Imagine the resort like temperatures of -85F (-65C). What air? In fact, who needs air anyway? The views will only be obstructed by the space suit you have to wear when you are outside. But who needs to go outside? Mars here we come!
Nobody is planning on Mars trips - its a cover story to justify all the rocketry. Elon and buddies want to build sky weapons to kill all competitors. He has watched too much James Bond. I don't believe all these billionaire psychos are blind to the facts facing humanity. They know as we know, and work hard to prepare .
The fact that I disagree with a few technical points does not necessarily mean that I am right, and that JBF is wrong. It also does not mean that I found his presentation without merit, as I did find it valuable. It also may be valuable to minimize a much larger discussion about some peripheral items that may take a longer time to likely come to the same basic point. With that said... Aluminum production IS specifically an electrically demanding process -there are likely more economic/technical/land use reasons aluminum facilities are not really located near nuclear plants, but aluminum does directly soak up lots of electricity. Aluminum was more expensive than gold by weight until the mid-to-late 1800's when an electric (not heat) process was commercialized. Fertilizer production as an offshoot of military needs for explosives - there might be a "what came first, chicken or egg" thing with artificial nitrates for fertilizers/explosives. Depletion of local topsoils was a serious discussion throughout Europe, probably prior to the 19th century. The Haber-Bosch process, by with much of our artificial fertilizers are produced with nat gas today, was at least as much informed by specifically *non-Colonial power* Germany's agricultural concerns as it was military. The coal-rich, hydro poor Germany was at the time that is. As related to the above two items- The Norsk Hydro hydro-electric enterprise was initially created to produce agricultural fertilizers in Norway using an electrically demanding process that became no longer able to compete with the above mentioned Haber-Bosch Process. At which point Norsk Hydro eventually pivoted primarily to aluminum production. Norsk Hydro continues to be one of the largest aluminum companies worldwide. Regards steel- much of humanity's steel supply is from recycled content now, largely using electric arc furnaces. IIRC, virgin steel is more coal-dependent, but a substantially lower percentage of production. This has been a big part of recent discussions around Japanese companies wanting to buy US/UK virgin steel facilities. Not mentioned regards steel/iron- "steel" is a product of iron resulting from alloying discoveries made economical in the mid 1800's. The oil rigs, and steel-dependent industry post 1860 could not really have happened as easily with pre-1860 (Bessemer Process) cast iron. Advances in metallurgy/alloys have dramatically reduced the needs for metals in structures over time. Thank you for reading annoying-ass long comment. -sry
@@57stapler There are interesting things going down in fertiliser world. Multiple startups working plasma fertiliser made from electricity and water. Extracting nitrogen from atmosphere. Steel. Boston metals direct electrification solution replaces the blast furnace. We can run these new processes with wood no?
The only solution to the current consumptive lifestyle has to mean slowing down. Substituting one technology with another never results in less consumption. Jevons paradox. Humans will never voluntarily reduce their consumption. I.e, we are fucked. x
Electricity intensive products like aluminium or fertilizer would be a great way to use plentiful solar energy in sunny desert areas, if the furnaces can be modulated according to the daily cycle. Remember, 1 kW/m2 sunlight means 1 GW per km2 (reduced by the efficiency of solar panels, but you get the idea). This would also help spread industrial activity more evenly across the planet. The input (bauxite) and finished goods (alu) are easy to transport in bulk. For fertilizer, we can pull the nitrogen out of the air anywhere. Glass or silicon = sand + power. We just need to hit the "singularity point" where PV feeds an ever increasing production of solar modules.
I think complexity (discussed around 43:00) is a significantly underlooked aspect of changing the way we live. We have many developing technologies that seemed poised to tackle many of the problems of the polycrisis, but almost all of them are highly complex, sophisticated, high-tech, "high entropy" devices - fusion, fuel cells, even wind turbines require highly sophisticated generators and solar panels are somewhat akin to computer chips - extremely fine and precise components. TRUE sophistication is simplicity; "the best part is no part, the best process is no process". I don't know what this entails in application to solving all our problems, but I feel like the path we are going down to solve the metacrisis is not the right one. Organization is another vastly overlooked aspect of civilization - in fact it might be the most key aspect - and organizations of all kind, friends, family, colleagues, fraternal, etc. - are all on the decline globally. How can we solve our problems if we can't coordinate and collaborate? Some say AGI/ASI will also excel at this skill of organization - and it may be that we may need it to get us out of the hole we have dug ourselves. But I hope I am wrong.
An interesting point, it raises a few questions. Is true sophistication simplicity, or just simplicity from the human perspective? For example, the most simple form of sustenance is for me to simply gather (and nurture) that which is on my doorstep, allowing nature to create its abundance. However, in this example, nature's processes are highly complex, sophisticated and beautiful, whereas I simply observe and collect in a way that humans have done since their evolution - effortlessly and knowingly. Secondly, there's a definite paradox between the hyper complex system we have created, in that its outputs are increasingly homogeneous. Whether it be monocrops, suburban housing, franchise shops and restaurants, social medias, modern music and increasingly women's faces (eyebrows, Botox, lip enhancements, wrinkle removal etc etc), the increasing complexity has actually led to a dearth of originality or variety. I wonder, then, if we haven't increased complexity at all? If we have actually just tipped a scale - decreasing nature's complexity, whilst increasing the pale imitation of human [built] complexity? I certainly think that is the case. Of course, what comes hand-in-hand with that approach (likely driven by ego, and definitely by separation) is ever increasing abstraction of us from what is. We're entirely abstracted from our basic needs, entirely abstracted from nature and our political systems (certainly any based on the nebulous representative democracy) entirely abstracted from our day to day experience. I'm not proposing an answer here. I don't believe it'll come from AI, which is simply a tool of, and for, our existing system.
I'm glad to see a guest who is connected with reality. Often the guests can be delusional (unrealistically optimistic, lacking knowledge) about history and the realities of the situation.
It is refreshing to listen to people who back up their statements with numbers & then provide historical context for these numbers by comparing with past realities.
Fundamentally, the rock-bottom truth of the matter is that greed more than wisdom has propelled humanity to the unsustainable moment we now live in. Sadly, that self-destructive human trait has reached a crescendo at the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century. We, as a species, know better. Most of the conversations that occur on TGS attest to that reality. This particular conversation is very german to the issue. WE KNOW BETTER. We live at a moment in history in which unfettered greed has overwhelmed common sense. Ominously, the greediest of the lot, our current world leaders in politics and commerce, have utter control over our collective future. Wisdom is our most endangered "natural resource". Blind greed is not. As corny as it may seem Joni Mitchell encapsulated the idea when she poetically asserted that "we've paved paradise and put up a parking lot".
@@treefrog3349 yes greed and egotism. The planet is not a natural resource, its a source and life support system. I believe we can still optimistically make a cultural shift objective . I have a concept that given a chance could show a new way. It starts with the individual and needs a community. I may not be a scientist nor best with words. Dyslexic thinkers brain thinking out of the box. A new way of paying back the favour to nature "Janine Benyus " and a new way of paying it forward.
It's a common mistake to project your knowledge, ethics, and morality on others. The reality is that a tiny fraction of people "know better" about declining EROEI, and an even smaller fraction prefer a moral response to simply eliminating competition for the resources. See the energy consumption per capita by year in Ukraine for example and then try to unsee why the population there is being decimated. What you want, and what I want, is a moral response rather than "the most energy efficient" response because you see a different layer of efficiency embodied in a peaceful decline rather than a violent one. But don't be mistaken, the "species" is far more concerned with Taylor Swift's lyrics than EROEI. As evidenced by her hundreds of millions of views compared to the mere thousands of viewers here.
It's probably more a "tragedy of the commons" situation combined with the fact that one person's consumption habits won't make 0.0000001% of a difference. That said, there are greedy people with businesses that do make larger differences with their pollution (chemicals, short product life cycles, etc) and choices to make another dollar instead of a less profitable choice that is better for the environment. That is where The People and Governments need to step in with laws and force to protect The Commons from corporations acting without regard to the environmental costs.
Its beyond greed at this stage. Its being carried along by it own momentum. 8 billion people going about thier business is beyond morals and the ability of some sort of "rational" planning.
Just an FYI, China, India, and Africa don't see the world or humanity in such a negative light. They see people as inherently good and they try to let other nations be. It's our European colonized mindset which paints everyone else as "greedy & selfish" and looks for zero-sum arguments like "carbon budgets" and "carrying capacity" which never account for advancing technology. China is building more solar panels than anyone. They're designing space-based solar farms that send power back via microwave. Something American engineers have known about since before 1990 but which aren't bothered to be researched by our short-term profit mindset. China does not have this short term, "no planning because planning is evil communism" mindset.
The flames do look pretty though. We live in the UK and don’t strictly need to burn wood in the open fireplace in our lounge but it’s nice to occasionally when friends visit.
@@JPCoetzee The numbers aren't from home woodstoves. The US & EU foolishly allow wood-burning power plants to be considered "renewable" because trees can regrow. Not realizing that trees take up potential farm & park land, which is not unlimited. Humans can get "free fiber" if we switch our corn & soy crops to hemp. Same acreage, more yield, less soil damage. That's where I want to see research, development, and government grants.
I'm pretty sure that several times when he says "1900s", he meant to say "19th century". But if you assume just a mis speaking here at these times, the statements make perfect sense.
I keep trying to walk my mind through the maze looking for the end. Over and over again I run into the problem of interest bearing debt. It's what pulls us forward no matter what we think or feel. Columbus crossed the sea to pay off a debt to a king and queen who themselves were trying to pay off a debt. Usury is why GDP 'has to' go up. The currency of nature is carbon. It is brought into circulation by plants and taken out of circulation by animals. Nature grows and de-grows at the same time. It's debt always paid forward instead of back. Thanks for another thoughtful episode
The good thing about debt which is owed to central banks (most debt today) is that it can be deleted by central bank coordination through the BIS. The bad thing is that many people don't believe this. Humanity is on a collision course and all we have to do is change the heading. Write down debt, tax carbon, eliminate most BS jobs, pay people to build eco-housing (actual 100+ year construction, 18 inch thick walls, etc) and permaculture. Switching ethanol corn to hemp, along with GMO cotton & soy, can sequester hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 per year. Rock dams in the American Southwest can sequester millions of tons/year. Stone age technology. The problem is the mentality and sacred cows, like "debt must be repaid"
Hello Nate. Thanks a lot for this podcast. Haven't listened to it yet, but I'm a huge fan of Mr Fressoz. He has really a highly important message! Cannot be broadcasted and promoted enough.
Another fascinating episode. There is so much dogma in the "debate" .... meanwhile that same debate is just people proposing their favorite deckchair formation on the Titanic.
@ Still does not address the problem of overshoot. The Titanic still would have sunk if it were nuclear powered. Maybe if it had been a sailing boat....
@@SigFigNewton In theory, I agree, but the reality will just bring us to further overshoot. There is no replacement of energy, just addition. Some doomers would argue no, it's better to make minimum impact for the future biosphere. Pretty dark I know.
Another insightful and useful analysis. Thanks, Nate. My main disagreement to what was said would be the claim that the Western Empire (centred in UK/US) wasn't inherently violent. The whole premise of empire, like the nation-state, is predicated in violence and the threat of violence. Capitalism doesn't happen without it.
