The Energy Collapse | Louis Arnoux
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- Опубліковано 26 лис 2024
- What happens when economics takes precedence over thermodynamics?
Eventually, the system collapses-because being incompatible with thermodynamics is impossible. That’s the stark message of this week’s guest, Louis Arnoux, a scientist, engineer and managing director of Fourth Transition, who has been working on this problem for decades. Louis and his team’s research point to our energy systems collapsing by 2030 because we’re having to spend more energy than ever before to extract fuel. Soon, the energy cost of extraction will equal the energy benefit. Such an equilibrium is, in his words, a dead state.
In the episode, Louis gives a phenomenal overview of the three thermodynamic traps human civilisation is caught in, including how decarbonising to renewables is exacerbating the thermodynamic problem. He explains how our current energy systems work antithetically to the sun and the planet, including the waste problem, before highlighting the role of economics in the creation of an impossible system. He then explains what a possible energy system could look like with the technology we have available, and how we can engineer that system to mimic the efficiency and productivity of life on the planet.
🔴 Louis Arnoux: www.linkedin.c...
🔴 Fourth Transition: www.fourthtran...
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🌎 Twitter: / crisisreports
"It's time to wake up now. The fact that energy cannot be replaced with anything else is sufficient to invalidate the whole of economics, the use of money, and the entire financial system. Energy is not a commodity that can be swapped with other commodities."
Correct.
Yet still thousands of economics degrees will be given out in a few months and for years to come
Humans have cornered the market in idiocy...
It is 'WORK' not energy. The fractionation of work is fungible so economics is valid.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics)
@@carly09etlol ok.
@@carly09et You need to work through the examples given in the talk. It's not that simplistic. Steve Keen also has tons of material showing neoclassical models are completely wrong. He's even built modelling software to illustrate it.
Please have him back for a sequel, as he squeezed any solution oriented information into the last little bit. He could start there and expand on it. For example what would that look like for the average person. How would their life change? In what way would these changes be implemented?
Very good hint in my opinion. For example I even visited the website and looked at the presentation of their nGeni green box concept, but it didn't help very much. There should be a demonstration and an independent expert assessment of the prototypes.
He's excellent!!!❤
I don't think it applies to everyone and takes into account the limitations of possibility, given the Nature of our problem.
But is Humanity worth the loss of the Entire Tree of Life? I don't think so.
Not even close.
@@beatreuteler They claim on the site that details are highly commercially sensitive and could be shared under strict NDA. It would be interesting to see what has been achieved and when such a system can be offered to end users though. Seems to be a system of enclosed heatpumps that will make use of all available energy gradients to produce mechanical, eletrical and heat energy, as well as make use of the "waste" cool air for freezing/refridgeration, if you are not using it for AC i guess.
Nature doesn't do monoculture and it doesn't do centralisation. Grid systems are a way of controlling 'customers' as are food chains.
The Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows 1972 "The report’s argument that the biosphere has a limited ability to absorb human population growth, production, pollution, and economic growth in general stirred considerable debate. Over the ensuing decades, however, a cohort of critics managed to derail the debate, apparently because they simply could not imagine that two centuries of impressive growth in Western economic production and consumption could ever run into any limits" .
The single biggest criticism to 'the limits to growth' argument is their 'business as usual' argument.
In the view of many techo optimists, we evolve our system and switch to another source or strategy, every time we exhaust the potential of an older system.
Until and unless we have consumed the Universe, we will have unexploited resources. For all we know we will, even then find new ways to avoid the consequences of the laws of thermodynamics, before ultimately, succumbing to them [insert SciFi story here].
@@davidrowewtl6811Fine. Now you’ll have Gates Reactors to make stuff for 10 billion people. Make water, air and food because the traditional methods are wearing out. No more snowmelt and glaciers supplying rivers. Microdrones instead of bees. Unlimited energy will fix it.
@@davidrowewtl6811nebulous clouds in the sky do not an argument make.
your 'techno-optimism' boils down to a miracle. good luck with that, mr rationalist lmfao.
@@davidrowewtl6811Who are 'we'?
An artificial life form may be able to survive and exploit the entire universe. Not humans, we exist and survive in a very very VERY thin film of slime on the surface of this one planet. Staying alive outside of that is very difficult and tenuous at best, and still ultimately dependent on that thin film.
Mr. Arnoux is one of the few experts who are linking the systems together and explaining the cumulative effect of the results. By the time the majority of the population realizes this and ges serious about doing something to implement solutions, the consequences of our actions will be too powerful to overcome. I think Planet Critical needs to be watched by everybody who actually cares about the future. Great Job. Vaya con Dios
Yep. You can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps after your bootstraps got threadbare, too late.
Guest suggestion: Daniel Schmachtenberger. One of the most articulate and high-level systems thinkers I have come across in all my time watching lectures and interviews.
Totally agree!!!
When Daniel is able to get real about the inevitability of #collapse, we'll be fans too. Still waiting.....
I have given this 40 minutes. I have an understanding of power, energy, enthalpy, entropy, chemistry, physics, maths and economics...(Though I say so myself!)...
...in 40 minutes I have heard
You cannot beat physics
You cannot come close
Life on earth charges [the surfaces of ocean , land and sky] up like a battery
Ghia is not a science-friendly concept
But no explanation or discussion of radiant heat
Just saying
...
And no explanation
@@simonmasters3295Rachel gets out of her depth with some of these old peak oilers and they are at liberty to snow-job the entire interview. I’ve seen it happen before with previous peaker-oilers. only 20 minutes in so far but hearing some very rubbery statements with no sense of a need to reference or qualify any of it with empirical or theoretical facts. i know enough to know when im being snowjobed. peak oilers have been running these lines for literally decades. they cannot bring themselves to admit they didn’t seen wind and solar coming. it’s sad, frankly.
ok now i’m hearing unqualified 🐄🐂💩 from the guest. he’s saying wind and solar uses as much energy to make it. this is crap. the embodied energy payback for wind and solar has been declining for fifty years and continues to. today the payback period for PV and wind approx 1.5 years. life expectancy is 20-40 years. yes we aren’t retiring fossil generation fast enough due to not enough effort on energy efficiency and demand reduction. but it’s not like fossils aren’t being displaced at all. South Australia is at 75% RE net and will be 100% net in a few short years. there’s resource industry and shipbuilding for the Aust Navy in SA, they aren’t tiny by Australian standards. Rachel wasn’t able to push back in any of this. she didn’t even seem to know the difference by energy and power, in terms of definitions in physics. there’s no crime in that at all and i love the channel, but it means these guys can run a soap box free of the need to be factually accountable at any point.
i do agree that orthodox economics (he says all kinds of economics but that’s misleading imho) has mislead us, but that’s the point of it. neoclassical economics is a raft of suppositions and myths mutually supporting a project that supports neoliberal/fascist political trajectories. i also agree that the orthodox economics has maintained a pretence that it’s a hard science and that the poly-crisis involving climate crisis, Anthropocene, ever-growing inequity, etc etc is seeding crises that most of our policy makers are asleep to or actively suppressing discussion of. but if we agree that social science and psychology are soft sciences, the. economics has the potential to be a field of knowledge with a decent! workable empirical and theoretical basis. it’s won’t come from the orthodox schools of economics, they actively shut anybody out who contradicts their myths. it will probably happen outside the profession and gradually replace the stranglehold economics holds over political institutions and policy think tanks.
