase jizya payment to get you more auto keltect and 100000 rounds for self defense and practice and enjoyment, please let me know.
aswange, please kick anti american dog i made of granite
Anontarded1 on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 8:35 am
aswange (pbuh, swt) et al if you like your rd-180 you can keep it. that’s a promise and a guarantee from a tard and former paultard.
i’m happy with my supterad elon and all my supetrads (pbuh, swt). snowden was a low level supertard in limited hangout, he took the Cambridge Five pill…no big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFR_(rocket)
first stage – booster 61.8MN wowzya!
2nd stage 13.9 MN
thank you supertard elon musk. i’m confident your next woman will be 100x better than heather heard (pbuh, swt)
Anymousechez on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 8:50 am
Club of Rome good sincere people but stupid and wrong on almost every count. Like Einstein said, everything in the world is in short supply except stupidity.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 9:10 am
No growth may not be desirable but it is definitely possible. And as far as the Club of Romes walking back of their ominous conclusions of decline, they were accosted virulently after publishing their report in ’72. But their findings still hold credence in the conditions of today and the approaching bottleneck.
I AM THE MOB on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 9:59 am
Limits to growth had 12 models. One of those models, the “standard run” or, alternatively, the “business as usual” model was the one that 40 years of historical data tracked/followed. And according to that model the global economy will collapse by 2030.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apocalypse-soon-has-civilization-passed-the-environmental-point-of-no-return/
https://www.scribd.com/document/379418787/Is-Global-Collapse-Imminent-An-Updated-Comparison-of-The-Limits-to-Growth-with-Historical-Data-Turner-2014
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/looking-back-on-the-limits-of-growth-125269840/
https://imgur.com/a/ZUUkN4c
deadly on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 10:01 am
I wouldn’t belong to any club that would want me a as member said Groucho Marx, Karl’s fourth cousin twice removed. lol
Who are these Club of Rome idiots anyhow?
“in one of their later reports” link is a no go.
It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.
alain gargasson on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 10:42 am
@anymousechez and clogg
The law of energy conservation demonstrates that we can not create or destroy energy. We must remember the chemist Lavoisier “nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.” Man can only transform, he does not create an atom, ore or energy. We can only transform the primary energies present on our planet like geothermal energy, nuclear energy, the ocean (tides, currents and waves), the sun (light, heat) and associated with the atmosphere (wind, rain) The old biomass (fossils – coal, oil and gas), recent (our food and animals we consume, wood)) hydrogen and electricity (are not native and come from chemical, mechanical and / Or heat) No “new” energies. The energy characterizes the change of state of a system, then it is the unit of account of the modification of our environment. The world consumes 100Mb / d or 12 million tons or 40 tankers of 300,000 t per day. Any technology will always need mineral resources and energy to be manufactured, transported, installed and maintained for at least 50 Years for nuclear energy, without oil in a few decades, I would like to know by what miracle, the heolic energy, thorium or others could function for centuries. Will cement, steel, insulation, lubricants fall from the sky? Similarly for Artificial Intelligence !!!
Today you need more and more metals and energy to extract the same amount of fossil fuels and more and more energy and metals to extract minerals with decreasing concentration. 4% of steel is used in the petroleum industry and 4% of the energy in cement processing (3.5 billion tons).
In agriculture, oil and gas are used to produce fertilizers, 180 million tons of fertilizers (N-P-K), and phytosanitary products that are essential to modern agriculture. Without them, yields collapse. Within 20 years we will pass the peak of phosphorus production which has no replacement. We also use diesel (100 to 150 liters per hectare per year to plant, process and harvest) for mechanization, forget the electric tractor. 1 truck out of 2 carry food, cold chain etc. Saying that we want a sustainable world, it is possible with 1 or less billion inhabitants, but it will be the return in 1800 before the industrial revolution.
alain gargasson on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 10:50 am
@ deadly
For you who need to improve your culture.
http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf
pag 124
Cloggie on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 12:55 pm
@alain – only look at this picture long enough until it begins to dawn on you that your 40 tankers per day are peanuts compared to as what mother nature had on offer:
https://goo.gl/images/tWJbfD
The free, raw kWh’s are there, in abundance and can be converted in any form desirable: H2, NH3, CH4, methanol, pumped hydro, battery, heat, charged batteries, flywheels.