The invasion of the euroTyrranies onto Turtle Island was as inherently violent and vicious as could be imagined. Those prim proper pretentious Limeys who created an entire industry to mass-extract beaver's just so those pompous stuffed shirts could wear formal hats... They imagined themselves to be the very pinnacle of human creation and yet were more violent and degraded and despicable than the indigenous people who they treated with contempt and derision - on all the continents on which the sun shines
Agreed. The USA has been at peace for only 17 years of its existence. England did things a bit differently - most of their celebrated explorers are referred to as pirates by the places they visited.
Sure, but that's life, right? Violence and the threat of violence are important tools of communication. The threat of violence (banishment in the nicest form) is what keeps a community together.
Wrong. The colonialism and violence of white Europeans against non whites was intentional done differently than the violence within Europe. This would take you less than thirty seconds of learning about colonial and European war and law to find out@@EastWindCommunity1973
Thank you Nate for inviting Jean Baptiste Fressoz, I am French American, I think he brings a great perspective. You had Jancovici, now Fressoz,...is Arthur Keller next?
China's primary motivation to expand electric vehicles is to minimize their limited and potentially constrained access to oil. I do not believe that the CCP would make political, economic, or military sacrifices in order to contribute to a healthy climate.
Let's be real. None of us actually know what China would or wouldn't do. Everything we hear about China is either their propaganda or US propaganda. We can make guesses at what they might do and why. But they're really just guesses.
@@thegreatsimplification A study released earlier this week found that the human brain now contains an entire plastic spoon's worth of microplastic particles (7 grams), and a significant proportion of those particles are probably finding their way into the brain via the inhalation of dust from automobile tires. Electric cars, due to their extra weight, produce 20% more tire dust than cars with internal combustion engines.
Half way through I realized that he is co-author of „The Shock of the Anthropocene“ which I read a few years ago, a really fascinating and eye opening book that connects history and ecology in multiple ways, very much recommended.
" Maybe put a picture of Homer Simpson on the book ". Thanks for chuckle in this insane world of energy, they are far and few between. Cheers for the podcast to both of you.
Unfortunately just „visiting“ someone in New Zealand is not compatible with a sustainable future. Transcontinental air traffic is only one step under space traffic, an incredible luxury.
Interesting perspective on wood and its use as pit props. What is really scary is when you go down an old mine and find that wood is still there, slowly decaying and failing, an ongoing release of carbon still continuing. I still remember going down a old metal mine in Coed y Brenin and seeing a open stope full of water with what seemed like hundreds of tree trunks holding the rock walls apart -scary. Some of the many mine exploration videos give a feel for how scary those places can be.
Nate et Jean-Baptiste, merci beaucoup. I learned a lot from J-B's analysis of the symbiosis of energy systems. With respectful humour, however, I'll just add that decoding his accent also requires a lot of unaccounted-for energy, even if French is my first language :)))
@@jeanrajotte946 It's been difficult to try to split my brain to both listen & read through the comments. This is what I typically do while listening, even though I always reach the same conclusion after every episode that, WASFd
Nice talk. Learned a lot of new things here. His book title... Is more or less what I am telling myself for decades now. This is the following... The 'more more more' attitude has no limits. The 'less less less' attitude does. It is unsettling to see you need more and more to be satisfied. It is satisfying to see you can manage life with less and less. I try to bear this in mind. But sometimes I forget. I guess maybe we are wired that way. On the other hand... The form of capitalism prevailing this last century indoctrinates people with the scarcity idea: there is never enough, so we need more and more. So at least it creates a battle in our heads.
I don't really agree with the thesis. for example coal v wood. Coal allowed the industrial revolution, There aren't enough trees for that to happen. we moved to coal because there weren't enough trees. The energy transition isn't happening because there aren't enough hydrocarbons. This is more akin from ships moving from sail to steam. They didn't run out of wind. There was plenty of wind, but wind has issues, which caused people to move away from it. Or slavery. we decided that slavery was bad and stopped it. We didn't use more slaves, even though labour demand has risen.
Good points. On the slavery issue, you might want to consider a deeper dive into slavery. For example, I incorporate corvee (obligate slavery) into the overall term, while many people only consider chattel slavery (ownership as private property). The bottom line for me is if they put you in jail if you don't do the obligation. In my formulation the military draft was slavery because they put you in jail if you resisted. Many people disagree.
@wvhaugen for the purpose of the argument I don't think it matters. Society decided that chattel slavery was wrong and got rid of it. I suppose a more direct analogy is rather than having slaves rub you and breathe air on you to warm you up. You build a coal mine and have the slaves mine the coal. That's the thesis being proposed. But we have decided that chattel slavery is wrong, just like emitting co2 is bad. So we aren't going to send the slaves down a mine as an alternative because it misses the point. They are free. Yes there are other forms of slavery, some of which we have decided are wrong. But we've also phased out ozone gases, and leaded fuel.
The superorganism will collapse into caos and anarchy due to famine,violence and abrupt die off of Homo sapiens!!! I hope I will not be alive whwn this happens
yes however a sustainable population is not only a function of numbers of people, its also a function of consumption/person. So here it is noted that a car requires more energy to produce than the car will use to drive for however many years its is driven.
No it is not mainly about population. If with a "magic wand" you would halve the population immediately, but kept an economic growth rate of 3%, after 25 years the size of the economy (and its ecological impact) would be the same.
I live in a area that produces loads of Eucalyptus Timber here in Minas Gerais, Brasil. The area devoted to this plantation only grew since I was young forty years ago. This timber is used as: Charcoal for churrasco* cooking and steal production. Thin timber for cooking**, fencing and support during construction of new brick and mortar housing. Strong wood for roofing, small cheap furniture and wood art. But other timbers are preferred for those applications. * Churrasco is cooking, mainly meats, over a red hot charcoal. Yes Churrasco is almost a synonymous of Barbecue. * Is a tradition here to cook in a open wood burning stove even if you have a gas burning stove.
This conversation reminds me of the book, Food, Energy and Society by D & M Pimentel. Recommended if folks need any more convincing of these arguments. Enabling degrowth on a personal and societal level is where my personal interests and career is focused these days.
@@mikethebloodthirstyBend, not break. Grind to a halt, not crash. And achieve global levels of consumption that do not impoverish all of the biosphere around us.
@mikethebloodthirsty, with respect, framing degrowth as simply "wanting to crash economies and make people live in poverty" is a textbook strawman. It completely misrepresents the concept. Degrowth is a reasoned argument for a planned transition away from unsustainable levels of consumption and production, particularly of non-essential goods, towards a more sustainable and equitable economy. The goal is enhanced well-being and ecological stability, not poverty. Anyone seriously considering wealth today understands that GDP growth is a myopic and incomplete metric. Real wealth includes quality of life, social cohesion, and a healthy environment. Degrowth argues that we can become demonstrably richer in these crucial areas - healthier, more connected, more fulfilled - while simultaneously reducing our environmental impact and reliance on fossil fuels. To cling to the idea that infinite consumption is the only path to wealth and happiness is, frankly, a tragically limited vision, and a root cause of the predicament we are in. Despite best intentions, the spoils of growth go to a few, and calls for more growth serve those ends.
Thanks again, Nate, for a very thought-generating conversation. You are certainly a rare interlocutor with two good ears and time. You've come into this from the energy side, obviously, and you keep bringing energy-wise people to your podcast. But also a whole array of people with other entry points, like Sunita Narain, Jeremy Grantham, Suzanne Simard, Stefan Rahmstorf, Mamphela Ramphele, Chuck Watson, Nora Bateson, Simon Michaux etc. I would very much like if you could catch Walter Jehne, micro-biologist from Australia, who has another eye-opening story to tell about the hydrological cycle (the most important greenhouse gas, water vapour) and the value of the SOIL CARBON SPONGE!!!
Windmills do NOT produce electricity!!! Stop calling wind turbines windmills!!! Windmills produce flour with machines that are powered by the wind. Wind turbines produce electricity with completely different machines that are also powered by the wind. If you try to produce electricity with a windmill it will fail. And if you try to produce flour with a wind turbine it will also fail. Calling a wind turbine a windmill is the same thing as calling a hair dryer a washing machine because both are powered by an electric motor. Just stop doing it because it is incredibly stupid.
And wind turbines produce electricity with machines (turbines) that are powered by wind... And if you try to produce electricity with a windmill, il will succeed : just replace the flour melter by a rotor and a stator... A thing that turns when wind blows on it is a thing that turns when wind blows on it...
here is backdrop and context: ua-cam.com/video/mxqxq4sUfh8/v-deo.htmlsi=RCpNrxBmfoA4YQ4J watch first 5-6 min here for update. www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/83-artificial-intelligence-and-the-lost-ark I am working on longer update. Answer is 'it depends. But from generational/century standpoint we are close to peak of carbon pulse. As to which year/decade, that is extremely nuanced
@@dbadagna I agree w much of what Art wrote - but the confusion is on his language. his main point was that as a PARADIGM 'Peak Oil' was failed - he wasn't saying (I don't think) that Peak Oil itself is false. (it is an obvious truism by first principles). btw - here is from my very first post on theoildrum almost 20 years ago!: theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/7/235952/0498 "unless the EIA changes their definitions, what we are currently calling "Peak Oil" will be obfuscated (and delayed) by increasing amounts of alternative energies that are now being definitionally included as 'oil' in the headline number. As long as we use EIA production numbers as the benchmark, Peak Oil will silently morph into Peak Liquids. This is relevant because the definitional layers we add on top of 'crude oil' are not equal in what they provide to society. It is also relevant in that the logistical heuristic used by M. King Hubbert was not intended to include corn and sugar cane derived ethanol, tar sands, or Natural Gas Liquids in its predictive theory of oil basin depletion. The concept of Peak Oil, already not widely believed, will start to be very confusing, and probably even more combative."
@@thegreatsimplification Alice Friedemann proposes the 2018 article by by Richard Heinberg entitled "Our Bonus Decade" as a possible rebuttal to Art Berman.
Recomendations: think of the utility of what we consume. Good easy start. Stop flying, stay near home, study and enjoy your neighbourhood, "love miles" are still pollution, be outspoken that you cannot respect those who assume a right to dump their pollution on you and your family. Would they accept a load compost into their front yard? If not why is it so strange that o object to fossil fuel sourced CO2 burned for selfish trivial reasons?