Daniel is superb. (And he speaks English.) No offense meant, but am I the only one having trouble understanding Me Arnoux through his extraordinarily thick accent? I don't usually have trouble settling into people's accents and grammatical contrasts, including those of the Asian languages, no matter where they are from, But Louis speech is virtual mush at times. It would almost be better if he uad a translator, but even UA-cam's AI can't make any sense of what he says at times. Frustrating, because I really want to understand what he's saying. I'd suggest respectfully that he invest in a speech coach for a time to help him clean up his accent, that is, if he's serious about communicating what he knows to the English speaking world.
Enough winging I guess. I'll listen to this twice or three times through, and I surmise that may help. But it's frustrating. I could be using that time more productively.
I’ve been subscribed for 6 months and have never been notified of ANY of your podcasts. UA-cam is up to something here.
Oh wow really?! Also shadow-banned on the other social platforms.
@@PlanetCritical me too. Twitter. 4 years ago for what I said about Israel. Gee, guess I was right!😁
Did you select 'ALL' when you subscribed? This should push notifications according to Google.
@@cbromley562 yup. Then I unsubscribed and r subscribed and hit all and now I got the latest one.
The video clearly doesn't feature enough dogs wearing hats.
😞
We all need to learn how to get by on 95% less stuff.
Bingo, but that can only happen with the death of Capitalism and the National cultures built around it.
The problem is that people won't and believe the greenwashing that we can consume their way out of this mess by buying more green stuff. It is not so much rearranging the deckchairs on the the Titanic, but reupholstering them.
And a lot more than that! But humans don't have to worry because our fertility has been dropping by 2.6%/yr since 2000 so we will be functionally extinct by around #2035 if we make it that far.
@@elliskaranikolaou2550 If we all got by with 95% less stuff that would be the death of those things.
Try getting by with 95% less food. Or air. Or water. Or electricity. Enjoy.
I want to thank you both for taking the time on this interview. I believe one of the most important discussions i have yet to see. This is the type of new direction we as distinct societies need to be having. New solutions are creating new problems, many old solutions are more in harmony with the planetary world.
Rachel, a very big 'thank you' is in order!
As far as cities being sustainable goes, there was this from 2016: "Lauren Singer, a regular New Yorker with one key difference - a zero waste lifestyle … and she’s got a jar to prove it. “Within the past four years all the trash that I’ve produced can fit within a 16 oz mason jar,”" This was widely celebrated in the feel good news media but I would say on closer inspection it's a complete fantasy. People who live in cities and think they are more sustainable than low density areas are oblivious to the supply chains that feed a modern city. For NYC, where this person lived, there is a 25 mile radius of industry and logistics that caters for the inhabitants. None of it is sustainable. But they have cool jobs in the city where people can get paid to promote economic growth and drink lattes.
Yes - the 'personal' ecological footprint cannot be seperaated from the larger civilisational footprint - yes, this so called 'sustainability' is entirely unsustainable. #Unsustainability
Every US citizen would needs similar amounts of stuff but it’s more economic/sustainable for it to be moved to one location than many. Transport is much more sustainable-trains/busses/subways don’t work in the country etc.
@@mcrunk1977 Well, yes, if you live in a rural area, but want to live like people in the city, then just live in the city. That's clearly not efficient. I think what Louis was getting at (in his version of a sustainable future) is more akin to decentralized living and having a smaller number of luxury resources overall(ie. less amazon, starbucks, fast food, etc), but having the essentials produced locally to cut down on transportation loses. He used the example of transferring heat via steam, you lose that energy over distance. In a city you are so stacked that all the essentials need to be imported over distance, which inherently increases transportation loses.
@@mcrunk1977 As I understand it, the general outlines of the problem are as follows: If your lifestyle requires huge amounts of energy, as modern urban lifestyles do, then it is indeed more efficient to concentrate population into large cities, because it minimizes the cost of delivering, and gaining access to, the material basis for that lifestyle. But modern urban lifestyles are not sustainable without cheap and abundant fossil fuel supplies -- so once fossil fuels become expensive enough, you'll have no choice but to reduce energy demand to the point where you can harvest all you need from the cheapest possible source, the sunlight that falls on the land you occupy. Getting enough energy to survive under such circumstances requires more widely dispersed living.
Not sure this is the same as Arnoux's alternative solar energy source, but seems like it dovetails nicely with his idea of decentralized power generation.
An exciting paradigm shift in advocating that energy use (which is "priceless") must mimic the natural world and recognize thermodynamic laws in order to be sustainable. Classical economics is useless in its ability to reflect the true value and efficient allocation of energy resources.
A "must listen" episode. 👍
John, I couldn’t agree more. My undergrad work was history and economics and all of my grad work was in ecology and spatial analysis. Classical economics is worthless for preserving life on Earth, much less a healthy and sustainable human civilization.
@@johndavis2399 if nothing else
The problem is debt. Debt allows you to do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. Living beyond the sustainable means. The worldwide debt bubble is unsustainable. They just keep kicking the can. Keep Borrowing money as if 30 years from now everything will be the same or better. If you don't have sound money, and environmentally sound money it will not be sustainable. Nanocurrency (XNO) is the only cryptocurrency asset I am aware of that is both digital hardmoney and energy-efficient so it is environmentally sustainable.
I like the terms in which he presents the problem but his delivery is ponderous to say the least. Communicating these ideas is so important: I’d to to have a summary and breakdown by you alone or someone with your communication skill to lay out these ideas again in clearer fashion.
He did waffle
See Nate Hagens' TheGreatSimplification - many interviews with experts from diff't fields elucidating this same big picture predicament...
His delivery was slow but it wasn't hard to understand.
He sounds like one of those brilliant masterminds that lacks social skills. Great insights, poor delivery
Completely agree; this was difficult to understand and a synopsis by you or someone who can carefully explain complex concepts with lay people would be very helpful
That was good. He put some kind of plausible timeline on this thing we can see gathering pace around us. We are already past peak oil and peak complexity. Energy is the Achilles heel of the status quo system, there’s no getting away from the laws of physics. Economics has been the world religion for some time now, the cult of growth, the altar of ‘prosperity’ on which the environment (and our cultural values) was sacrificed. How sad that so much was lost for so few to enjoy life for such short period of time! We must be mad. Mad.
I’m listening. Boy it’s hard work with this character..
He's very interesting - sounds like Australian layered on top of a French accent though. I suppose I'd sound equally awful in French...
Yeah, me too. He was still too slow when I put playback speed at 2x, so I just couldn't do it. And also he doesn't seem to understand that people watching on UA-cam don't need you to refer to other scientists, as if we're going to go look up the references in a scientific journal with our academic database subscription. Dude, nobody wants a human version of JSTOR paper.
A lot of words saying nothing coherent. At least you can laugh at Trump.
@@carolinebza
😂I'm not the only one then !
Remember he's trying to explain difficult concepts in a foreign language. Being an engineer myself I caught most of it. Little disappointed he didn't go deeper into how thermodynamics were imposing limits on the system. I thought that was going to be the main focus. He talks about it without going into details about the "why".
You make good videos, but time stamps are always a plus, especially with science videos
This is a very important topic that needs its own presentation, a casual meeting is not enough to convey the complex concepts.
"economics and thermodynamics are incompatible" is really just sustainability and capitalism are incompatible
#Unsustainability
Videos like this (i.e. interviews with people who are aware of the dire situation humanity is in) is the ultimate redpill. This stuff is terrifying.
We are already over the cliff... like Wile.E.Coyote, the majority just haven't realised this yet.
@@justcollapse5343 Yep. Even if you went out and told people that everything is collapsing they'd call you a nut job.
