
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense - p4bl0
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
======
dmm
A major omission of his energy analysis is the concept of Energy-returned on
Energy-invested or EROEI. EROEI simply means how much energy it takes to
produce a give unit of energy. Taking this into account provides a much more
meaningful analysis than just looking at simple reserve and consumption
numbers.

For example, it doesn't matter how many billions of barrels I might have in a
field if each barrel takes 2 barrels to extract(except as perhaps a chemical
feedstock).

It's absolutely meaningless to take theoretical oil reserves and simply
dividing them by currently yearly consumption and concluding that we have
hundreds of years to go.

The easy oil has been extracted and all that is left is the hard stuff. Even
Saudi Arabia is drilling wells that sit under a mile of water.

McCarthy mentions extracting uranium from seawater for christsake! That is
really crazy.

Also, it doesn't matter if all of our energy problems could be solved by
building a million nuclear plants if the building of them takes so much
capital no one can afford it. Again EROEI for nuclear is negative until the
plants actually start producing electric.

And it doesn't matter if we have tons of electric if all of our transportation
infrastructure requires oil products. Converting all of that infrastructure is
going to take lots of capital and energy.

Check out theoildrum.com for lots of good energy articles.

~~~
viggity
why does it take so much capital to build a nuke plant? Sounds like a
regulatory problem.

~~~
grammaton
I really hope this was sarcasm.

Plutonium is not cheap. Uranium is not cheap. Redundant safety systems are not
cheap. Pressure proof concrete vessels are not cheap. Industrial grade power
turbines, also not cheap. The list goes on and on.

~~~
btilly
A lot of that expense is redundant safety systems, inspections, etc. Which
cost is born because of regulation.

Whether regulations like that are a problem or a solution is a source of
endless debate depending on your political position. But given recent events
in Japan, it is clear that we are headed for more regulation, not less.

~~~
mkr-hn
I would hope they'd do most of that stuff in the absence of regulation.

~~~
btilly
A lot of people would hope that. However all available evidence suggests that
people will and do cut corners until they get burned. And companies that
refuse to do so will find themselves becoming less profitable than their less
scrupulous competitors.

The result is public pressure for regulation.

Unfortunately economic theory and practice show that once an industry has come
under regulation it becomes their priority to get control of that regulation.
This process is called "regulatory capture" and inevitably succeeds. Once it
has succeeded, the protections erode and the regulatory scheme is used to
create barriers to entry for competitors. See the recent financial crisis for
an example of this.

Depending on your politics you are likely to think that one of these failure
modes is a bigger deal than the other.

~~~
mkr-hn
The choice is often between a shaky regulatory structure and a melee between
profit and common good. I usually prefer to take a chance on regulation unless
someone comes up with a better option.

Sometimes the third option of going to an industry and asking them to do
something does work, but not always. I'd always try it first, but it's not
always going to work, and the consequences of inaction can be pretty bad.

------
rlpb
I refuse to do arithmetic in units such as the acre-foot.

------
rsheridan6
>In particular, we argue that the whole world can reach and maintain American
standards of living with a population of even 15 billion.

That's one doubling away from the current population. There's no particular
reason to believe population will never exceed 15 billion.

~~~
jerf
Actually, the claim that it _will_ is the one not currently supported by
evidence. The UN currently estimates the peak of world population will be 9.22
billion in 2075, followed by a general decline, assuming current trends [1].
Now, I'd like to think we continue to extend lifespan, but birth rates are
dropping. Against all (first-order) biology, when humans become wealthier,
they have fewer children, and this result is very robust now, not just the
aberration of one particular culture.

[1]:
[http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Wor...](http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf)
, second paragraph of the executive summary. Oh, and I'm just quoting the
9.22; I think that's an absurd number of significant digits but one should
quote sources as directly as possible.

~~~
rsheridan6
to last billions of years. You yourself think that projecting the tens of
millions place 64 years in the future is an absurd number of significant
digits. How many significant digits do you think is appropriate in a time
frame 100M years longer? Even the UN itself only purports to project
population trends until 2300, which is far short of a billion years, as
hubristic as it is.