I keep trying to give him credence, but he keeps saying things like electricity doesn't help producing aluminum, which is just wrong. Aluminum is effectively solid electricity. I have been inside a modern electric aluminum smelter, with potlines stretching kilometers, standing on bus-bars carrying hundreds of thousands of amps. Aluminum manufacture is something that can be done with a very tiny carbon signature. Sure, you need carbon electrodes (each pot is basically a carbon arc furnace), but that is a tiny part of the overall system. Similar things exist for steel. And I get that the current economic system has sets of characteristics that tend to make it consume all that is economically available, and economics in that sense tends to ignore everything it can and count only the shortest term costs it can get away with. At a more abstract level that can be seen as a general attribute of computational systems generally (which includes all life), that the successful ones tend to approximate a Hamiltonian that over the contexts experienced tends to optimize the system to deliver survivable systems with least time to compute. The deep problem with that, is that in times of exponential change, that rearward (deep past) looking optimization tends to fail, and many of the heuristics that worked in the past no longer work in the new contexts present and emerging. To get ahead of that game requires multi level recursive abstraction and modeling of some very complex strategic systems. When one has spent a few decades exploring that, then you meet all manner of edge cases and exceptions to every rule, and there are some general principles that do actually work in most contexts most of the time, and they are not what common dogma says. Contrary to popular dogma that competition enhances freedom, the exact opposite is actually the case. Competition is always present in a sense, and in a deeper sense it is cooperation that actually maintains complexity long-term, and actually delivers maximum freedom in practice. Purely competitive systems tend to reduce complexity, and optimize for current contexts (which reduces the options available in practice, thus reducing real freedom), which can look like economic and engineering efficiency, but at the same time it also tends to reduce systemic resilience to any level or dimension of "shock", and if taken too far leads to extinction. Real freedom requires responsibility to be survivable, and that always asks more of us than we are comfortable giving; and if you are concerned about your own long term existence, or that of your family or anyone or anything else, then it is what is required. So I agree with the general thesis, that left to its current set of incentives, markets tend to consume all available energy; but disagree with the other general thesis that Jean-Baptiste seems to keep saying, that there are no engineering alternatives. There are. They are in place and tested and working. But so long as there is more profit to be made from the old ones, then they will persist within the current economic and political systems. Thus it is systemic reform, at the deepest of levels, that is demanded. We have some profound complexity ahead of us. I agree the current system cannot solve the issues we have within its current set of incentive structure. I have been saying for 20 years that fundamental economic reform is required for survival. I am now saying that such reform is demanded urgently. It is not longer a "nice to have sometime in the future", it is now a "required to be started this year" sort of process. And it will be complex, because enabling of both freedom and responsibility is demanded. The current default response of using regulations instead of responsibility is not working. Regulations need to be there only to enable us to curb the irresponsible, not to overly constrain the responsible. The rule of law, and currently conceived of by many, is insufficient for the change and complexity we currently face. It has essentially been gamed by multiple levels of cheating strategy, many within the legal and political systems. The task is difficult, and not yet impossible, and it is both urgent and difficult, and I empathize with you Nate, because we need to see all the many real levels of difficulty actually present, if we are to successfully resolve them all in the time available. Survival demands change on scales and at rates that we have no historical precedent for. It still seems doable to me, and I have been thinking about it for 60 years. We need real diversity, many different trials of possible ways, at every level, from individual to community all the way up. Hegemony, at any level, is not survivable. Cooperation in diversity is demanded for survival. For many, that will be hard to conceive of.
Astute comments. We used to live about two miles from Intalco (another branch of Alcoa), which was on the Georgia Strait near Ferndale in northwestern Washington state. It was a heavy, heavy consumer of electricity. We still had lower rates compared to other states because of the Bonneville Power Administration and the Columbia River, but it was well known that us peasants were subsidizing the low rates of electricy for Intalco. The upside of being on the same grid as Intalco was that power outages were fixed right quick. The plant went idle in 2020 and was finally closed in 2023. Intalco was one of those corporations that could ONLY make money in a fat economy. During the Covid lockdowns, its inefficiency was available for everyone to see, although people like me had been pointing it out for years. The Alcoa smelter in Massena, New York is still operating but it has always had a cozy subsidized supply of hydroelectric power.
Great as always, Nate. I hear a lot of Vaclav Smil reverberating through this ep. On that topic - any chance you’ll try to get Prof Smil on TGS anytime soon?
@garrenosborne9623 most heat wells are near fault lines, change in temperature implies changing the stress factor of the earth crust, implies earthquakes of unknown severity. Certainly not in an addition to drill baby drill.
@@life42theuniverseyes but Geothermal companies are getting better at working out the process behind that and siting the wells in places where that shouldn’t happen.
That last comment were my very thoughts for the last few days. People don't really care about future generations beyond their grandchildren.... because saying that fossil fuel will last for a century is really just a blip on our species timeline anyway...the concern is only the next few decades and basically beause we might still be around, but beyond that it like that will be "their problem" mentality. Don't know, but things can seem to get a bit out of whack in our lifetimes. I almost envision the next century and the one after that perhaps going back to sort of a series of feudal states, in other words we'll go back in time, at least that's a scenario. I believe decreasing birthrates and a declining population will in the end be a blessing to be able to cope with the end of the carbon pulse (peak population might be in right in the middle of this century and then it will go down, us who are over 50 or so won't see it because our departure will be the cause of such population decline).
Assisted-living is what energy-technologies have provided more and more of since the settlement revolution which required agriculture in order to provide enough food-energy for all the specialist individuals settlements needed to become City-regions, technosphere nodes protected by armies.
I was reading about fusion in The New Yorker a few years ago and I realized, fusion would not save us, because it would spur economic growth and increase the standard of living, which means more extraction. Then I realized the same thing will happen if we transition to Solar.
Also, solar panels only last for a couple of decades before they fail and need to be replaced with new ones (produced using more fossil fuels and newly mined/refined materials).
@@dbadagnaand also due to leakage of the various chemicals found in them... they render any farmland they're used on unfit for farming, grazing indefinitely.
That‘s why what we really need is a transition of mindset. As Stephen Emmott said ten years ago: We must consume less, much less, much less of everything. I am following that path for years now, and it‘s fun and liberation.
No better and yet both exponentially better than the presidents we got instead of them. We can't even get leaders who understand the greenhouse effect (which a 5th grader understands). We are doomed....
A growing pit in the stomach. Yes. The consequences rolling out before us, just as with climate tipping-point obfuscation (the indelicacies of well-siloed 'information')... You can sort of see the point of the obfuscation -- it's like the IPPC leaving methane out of their calculations. It's news which, were it taken seriously, would cause chaos. Well, it will anyway... sigh... Thanks for the care and intelligence you bring to the world, sir.
While certainly sobriety, if not degrowth, will be a mandatory basis for the solving the crises (climate, biodiversity,..), the growth in energy use over the centuries should be put in the context of the rapid increase of the human population. The per-capita figures are much less shocking. This points to the fact that, given that we are going to have a population crash towards the end of this century, there might be far more renewal of energy sources than assumed here.
Emmanuel Todd is having theories about some direct relation between the family structure, the language, implying then some political proximities around differents values. Would maybe be worth inviting him too?
Disappointing. 1) Yes, it is good to hear someone who appreciates wood as a primary energy source. 2) No, cement is not a good thing. The embedded energy of cement is HUGE. About a year ago I read an article in La Dépêche (local French newspaper) quoting a scientist who maintained that the tokamak fusion reactor being built north of Montpelier will NEVER pay back the embedded energy of its construction. [Side note: The quality of local French newspapers is far superior to that of US national newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times.] One can make the same argument about nuclear reactors and other towering monuments to the Great God Concrete. Never forget that the Roman Empire's use of cement was based on massive exploitation of human slave labor. 3) No, nuclear power is not a good thing. It has a small risk factor, but the consequences of accidents far outweigh the benefits we get. 4) Fressoz was smart to delay writing about manual labor in his book, as he clearly doesn't grok peasants. This is depressing, since he is French and French culture is very proud of its peasant underlay. I live in the Occitan and feel more at home with my peasant roots than I did in Washington state or Colorado. My EROI of food grown with mostly manual labor and a small amount of gasoline for a tiller and weed whacker is around 3.5:1.(3.5 kilocalories or kilojoules food produced for every 1 kcal or kJ of input.) You cannot beat that without slave labor. [Side note: You can run that up to 8:1 if you are willing to work your slaves to death, like the Spanish Empire did in the New World in the 16th century.] Certainly it is far, far better than the 1: 10 of industrial agriculture. (1 kcal or kJ of food produced from 10 kcal or kJ of fossil fuel energy.) 5) It is refreshing that Fressoz is conversant with the "plateau" concept; i.e. the micro view when you are on top of the saddle point of the curve. Yes, we have been on the plateau for twenty years and it has been a bumpy ride; hence the "bumpy plateau" that has been thrown around in the peak oil debate since at least 2008. 6) Fressoz, like many modern thinkers, has an underlying assumption that he never questions. This assumption is that we can "somehow" make changes that accommodate to the present overshot global population of 8.2 billion humans. This is a false assumption. It was a false assumption back in 1970 when we only had 3.5 billion as the global population. How many times do you have to listen to people like Bill Rees to get that we don't have enough planetary resources to continue in our present lifestyles? We are in overshoot, just like William Catton said in 1988. Don't you get that? Any analysis that does not include massive dieoff as one of its scenarios is intellectually bankrupt. 7) 1:05:00 "To be honest, I don't think we can learn from any historical lessons." Wow; just WOW! I live in a village rich in history from medieval times. From my garden, I can look up and see the ruined chateau of Montsegur (the last gasp of Cathar culture that was captured by siege in 1244 AD). The wider area has a lot of paleolithic roots too, like the cave paintings at Niaux that go back 17,000 years. I do appreciate Fressoz' wider comment that this time is different, but the nuts and bolts of past human adaptation is even MORE important now than it was a couple of hundred years ago before all this fossil fuel nonsense got out of control. 8) Fressoz' mention of shovels and wheelbarrows as necessary implements was good. Maybe if he goes down this road for his next book, he will get to the same appreciation I have had for the value of human labor for the last 70 years! 9) Fressoz' last comment was asking why the idea of transition didn't come up until the 1970s. Well, to be blunt, it was because of the Vietnam War and the Draft. This is US-centric of course, but the social upheavals of May 1968 in France were part of it too. Around this time something special happened and a small - very small - percentage of people around the globe "got it." They grokked it. The bus came by and they got on. I appreciate Nate having a wide variety of people on his show. However, I feel obligated to speak up and call out the poor analysis, just as I have been doing since 1968.
Jean-Babtiste if you have not read the book La Technique ou l'Enjeu du siècle by Jasques Ellul, please read it. It shows that we ended into a true "cul de sac".
More and more by humans completely depends on more and more depletion of potential energy which the other living beings had created to build more and more life and the environment for life to survive.
We need more aesthetic arguments against the visual blight & noise of industrial WIND turbines, not just math & economic angles. The need to bridge large distances w/transmission lines from remote (desecrated) areas only adds to the blight. Big Wind eco-hypocrisy is a classic case of "WHY just do something because we CAN?"
I would love him to include in his next book on human energy the irony of gyms and health clubs. We’re expending all this energy to do essentially nothing except move weights around for no reason that is actually productive.
they are not doing nothing, they are keeping your body active in an enviroment where being sessile is easy, this is absolutely necessary bevause your body operates on use it or lose it, from bone strength to tendons and yes muscles, in addition skeletal muscle is most of your body weight, you cannot just neglect that organ and expect your health not to suffer for it, even your joints nutrient diffusion is dependent upon physical motion for optimal joint health
@@TS-jm7jm Sweetheart I know this. I’m a public health professional who establishes outdoor exercise classes in public parks. So I’m fully aware of the benefits of exercise, social interaction, and exposure to nature as a package. I’m just also aware of the irony that we need to fill the gap in activity that all this technology creates for us, by movement that accomplishes no work in the process.
@@nancercizeriveting stuff, toots. I’m sure he should include a chapter in his next book on a question that could be answered by any 10th grade who hasn’t had a lobotomy. Very insightful and also simultaneously condescending.