I’m not an expert of anything but wasting time but I’ve been saying that the world is on the verge of energy crisis. And people are looking at me like I’m crazy. I just started watching the video but somehow I already know what he’s gonna be talking about. Curious to hear what solution he’s going to present…
@@Spacemonkeymojowhen I go out, then what I notice is that it’s cold outside. The collapse may be something to understand or not understand scientifically, but it’s not something You can simply notice.
Took the red pill years ago, nothing to be terrified about anymore...
who could have guessed that harnessing energy in real time is not going to supply enough for the 8 billion (despite being mostly poor) humans that energy captured over millions of years has enabled. Thermodynamics .. brutal, spin proof, dispassionate and fundamental.
The Green Revolution: For-profit grifting bullshit.
...I don't think he explained anything. Your point is well made in will upvote and quote it.
GESUS is Global Energy Supply and Use System
@@eddycurrant1380 who would have thought that harnessing the water in real time for billions of people doesn’t happen in real time, it only occurs when it rains and that rain is collected in storage and distributed via infrastructure. energy is just the same but across more technologies and forms of energy can take various manifestations, while water is limited to liquid, solid and gaseous state (PLUS a dozen other subtle states if you believe that stuff about water molecules having other “phase states”). Energy can be electrical potential, gravitational potential, chemical potential, thermal mass etc etc. many of the claims made in this video were straight out lies. Like more energy spend to recover oil than is embedded in the recovered oil. A;so ignores all the unwanted methane energy potential that is vented when they are openly interested in extracting the condensate and oil. CURRENTLY EROEI in oil is approx 10:1 and in USA probably more like 5:1. He also said crazy stuff about the embedded energy in wind turbines and solar panels. and some weird stuff about the energy lost due to energy inefficiencies in thermal plants and PV panels., It doesn’t actually matter how efficient a PV cell is per see, it matters how efficient it is per units of material resources used to make it, which in the world today we reduce to a simple monetary cost as a way of flattening out all the resource demands into a single figure. A 10 cent cell that produces 50 W is better than a 1 Cent cell that produces 1 W under the same conditions. in the same way, if a cell is only 20% efficient but is half the cost of a cell that is 27% effiecnt, then the procurers of cells, all other things being equal will but the cell that is 20% effiecnt and half the price.
Disappointing there was nobody during or after the interview capable of basic fact checking. much as I admire Rachel, her channel and was once a paid subscriber, it;s a bit of a weakness in some of these interview with olde3r peak oilers type fellows.
We have representatives of the greediest people on earth in the most important positions in our human experiment
0,1 % own 80% from all AND THEY WANT THE HOOL REST WITHOUT US !
And only truly wise people (just like you?) should decide the minions' fates.
@@oldernu1250 god no, I can barely tie my own shoe laces, but lets not elevate our species psychopaths and sycophants to the top - seems akin to putting Jimmy Saville in charge of children homes.
So what? It's a thermodynamics problem. There's no getting out of it no matter the disposition of anybody in or out of power. It's the macro of macro. What lives must live and then die.
I wish people would be a little more polite while conversing with you! I know its a stressful topic but sometimes people can be very disrespectful. I still don't understand why 25 zetajoules of energy is amplified to 500 and you explained it better than him!
He also wouldn't re-define the rate unit he was describing!
Hahaha
You're missing missed the point
Energy is not amplified. He didn't say that. On the very low level (entropy) it is accumulated unless you have a drain.
@@MrRandythibeault Thank you for the illumination. Isn't the point of this podcast for experts to have a chance to share what they believe is most important to the climate crisis in their experience? One would infer he would WANT to make his message digestible to laymen then, right?
I guess I was confused by the lack of clarity. Anyways, since you seem to have understood a LOT better than myself, can YOU elucidate me? I am sure you'll have a concise and understandable explanation, since you understand so thoroughly how I am missing the point!
"Economics is a perpetual motion fantasy". "Economics is completely detached from the real world". Yes!
Are those his quotes? I missed them
your talking at about orthodox economics, which is mostly neoclassical economics. there’s ecological economics, Herman Daley and others began it, others have taken it deeper. Kate Raworth’s Doughnut economics is predicated on the planetary boundaries concept developed by scientist, many involved in science of the climate crisis
Dr. Arnoux isn't saying the total population (of humans) will decline by 6 billion by the year 2050, he's saying there will be 6 billion pre-mature deaths due to all these problems (poly-crisis) over the course of 30 years starting in 2020. These people would have died from other causes eventually. They're just dying sooner (in some cases much sooner) than they would have if we didn't have all these problems.
I've heard that once we no longer are able to use the Haber-Bosch process to artificially grow food for the excess population, half the global population will be gone within 6 months. It's tragic that we sat back for the past 50 years knowing we were in population overshoot and doing this to ourselves, and dooming billions of humans to death.
@@alandoane9168 Not sure if it would happen in six months but I think the source of that is from an article written in the September 2008 edition of Nature Bioscience (journal). "How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world". The article claims that artificial nitrogen fertilizers are responsible for about half (48% as of 2008) the world's food. But nothing in the article talks about losing the ability to use the Haber-Bosch process, we'll probably be able to do that for a long time. Still geopolitical instability might cause some areas to not get as much artificial fertilizer as they need, so we might have a global famine. And I don't think Dr. Arnoux accounted for that in his estimate.
Well in addition to the general poli-crisis that would affect food production, he's specifically talking about the decline of oil production. Where the creation of fertilizers, and reductions in energy intensive large scale farming and global supply chains of food distribution would all contribute to population decline. But 6 billion over 10 years is mind boggling. But starvation and lack of drinking water are the two things that would reduce population that quickly.
@@TaviaUzumi It's 6 billion over 30 years not 10 years (2050 - 2020). And it is a lot. That's an average of 200 million extra deaths per year. We only have about 61 million deaths last year. Not from climate change, that's the total. And we had about 134 million births last year... All I was trying to say before was Dr. Arnoux wasn't saying the total population of the world was going to drop by 6 billion, from 8 billion down to just 2 billion. The total population of the world is probably going to be lower than 8 billion in 2050. But it's also going to be a lot higher than 2 billion.
@@TaviaUzumi That's weird, I think my reply got deleted. It's 6 billion over 30 years, which is still a lot.
The technology is the least interesting part, we have that already.
On the other hand, the philosophical and social changes required to evolve beyond the intrinsic inefficiencies of capitalism are fascinating.
The jury is out as to whether we are even capable, let alone willing to step back from the cliff edge.
Wait until the pain starts hitting home for more people, at which point it'll be too late 🤦♂️
Nope we’re doomed. Prove me wrong hopefully but I’m 75 and I don’t think humans are capable with our Paleolithic brains.
Bravo !!! ...... for asking critical questions and challenging when what was presented was unclear.
With access to newly found resources, Western culture has devised a religion. Most have been following this religion without even knowing it. Louis articulates this religion very well. But who wants to admit they've been following a destructive religion?
What Jesus are you talking about? The one doing signs in every chapter or the one rebuking those seeking signs? "The only sign is Jonah:" a believer murdered by other believers because he was outnumbered. The Jew is hung from a tree for all time & the record of this is in the gospels themselves: ua-cam.com/video/xyhv69EFuoM/v-deo.html Proof the Roman Government invented Jesus' story - in 12 minutes.
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree:" Galatians 3:13
I realized I was worshiping the false religion of Technology; Technology *will save us*. I think many/most people fall into this anymore. Where does Tech come from? Us. We've come to worship ourselves...
Its called uz, or the land of oz - all virtuous spiritual teachings talk of the "world" and worldly ppl. Ego driven, selfish and self righeous that know little of what it means to be virtuous.
