TomWayburn wrote:In ERoEI practice, we do not charge the process for the energy from Nature which is the third meaning of free energy.
TomWayburn wrote: If we did, I agree we could not hope to get as much out as went in.
TomWayburn wrote: The reason it was called renewable in the first place is that we expect the Sun to rise again tomorrow and for many days into the future.
There are a huge number of people doing energy modeling. In my opinion, nearly all of them are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates.
AdamB wrote:May I congratulate Gail for being an actuary, herself associated with the energy modelers of TOD that called global peak oil in 2008 (oops!), claiming that others don't understand economics, is downright riotous.
Gail "high oil prices are bad" versus "low oil prices are bad" is itself an interesting question into her transactional psychology on this topic. She has demonstrated she knows nothing about oil ( I once corrected her edited discovery charts at TOD, but telling her the truth didn't work), she has no experience with economics other than saying so, she is as random in her causation/correlation claims as Short was, but..it is those OTHER folks who don't understand economics.
Fascinated by the duplicitous nature of folks who claim to be researchers, yet seem to know nothing about how research, or science, works.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:AdamB wrote:May I congratulate Gail for being an actuary, herself associated with the energy modelers of TOD that called global peak oil in 2008 (oops!), claiming that others don't understand economics, is downright riotous.
Gail "high oil prices are bad" versus "low oil prices are bad" is itself an interesting question into her transactional psychology on this topic. She has demonstrated she knows nothing about oil ( I once corrected her edited discovery charts at TOD, but telling her the truth didn't work), she has no experience with economics other than saying so, she is as random in her causation/correlation claims as Short was, but..it is those OTHER folks who don't understand economics.
Fascinated by the duplicitous nature of folks who claim to be researchers, yet seem to know nothing about how research, or science, works.
+1
One thing about knowing nothing, is to be able to lie passionately, even convincingly (to the ignorant) and with a straight face, as knowing nothing lets one believe in whatever shiny object seems most attractive.
Whether it's Bible thumpers, climate deniers, economics deniers, science deniers, anti-vaxxers, Covid-deniers, flat earthers, and on and on, the overall pattern is the same. And intransigence doesn't begin to describe how dug-in those folks are re their nonsense. So yeah, getting them to listen to reason or accede to facts is going to be a slim to none outcome.
The amount of tragedy this causes gets exponentially worse as society becomes more complex. It's going to do some serious ass-kicking in the next century if TPTB can't force the idiots to comply with science based policies, overall.
When a person models how the system works, it becomes apparent that as increasing complexity is added to the system, the portion of the economic output that can be returned to non-elite workers as goods and services drops dramatically. This leads to rising wage disparity as increasing complexity is added to the economy. As the economy approaches limits, rising wage disparity indirectly leads to a tendency toward low prices for oil and other commodities because a growing number of non-elite workers are unable to afford homes, cars and even proper nutrition.
StarvingLion wrote:Here is my Head Scientist:
https://www.quora.com/profile/Michael-Brenner-13
He says *****EVERYTHING***** TPTB taught me about Physics and History in K-12 and university is a GIGANTIC FRAUD....EVERYTHING!!!
He says Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Feynmann, Darwin are 100% FRAUDS. He says TITANIC, MOON LANDINGS, 9/11, ISS, etc are 100% HOAXES.
His latest words:
"I have shown in many recent posts how “reason” as a faculty and “logic” as a discipline have been erased from what we call hard sciences like physics and mechanics, ...."
'I have argued that Newtonian physics is - as Leibniz perfectly well understood - a cult, it is, in Leibniz’ words, “physical theology” and the above Mark quote combined with hundreds of comments posted by “nuclear physicist” Torsten Hehl here on Quora proves that: he tells us in no uncertain terms, that the “physics of projectile trajectories” as taught in schools is nonsense “flat earth physics” intended for toddlers only because they don’t understand better, but once you are accepted into the “cult training camp” called university, you will be taught the right stuff."
Outcast_Searcher wrote:StarvingLion wrote:Here is my Head Scientist:
https://www.quora.com/profile/Michael-Brenner-13
He says *****EVERYTHING***** TPTB taught me about Physics and History in K-12 and university is a GIGANTIC FRAUD....EVERYTHING!!!