Jean-Baptiste is right, the real limit for our future is the cost of the "transition". The CAPEX to replace 137'000 TWh of primary fossil energy by 100'000 TWh of carbon-neutral electricity is much too high. Sweden produces some carbon-neutral steel with hydrogen and arc-furnaces. The steel simply costs 3 times more even though Sweden has cheap hydroelectricity.
Carbon-neutral steel, or cement, cost between 25 and 75% extra... NOT 3 times more. And that premium is shrinking every year. CAPEX to go 100% renewable energy is LESS than the cost of business as usual. You should inform yourself a bit better, mon ami!
The entire concept of the world reducing its energy use is a non starter. The entire populations of the second and third worlds aspire to the same standard of living as the industrialized world. Unless the prosperous countries are willing to actively hold the poorer countries back than energy consumption will continue to grow.
Yes and these exact points are discussed in about 100 of the other episodes of this podcast, thankfully. Sadly, partly for the very fact that you are mentioning, I think we are blindly headed to disaster like a slow train wreck.
Steel tubes for drilling? What about 3 million miles of steel pipelines just in the U.S., then all the trains, trucks, supertankers, ports, refineries, storage tanks, gas stations, it's unbelievable how much mining is required for oil and gas.
Both concrete and asphalt are used in road construction. Concrete lasts longer, but asphalt is 40% cheaper to install, so it's used more. But one can't build bridges out of asphalt!
but in context of .... some forced choices! if you want to eat, breath, drink clean water & still use tec.... manage decline or crash hard & still have breathing, drinking & eating problems
Most of the material for industrial civilization is mined or drilled from more than one mile under the surface. More than 100 Billion tons (not including waste or unused material) / year is currently being mined to build and maintain civilization. None of this energy is included in current "climate science". Rotational inertia, also called moment of inertia, is directly proportional to the square of the distance from the axis of rotation, meaning that as the distance from the axis increases, the rotational inertia of an object also increases significantly; essentially, the farther the mass is distributed from the axis, the harder it is to change its rotational motion The basic formula for rotational inertia of a point mass is I = mr^2, where "m" is the mass and "r" is the distance from the axis of rotation. Interpretation: This formula shows that the rotational inertia is directly proportional to the square of the distance from the axis. Impact on rotation: A larger rotational inertia means it takes more torque to change the angular velocity of an object. Example: Imagine a spinning ice skater with their arms outstretched. When they pull their arms closer to their body, they decrease their distance from the axis of rotation, which reduces their rotational inertia and causes them to spin faster "Hydroelectricity" is in NO WAY "decarbinizing" at all. Where does concrete come from? How much diesel and coal is REQUIRED for acquiring concrete by mass? What is the thermal capacitance of that concrete? Add the constant energy from the change in the concrete's change in moment of inertia. Apply this same process to the materials of solar panels and their components. Do the same for wind turbines. Anyone promoting "alternatives" is blind to physics.
Changing cultural objectives and pushing the social tipping point to systemic change is on the table with Elise Lilliehöök. Our biggest challenge is collaboration and egotism unfortunately. We are not born with ego and its as real as water in a mirage. Inner development Erik Fernholm and Tomas Björkman could explain this. The 340 million tonnes of waste that enters our environment is a huge factor in our climate situation. We have some solutions that is in a thread of The Great simplification. Excuse my Dyslexic thinkers brain way of thinking. Its OVERWHELMING complexity yet simple.
25:00 I think you are correct it's rubbish to believe we will decarbonize our own actions.. 1:02:00 But it will. 1:05:30 If you want a history lesson about falling economies, look at Julius Nepos (c. 430-480) was the last legitimate Western Roman emperor. Hypothesis : the bear of roman lumber.
UK uses gas for about half of electricity, but uses more energy for heating which is about 98% gas and electricity is around 17% of total energy. Edit Funny, now because of coal it is asking us to do less.
Mind-blowing realisation about neglected angles of energy usage. You might also want to talk to Aurore Stéphant, a mining engineer in France also who did a captivating three hour interview on mining and extraction in 2022 and again in 2023 with a total of 4 millions views.The podcast is called Thinkerview and english subtitles are available. ua-cam.com/video/xx3PsG2mr-Y/v-deo.html&pp=ygUbYXVyb3JlIHN0ZXBoYW50IHRoaW5rZXJ2aWV3
Never came to this podcast so I am new here - and I guess we are on the same side. But... I have the huge impression that you are on the typical American way to SELL something. There is so much "weight" in what you (but also Fressoz) say and the emphasis on "the great simplification" for me sounds like pure commercial branding. Yeah - green growth very likes is BS. We are talking about this for many years. And of course all those who want to not change our economical system at all or even want to intensify our economical system want to create narratives of "green growth" and any other crap that just means to go on with what we are doing for roughly 200-250 years now in so called "industrialized" countries. And I guess what you want to say is: STOOOOOOOPPPPPP - and rethink our whole economical and sociological approach to our life. So what folks like Marx, Adorno, Baudrillard and many other thinkers did in the last (also) 200 years cause they noticed that our huge "transition" (and this really is one) of our whole society that we call "capitalistic" must be FURTHER transformed into a more healthy "system". Did I understand your approach correct? Is this in the end your goal? Communicate that we should be more interested in a healthy way of living within our society and (natural) environment? If so - nice. But its a bit weird that I have so much trouble to find this out 😀 - and its even weirder that in the beginning I have a huge impulse to click away cause most of what I hear sounds like you do some total never heard of groundbreaking new approach. That I dont see at all. (Sociological the term "systems" got really huge with Niklas Luhmann). Anyway - try to listen to the end and in some other of your interviews. And even if we are on the same side and I understood in the few minutes the approach you are following... I will stay critical like always 🙂
please stay critical - but there are hundreds of hours of content here that build a story. Watch the 30 min animation as a starter. I dont want to stay 'STOOPP' because we won't - I want to prepare society en route to protecting (whats left of) the biosphere on the downslope of the carbon pulse. ua-cam.com/video/bE7Bbnvf4ko/v-deo.htmlsi=lwkw12SKnuXeTQ93
After studying the topic of global energy from 1996 and associated global warming a few facts provide a view of the future. Actual timing and rate of collapse is difficult. But more like years not decades. That is my educated guess only. The only years that consumption of fossil fuels did not increase were 2009 and 2020. Global production of crude oil as opposed to liquid fuels that is what is quoted as oil, has decline since 2019. The moving average of volumes of new discoveries of crude oil are about 10% of consumption. US decline of oil production is 42% a year. Global production of oil is declining at 15% per year. Increasing drilling in known reserves of oil is required to maintain supply. Global warming is accelerating spreading of the hot dry tropical zones (hot deserts) from the equator to the poles. Causing droughts and wild fires, destroying many large agricultural areas. Global debt has escalated to some 400% of global GDP. The ability to fund change is not available. While there are many possible triggers for collapse of, economic, sociatial, food supply etc., an oil price above about US$130/barrel is a near certainty.
He is aware of the use of pit props on a global scale - some marginal backwards mines in backwoods America does not comprise a refutation. I challenge you to provide some detailed evidence to substantiate your nitpickery: Total wood pit props in USA Total wood pit props globally Total non-wood pit props technology globally THEN you may or may not have established one single proto-point
The last time, I heard someone say, "We're going to colonize Mars " I looked at my imaginary wristwatch and said, "Great. What time are you leaving?"
Hey..it's only 140 000 000 km away..on a good day...
@@mmraike Golgafrincham Ark Ship B, was it?
😂
Imagine the resort like temperatures of -85F (-65C). What air? In fact, who needs air anyway? The views will only be obstructed by the space suit you have to wear when you are outside. But who needs to go outside? Mars here we come!
Nobody is planning on Mars trips - its a cover story to justify all the rocketry. Elon and buddies want to build sky weapons to kill all competitors. He has watched too much James Bond. I don't believe all these billionaire psychos are blind to the facts facing humanity. They know as we know, and work hard to prepare .
The fact that I disagree with a few technical points does not necessarily mean that I am right, and that JBF is wrong. It also does not mean that I found his presentation without merit, as I did find it valuable. It also may be valuable to minimize a much larger discussion about some peripheral items that may take a longer time to likely come to the same basic point. With that said...
Aluminum production IS specifically an electrically demanding process -there are likely more economic/technical/land use reasons aluminum facilities are not really located near nuclear plants, but aluminum does directly soak up lots of electricity. Aluminum was more expensive than gold by weight until the mid-to-late 1800's when an electric (not heat) process was commercialized.
Fertilizer production as an offshoot of military needs for explosives - there might be a "what came first, chicken or egg" thing with artificial nitrates for fertilizers/explosives. Depletion of local topsoils was a serious discussion throughout Europe, probably prior to the 19th century. The Haber-Bosch process, by with much of our artificial fertilizers are produced with nat gas today, was at least as much informed by specifically *non-Colonial power* Germany's agricultural concerns as it was military. The coal-rich, hydro poor Germany was at the time that is.
As related to the above two items- The Norsk Hydro hydro-electric enterprise was initially created to produce agricultural fertilizers in Norway using an electrically demanding process that became no longer able to compete with the above mentioned Haber-Bosch Process. At which point Norsk Hydro eventually pivoted primarily to aluminum production. Norsk Hydro continues to be one of the largest aluminum companies worldwide.
Regards steel- much of humanity's steel supply is from recycled content now, largely using electric arc furnaces. IIRC, virgin steel is more coal-dependent, but a substantially lower percentage of production. This has been a big part of recent discussions around Japanese companies wanting to buy US/UK virgin steel facilities.
Not mentioned regards steel/iron- "steel" is a product of iron resulting from alloying discoveries made economical in the mid 1800's. The oil rigs, and steel-dependent industry post 1860 could not really have happened as easily with pre-1860 (Bessemer Process) cast iron. Advances in metallurgy/alloys have dramatically reduced the needs for metals in structures over time.
Thank you for reading annoying-ass long comment. -sry
@@57stapler There are interesting things going down in fertiliser world. Multiple startups working plasma fertiliser made from electricity and water. Extracting nitrogen from atmosphere. Steel. Boston metals direct electrification solution replaces the blast furnace. We can run these new processes with wood no?
The only solution to the current consumptive lifestyle has to mean slowing down. Substituting one technology with another never results in less consumption. Jevons paradox. Humans will never voluntarily reduce their consumption. I.e, we are fucked. x
Electricity intensive products like aluminium or fertilizer would be a great way to use plentiful solar energy in sunny desert areas, if the furnaces can be modulated according to the daily cycle. Remember, 1 kW/m2 sunlight means 1 GW per km2 (reduced by the efficiency of solar panels, but you get the idea). This would also help spread industrial activity more evenly across the planet. The input (bauxite) and finished goods (alu) are easy to transport in bulk. For fertilizer, we can pull the nitrogen out of the air anywhere. Glass or silicon = sand + power. We just need to hit the "singularity point" where PV feeds an ever increasing production of solar modules.
The vast majority of steel is produced from iron ore and coking coal, small percentage from scrap and electric arc
Yes but Nate won’t address this, doesn’t fit the agenda
I loved and much appreciated your talk with Jean Baptiste, Nate. I would like that you invite him back. Thank you
I have a roundtable in mind…
@@thegreatsimplificationGreat idea.
i just read his book, "moreo, more, more". Great read and highy recommendable.