@@Mike80528 You don't have to worship technology to understand that technology HAS indeed saved us, repeatedly, for centuries. And still does, right up to the present moment. No worship required.
@@alan2102X LOL. Someone who has little to no perspective. We have proven ourselves incapable of managing the tools we have created. Technology is the means of our downfall. It has enabled the individual at the cost of the species, and likely the entire ecosystem.
Hubris run amok.
You should interview Nate Hagens. He explains why economics and energy are incompatible much more clearly.
Nate just had an interview where he suddenly realized the global temperature average did not elucidate that the temperature in the interior of continents is another 2 degrees Celsius warmer or 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the global average. Professor Guy McPherson has made this point central to his lecture so this means Nate Hagens has yet to really listen to Guy McPherson. Why? I can only assume that Nate Hagens is too arrogant to learn from Guy McPherson. McPherson himself said he found out Nate Hagens was misrepresenting Guy's teachings.
So that is how bad it is for people to understand the fundamental truth of conservation biology.
I would love to see Nate on here if that hasn’t happened already.
@@growitheflow Nate interviewed Sir David King who emphasized that algae is the main way to solve global warming. Nate has since ignored that solution. Why? A quick googlescholar search shows that algae can sequester 100 gigatons of CO2 per year. Raffael Jovine, a double Ph.D. marine biologist has set up "Brilliant Planet" to sequester CO2 with near-ocean algae farms. Sir David King is working on deep ocean algae co2 sequestration. So what will it take to get Nate to research this on his own and promote algae? The problem is that a solution to global warming means that Nate's youtube show will no longer need to keep interviewing people. People set up their youtube channels as their "career" and that becomes more important than solving abrupt global warming. People put their own lives as more important than the future of all life on the planet even when that is the content of their youtube channel - why? Because the form of the youtube channel is more important than the content. The form is to keep cranking out content no matter what the content is - so people just "take around" the problem without really focusing on the solution. I did an algae talk on environmental coffeehouse channel - you can watch that for details. Nate is a former Wall Street dude - he's not focused on actual conservation biology with algae as the true source for oil and coal on Earth. Instead he just fixates on energy as economics. Economics is the "dismal science" for a reason.
Nate’s been interviewed by Rachel. A UA-cam search will quickly find this episode for you.
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 is conservation biology organic life equivalent of energy/heat storage? I had understnding from school biology and chemistry that natural systems have "buffer" and then they collapse, eg pH level of some lake. Perhaps this dynamic is similar. Lot of people think and are reinforced learning to believe in linear graph dynamics.
Great video & guest. The late Michael C. Ruppert spoke of thermal dynamics a great deal. Haven't heard anyone make that correlation since his passing until this video
Man, was that guy an awakening for so many of us, but he's almost been forgotten.
If only we had more like him...
I can think of a few, but they are rare
@@MattAngiono william catton jr kirkpatrick sale collapse chronicles William Rees are some that talk about this
We also literally don't have the minerals necessary to complete a full transfer to a renewable energy system. Simon Michaux is Associate Professor of geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) in KTR, the Circular Economy Solutions Unit. He holds a degree Bach App. Sc in Physics and Geology, Phd in Mining Engineering from JKMRC, The University of Queensland. Simon has more than 18 years experience in the Australian mining industry in research and development, 12 months at Ausenco in the private sector, 3 years in Belgium at the University of Liege researching Circular Economy and industrial recycling. His experience at GTK in Finland has been in Minerals Intelligence in the MTR unit, before joining the KTR. Mineral processing and geometallurgy being developed.
Long term objectives include the development and transformation of the Circular Economy, into a more practical system for the industrial ecosystem to navigate the twin challenges of the scarcity of technology minerals and the transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Have you seen his new Prometheus project?
Some good interviews on "Demystify Sci"
@@MattAngiono I'm guessing that you're probably not aware of the aerosol masking effect. In a nutshell as humanity reduces the burning of fossil fuels we also reduce the aerosols emitted from that burning. While some aerosols have a warming effect the overall thermal effect is a net cooling. As well the removal of sulphur from some fuels, more recently from shipping fuel phased in since 2015. You can expect to see dramatically more oceanic warming in the coming years. re James Hansen. Now while it only takes a few weeks for aerosols to be washed out of the troposphere the carbon dioxide will remain for centuries to millennia. In a nutshell as humanity attempts to reduce or shutdown (as much of a furphy [lie] that is for those gullible enough to believe) the planet will not only continue to warm but it will in fact accelerate planetary warming. Not all problems have solutions and the single greatest cause of problems are solutions.
@clintmichigan9112 Ha!
Well that's a first...
You guessed wrong.
I actually don't shut up about it on almost any climate related videos.
In fact, I've mentioned it several times already in this very comment section.
Good to finally hear someone bring it up to me.
Anyway, keep it up.
More people need to know, especially people who care about climate and environmental issues.
Sadly, there's almost a knee jerk reaction of just about every person I hear talking about this to just discount this whole effect and the implications.
People fighting for climate justice don't want to hear that they are likely making the problem even worse
See Simon on Nate Hagens. He’s awesome.
It is so depressing. Feels like we'll be living in the Middle Ages again in 15 years' time.
Arnoux's ideas seem very compatible with what Joseph Tainter says about energy and complexity.
Diminishing returns on complexity and on energy invested are inescapable.
Simplification is inescapable, voluntarily or not.
Yep! And massive drop in human population is also likely.
@@freeheeler09 #Collapse is inevitable.
@@freeheeler09 peak-oilers never die, they just change the subject.
Hi Rachel. I was blown by your performance!
Btw, mixing power (Watt, W, kW, MW,...) and energy (Joules (= 1W for 1s, or W.s or Ws or kWh (1kW during 1h) happens all the time. Your guest did it a little later in the interview.
Your sharp sense brought out exactly the right questions, your guest had hard to handle them. Again, the greatest performance in this interview was by the host.👍
Him mentioning the names of his sources and references - like 49:17 are extremely difficult to understand. Could you add them here or in the description? Thanksalot!
All of this understanding of our Predicament, continues to solidify my option that our only hope of a first step to any attempt at the preservation of Life is the the Global Consensus of The Predicament We are Collectively in, regardless of who and where We are.
Only with a clear understanding can one come up with the correct course of action.
It is obvious that any confusion about this is manufactured and is feeding in to our built in denial, which is the greatest form of self betrayal.
I will help in any way I can until I cannot.
Thank you Rachael and all those you platform.
I think what Louis is saying when trying to explain why 100 dispersed batteries is actually more efficient than 1 giant one:
1. Pumping the Megabattery energy around a city results in a lot of loss during travel; whereas small battery on-site use does not experience such evaporation of efficiency, and
2. The concentration of a ton of waste heat (entropy) in one area creates an amount of pollution that the local environment cannot assimilate, versus the wide dispersal of small batteries.
That would make more sense. Thank you 🙏
I was trying to figure out what he was saying surrounding this too. I interpreted another point being to avoid converting energy when possible. I.e. heat water locally with waste heat or sunlight focusers instead of using electricity to heat water
Thas was the interview's most unconfortable part! She was being so clear and polite and yet he would never seem capable of answer such a simple and logic question!
@@gatpm English is not that man's first language, give him a break.
Its incredible to have the power of awareness, awareness of our own demise and the demise of everything else. All is flux love more if you can the rest is inevitable.
Yeah... being aware, and being aware of being aware is just wild. Sure didn't think I was going to be at the end of things though. I was one of those fools who believed progress towards a Star Trek type of utopia was inevitable. Astounding how quickly we are regressing.