Also, the UN projections have some unjustified assumptions. From page 7, under
section C:

>Over the long run, total fertility is projected to settle at 1.85 children
per woman in each country—in between the current rate for Northern America
(which is just below replacement level) and the rate for Europe (which is
currently well below). This figure is somewhat arbitrary

In the longer run they expect the growth rate of all countries to stabilize at
0:

>The eventually similar growth between more developed and less developed
regions is produced by similar long-range assumptions, especially the
assumptions that fertility will fall in all countries below replacement (in
the medium scenario) and rebound to replacement after a period largely similar
across countries of a century or so. Starting their fertility declines later,
less developed regions will reach low fertility levels after more developed
regions but also stay at these levels until a later date.

Of course population stabilizes at a rate not too much higher than the present
rate if you assume fertility rates converge around the replacement level.
Garbage in, garbage out.

------
viggity
this should be read by every Malthusian environmentalist.

~~~
btilly
His underlying assumption is that if we raise everyone's standard of living,
population will stabilize permanently. It is true that raising people's
standard of living drops population growth - typically to below the
replacement level. But anyone who thinks that this effect will last for
billions, millions, or even thousands of years has failed to understand
evolution.

~~~
anamax
> But anyone who thinks that this effect will last for billions, millions, or
> even thousands of years has failed to understand evolution.

Oh really? Evolution selects for survival, period. (Actually, survival selects
for certain kinds of evolution.) Where is it written that survival implies
over-population.

~~~
btilly
_Evolution selects for survival, period._

No. Evolution selects for genes that manage to leave lots of descendants. This
is a local optimization that is not the same as long-term survival. In fact
there are lots of examples of species going down evolutionary dead ends where
eventually they get wiped out.

Thanks to the miracle of exponential growth, a successful trait that is
possessed by a small fraction of the population will spread like a cancer
until it dominates the population.

In the case of humans, any trait that leads to lots of kids despite economic
pressures to have few of them is going to be evolutionarily successful. And it
will be successful in a surprisingly short time. To take a simple model,
suppose that we have a recessive allele that is 1% of the gene pool. (So 1.99%
of the population carries the recessive, but only 0.01% of the population
expresses it.) Suppose that people without it just replace themselves, while
people with it expressed have twice as many kids. At first the trait will be
utterly invisible. But in under 100 generations it will completely dominate
the population. That is only a few thousand years.

~~~
anamax
> Evolution selects for genes that manage to leave lots of descendants.

Nope.

Survival selects for genes that have enough descendants. One way to have
"enough" is "lots", but it doesn't necessarily work and isn't necessary.

> In the case of humans, any trait that leads to lots of kids despite economic
> pressures to have few of them is going to be evolutionarily successful.

Nope - lots of kids is neither necessary nor sufficient. The key metric is "do
your kids have kids, rinse and repeat." Too many kids can break that, as can
too few.

~~~
btilly
All else being equal, in an environment like our own where survival is easy,
generally the more kids the merrier.

Modern economics and birth control have created pressures against reproducing
that we have never faced in our evolutionary history. Our species has not yet
evolved a response to it. Once we have evolved a response to it, I would
predict exponential growth rate until we exhaust available resources.

This may not happen in 10 generations or 20. But in 1000 generations, our
species will have adapted and reached a crisis.

~~~
sedachv
The only way I see of "evolving a response to it" is selecting for baby-crazed
women who are basically addicted to the hormonal changes of childbirth and
rearing. Men would already be happy to impregnate women as much as possible,
if they didn't have to stick around or pay child support.

It's hard not to think of Idiocracy.

~~~
btilly
And you think that selection process is not going on?

Anyways there are other possible responses. There is a strong correlation
between being religious and having lots of kids. Therefore genes that incline
one towards being religious are positively correlated with kids.

Another is a trait of failing to worry about future consequences. (Now you'll
really be thinking about Idiocracy.)

Complex traits like these are part nurture and part nature. But to the extent
that they are nature, there is evolutionary pressure for them to spread.

------
entangld
Arithmetic is required to be logical? I doubt it.