I'm on the wait list at my local library to read this book! So happy that Nate is interviewing Mr Fressoz.
I read his book (the French version) in just two days, my record for a book that size. It is that good!
I think complexity (discussed around 43:00) is a significantly underlooked aspect of changing the way we live.
We have many developing technologies that seemed poised to tackle many of the problems of the polycrisis, but almost all of them are highly complex, sophisticated, high-tech, "high entropy" devices - fusion, fuel cells, even wind turbines require highly sophisticated generators and solar panels are somewhat akin to computer chips - extremely fine and precise components.
TRUE sophistication is simplicity; "the best part is no part, the best process is no process". I don't know what this entails in application to solving all our problems, but I feel like the path we are going down to solve the metacrisis is not the right one.
Organization is another vastly overlooked aspect of civilization - in fact it might be the most key aspect - and organizations of all kind, friends, family, colleagues, fraternal, etc. - are all on the decline globally.
How can we solve our problems if we can't coordinate and collaborate? Some say AGI/ASI will also excel at this skill of organization - and it may be that we may need it to get us out of the hole we have dug ourselves. But I hope I am wrong.
An interesting point, it raises a few questions. Is true sophistication simplicity, or just simplicity from the human perspective? For example, the most simple form of sustenance is for me to simply gather (and nurture) that which is on my doorstep, allowing nature to create its abundance. However, in this example, nature's processes are highly complex, sophisticated and beautiful, whereas I simply observe and collect in a way that humans have done since their evolution - effortlessly and knowingly.
Secondly, there's a definite paradox between the hyper complex system we have created, in that its outputs are increasingly homogeneous. Whether it be monocrops, suburban housing, franchise shops and restaurants, social medias, modern music and increasingly women's faces (eyebrows, Botox, lip enhancements, wrinkle removal etc etc), the increasing complexity has actually led to a dearth of originality or variety.
I wonder, then, if we haven't increased complexity at all? If we have actually just tipped a scale - decreasing nature's complexity, whilst increasing the pale imitation of human [built] complexity? I certainly think that is the case. Of course, what comes hand-in-hand with that approach (likely driven by ego, and definitely by separation) is ever increasing abstraction of us from what is. We're entirely abstracted from our basic needs, entirely abstracted from nature and our political systems (certainly any based on the nebulous representative democracy) entirely abstracted from our day to day experience.
I'm not proposing an answer here. I don't believe it'll come from AI, which is simply a tool of, and for, our existing system.
I'm glad to see a guest who is connected with reality. Often the guests can be delusional (unrealistically optimistic, lacking knowledge) about history and the realities of the situation.
It is refreshing to listen to people who back up their statements with numbers & then provide historical context for these numbers by comparing with past realities.
"Often the guests can be delusional..." You mean on Hagens' channel, or just general woo-woo that pollutes UA-cam?
Most of those also have a financial interest in techno-solutionist ventures.
"I have so many questions." Now makes me laugh in every episode
Fundamentally, the rock-bottom truth of the matter is that greed more than wisdom has propelled humanity to the unsustainable moment we now live in. Sadly, that self-destructive human trait has reached a crescendo at the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century. We, as a species, know better. Most of the conversations that occur on TGS attest to that reality. This particular conversation is very german to the issue. WE KNOW BETTER. We live at a moment in history in which unfettered greed has overwhelmed common sense. Ominously, the greediest of the lot, our current world leaders in politics and commerce, have utter control over our collective future. Wisdom is our most endangered "natural resource". Blind greed is not. As corny as it may seem Joni Mitchell encapsulated the idea when she poetically asserted that "we've paved paradise and put up a parking lot".
@@treefrog3349 yes greed and egotism. The planet is not a natural resource, its a source and life support system. I believe we can still optimistically make a cultural shift objective . I have a concept that given a chance could show a new way. It starts with the individual and needs a community. I may not be a scientist nor best with words. Dyslexic thinkers brain thinking out of the box. A new way of paying back the favour to nature "Janine Benyus " and a new way of paying it forward.
It's a common mistake to project your knowledge, ethics, and morality on others. The reality is that a tiny fraction of people "know better" about declining EROEI, and an even smaller fraction prefer a moral response to simply eliminating competition for the resources. See the energy consumption per capita by year in Ukraine for example and then try to unsee why the population there is being decimated.
What you want, and what I want, is a moral response rather than "the most energy efficient" response because you see a different layer of efficiency embodied in a peaceful decline rather than a violent one.
But don't be mistaken, the "species" is far more concerned with Taylor Swift's lyrics than EROEI. As evidenced by her hundreds of millions of views compared to the mere thousands of viewers here.
It's probably more a "tragedy of the commons" situation combined with the fact that one person's consumption habits won't make 0.0000001% of a difference.
That said, there are greedy people with businesses that do make larger differences with their pollution (chemicals, short product life cycles, etc) and choices to make another dollar instead of a less profitable choice that is better for the environment. That is where The People and Governments need to step in with laws and force to protect The Commons from corporations acting without regard to the environmental costs.
Its beyond greed at this stage. Its being carried along by it own momentum. 8 billion people going about thier business is beyond morals and the ability of some sort of "rational" planning.
Just an FYI, China, India, and Africa don't see the world or humanity in such a negative light. They see people as inherently good and they try to let other nations be. It's our European colonized mindset which paints everyone else as "greedy & selfish" and looks for zero-sum arguments like "carbon budgets" and "carrying capacity" which never account for advancing technology. China is building more solar panels than anyone. They're designing space-based solar farms that send power back via microwave. Something American engineers have known about since before 1990 but which aren't bothered to be researched by our short-term profit mindset. China does not have this short term, "no planning because planning is evil communism" mindset.
The figures for the vast amount of wood still being burnt are a real eye-opener.
The flames do look pretty though. We live in the UK and don’t strictly need to burn wood in the open fireplace in our lounge but it’s nice to occasionally when friends visit.
@@glyngreen538 Also UK and I'm sitting in front of our woodburner right now. We use it all winter.
That was also covered in the documentary "Planet of the Humans."
Yeh tell China and America and India that😂😂😂...
@@JPCoetzee The numbers aren't from home woodstoves. The US & EU foolishly allow wood-burning power plants to be considered "renewable" because trees can regrow. Not realizing that trees take up potential farm & park land, which is not unlimited. Humans can get "free fiber" if we switch our corn & soy crops to hemp. Same acreage, more yield, less soil damage. That's where I want to see research, development, and government grants.
I'm pretty sure that several times when he says "1900s", he meant to say "19th century". But if you assume just a mis speaking here at these times, the statements make perfect sense.
Merci Nate d'avoir invité J-B Fressoz, je l'adore. This guy is amazing !
I keep trying to walk my mind through the maze looking for the end. Over and over again I run into the problem of interest bearing debt. It's what pulls us forward no matter what we think or feel. Columbus crossed the sea to pay off a debt to a king and queen who themselves were trying to pay off a debt. Usury is why GDP 'has to' go up. The currency of nature is carbon. It is brought into circulation by plants and taken out of circulation by animals. Nature grows and de-grows at the same time. It's debt always paid forward instead of back.
Thanks for another thoughtful episode
The good thing about debt which is owed to central banks (most debt today) is that it can be deleted by central bank coordination through the BIS. The bad thing is that many people don't believe this. Humanity is on a collision course and all we have to do is change the heading. Write down debt, tax carbon, eliminate most BS jobs, pay people to build eco-housing (actual 100+ year construction, 18 inch thick walls, etc) and permaculture. Switching ethanol corn to hemp, along with GMO cotton & soy, can sequester hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 per year. Rock dams in the American Southwest can sequester millions of tons/year. Stone age technology. The problem is the mentality and sacred cows, like "debt must be repaid"
@@Nphen "Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple."
-Bill Mollison
Hello Nate. Thanks a lot for this podcast. Haven't listened to it yet, but I'm a huge fan of Mr Fressoz. He has really a highly important message! Cannot be broadcasted and promoted enough.
Another fascinating episode. There is so much dogma in the "debate" .... meanwhile that same debate is just people proposing their favorite deckchair formation on the Titanic.
There do exist optimal deck chair formations, and none of these include fossil fuels.
Nuclear fission stabilizing a wind, solar grid. This is a great way forward.
@ Still does not address the problem of overshoot. The Titanic still would have sunk if it were nuclear powered. Maybe if it had been a sailing boat....
Limiting climate change doesn’t have to solve overshoot to be worth it.
@@SigFigNewton In theory, I agree, but the reality will just bring us to further overshoot. There is no replacement of energy, just addition. Some doomers would argue no, it's better to make minimum impact for the future biosphere. Pretty dark I know.
Thanks for the invitation, i'm french, i read his book, it's excellent.
Another insightful and useful analysis. Thanks, Nate.
My main disagreement to what was said would be the claim that the Western Empire (centred in UK/US) wasn't inherently violent. The whole premise of empire, like the nation-state, is predicated in violence and the threat of violence. Capitalism doesn't happen without it.
The invasion of the euroTyrranies onto Turtle Island was as inherently violent and vicious as could be imagined.
Those prim proper pretentious Limeys who created an entire industry to mass-extract beaver's just so those pompous stuffed shirts could wear formal hats...
They imagined themselves to be the very pinnacle of human creation and yet were more violent and degraded and despicable than the indigenous people who they treated with contempt and derision - on all the continents on which the sun shines
Agreed. The USA has been at peace for only 17 years of its existence. England did things a bit differently - most of their celebrated explorers are referred to as pirates by the places they visited.
Sure, but that's life, right? Violence and the threat of violence are important tools of communication. The threat of violence (banishment in the nicest form) is what keeps a community together.
Wrong. The colonialism and violence of white Europeans against non whites was intentional done differently than the violence within Europe. This would take you less than thirty seconds of learning about colonial and European war and law to find out@@EastWindCommunity1973
@@EastWindCommunity1973 Then you have a broken concept of what community means, destorted by the mentality normalised under capitalism.
I would love to see Nate interview Blair Fix. He and his colleagues very interesting things to say about the nature of growth and of energy intensity.
I love listening to talks that make me feel like a dummy. Bravo! 👏👏👏
Thank you both for this extremely enlightening conversation, and your questions were excellent.
Thank you Nate for inviting Jean Baptiste Fressoz, I am French American, I think he brings a great perspective. You had Jancovici, now Fressoz,...is Arthur Keller next?
Oh, yes, interviewing Arthur Keller, systemic risks specialist, would be a great idea!
Arthur is much less on the communication scale compared to the 2 other people unfortunately...@@superpieton
Another fascinating mind-expanding conversation.
This was such a fascinating and thought-provoking discussion, cheers!
thanks
China's primary motivation to expand electric vehicles is to minimize their limited and potentially constrained access to oil. I do not believe that the CCP would make political, economic, or military sacrifices in order to contribute to a healthy climate.
and internal air pollution
@@thegreatsimplificationthat’s the main reason in China for favoring electric cars in Chinese cities. 😊
Let's be real. None of us actually know what China would or wouldn't do. Everything we hear about China is either their propaganda or US propaganda. We can make guesses at what they might do and why. But they're really just guesses.