The Mordor economy or Necro-economics is upon us 😢
Tolkien warned us
begs the question: "What was the economic system of the Shire?" Let's do that.
@@erdelegyIt was largely pie-based.
The problem is as plainly evident as can be. Anyone who can add, subtract, and understand the rate of change for production, and consumption of resources, will have no trouble seeing it. Production of the resources needed to feed industry will necessarily decline, because those resources are finite. At the same time, the demand for those resources increases every second of every day. It does not take an engineer, an economist, or a physicist to see exactly where that leads.
finite viewed in the lifespan of the universe not necessarily in humanity's lifespan...
You are ignoring resource substitution and technological advancement. When a raw material is in short supply and becomes costly, the clever humans have managed to find a substitute or new technology to more efficiently produce the material needed.
@@davidmitchell4077 The resources don't drop to zero anyway. We're simply on track to reach a point where they no longer sustain continued growth of industrial output. Can we replace some things? Sure, but the periodic table is only so big. You can only find so many loopholes and dodges. Eventually the bill comes due.
@@dmwalker24 The keyword is recycling.
Mankind is not understanding it in full as of yet, but it is alredy clear for a very long time that each and every resource will require to become recycleable to a very high degree. There are already some shy beginnings like the discussion that is held some place about plastics that will become banned in the near future in favor of other materials or other plastics that are easier to be recycled. i.e instead of 15'000 different plasics materials in the market the variety will be shrunk to the maybe 25 or even much less inevitable types that we ultimately need and that can be better handled in recycling. Metals are almost a no brainer in this regard and even some bio-organic materials are at play. Textiles and paper/cardboard already works quite well, others will follow. Basically the philosophy will be nothing is waste. Landfills will become a nogo worldwide with very few and very well defined exceptions. According to Google the English term is circular economy.
Regardless of the specifics, there are going to be troubling times ahead. If you are not living as independently as possible you are going to have a really hard time ahead. Limits to growth called it, as people just won't change.
Living independently... a notion but an impossibility. I think we are all tied up together in an overloaded and sinking raft. I can claim to have a positive balance sheet but that is money. Can't eat it, drink it or protect my pathetic belongings with it. You are right to have the wish of self sufficiency and it can be useful in a pinch but I rely upon the cooperation of so many and the function of incredible complexity just to make it through the day.
That is why I said "as possible". My water pump has maybe 100 parts made by 100 manufacturers. Few people, if any, could create a working water pump from scratch by themselves, from only the land they live on. The future will be a salvage economy if you can survive the big die off. This die off does seem to be a cyclical event for civilisations.
But you can prepare now. I didn't said self sufficient as I have only recently realised self sufficiency is a lie. BUT we have time and available resources ATM for the aware people to prepare for what is coming, and build a community that is as independent as possible.
Thank you for another fascinating discussion. The ancient Greeks based their Gaia hypothesis, rituals and ceremonies on an understanding and appreciation of their relatedness to Earth's living and non living components and systems that predates the industrial and economic thinking that has now brought us to the point of Arnoux's 'system failure'. Thinking about such a systems failure using mechanical and abstract concepts such as heat pumps and economics, fails to recognise the importance of our relatedness to other and all that is, thereby exacerbating the failure.
Sounds like we should develop technology with an understanding of its effects on the planet we live on and not just for money and “prestige “. In other words it is time to slow down. If we proceed like many people do with their health the earth is going to become even more sickened by our actions . Good to hear someone put things into perspective. Economics and thermodynamics, who would have thought. Good interview 👍
Hi, I'm a new listener, and probably unwisely I'm going to jump right in. I hope this doesn't come across as "mansplaining" but I thought I'd take a crack at the energy versus power confusion. So,
- Energy is usually defined as "the ability to do work", which is still a bit vague. A more concrete example: you expend "energy" (ie, do work) when you move a block of something through a distance. Also, think of energy like a quantity, eg, a gallon or a litre. You can have 100 or 1000 litres in a tank, ready to *do* something. Energy is measured in joules, abbreviated "J".
- Power is a *rate* of energy consumption or production, ie, it's like gallons or litres of water *per unit time*. Power is measured in "watts" (W), which is *by definition* 1 joule per second.
In everyday speech we tend to blur the distinction between power and energy, and often use the word "energy" for each, but in Dr Arnoux's discussion of how much solar energy reaches the earth, he was going back and for between watts, a unit of power telling us how many *joules* of energy arrive each second, and joules, which tells us a *total* amount of energy that has arrived.
I hope this doesn't just confuse things further, and again, I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way.
Finally, you may want to take a look at the work of Dr Tom Murphy, UCSD, of the Do The Math blog and very recently, a youtube channel at @tommurphy2694. He's blogged about the incompatibility of "modern" economics and a finite world for some time, and over the years has moved onto the sustainability of the whole of "modernity" independent of energy sources, and I'm afraid he's not especially positive.
mansplaining is not necessary and actually cannot believe it is even a word. 🤯
@@dandantheideasman If you haven't seen it happen, I'm sorry, but you haven't been watching almost any conversation with a competent woman online. (It's a hilarious word, and totally apt.)
of this topic, im curious how this fossil fuel depletion means for max power available.... eg EV has good max power output but predicated that all that lithium and other minerals were dug up to make that battery and then charge it... but moreso in megaconstruction site, would it limit building sizes and ship sizes and so on.... mad power is needed eg construction lifts, port cranes and such and it goes up the bigger things get. Many talked that first could be mining in current effectiveness goes away simply from mining trucks not having energy source to move those insane quantities of raw earth. Oil, diesel has allowed almost limitless scaling upwards in this, excluding niche use of nuclear subs and nuclear powered aircraft carriers(nuclear power is only comparable energy source that I can think that can scale steady but very high power output).
true, and also have a look at Dr. Simon Michaux 's work on the minerals situation needed for the socalled green energy transition , very interesting stuff , what du you think about his solution with the purple transition?
@@dalehagglundstill shocked that there is a word for our society's misogyny 😔
Instead of drilling the wells and getting production in a few months, you have got to drill eight wells, or 10 wells," said Mike Oestmann, CEO of Tall City Exploration.
"That's $100 million in the ground before you see any revenue," he said. "For small companies like Tall City, that's a big challenge."
Both the number and cost of extreme weather disasters has grown over time. In fact, not even halfway through the 2020s the number of disasters is over 70% of those seen during the entire 2010s.
Thanks, that muddies the water better than anyone else I've ever listened to.
Normal, he talks like a commie.
@@Battery-kf4vubecause he is wise
@@janklaas6885 Ah communists and there wisdom. Here we go again...
actually very enlightening. its just, if that is supposed to be our way out, then indeed there is no way out.
what did i expect anyway...
Especially rolling it out to all mankind within 20 years let me think once more, knowing there's not even a working prototype.
All problems stem from the fact that we have a system that DEMANDS infinite growth on a finite planet...and the only possible way out would be to make it financially worthwhile for people to share the essential jobs..the jobs we NEED people to do and work much less. That would be the end of the system demanding growth.
Thanks for interviewing Dr. Arnoux, this was excellent. You did a good job of asking pertinent questions at the right time,
I was having trouble getting back to sleep. Listening to this presentation put me back to sleep quickly.
This was so informative that I watched it twice. Please have him again soon.
Thank you, Rachel for this amazing and informative interview. I learned so much from Louis today. Keep on doing your good work.