The challenge for the coming decades is to continue to research, invent, develop, build, construct until we have it right and make every component cheaper.
We’ll get there, we have come a long way already.
Cloggie on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 12:56 pm
has on offer.
Antius on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 1:44 pm
“The free, raw kWh’s are there, in abundance and can be converted in any form desirable: H2, NH3, CH4, methanol, pumped hydro, battery, heat, charged batteries, flywheels.”
Cloggie, that is true in principle. The problem is that our various regional economies have a certain energy intensity, which tends to limit how much we can afford to pay for energy. This is why oil prices cannot rise very far without triggering a recession. It is also why the trillions of tonnes of coal under the North Sea are probably useless. We probably cannot access them at a price that is affordable. I say ‘probably’.
Likewise for renewable energy. The system that we develop will only be useful if it can deliver energy beneath a certain price per kWh after buffering for intermittency. It takes a certain amount of work-energy to make a unit of wealth. So we can only afford to pay a finite amount for the energy before it becomes economically useless. This makes our energy predicament much tougher to solve, especially in the time we have left.
alain gargasson on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 2:11 pm
@Clog
All primary energies are immense, but they must be transformed into useful energies for our society. It due to oil and technology that we have been able to develop all the other energies (nuclear, wind power, hydro, engines, hydrogen, electricity, etc.) that we use, without oil, no transport, therefore access to raw materials and their transformation into finished products such as steel, copper, aluminum, cement, glass, paints and coatings, lubricants, electrical insulators, our clothes, your cell phone with its rare earths, your tennis finally, everything that makes your life more pleasant. Try a deserted island, the maximum with the sun is that you will be tanned and risk to die of hunger. The decline in oil production and some elements of Mendeleyev’s table will decrease the GDP and produce the collapse of our society.
Without petrol you can do this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtIgcNR5ulc
Antius on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 3:13 pm
Alain, I watched the youtube video that you posted. Whilst it would be a more complicated arrangement, it should be possible to accomplish everything shown in that clip using grid connected electric vehicles. Basically, trucks, diggers and cranes connected to a power supply by long insulated cables. We don’t do it that way not because we can’t, but because we don’t have to. So long as we have diesel, it is easier.
Anonymous on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 5:41 pm
I would like them better if they DID admit they were wrong. Being wrong and refusing to admit it is dishonest. It is unscientific. (Then again, there is a reason why Bardi spends his time teaching slushy science for poets courses instead of hard core chemistry.)
Anonymouse on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 7:07 pm
A bit more about TLoG and it’s primary author Donnella Meadows:
https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1104/article_985_printer.shtml
GetAVasecectomyAndLetTheHumanRaceDie on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 8:25 pm
I agree with Alain, especially with his long comment. His long comments is a good description of some part of the supply chain starting from mining.
His long comment is missing the manufacturing and distribution (FedEx, US postal service Oil tanker, cargo navy ship and so on)segment of the supply chain, but it is still a good summary anyway.
This is why in my opinion we are a looking at human life die off events.
I also find funny that Whites, South Korean and Japanese are going extinct close to peak oil and just at the begging of a new ice age. Maybe there is a GOD and GOD don’t wants to see Whites, South Korean and Japaneses to go through the die off.
https://www.iceagenow.info/
http://www.solarham.net/xray.htm
X-ray flux out of the sun is real low.
Boney Joe on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 10:09 pm
DavyDonaldTurd (DDT), are you capable of making an intelligent comment or is all you can do is play obsessive social media games. Go hang out on facebook.