@@thegreatsimplification A study released earlier this week found that the human brain now contains an entire plastic spoon's worth of microplastic particles (7 grams), and a significant proportion of those particles are probably finding their way into the brain via the inhalation of dust from automobile tires. Electric cars, due to their extra weight, produce 20% more tire dust than cars with internal combustion engines.
Half way through I realized that he is co-author of „The Shock of the Anthropocene“ which I read a few years ago, a really fascinating and eye opening book that connects history and ecology in multiple ways, very much recommended.
Another fantastic interview. Thanks Nate
amazing jean!
" Maybe put a picture of Homer Simpson on the book ". Thanks for chuckle in this insane world of energy, they are far and few between.
Cheers for the podcast to both of you.
Love the book, it's a true masterpiece!
Merci beaucoup from a Canadian born now living full-time in New Zealand, perhaps you may think of visiting here one day? Keep up the good work. Nate.
Unfortunately just „visiting“ someone in New Zealand is not compatible with a sustainable future. Transcontinental air traffic is only one step under space traffic, an incredible luxury.
Interesting perspective on wood and its use as pit props. What is really scary is when you go down an old mine and find that wood is still there, slowly decaying and failing, an ongoing release of carbon still continuing. I still remember going down a old metal mine in Coed y Brenin and seeing a open stope full of water with what seemed like hundreds of tree trunks holding the rock walls apart -scary.
Some of the many mine exploration videos give a feel for how scary those places can be.
The only carbon capture and storage that has ever worked.
Yes I often lay awake all night worrying about this.
YES!!!!! cant wait to watch it thank you Nate. Vive la France!
Excellent Merci 😊
Nate et Jean-Baptiste, merci beaucoup. I learned a lot from J-B's analysis of the symbiosis of energy systems. With respectful humour, however, I'll just add that decoding his accent also requires a lot of unaccounted-for energy, even if French is my first language :)))
As an English Spanish speaker I understood him! Great interview Nate. Keep going.
@@ouimetco Oh, it was not impossible and I did understood it all, but it was work, hence my joke! Yes, superb interview!
@@jeanrajotte946 It's been difficult to try to split my brain to both listen & read through the comments. This is what I typically do while listening, even though I always reach the same conclusion after every episode that, WASFd
@@ouimetco Whoever (or whatever) made the subtitles didn't completely understand him, though.
Nice talk. Learned a lot of new things here.
His book title... Is more or less what I am telling myself for decades now. This is the following...
The 'more more more' attitude has no limits. The 'less less less' attitude does. It is unsettling to see you need more and more to be satisfied. It is satisfying to see you can manage life with less and less.
I try to bear this in mind. But sometimes I forget. I guess maybe we are wired that way. On the other hand... The form of capitalism prevailing this last century indoctrinates people with the scarcity idea: there is never enough, so we need more and more. So at least it creates a battle in our heads.
I don't really agree with the thesis.
for example coal v wood. Coal allowed the industrial revolution, There aren't enough trees for that to happen. we moved to coal because there weren't enough trees. The energy transition isn't happening because there aren't enough hydrocarbons.
This is more akin from ships moving from sail to steam. They didn't run out of wind. There was plenty of wind, but wind has issues, which caused people to move away from it.
Or slavery. we decided that slavery was bad and stopped it. We didn't use more slaves, even though labour demand has risen.
Good points. On the slavery issue, you might want to consider a deeper dive into slavery. For example, I incorporate corvee (obligate slavery) into the overall term, while many people only consider chattel slavery (ownership as private property). The bottom line for me is if they put you in jail if you don't do the obligation. In my formulation the military draft was slavery because they put you in jail if you resisted. Many people disagree.
@wvhaugen for the purpose of the argument I don't think it matters. Society decided that chattel slavery was wrong and got rid of it.
I suppose a more direct analogy is rather than having slaves rub you and breathe air on you to warm you up. You build a coal mine and have the slaves mine the coal.
That's the thesis being proposed. But we have decided that chattel slavery is wrong, just like emitting co2 is bad. So we aren't going to send the slaves down a mine as an alternative because it misses the point. They are free.
Yes there are other forms of slavery, some of which we have decided are wrong. But we've also phased out ozone gases, and leaded fuel.
Bonjour from Western Australia. Thanks for your podcasts x
Great interview!
great one!
I've been waiting for this! Can't wait to get home and watch. Unfortunately, the book isn't out in the US until August.
EXCELLENT WORK GUYS!!💥SHINE BRIGHT!!💥🙌💪
AUSTRALIA!!🤍💙❤️💥👊
In the end, it's really about population.
Much gratitude for your channel and the guest you choose to highlight.
The superorganism will collapse into caos and anarchy due to famine,violence and abrupt die off of Homo sapiens!!! I hope I will not be alive whwn this happens
yes however a sustainable population is not only a function of numbers of people, its also a function of consumption/person. So here it is noted that a car requires more energy to produce than the car will use to drive for however many years its is driven.
@rd264
You're correct
It‘s about a special part of the population. G7 and G20 countries produce 85% of global CO2 emissions.
No it is not mainly about population. If with a "magic wand" you would halve the population immediately, but kept an economic growth rate of 3%, after 25 years the size of the economy (and its ecological impact) would be the same.
I live in a area that produces loads of Eucalyptus Timber here in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
The area devoted to this plantation only grew since I was young forty years ago.
This timber is used as:
Charcoal for churrasco* cooking and steal production.
Thin timber for cooking**, fencing and support during construction of new brick and mortar housing.
Strong wood for roofing, small cheap furniture and wood art. But other timbers are preferred for those applications.
* Churrasco is cooking, mainly meats, over a red hot charcoal. Yes Churrasco is almost a synonymous of Barbecue.
* Is a tradition here to cook in a open wood burning stove even if you have a gas burning stove.
Glad you had me read the book before the podcast.
This conversation reminds me of the book, Food, Energy and Society by D & M Pimentel. Recommended if folks need any more convincing of these arguments. Enabling degrowth on a personal and societal level is where my personal interests and career is focused these days.
Be happy and own nothing, you have a extremely interesting way of saying you want to crash economies and let people live in poverty.
@@mikethebloodthirstyBend, not break. Grind to a halt, not crash. And achieve global levels of consumption that do not impoverish all of the biosphere around us.
@mikethebloodthirsty, with respect, framing degrowth as simply "wanting to crash economies and make people live in poverty" is a textbook strawman. It completely misrepresents the concept. Degrowth is a reasoned argument for a planned transition away from unsustainable levels of consumption and production, particularly of non-essential goods, towards a more sustainable and equitable economy. The goal is enhanced well-being and ecological stability, not poverty. Anyone seriously considering wealth today understands that GDP growth is a myopic and incomplete metric. Real wealth includes quality of life, social cohesion, and a healthy environment. Degrowth argues that we can become demonstrably richer in these crucial areas - healthier, more connected, more fulfilled - while simultaneously reducing our environmental impact and reliance on fossil fuels. To cling to the idea that infinite consumption is the only path to wealth and happiness is, frankly, a tragically limited vision, and a root cause of the predicament we are in. Despite best intentions, the spoils of growth go to a few, and calls for more growth serve those ends.
@@mikethebloodthirsty nice straw man... Not what degrowth is at all.
@@vexy1987 "degrowth" is a very poor choice of terminology. Zero PR points awarded.
Thanks again, Nate, for a very thought-generating conversation. You are certainly a rare interlocutor with two good ears and time. You've come into this from the energy side, obviously, and you keep bringing energy-wise people to your podcast. But also a whole array of people with other entry points, like Sunita Narain, Jeremy Grantham, Suzanne Simard, Stefan Rahmstorf, Mamphela Ramphele, Chuck Watson, Nora Bateson, Simon Michaux etc. I would very much like if you could catch Walter Jehne, micro-biologist from Australia, who has another eye-opening story to tell about the hydrological cycle (the most important greenhouse gas, water vapour) and the value of the SOIL CARBON SPONGE!!!
I know of him. Can you introduce?
@@thegreatsimplification I wrote a reply. Did you get it? It has disappeared!
Windmills do NOT produce electricity!!! Stop calling wind turbines windmills!!! Windmills produce flour with machines that are powered by the wind. Wind turbines produce electricity with completely different machines that are also powered by the wind. If you try to produce electricity with a windmill it will fail. And if you try to produce flour with a wind turbine it will also fail. Calling a wind turbine a windmill is the same thing as calling a hair dryer a washing machine because both are powered by an electric motor. Just stop doing it because it is incredibly stupid.
And wind turbines produce electricity with machines (turbines) that are powered by wind... And if you try to produce electricity with a windmill, il will succeed : just replace the flour melter by a rotor and a stator... A thing that turns when wind blows on it is a thing that turns when wind blows on it...
Stimulating conversation, thank you.
November 2018, peak of the carbon pulse. Can I get context please? A link? Is that in the super organism article?
here is backdrop and context: ua-cam.com/video/mxqxq4sUfh8/v-deo.htmlsi=RCpNrxBmfoA4YQ4J watch first 5-6 min here for update. www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/83-artificial-intelligence-and-the-lost-ark I am working on longer update. Answer is 'it depends. But from generational/century standpoint we are close to peak of carbon pulse. As to which year/decade, that is extremely nuanced
@thegreatsimplification thank you very much!
@@thegreatsimplification But what do you make of Art Berman's perplexing article "Peak Oil: Requiem for a Failed Paradigm" (Feb. 3, 2025)?
@@dbadagna I agree w much of what Art wrote - but the confusion is on his language. his main point was that as a PARADIGM 'Peak Oil' was failed - he wasn't saying (I don't think) that Peak Oil itself is false. (it is an obvious truism by first principles). btw - here is from my very first post on theoildrum almost 20 years ago!: theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/7/235952/0498 "unless the EIA changes their definitions, what we are currently calling "Peak Oil" will be obfuscated (and delayed) by increasing amounts of alternative energies that are now being definitionally included as 'oil' in the headline number.
As long as we use EIA production numbers as the benchmark, Peak Oil will silently morph into Peak Liquids. This is relevant because the definitional layers we add on top of 'crude oil' are not equal in what they provide to society. It is also relevant in that the logistical heuristic used by M. King Hubbert was not intended to include corn and sugar cane derived ethanol, tar sands, or Natural Gas Liquids in its predictive theory of oil basin depletion. The concept of Peak Oil, already not widely believed, will start to be very confusing, and probably even more combative."
@@thegreatsimplification Alice Friedemann proposes the 2018 article by by Richard Heinberg entitled "Our Bonus Decade" as a possible rebuttal to Art Berman.
Recomendations: think of the utility of what we consume. Good easy start. Stop flying, stay near home, study and enjoy your neighbourhood, "love miles" are still pollution, be outspoken that you cannot respect those who assume a right to dump their pollution on you and your family. Would they accept a load compost into their front yard? If not why is it so strange that o object to fossil fuel sourced CO2 burned for selfish trivial reasons?
So a 15 min city fan? I guess you would sign up to a carbon credit score?
I keep trying to give him credence, but he keeps saying things like electricity doesn't help producing aluminum, which is just wrong. Aluminum is effectively solid electricity. I have been inside a modern electric aluminum smelter, with potlines stretching kilometers, standing on bus-bars carrying hundreds of thousands of amps.