He says Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Feynmann, Darwin are 100% FRAUDS. He says TITANIC, MOON LANDINGS, 9/11, ISS, etc are 100% HOAXES.
His latest words:
"I have shown in many recent posts how “reason” as a faculty and “logic” as a discipline have been erased from what we call hard sciences like physics and mechanics, ...."
'I have argued that Newtonian physics is - as Leibniz perfectly well understood - a cult, it is, in Leibniz’ words, “physical theology” and the above Mark quote combined with hundreds of comments posted by “nuclear physicist” Torsten Hehl here on Quora proves that: he tells us in no uncertain terms, that the “physics of projectile trajectories” as taught in schools is nonsense “flat earth physics” intended for toddlers only because they don’t understand better, but once you are accepted into the “cult training camp” called university, you will be taught the right stuff."
Yeah. Using quora for a cite. Why not use your own clear dementia?
Seek medical help. Seriously. But hey, claiming flat earth "science" is convincing is nothing new in modern internet nonsense, sad as that is.
Shell uses plastic waste to produce resin feedstocks
Shell says that it has successfully made “high-end” chemicals using a liquid feedstock made from plastic waste using a pyrolysis process that is considered a breakthrough for hard-to-recycle plastics. The initiative advances Shell’s ambition to use one million tonnes of plastic waste a year in its global chemical plants by 2025.
Atlanta-based Nexus Fuels LLC recently supplied its first cargo of pyrolysis liquid to Shell’s chemical plant in Norco, LA, where it was made into chemicals that are the raw materials for everyday items. Shell Chemicals manufactures ethylene, propylene, and butadiene at the site.
According to a Nexus Fuels company spokesperson, “Our process uses HDPE, LDPE, PP, and PS. Our sources for material are primarily post-industrial and post-retail. At present, we are not taking post-consumer due to high contamination levels.”
he Nexus process is operational at a commercial scale and scalable—50-tonnes/day at the plant in Atlanta, GA. Nexus claims five times better EROEI (energy returned over energy invested) and 25% more liquid per tonne of waste with less char. It is less than one-quarter the cost per tonne compared with other pyrolysis systems.
“This [move] makes sense for the environment and our business,” said Thomas Casparie, Executive Vice President of Shell’s global chemicals business. “We want to take waste plastics that are tough to recycle by traditional methods and turn them back into chemicals – creating a circle. These chemicals will meet our customers’ growing demands for high quality and sustainable products.”
Shell is working with multiple companies who collect and transform plastic waste in order to scale this solution to industrial and profitable quantities across its chemical plants in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Shell is a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW). This not-for-profit organization is bringing together top minds from across the plastics value chain (chemicals and plastics manufacturers, consumer goods companies, retailers, converters and waste management companies) and partnering with the financial community, governments and civil society. The AEPW has committed $1.5 billion over the next five years to help end plastic waste in the environment.
Shell is also working with its retail, business fuels and lubricants customers to help reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging.
Pyrolysis is a chemical recycling process of heating plastic waste without oxygen, such that it breaks down the longer chain polymers into shorter chain materials. These products can then be further processed into chemical feedstocks or fuels. Pyrolysis can be more effective than the traditional mechanical recycling process of melting as it does not degrade the quality of the final plastic and requires less intensive sorting of the initial waste.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Carrots and sticks: why energy prices won't fall for a long time | MoneyWeek
Energy is going to be more expensive for a long time before it gets both cleaner and cheaper.
We often write here about the global economy being at an inflection point. Many of the great trends that have shaped the last few decades are coming to an end. The age of cheap labour is ending as politics restricts easy migration and the world’s population ages. The easy growth, productivity gains and deflationary impulses from the integration of China into our economic systems are all fading. At the same time companies and countries are changing the way they think about supply chains (just in case rather than just in time). All this is disruptive and inflationary in itself. But there is one more factor to add into the mix – the price of energy is rising and going to keep rising. This matters.
In 2013, in his book Life After Growth, Tim Morgan noted that the real economy is at heart nothing but an energy equation. Without a steady supply of cheap energy (to provide everything from our fuel to our chemicals and fertiliser) there is nothing to drive long-term growth. What matters then is how much energy costs to produce.