If his solution was really a solution it would have been done 40 years ago when they figured out that the road we were on was a dead end. Energy is the name of the game, when there is none left (or significantly less) then that’s it for the majority of us. As Terence McKenna once said “we know where the road ends, we just don’t know the scenery.” It’s overwhelming, truly.
I'm not exactly this certain. Some solutions are out there waiting for the last piece in the puzzle for it to become doable.
Mr. Arnaux however says it doesn't require any critical components suggesting it should have been built long ago as you mention, however maybe there is still something small holding it up.
I can't get the idea that oil is a negative energy system. I still believe we're getting most of our energy from oil, some from Cole and around the edges from renewables.
Even Exxon is stating that 0.7 units of oil are needed to extract and refine 1 unit of oil (well to nozzle). Assuming that this is just a little bit sugar coated as oil copanies tend to do, it could easily happen it becomes a negative system (I would prefer the term a non self sufficient system), which happens when it reaches 1 unit of demand to extraxct and refine 1 unit (well to nozzle).
Wind and solar now provide us with more power than coal. 19% vs 18%.
This one needs to be studied with repeated listenings, but this one is worth the effort
though i find his historical point of view has an extremely short focal length
Right at the end when the topic of large batteries vs. small batteries comes up, when Dr. Arnoux mentions "transport" he's talking about transporting energy (in the form of electricity), not transporting people or stuff. Loss of energy is significant and is caused by resistance in the wires. We use transformers to increase the voltage (lower current) so we can transport electricity over long distances and reduce the loss of energy (there's still loss).
As for batteries, efficiency from the size of the battery depends a lot on what type of battery you are using. Larger batteries usually are slightly more efficient but it's not a big savings. If your battery is a reservoir of water at high elevation, a 10 million liter reservoir isn't any more efficient than a 1 million liter reservoir, it just holds more energy.
Power transmission losses are typically less than 1%. You are vastly overstating the matter.
@@bearclaw5115 I said significant, is that vastly overstating it? Anyway, yes the losses are low because we step up the voltage. But we also try not to transmit energy over long distances (with long being relative). Furthermore, I was trying to clarify a point Dr. Arnoux was making, not saying if he was right or wrong.
A person you should consider interviewing is the British author Fred Harrison. He is one of the world's leading analysts of the link between our systems of taxation and the misuse and abuse of land and natural resources. His latest two books (titled "#WeAreRent") will become a trilogy with publication of a third book. I have interviewed him for the "Smart Talk" program I host for the Henry George School of Social Science in New York City. His part of the story must be understood if the entire picture of what is happening in our world is to be understood.
Edward J. Dodson
a good explanation of the concept of EROI, where the cost of oil approaches the energy value that is obtained. When that approaches unity, simple economics cannot make it economically viable to continue to drill for oil.
the way out is limited population who consume less for future generations
Wow, thank you so much Rachel, this was one of the best podcasts I've listened to, and I highly recommend to everyone to listen to this
I like your use of the term the big picture. Facets like this are all part of the overall, ecological crisis, which is much greater than most people imagine. Scientific ecology, may have artificially limited the scope of its study, to the populations of non-human organisms (and I say that as a graduate in scientific ecology), but the reality is it includes the interaction of everything. So economics, politics, and all the rest are in reality, just tiny subsets and facets of the overall ecological big picture, which is just too vast for the conscious and intellectual mind to deal with, without gross oversimplification, where sight of that big picture is lost. Yes, the human mind, is capable of grasping that big picture, but not intellectually i.e. not in words.
For most of my life, I was baffled by my ability to grasp this picture, from the age of 10, in 1970, until this year. When I discovered I have anauralia, itself only first described in 2021, which basically means having no inner voice, no inner monologue. I didn't just discover that now, as I'd been aware since I was a young child, that I didn't think in words. Rather my discovery this year, in a concluding part of a psychological assessment for PTSD, about anauralia, was that other people did have an inner voice, and an inner monologue. I like others with anauralia, just assumed the inner voice, was just a metaphor, not that people actually spoke words aloud in their head. I am at the extreme end, and all my inner mental processes, are intuitive and use insight. I don't become aware of words, until I speak or write something. This has meant my internal thinking, has never been constrained by language logic, and all the limitations and artefacts that go along with this. I haven't been able to discover yet, how unusual it is for someone not to think in words, even if they have anauralia. I only mention this, because I've always been frustrated and puzzled, that I can see this crisis globally (meaning all over, not geographically), whereas most people tend to get bogged down in facets of the overall big picture. Basically, I see things in wholes, not in the parts of them.
I am not in any way criticising your excellent work, in building up this big picture, intellectually, by these excellent interviews with various thinkers. Rather, I am requesting that we have to find some way of integrating all of this, into an overall, joined up big picture. Where we don't end up, not being able to see the woods for the trees, or the other end of the spectrum, so over simplifying everything, as to lose sight of these crucially, important insights of these experts.
Hey Stephen! 👍
Thanks for making this mind-blowing video. Like most great things this explanation of how thermodynamics and economics are incompatible. It doesn't seem plausible at first. However, calculating how much energy we waste is so obvious. We have been educated and indoctrinated all our lives into wasting so much energy. Thus we find it difficult to comprehend that we can eliminate most of the waste, save money, and help save our beautiful existence. Our psychology is a big hindrance to this energy saving. I am working up a system to reduce electricity use in buildings by 50%. Most people can not even conceive that this is possible.
Keep up the good work Louis and Rachel. Thanks
We are wasteful because we have abundance. When it's worth the trouble to conserve, we will.
the amount of oil recovered per foot drilled in the Permian Basin of Texas, the main U.S. shale formation, fell 15% from 2020 to 2023, putting it on par with a decade ago, according to energy researcher Enverus.
So i found his org - 4th transition.
I see some major red flags that concern me
"4th Transition Ltd is a cutting edge wealth creation business that
addresses global warming by redefining how we access & use energy"
"Famous and highly successful venture capitalist Peter Thiel likes to ask:
“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” *"
Thiel? A poor choice. Its like quoting musk
~25 mins in - Louis Arnoux:
" life on Earth receives about 510 terawatt (TW) of power from the sun."
The solar constant (solar intensity at the top of the atmosphere), Is = 1376W/m2.
Earth radius, Re = 6,371,000m
Solar power striking Earth
= Is x pi x Re² = 175,462 TW
344x more than the amount Louis Arnoux comes up with. I'm curious to know what has happened to the rest of this power.
Maybe He's only talking about the amount of actually gets permanently absorbed by living systems by converting it into chemical energy, specifically through photosynthesis in plants, but all that tells you is that photosynthesis is very inefficient at harvesting solar energy.
Actually only about 1000 W/m^2 are hitting the surface and an average of 30% of this is reflected due to the Albedo effect of surfaces.
But I agree it is still much more (about 89'261 TW)
Six billion by 2050! Wow! I love these really dramatic predictions because we immediately get to see whether they come true. Take your dramamine, cuz it’s gonna be a roller coaster!
It's more likely to be everyone by then.
When aerosol masking is gone the planet will heat up significantly and rapidly.
Rachel's patience is astounding. Dude kept talking over her, ignoring, and never getting to a point. Yeesh.
Yeah he has a limited ability to articulate the problem that makes me think he has thought himself into a conceptual corner.
He is probably very intelligent, but a poor communicator. A bit of a mangled opportunity to highlight some interesting perspectives. @@RussellDeacon
It was annoying to listen to this man. He talks in circles because he can't adequately support his conclusions.
It's as if he found himself in a field, where people were paying him for his expertise, so he thought, "Hey, I can run with this." And so here we are listening to an "expert" with a thick accent, taking everything he says as gospel.
