onlooker wrote:Can anyone show whose studies are undeniably more credible and incontrovertible? If so I would love to see them. Until then, we are all just gleaning different research and analysis and not particularly qualified I think to be able to discern which analysis is the true accurate one. So, we are all just voicing our educated guesses and preferences anyway.
The entire theory of EROEI was created by peak resource advocates to support their view of reality. It is impossible to find a contrary view because you either accept the premise that you can calculate EROIE or you do not.
Philisophically EROEI is a neat catch all idea. In the real world however you can not actually account for all the energy that is used between your wheels spinning and the oil in the formation in the ground. How do you decide where to stop counting? For example, the person who drilled the well that released the oil had to get to the field somehow, do you count his fuel use? If you count his fuel use what about the energy to build his vehicle? What about the energy to build, pave and maintain the road he travled to get there? The same issue arises from the steel in the rig and drill pipe. Do you count the energy needed to manufacture the pipe? How much of the energy do you count, do you include the blast furnace and steel mill, or do you go back and count the mine, and then the miner and then the tools and equipment used to find and mine the ore?
Layer on layer on layer means if you want to you can keep adding or subtracting kayers of energy until you get the answer you want to get. This makes EROEI studies into a self referencing system that has no valid meaning in the broader context. If person A thinks tar sand is great they get a 9:1 EROEI while person B who thinks they are a wasted effort gets a 1:1!
Posted: Tue 22 Aug 2017, 18:15:32