~~~
Symmetry
Be logical? No. Make sense? Yes.

You can make all the navel-gazing syllogism you want with pure logic, but if
you want to make conclusions about the real world then in many cases (like the
domain under discussion) you're going to need to involve math.

~~~
entangld
So what you're saying is you could listen to someone and agree that what
they're saying is logical but it doesn't make sense?

I'm not being a jerk, but could you please give me an example of something
logical that doesn't make sense?

~~~
gloob
All noses are frozzle.

Some wiggles are noses.

Therefore, some wiggles are frozzle.

~~~
entangld
I'm not advocating fuzzy logic, just like the people who believe math is
needed to make sense aren't advocating bad statistics.

------
grammaton
This is a bunch of standard issue cornucopian gee-whizery. I can't help but
notice that nowhere in this article does he cite so much as one, single,
solitary number or statistic to back up any of his claims.

Here is essentially how this entire page read, for me:

"Q: Will we ever run out of resources?" "A: No, of course not, that's silly!"

My personal favorite: If global warming is a problem, why, then, we can just
reverse it!

Of course! Why didn't we think of that before?!?

~~~
nandemo
> Here is essentially how this entire page read, for me: "Q: Will we ever run
> out of resources?" "A: No, of course not, that's silly!"

Well, then you need to read better. For instance, he estimates that nuclear
and solar energy will last us 5 billion years. If he's wrong by a factor of
1000 that's still 5 million years which is not too bad.

And there's a whole page of references:

<http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/references.html>

PS: I expect that some people will assume I'm in the same "camp" of the
author, but I'm just pointing out that the criticism above is unfair.

~~~
brudgers
The estimates of 5 billion (or 5 million) years ignores the potential side
effects of widespread distribution of the current generation of fissionable
fuels and the level of political will required to develop an infrastructure
for coping with these potentials.

In other words, if one is inclined to ignore issues of this magnitude, why
bother mentioning nuclear at all when no less questionable assumptions about
relevant factors would allow a similar projection based on solar energy alone?

~~~
jerf
Well, we also have 5 million/billion years to _deal_ with those problems. Our
descendents, if they are still using nuclear power, will be no dumber and less
capable than we are of solving problems, and probably a great deal more so. If
nothing else, "blast it into space" is likely to be feasible within our
lifetimes. (And not just "leave it in orbit", but drop it somewhere where it
won't be a problem anymore. Space is full of such places; space arguably is
nothing _but_ such places. Space is _big_.)

Besides, what massive problems are you worried about? On that timescale,
radioactive waste just dissipates. It doesn't build up over millions of years.
If it could build up over that time scale, it wouldn't be "radioactive" in the
first place.

~~~
brudgers
> _"Our descendents"_

One of the potential issues which accompanies nuclear power is the "what
descendents?" issue. Sterility and infertility and death are known side
effects of exposure to common fissionable materials and their byproducts. One
need not even consider the potential consequences of deliberate human
activities designed to harm people or fulfill religious prophesy.

In other words, it's not so much the last 4.99999 billion years that's a
concern as the 1000 years which must precede them.

~~~
pjscott
Er, that's why you _don't_ go around exposing people to high-level radioactive
waste. You stick it in a cooling pool to let the really nasty isotopes decay,
then store it with radiation shielding. If you want to get really fancy, and
have enough excess neutrons, you can even get rid of worst of the waste by
turning it into something else.

On the list of existential threats, mass radiation poisoning really doesn't
rate very high in likelihood.

~~~
brudgers
PU-239 has a half life of 24k years. Or to put it in perspective, if the
Neanderthals had been using it, we would be running the risk of stumbling over
cooling pools where significant quantities of nasty isotopes were still
decaying - assuming anyone could build a cooling pool with a 24,000 year
service life.

The half lives of U235 and U233 are significantly longer (approx. an order of
magnitude).

~~~
pjscott
Wait, what? Pu-239, U-235, and U-233 are not waste. They are _fuel._ Those are
all fissile isotopes that we burn in conventional nuclear reactors.

The isotopes you get rid of in cooling pools are the highly radioactive ones
with short half-lives.