Aluminum manufacture is something that can be done with a very tiny carbon signature. Sure, you need carbon electrodes (each pot is basically a carbon arc furnace), but that is a tiny part of the overall system. Similar things exist for steel.
And I get that the current economic system has sets of characteristics that tend to make it consume all that is economically available, and economics in that sense tends to ignore everything it can and count only the shortest term costs it can get away with. At a more abstract level that can be seen as a general attribute of computational systems generally (which includes all life), that the successful ones tend to approximate a Hamiltonian that over the contexts experienced tends to optimize the system to deliver survivable systems with least time to compute. The deep problem with that, is that in times of exponential change, that rearward (deep past) looking optimization tends to fail, and many of the heuristics that worked in the past no longer work in the new contexts present and emerging. To get ahead of that game requires multi level recursive abstraction and modeling of some very complex strategic systems.
When one has spent a few decades exploring that, then you meet all manner of edge cases and exceptions to every rule, and there are some general principles that do actually work in most contexts most of the time, and they are not what common dogma says. Contrary to popular dogma that competition enhances freedom, the exact opposite is actually the case. Competition is always present in a sense, and in a deeper sense it is cooperation that actually maintains complexity long-term, and actually delivers maximum freedom in practice. Purely competitive systems tend to reduce complexity, and optimize for current contexts (which reduces the options available in practice, thus reducing real freedom), which can look like economic and engineering efficiency, but at the same time it also tends to reduce systemic resilience to any level or dimension of "shock", and if taken too far leads to extinction.
Real freedom requires responsibility to be survivable, and that always asks more of us than we are comfortable giving; and if you are concerned about your own long term existence, or that of your family or anyone or anything else, then it is what is required.
So I agree with the general thesis, that left to its current set of incentives, markets tend to consume all available energy; but disagree with the other general thesis that Jean-Baptiste seems to keep saying, that there are no engineering alternatives. There are. They are in place and tested and working. But so long as there is more profit to be made from the old ones, then they will persist within the current economic and political systems. Thus it is systemic reform, at the deepest of levels, that is demanded.
We have some profound complexity ahead of us.
I agree the current system cannot solve the issues we have within its current set of incentive structure.
I have been saying for 20 years that fundamental economic reform is required for survival. I am now saying that such reform is demanded urgently.
It is not longer a "nice to have sometime in the future", it is now a "required to be started this year" sort of process.
And it will be complex, because enabling of both freedom and responsibility is demanded. The current default response of using regulations instead of responsibility is not working. Regulations need to be there only to enable us to curb the irresponsible, not to overly constrain the responsible. The rule of law, and currently conceived of by many, is insufficient for the change and complexity we currently face. It has essentially been gamed by multiple levels of cheating strategy, many within the legal and political systems.
The task is difficult, and not yet impossible, and it is both urgent and difficult, and I empathize with you Nate, because we need to see all the many real levels of difficulty actually present, if we are to successfully resolve them all in the time available.
Survival demands change on scales and at rates that we have no historical precedent for.
It still seems doable to me, and I have been thinking about it for 60 years.
We need real diversity, many different trials of possible ways, at every level, from individual to community all the way up.
Hegemony, at any level, is not survivable. Cooperation in diversity is demanded for survival. For many, that will be hard to conceive of.
Astute comments. We used to live about two miles from Intalco (another branch of Alcoa), which was on the Georgia Strait near Ferndale in northwestern Washington state. It was a heavy, heavy consumer of electricity. We still had lower rates compared to other states because of the Bonneville Power Administration and the Columbia River, but it was well known that us peasants were subsidizing the low rates of electricy for Intalco. The upside of being on the same grid as Intalco was that power outages were fixed right quick. The plant went idle in 2020 and was finally closed in 2023. Intalco was one of those corporations that could ONLY make money in a fat economy. During the Covid lockdowns, its inefficiency was available for everyone to see, although people like me had been pointing it out for years. The Alcoa smelter in Massena, New York is still operating but it has always had a cozy subsidized supply of hydroelectric power.
Love content
Great as always, Nate. I hear a lot of Vaclav Smil reverberating through this ep. On that topic - any chance you’ll try to get Prof Smil on TGS anytime soon?
Unlikely. He said he’ll do it here if he does any, but he just wants to write books
Is geothermal energy in any equation?
Geothermal may cause earthquakes.
@@life42theuniverse trade offs, is R&D geo thermal conversion of drill baby drill waaaay better than not?
@garrenosborne9623 most heat wells are near fault lines, change in temperature implies changing the stress factor of the earth crust, implies earthquakes of unknown severity. Certainly not in an addition to drill baby drill.
@@life42theuniverseyes but Geothermal companies are getting better at working out the process behind that and siting the wells in places where that shouldn’t happen.
@glyngreen538 As long as it is not built by a billionaire, where they want it to run their super computers, regardless of damage.
That last comment were my very thoughts for the last few days. People don't really care about future generations beyond their grandchildren.... because saying that fossil fuel will last for a century is really just a blip on our species timeline anyway...the concern is only the next few decades and basically beause we might still be around, but beyond that it like that will be "their problem" mentality. Don't know, but things can seem to get a bit out of whack in our lifetimes. I almost envision the next century and the one after that perhaps going back to sort of a series of feudal states, in other words we'll go back in time, at least that's a scenario. I believe decreasing birthrates and a declining population will in the end be a blessing to be able to cope with the end of the carbon pulse (peak population might be in right in the middle of this century and then it will go down, us who are over 50 or so won't see it because our departure will be the cause of such population decline).
Assisted-living is what energy-technologies have provided more and more of since the settlement revolution which required agriculture in order to provide enough food-energy for all the specialist individuals settlements needed to become City-regions, technosphere nodes protected by armies.
I was reading about fusion in The New Yorker a few years ago and I realized, fusion would not save us, because it would spur economic growth and increase the standard of living, which means more extraction. Then I realized the same thing will happen if we transition to Solar.
Also, solar panels only last for a couple of decades before they fail and need to be replaced with new ones (produced using more fossil fuels and newly mined/refined materials).
@@dbadagnaand also due to leakage of the various chemicals found in them... they render any farmland they're used on unfit for farming, grazing indefinitely.
That‘s why what we really need is a transition of mindset.
As Stephen Emmott said ten years ago: We must consume less, much less, much less of everything. I am following that path for years now, and it‘s fun and liberation.
51:48 "for most of the human history we're not that damaging, and many countries are not that damaging"
We just had the warmest January since measurements started. Despite an expected La Ninja phase. We are on a slippery slope.
Hi, guys
When wood is used as a construction material it stores carbon, but when it is burned it emits carbon and air pollution.
Somewhere there is an excellent talk by Richard Rhoads about just this subject. Also, that dude has a great beard.
Let’s go long wood?
The pair trade: Long Wood/Short Biosphere
it will just be controlled by big wood.
He mentions John Kerry, but means Al Goore (who lost against George Bush Jr), although John Kerry is no better
No better and yet both exponentially better than the presidents we got instead of them.
We can't even get leaders who understand the greenhouse effect (which a 5th grader understands). We are doomed....
19:53 on the English coal use, how much coal do the British use in Chinese products that they consume?
39:51
What is the title of the video Fressoz is referring to?
"The Great Simplification" of course!
Always here to learn and here is the place to be !
A growing pit in the stomach. Yes. The consequences rolling out before us, just as with climate tipping-point obfuscation (the indelicacies of well-siloed 'information')... You can sort of see the point of the obfuscation -- it's like the IPPC leaving methane out of their calculations. It's news which, were it taken seriously, would cause chaos. Well, it will anyway... sigh... Thanks for the care and intelligence you bring to the world, sir.
I had difficulty understanding your comment so I went to Google translate, it came up with this 💩
We have Antonio Turiel saying this same things in Spain
Where can we find this information that includes countries CO2 emissions including imports
Type "co2 emissions per country 2024" into Google. There are several sites.
Does anyone have insight on the potential of ocean wave power? Does it have impressive power potential or is it overstated?
Possibility is contingent on the amount of energy available. Pretty easy to understand what will happen from there on.
While certainly sobriety, if not degrowth, will be a mandatory basis for the solving the crises (climate, biodiversity,..), the growth in energy use over the centuries should be put in the context of the rapid increase of the human population. The per-capita figures are much less shocking.
This points to the fact that, given that we are going to have a population crash towards the end of this century, there might be far more renewal of energy sources than assumed here.
Emmanuel Todd is having theories about some direct relation between the family structure, the language, implying then some political proximities around differents values. Would maybe be worth inviting him too?
Disappointing.
1) Yes, it is good to hear someone who appreciates wood as a primary energy source.
2) No, cement is not a good thing. The embedded energy of cement is HUGE. About a year ago I read an article in La Dépêche (local French newspaper) quoting a scientist who maintained that the tokamak fusion reactor being built north of Montpelier will NEVER pay back the embedded energy of its construction. [Side note: The quality of local French newspapers is far superior to that of US national newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times.] One can make the same argument about nuclear reactors and other towering monuments to the Great God Concrete. Never forget that the Roman Empire's use of cement was based on massive exploitation of human slave labor.
3) No, nuclear power is not a good thing. It has a small risk factor, but the consequences of accidents far outweigh the benefits we get.
4) Fressoz was smart to delay writing about manual labor in his book, as he clearly doesn't grok peasants. This is depressing, since he is French and French culture is very proud of its peasant underlay. I live in the Occitan and feel more at home with my peasant roots than I did in Washington state or Colorado. My EROI of food grown with mostly manual labor and a small amount of gasoline for a tiller and weed whacker is around 3.5:1.(3.5 kilocalories or kilojoules food produced for every 1 kcal or kJ of input.) You cannot beat that without slave labor. [Side note: You can run that up to 8:1 if you are willing to work your slaves to death, like the Spanish Empire did in the New World in the 16th century.] Certainly it is far, far better than the 1: 10 of industrial agriculture. (1 kcal or kJ of food produced from 10 kcal or kJ of fossil fuel energy.)
5) It is refreshing that Fressoz is conversant with the "plateau" concept; i.e. the micro view when you are on top of the saddle point of the curve. Yes, we have been on the plateau for twenty years and it has been a bumpy ride; hence the "bumpy plateau" that has been thrown around in the peak oil debate since at least 2008.
6) Fressoz, like many modern thinkers, has an underlying assumption that he never questions. This assumption is that we can "somehow" make changes that accommodate to the present overshot global population of 8.2 billion humans. This is a false assumption. It was a false assumption back in 1970 when we only had 3.5 billion as the global population. How many times do you have to listen to people like Bill Rees to get that we don't have enough planetary resources to continue in our present lifestyles? We are in overshoot, just like William Catton said in 1988. Don't you get that? Any analysis that does not include massive dieoff as one of its scenarios is intellectually bankrupt.
7) 1:05:00 "To be honest, I don't think we can learn from any historical lessons." Wow; just WOW! I live in a village rich in history from medieval times. From my garden, I can look up and see the ruined chateau of Montsegur (the last gasp of Cathar culture that was captured by siege in 1244 AD). The wider area has a lot of paleolithic roots too, like the cave paintings at Niaux that go back 17,000 years. I do appreciate Fressoz' wider comment that this time is different, but the nuts and bolts of past human adaptation is even MORE important now than it was a couple of hundred years ago before all this fossil fuel nonsense got out of control.