Hypocrisy is indeed one of your most reliable and consistent character deficiencies.
Anonymouse1 on Mon, 24th Sep 2018 10:11 pm
Thanks Joe, right back at you. Someone has to keep the dumb-asses, and extremists with their dumb-ass agendas in check. And if we dont, who will?
Cloggie on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 2:00 am
“Without petrol you can do this?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtIgcNR5ulc
Alain, YES, you can do with hydrogen anything you can do with oil, other than lubricating your doorhinges: flying, trucking, power-generation, anything.
The crucial parameter to watch is EROI and that is getting better all the time:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/siemens-reports-eroi-onshore-wind-of-50-or-larger/
For the rest, a kWh is a kWh, irrespective of the source. When it comes to energy, I’m a Marxist.lol
Davy on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 4:59 am
“Thanks Joe, right back at you. Someone has to keep the dumb-asses, and extremists with their dumb-ass agendas in check. And if we dont, who will?”
The two board fakes swapping spit like teenagers. Get on Facebook and you two can play your social media because here neither of you say much of anything intellectual. Both of you contribute noise. Joe the sock with the gimp his boyfriend gamer.
Cloggie on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 2:26 pm
Strawman, nobody says Holland is a great agricultural producer, but on international markets very well a powerhouse.
The point I was making is that Dutch greenhouses represent a very competative means of agricultural production, which could serve as an example for a water starved world of the future.
Cloggie on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 2:30 pm
The above is a response to Davy:
“Neder as far as total production it does not even compare. You are a postage stamp county just because you export a lot does not make you an AG powerhouse you think you are.”
alain gargasson on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 5:25 pm
@ Clog
638/5000
you have trouble understanding that a controllable energy can never replace a renewable energy, try a night without wind. Germany has already spent 300 billion euros but has not removed a coal plant. With this money she could have stopped them if it had been invested in Nuclear. A cube of 10m of air (1000m³) at 80 Km / h passing in a wind turbine provided the same amount of energy as 3 milliliters of oil. In the nineteenth century the windmills were replaced by the steam engine to eliminate intermittency, today we come back, the lessons of history are useless.
Cloggie on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 5:46 pm
“you have trouble understanding that a controllable energy can never replace a renewable energy, try a night without wind.“
Why don’t you try a romantic night with hydrogen and candle-light.
On second thoughts, perhaps skip the candle-light.
“Germany has already spent 300 billion euros but has not removed a coal plant.”
Unfair fomment. They decided to kill nuclear first, under the impression of Fukushima.
“A cube of 10m of air (1000m³) at 80 Km / h passing in a wind turbine provided the same amount of energy as 3 milliliters of oil.”
That doesn’t say a lot. How about: a 6 MW offshore wind turbine produces the equivalent of 88 barrel of oil per day.
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/gold-mine-north-sea/#more-60619
…or 800,000 barrel of oil throughout 25 years, at an equivalant oil price of $45/barrel, excluding storage, but without the emissions.
“In the nineteenth century the windmills were replaced by the steam engine to eliminate intermittency, today we come back, the lessons of history are useless.”
I’m sorry but you cannot compare 19th century windmills…
https://goo.gl/images/qiHHKU
…with the giant offshore work horses of today, with new machines coming online with 12 MW capacity.
And you seem to have forgotten that your fossil fuel needs to be phased out, for environmental reasons.
Antius on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 5:56 pm
Alain, can’t argue with what you are saying. In terms of power density and EROI, nuclear power plants outperform any of the alternatives.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/519e/a5c55a312f3f45ccfcc4a093a941366c6658.pdf
But the administration costs have been made ruinously expensive. Nuclear power has gone from being our cheapest electricity source to one of the most expensive.
Looking slightly longer-term, I do wonder how much good a very cheap energy source would do for humanity. In barely a century, we have managed to deplete many mineral resources down to junk levels and cause a horrific levels of damage to natural habitats. If more energy is simply used to accelerate that process and run down resources even more quickly, how much good does it do in the long run? In a finite environment, even our successes begin to look like failures.