A great interview, so informative and obviously important. Keep up the great work 😊
It would take some 6 times the materials ever mined and drilled by humans to replace the existing system with any form of "renewables".
The energy required to create the tech for "renewables" can never be made up for in "energy" generation.
Where do you take this number from? It takes 450 g of coal alone to make 1 kWh-electric with a coal-fired power plant. And and about 1/10th that (worse case scenario) to make 1 kWh with solar panels in sunny places, 1/5th in not so sunny ones. As for wind turbines, it's more like factor 1/20th. They are, indeed quite conspicuous, but the energy collectors themselves are very rational use of resources. And as for energy itself, in the science of renewable energy there is a parameter called energy yield ratio showing exactly how much useful energy an energy converter creates relative to embodied energy (energy required to create the generating equipment). And that factor is 3-8 for solar panels and 20-25 (and more) for wind turbines. Your last statement is outright false. I don't even know why people keep repeating this nonsensical mantra.
@@arkytitan you really need to stop repeating nonsense.
Go learn where and how that stuff comes into being.
Everything i said is verifiable with very little effort on the reader's part.
Nate Hagen, for example, has posted many interviews with engineers; geologists; physicists; etc. (my background is physics).
Learn
@@JMW-ci2pq @JMW-ci2pq well, my background is also in physics, I'm actually a PhD. And I do work in renewable energy research/applied physics. In addition.I have a postgraduate degree in renewable energy technologies... Nate Hagen does a lot of great videos. But what I say is verifiable via numerous peer review research by many independent research groups, plus can be [loosely] derived from first principles. So. unless you have some hard science to refer to, you don't need to patronise someone who is likely to be way more competent than you are.
@@JMW-ci2pq I mean, over years I've read dozens of LCAs of renewable energy devices, and literally nil find what you say, actually quite the opposite. It's pretty much textbook information for anybody at least remotely competent in renewable energy technology, so unless there is a global conspiracy of scientists working in this area, renewables are pretty good investment of energy and resources. They are not flawless, of course, and without serous systemic changes they won't do shit to slow down global waking, but their math still checks out. Simple as that.
@@JMW-ci2pq It's even better than arkytitan is expressing. state of the art PV-Systems are "generating" (the right word would be collecting) the energy that was used to build it in less than 2 years, but the typical life span of such a system is 30+ years. This said, the factor is 15+.
I'm not familiar with the mining part of it, e.g. the amount of material needed to do it including the mining effort, but that is the energy portion.
So if there is not enough raw material to be mined, why do most scientists say otherwise?
Heartfelt appreciation for this thought-provoking education .... thank you
Accent is a bit tough but there is nothing difficult to understand about the truth of thermodynamics. Even as it is a complex subject, the basic nature of this level of knowledge is indisputable. Once I understand the feeble desire to escape the trap of thermodynamics, I can move on to the wisdom of relaxing to the inevitable (and soon to be) destruction of much of life on the planet. On all kinds of levels, as your guest professes, I get to observe entropy in action. I will be destroyed quite soon if I understand to quandary correctly so am choosing to enjoy the meditation of death breath by breath. May it be in peace and acceptance. I wish peace upon all beings.
Why are each of us here? What works do we need to do while we are alive? What is our purpose? How much energy do we need to do the work we need to do while we are here? Do we have enough? Is it ever enough?
I find your questions to be enough... 😉
@@TheFlyingBrain. May I recommend 'you are not a machine' youtube channel? It talks about some interesting ideas.
@@JohnSmith-lt8wg Thx! Nice reading list. I grew up reading Huxley, Lewis & McLuhan, and formally (also abruptly) severed my contextual link to Morgoth in 1969. Am always on the lookout for voices and sources I can recommend to those who remain ensnared. 👍👋
The interviewer does seem a little confused about thermodynamics. The guest isn't explaining the failures of batteries well enough for her to understand.
A battery is just a bucket. You put things into a bucket, so you can take them out. In this case, energy is put into the bucket to later be taken out. You can create an endless number of buckets, but where do you get the energy to fill those buckets? That's the crux of the thermodynamic issue, where does the energy come from and what happens after its been used?
The sun?
Another problem is that a battery is a *leaky* bucket. And the hose that fills it sprays water all over the place while filling the bucket by chance.
@@WildlandExplorer Not really.
In fact the (Li Ion) batteries are at least rechargeable. Think of the fossil fuels Mr. Arnaux is calling "liquid batteries"! I like the allegory because it makes it esay to explain: This battery is not even rechargeable! And where is this one going!
Doesn't the entire idea hinge on oil being necessary for transport?
That's just not the case.
In fact by electrifying everything we EXACTLY address the thermodynamic inefficiency of fossil fuels.
...... the inefficiency is the way we use the fossil fuel/electricity.
also, need to look at the wheel to grave total picture.
Dear Rachel, you have my full understanding, that you couldn't always follow the sometimes obscure explanations of Louis. Yet there is NO excuse for you to mix up power and energy ;-). Continue your great work.
Fantastic podcast
Engineer here looking for some advice. I am trying to share this topic with people, which requires clear communication. Mr. Arnoux uses a lot of technical terms, and he says thermodynamics a lot. Do y’all think you follow what he says? Do phrases like “the energy contained in the oil” make sense?
Nope!…☺️
The guy is a con artist bullshitter,
I'm going to brainstorm phrases to say: "it almost takes as much energy to extract the energy we use." "Extracting energy requires almost the same amount of energy" "extracting one unit of energy to use takes a little less than said unit of energy"
On a side note, I wonder what the most efficient way to generate energy? Something that generates energy for years with no or little maintenance?
@@CyrusYareff A problem I am seeing is that people don't know what "energy" is. Sci-fi has ruined the perception of what it is.
"Generate" is a tricky word in this regard Energy is the ability to do something, and energy is more like something we capture. Whenever you have a potential for change, like water that could fall to a lower elevation, you can take advantage of that water moving to do something.
We can capture sun light. Fossil fuels is actually stored sun energy.
I'm having a hard time believeing some of these assertions. But I'm listening. if "overall" including non-FF sources were approaching an EROI of 1:1 then system would be collapsing NOW. But I'm listening to the details.
You deserve 100 millions followers
Did he actually say how he’s going to turn concentrated sunlight into electricity? He said it’s not PV. Like so many topics he mumbled, was tight lipped and was not explicit.
The energy collapse, Louis Arnoux, climate critical
ua-cam.com/video/p9YCzrHugJI/v-deo.htmlsi=q1Nmn-jF76IE-ExV
The very high temperatures achievable with solar's thermal and the ability to easily store it in a molten material provides many benefits. With such very high temperatures, up to 1500° C, likely a number of high efficiency Brayton Cycle supercritical CO2 turbine generators in series could be run to generate electricity, since the very high achievable temperatures might allow this. As well, a lot of industrial processes would have access to necessary very high temperatures without an increase of CO2 or additional waste heat loading the biosphere, since all the heat used is what is anyways incoming from the Sun.
By urging a compact communities, each with their own thermal solar generator, he is trying to get utilization of the collected solar energy up to very high efficiency values by using the thermal energy in multiple ways within descending temperature gradient employments, all while minimizing transmission losses.
Most likely through steam?
Concentrated solar with parabolic mirror design.