8) Fressoz' mention of shovels and wheelbarrows as necessary implements was good. Maybe if he goes down this road for his next book, he will get to the same appreciation I have had for the value of human labor for the last 70 years!
9) Fressoz' last comment was asking why the idea of transition didn't come up until the 1970s. Well, to be blunt, it was because of the Vietnam War and the Draft. This is US-centric of course, but the social upheavals of May 1968 in France were part of it too. Around this time something special happened and a small - very small - percentage of people around the globe "got it." They grokked it. The bus came by and they got on.
I appreciate Nate having a wide variety of people on his show. However, I feel obligated to speak up and call out the poor analysis, just as I have been doing since 1968.
Jean-Babtiste if you have not read the book La Technique ou l'Enjeu du siècle by Jasques Ellul, please read it. It shows that we ended into a true "cul de sac".
Looks like the takeaway is that energy transition has happened in the past, the transition is additional, but the planetary limits are new.
The takeaway is we do not transition. All new sources continue to use prior sources.
More and more by humans completely depends on more and more depletion of potential energy which the other living beings had created to build more and more life and the environment for life to survive.
We need more aesthetic arguments against the visual blight & noise of industrial WIND turbines, not just math & economic angles. The need to bridge large distances w/transmission lines from remote (desecrated) areas only adds to the blight. Big Wind eco-hypocrisy is a classic case of "WHY just do something because we CAN?"
Prevention of doom beats aesthetics
I would love him to include in his next book on human energy the irony of gyms and health clubs. We’re expending all this energy to do essentially nothing except move weights around for no reason that is actually productive.
Kris de Deckers low tech magazine blog has a blog on this, IIRC!
they are not doing nothing, they are keeping your body active in an enviroment where being sessile is easy, this is absolutely necessary bevause your body operates on use it or lose it, from bone strength to tendons and yes muscles, in addition skeletal muscle is most of your body weight, you cannot just neglect that organ and expect your health not to suffer for it, even your joints nutrient diffusion is dependent upon physical motion for optimal joint health
@@TS-jm7jm Sweetheart I know this. I’m a public health professional who establishes outdoor exercise classes in public parks. So I’m fully aware of the benefits of exercise, social interaction, and exposure to nature as a package. I’m just also aware of the irony that we need to fill the gap in activity that all this technology creates for us, by movement that accomplishes no work in the process.
@nancercize >Public health professional
if i were to tell what i really thought of you now for saying that my comment would get deleted.
@@nancercizeriveting stuff, toots. I’m sure he should include a chapter in his next book on a question that could be answered by any 10th grade who hasn’t had a lobotomy. Very insightful and also simultaneously condescending.
Finnaly more about energy, that's the most Important part peak cheap oil
Every episode is about energy. And peak cheap oil
@@thegreatsimplification That's probably because energy is the only thing there is. Matter is just an illusion.
Jean-Baptiste is right, the real limit for our future is the cost of the "transition". The CAPEX to replace 137'000 TWh of primary fossil energy by 100'000 TWh of carbon-neutral electricity is much too high. Sweden produces some carbon-neutral steel with hydrogen and arc-furnaces. The steel simply costs 3 times more even though Sweden has cheap hydroelectricity.
Carbon-neutral steel, or cement, cost between 25 and 75% extra... NOT 3 times more. And that premium is shrinking every year.
CAPEX to go 100% renewable energy is LESS than the cost of business as usual.
You should inform yourself a bit better, mon ami!
„Energy“ ist the answer to the question: what made human mankind to rule the world and get that far? 😊
human are emergence of earth.we do not rule anything,we just mistaken our capacity for distruction,with wisdom.we are doing nothing,but eat ourselfs.
The entire concept of the world reducing its energy use is a non starter. The entire populations of the second and third worlds aspire to the same standard of living as the industrialized world. Unless the prosperous countries are willing to actively hold the poorer countries back than energy consumption will continue to grow.
Yes and these exact points are discussed in about 100 of the other episodes of this podcast, thankfully. Sadly, partly for the very fact that you are mentioning, I think we are blindly headed to disaster like a slow train wreck.
❤
Steel tubes for drilling? What about 3 million miles of steel pipelines just in the U.S., then all the trains, trucks, supertankers, ports, refineries, storage tanks, gas stations, it's unbelievable how much mining is required for oil and gas.
And where is energy all around us? It’s in every atomic core… 😊
l'm confused. When in this video is talked about cement, how much that cement is actually asphalt (which we call that outside of France)?
Cement is used to make concrete. Bitumen is used to make most roadway pavements. I believe he is talking about cement/concrete.
Both concrete and asphalt are used in road construction. Concrete lasts longer, but asphalt is 40% cheaper to install, so it's used more. But one can't build bridges out of asphalt!
@@dbadagna I have inspected a few bridges where the deck is asphalt over steel deck plate. Not very durable at all.
The Energy Transition:
Go farther away and work harder for lower quality fuel forever.
but in context of .... some forced choices! if you want to eat, breath, drink clean water & still use tec.... manage decline or crash hard & still have breathing, drinking & eating problems
Most of the material for industrial civilization is mined or drilled from more than one mile under the surface. More than 100 Billion tons (not including waste or unused material) / year is currently being mined to build and maintain civilization.
None of this energy is included in current "climate science".
Rotational inertia, also called moment of inertia, is directly proportional to the square of the distance from the axis of rotation, meaning that as the distance from the axis increases, the rotational inertia of an object also increases significantly; essentially, the farther the mass is distributed from the axis, the harder it is to change its rotational motion
The basic formula for rotational inertia of a point mass is I = mr^2, where "m" is the mass and "r" is the distance from the axis of rotation.
Interpretation:
This formula shows that the rotational inertia is directly proportional to the square of the distance from the axis.
Impact on rotation:
A larger rotational inertia means it takes more torque to change the angular velocity of an object.
Example:
Imagine a spinning ice skater with their arms outstretched. When they pull their arms closer to their body, they decrease their distance from the axis of rotation, which reduces their rotational inertia and causes them to spin faster
"Hydroelectricity" is in NO WAY "decarbinizing" at all. Where does concrete come from? How much diesel and coal is REQUIRED for acquiring concrete by mass? What is the thermal capacitance of that concrete? Add the constant energy from the change in the concrete's change in moment of inertia.
Apply this same process to the materials of solar panels and their components. Do the same for wind turbines.
Anyone promoting "alternatives" is blind to physics.
Changing cultural objectives and pushing the social tipping point to systemic change is on the table with Elise Lilliehöök. Our biggest challenge is collaboration and egotism unfortunately. We are not born with ego and its as real as water in a mirage. Inner development Erik Fernholm and Tomas Björkman could explain this. The 340 million tonnes of waste that enters our environment is a huge factor in our climate situation. We have some solutions that is in a thread of The Great simplification. Excuse my Dyslexic thinkers brain way of thinking. Its OVERWHELMING complexity yet simple.
25:00 I think you are correct it's rubbish to believe we will decarbonize our own actions.. 1:02:00 But it will. 1:05:30 If you want a history lesson about falling economies, look at Julius Nepos (c. 430-480) was the last legitimate Western Roman emperor. Hypothesis : the bear of roman lumber.
UK uses gas for about half of electricity, but uses more energy for heating which is about 98% gas and electricity is around 17% of total energy.
Edit Funny, now because of coal it is asking us to do less.
11k views and only 600 likes? Unfortunate.
Finally hubbert entered the chat
Too bad they didn’t actually touch it.
Mind-blowing realisation about neglected angles of energy usage. You might also want to talk to Aurore Stéphant, a mining engineer in France also who did a captivating three hour interview on mining and extraction in 2022 and again in 2023 with a total of 4 millions views.The podcast is called Thinkerview and english subtitles are available. ua-cam.com/video/xx3PsG2mr-Y/v-deo.html&pp=ygUbYXVyb3JlIHN0ZXBoYW50IHRoaW5rZXJ2aWV3
I didn't find it very easy to follow the conversation in the video you recommended. Can you encapsulate its main points?
Never came to this podcast so I am new here - and I guess we are on the same side.
But... I have the huge impression that you are on the typical American way to SELL something. There is so much "weight" in what you (but also Fressoz) say and the emphasis on "the great simplification" for me sounds like pure commercial branding.
Yeah - green growth very likes is BS. We are talking about this for many years. And of course all those who want to not change our economical system at all or even want to intensify our economical system want to create narratives of "green growth" and any other crap that just means to go on with what we are doing for roughly 200-250 years now in so called "industrialized" countries.
And I guess what you want to say is: STOOOOOOOPPPPPP - and rethink our whole economical and sociological approach to our life. So what folks like Marx, Adorno, Baudrillard and many other thinkers did in the last (also) 200 years cause they noticed that our huge "transition" (and this really is one) of our whole society that we call "capitalistic" must be FURTHER transformed into a more healthy "system".
Did I understand your approach correct? Is this in the end your goal? Communicate that we should be more interested in a healthy way of living within our society and (natural) environment?
If so - nice. But its a bit weird that I have so much trouble to find this out 😀 - and its even weirder that in the beginning I have a huge impulse to click away cause most of what I hear sounds like you do some total never heard of groundbreaking new approach. That I dont see at all. (Sociological the term "systems" got really huge with Niklas Luhmann).
Anyway - try to listen to the end and in some other of your interviews. And even if we are on the same side and I understood in the few minutes the approach you are following... I will stay critical like always 🙂
please stay critical - but there are hundreds of hours of content here that build a story. Watch the 30 min animation as a starter. I dont want to stay 'STOOPP' because we won't - I want to prepare society en route to protecting (whats left of) the biosphere on the downslope of the carbon pulse. ua-cam.com/video/bE7Bbnvf4ko/v-deo.htmlsi=lwkw12SKnuXeTQ93
Britain's largest power plant, Drax, burns wood...
After studying the topic of global energy from 1996 and associated global warming a few facts provide a view of the future. Actual timing and rate of collapse is difficult. But more like years not decades. That is my educated guess only.
The only years that consumption of fossil fuels did not increase were 2009 and 2020. Global production of crude oil as opposed to liquid fuels that is what is quoted as oil, has decline since 2019. The moving average of volumes of new discoveries of crude oil are about 10% of consumption. US decline of oil production is 42% a year. Global production of oil is declining at 15% per year. Increasing drilling in known reserves of oil is required to maintain supply. Global warming is accelerating spreading of the hot dry tropical zones (hot deserts) from the equator to the poles. Causing droughts and wild fires, destroying many large agricultural areas. Global debt has escalated to some 400% of global GDP. The ability to fund change is not available. While there are many possible triggers for collapse of, economic, sociatial, food supply etc., an oil price above about US$130/barrel is a near certainty.
Pit props are still used today. Guest stated otherwise . I work with a sawmill in Colorado that sells them to Colorado cole mines
There is a similar phenomenon with railroads/track. They use a huge volume of timber for ties.
He is aware of the use of pit props on a global scale - some marginal backwards mines in backwoods America does not comprise a refutation.
I challenge you to provide some detailed evidence to substantiate your nitpickery:
Total wood pit props in USA
Total wood pit props globally
Total non-wood pit props technology globally
THEN you may or may not have established one single proto-point
Hemp can replace oil to produce plastic!