Anonymouse1 on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 6:13 pm
You should wait longer than 10 mins to have your sock chime in, cloggraham. Dont make the same noob mistakes your buddy the exceptionalturd has, does. Wait, like, 11 mins next time.
Anontarded1 on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 6:29 pm
anontard (pbuh, swt) please enjoy this video of supertard cody wilson (pbuh, swt)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KatYW_gN4j8
and go back, way back. we’re told by supertard eugen webber (pbuh, swt) that islam is the greatest since sliced bread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atPyaxVPEg4
This is very ignorant and mirrors that of the position of Akbar Ahmed the progandist.
what so damaging is supertard eugen webber is from UCLA, no less.
we now know virtually no achievement of worth happened in the fictional ‘al andalusia’. it’s all fabricated even the painting of muslims in the act of doing science. unfotunately these fake news are in the “august” of libaries as supertard robert spencer said.
Antius on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 6:34 pm
The club of Rome models were indicative; not something that can be treated as precise predictions of future problems. They were more about providing a general picture of the sort of limits we are approaching.
They provide a graphical means for stating the obvious. Resource use in a finite environment faces limitations that are plainly obvious. Putting numbers on it and plotting fancy graphs makes it appear more real to all of us. But the basic idea is very simple and very difficult to circumvent.
alain gargasson on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 9:00 pm
@Clog
I am tired, I wrote the opposite of my thoughts, now it is good
You have trouble understanding that renewable energy can never replace a controllable energy, try a night without wind. Germany has already spent 300 billion euros but has not removed a coal plant. With this money they could have invested in the Nuclear and stop the coal. A cube of 10m of air (1000m³) at 80 Km / h passing in a wind turbine provided the same amount of energy as 3 milliliters of oil. In the nineteenth century the windmills were replaced by the steam engine to eliminate intermittency, today we come back, the lessons of history are useless.
JuanP on Tue, 25th Sep 2018 9:31 pm
Cloggie, The Dutch are world leaders in greenhouse technology and use, and have been for centuries. Every time I research a related subject the Dutch pop up.
I helped build a 30′ by 75′ (10m by 25 m) polytunnel greenhouse nursery last year, and have been helping to run it since. I also just finished building a 20′ by 36′ one in a backyard in a residential area in Miami; this time I was project boss, and I built it with the help of volunteers. Both are in fully urbanized areas. Don’t underestimate the future of greenhouses in urban environments; they could help a lot.
Cloggie on Wed, 26th Sep 2018 1:17 am
Indeed Juan. To sum it up:
Greenhouses require higer upfront cost, but…
– they offer higher temperatures and hence longer growth season, even all year around in some cases
– with the isolated environment you need far less weeding, as weed seeds don’t get the chance to enter the greenhouse in the first place
– You can apply “natural” means like wasps in combating insects you don’t want in your greenhouse
– Perhaps the most important aspect: you hardly need water. You can build one in the desert, provided you have access to at least sea water (small 10 cm pipeline suffices). Let the sea water evaporate over the floor of the greenhouse and saturate the greenhouse with moist, which suffices for the plants. The only water that leaves the greenhouse is the water stored in the crops and ventilation (moist can partly be recaptured)
– You can “fertilize” the crops by pumping CO2 into the greenhouse
– Greenhouses offer the possibility of high degree of automation: sowing, fertilizing, watering, harvesting
Cloggie on Wed, 26th Sep 2018 2:43 am
Climate change latest: collapsing mountains
http://www.spiegel.de/video/schweiz-felssturz-auf-video-festgehalten-video-99021037.html
It turns out that permafrost has functioned as a glue to keep fractured rocks together. Remove the glue and you get…
Timber!
I mean:
Rocks!
Upbeat message from the moderator in the video: this will only take a few centuries, after that it will be safe again to walk in the mountains.