There was a time when we didn’t need to worry about this much: when we could use “rudimentary wellhead equipment to access billions of barrels of energy in the sands of Arabia”, we got “at least 100 units of energy for each unit invested in the infrastructure” (the energy return on energy invested – EROEI – was 100:1). It didn’t last long. In 1990, the global energy EROEI was about 37:1. When Morgan was writing it was 14:1. Today there is much debate on EROEI – you will find endless papers online claiming that fossil-fuel numbers are lower than once thought (once refining and transport are taken into account) and that renewable numbers are higher than they first look (it depends on the life of each project, for example).
But however you cut it, one thing that is coming out of the COP26 meetings in Glasgow is a promise that energy is going to be more expensive for a long time before it gets both cleaner and cheaper.
Carrot and stick will both play a role. The global financial sector seems set on defunding the fossil-fuel industry and we should expect to see rising carbon prices layered on top of the supply crunch that may cause. We should also probably expect to pay higher taxes to finance the subsidies government will keep offering to low-carbon energy production. As renewables scale up, notes Arthur Kroeber of Gavekal, we should expect the end price of electricity to rise too – the intermittency of solar and wind means we must invest more in spare-capacity storage and grid upgrades. Other problems will come in the sharp rise in demand for the metals renewables need – lithium, cobalt and nickel in particular – and in the waste created by replacement cycles for solar panels and turbine blades. None of this is insurmountable. But it is disruptive (and the more serious anyone is about net zero, the more disruptive it is) and it is almost certainly quite inflationary. We might (in many decades) end up with a clean energy system. But getting there is going to be an inflationary journey into “the unknown and the unpredictable”.
This might all seem a bit long-term, but it should add to the list of things making investors feel a little uneasy about valuations. Market corrections are impossible to forecast. But it really does feel like our next one is a tad overdue.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
LOL, limits to growth is the reason for wealth inequality.
Yeah, that's the ticket!
Doly wrote:In a nutshell, when resources are limited there is increased competition for resources.
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. [Warren] Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Inequality comes about when growth is slow and steady, not when there is scarcity and competition.
But the reason for inequality today is simply that in the battle between capitol and labor, the rich won.
Labor arbitrage, automated control systems and containerization along with the flood of two-income families killed any leverage left on the side of labor.
Notice the panic over the Great Resignation, that's capitol seeing its leverage slipping.
Doly wrote:What is missing from your picture is what happens when a period of growth inevitably comes to an end.
It's easy to be generous when there is plenty for everyone. It's when the period of growth ends that you see the biggest increases in inequality.
If you read Peter Turchin, you would see that in the battle between the elites and labor, the common pattern is that the elites win initially.
Labor arbitrage is a symptom of inequality, rather than a cause. Why are companies the ones that get to pick and choose, rather than workers?
As for automatization, machinery is nothing new. Why is machinery a problem for employment today and not in the sixties? Why haven't workers displaced by machines found other jobs?
And why are there two-income families in the first place? Because at one point there were so many jobs that needed to be done, that females were encouraged to work. Why is that no longer the case?
Peter Turchin's perspective...
Pops wrote: To be a capitalist you must at heart be ungenerous, after all you are asking people to work for less than their worth so that you can mine the difference.
Pops wrote: Ask the Walton kids, gramps was a miser.
Pops wrote:
Offshoring jobs to undeveloped third world countries with few jobs and zero wages effectively made US workers obsolete and gave capital a huge boost.
Pops wrote: today women still earn 16% less than men even though they are now better educated!
Pops wrote: ....And just between you and me, this picture explains a lot of the current "burn it down" attitude of certain demographics.
Are you saying that growth is over? If so when do you think it ended?
Second, the gilded age was not the end of anything, it was the beginning of modern industry, yet it featured fantastic inequality.
Third, the third industrial revolution period we are now in features productivity growth similar to the proceeding 70 years, the only thing different is wages.
Initially? You implied above that growth already ended.
Why do companies get to choose employees? Usually it is because they have the jobs. Especially when they go into a poor country where there are no jobs. This is not new.
Not just machines. But remote control machines!
The stories I've heard from women in my own generation harassed at work and paid half of mens wage doesn't sound like encouragement to me.
Why were there so many jobs? Because why wouldn't an employer hire two women for the price of one man?
Hari Seldon he ain't
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