It was a lot of "trust me bro we did the math". He described it like the big solar collector farms in Arizona & California. Except with a different kind of parabolic design that is more efficient. And then steam for distribution (he didn't really elaborate too much? sounds like magical thinking to me.... how do they deal with thermal loss over distance?) And then their website shows some basic schematic mock ups of small scale generators about the size of a dishwasher, that utilize the fundamentals of efficient heat pumps to generate electricity using steam that came from the solar collector farms (or something like that, they don't even mention the solar collectors on their website that I could find - so I'm making assumptions now).... But also definitely PV solar isn't part of the solution because it's too inefficient for the energy requirements of extraction and manufacturing. Guy was kind of all over the place, but that's how his solutions came off to me. To say nothing of transport (y'know how we get our food from farm to store to table) - more pressing than having the lights on in an office imo.
He didn't explain it in full. The Idea is to run a mechanical heatpump by use of the heat from the parabolic mirror, but using these extreme temperatures I have some doubts steam could help. To me it looks the generator for electricity is a common rotary system driven from the same shaft as the heat pump, possibly on a different speed using a gearbox. However the missing link is the way the heat pump is driven.
From the first 2 minutes, this podcast sounds so good, but I don’t know if I can bear myself to listen to it.
Thank you for making this complicated topic more understandable.
Your eyebrows speak for you..
We have 8,000 million inhabitants, if India and China wanted to consume like an average European, they would consume 67 mbd, which is unaffordable for the planet. Is anyone going to stop them from increasing their consumption to improve their standard of living even a little? The situation is valid for the rest of non-renewable resources.
Prices.
I generally find your videos informative and and accessible but Mr. Arnoux is opaque in his science and vague in his plans, not to mention very light on discoverable scientific or professional credentials. I appreciate that you tried to pin him down on a number of points but his responses seemed to obfuscate more than illuminate.
That's because he is a techno-hopium huckster and the host doesn't have the scientific accumen to parse it (though she does push back as he repeatedly talks over her, and that is commendable), but she was out of her element. This guy's website literally begins with a byline that they are a *wealth* *creation* *business* . And that's probably all you need to know.
Rachel asked him to clarify, and he literally said something like, "Je ne suh suh." And she was like, WTF. 😅
One healthy economy and way of life .
Requires humans recognize the fundamental laws God put into his creation . That means limit in demografic , limit in consume of goods, and a different way of thinking .I mean a new thinking where love, compassion honesty .etc etc . Are the and most important issues .
So Louis Arnoux did a terrible job of explaining the diff between energy and power. Energy is the capacity to do a discrete amount of work whereas Power is how much work you can do per unit time. So humans and horses can do the same work but it will take the human 10X longer. So we say 1 horsepower is about 750 watts and 1 human power is 75 watts. So anytime someone quotes power of a solar panel, or an entire powerplant, or the entire planet receiving energy from the sun, this is a constant nonstop energy supply, ... a certain amount of joules of energy delivered each second. Anytime someone quotes how much energy was used, that is a finite amount that was used to do a certain amount of work (e.g. charge your electric car, fill your gas tank, lift a rock). In the end think of Power as constant supply, and Energy as a discrete work packet. A helpful example: In the USA, at solar noon in summertime, with no clouds, the sun's power is about 1000W per square meter. So each second the sun delivers 1000 joules of energy spread over every square meter. But this is not the same as the total energy delivered over a single day, because day light has a beginning and an end and power delivery changes with angle, etc. To get total energy delivered you'd multiply the average power times elapsed time. Oy! :-)
"1000 W per m² of surface perpendicular to propagation of sun rays"
Other than that, he seem to be pretty bad as an energy scientist, and the device developed by his company seems to be a version of perpetuum mobile, buy just looking at promises.
@@arkytitan Not really, when it relies on an external power source. he dosn't deny this.
@@beatreuteler a magic wand is no better than a perpetuum mobile, even if its inventor pretends it doesn't violate any basic laws of physics
He is still right "all of the Time" about our predicamen, but doesn't however mention global dimming (The McPherson Paradox).
Economist Steve Keen and ecological economist Julia Steinberg of the Lili Project Living Well Within Limits, would be great guests.
Bless you.
❤ Probably THE best channel in the world in these times! Super quality, Rachel, thank you so much! ❤
As usual, the interviewer and many in the comments refuse to accept the reality of the predicament humanity finds itself in .
Yes - but to be fair, Sarah is exercising 'critical thinking' and the exploration is useful, even if, as we agree, that the conclusion is an inevitability. #Unsustainability
@@chadmiano583 i thought Rachel let this guy run his mouth pretty freely and had zero technical push back on his many false claims in inaccuracies
@@alastairleith8612 Yes, exactly.
Ultimately, populations need to change their ways of thinking and behavior before we can produce/recognize effective leaders for change.
The bad news is that this global paradigm shift will probably only happen at the last minute, after tremendous loss.
The good news is that we've faced existential crises at this scale before, and someone always inevitably survives.
No - this is not an existential problem. This is an existential predicament - an interrelated and intersectional series of crises from which there is no solution, but only an unpalatable outcome. How will we take action under such circumstances? Don't 'just' collapse - JustCollapse.or g
its coming
Alan Ginsberg's Zeroeth Law: There is a game, you can't win, you can't break even and you can't quit.
banned from everywhere but i'm still going
So dont play ...with the F$£king Planet
Either by default of a stupid system or deliberately in panic mode ..when said system obviously breaks down. As the meta crisis keeps kicking us up the A$$ harder n harder, so called governments & /or the $hit Shit were Fkd depts of corps out source to any mad scientist on the open market : "cant we just chuck some new $hit in the air & oceans to counter the old $hit", the wise one go this needs unintended consequences longterm studies etc Meanwhile after national service & rationing takes over {best case scenario stage - see movies for worst} State/corp sponserd unilateral Climate Mods will mess the picture up even more.... If we dont think this through now [& even if we do, its going to get bumpy}
There's a Grateful Dead song about this...The Wheel
@@markarchambault4783 I wondered if R. Hunter and Ginsberg knew each other. "The Wheel" sure makes it seem so.
I guess I'll have to learn some slight of hand and cheat my way through, though that doesn't really jive with my ethics
Renewables are NOT adding to the amount of energy we use.
What's actually happening is, 'we are using more energy', and most of that extra energy demand is being supplied from renewables, which would otherwise result in increased use of fossil fuels.
The slight bit of good news is, if we didn't have those renewables we would need even more fossil energy because of its comparatively poor energy chain efficiency.
Solar and wind are around 5% of total energy, burning twice as much biomass than we did in the 1800's or hydro are both as bad as coal so shouldn't be classed as renewable in my opinion. Coal and oil added twice as much twh than solar and wind between 22 and 23.
I'm not sure what percentage of world power is used to create the renewables but it would be interesting to know.
No energy required in the mining of the mineral resources required for them, their manufacture, transportation and installation?
At last - a revolutionary ! No money! Yes!
No money, no value. No value, no production. Yikes!
Economies of scale are possible only with large throughputs of energy to compensate for thermodynamic inefficiency and energy loss. For instance, economies of scale make large power plants cheaper and more economically efficient, but at the cost of energy inefficiency in terms of running power lines everywhere and energy loss in the lines and transformers used, as well as in maintenance and repair. It is more energy efficient to use power at the point it is generated, even if it is cheaper to have centralized power plants. Without cheap energy - and this is the near future - it becomes more cost effective to have decentralized energy, used at the point of generation, particularly if it involves wind and solar. It becomes impossible, however, to run an industrial economy with alternative energy, because an industrial economy collapses well before the amount that can be generated even under the most optimistic scenarios. North Korea's industrial economy collapsed when it could no longer obtain energy supplies from the Soviet Union, at a point of about 40% of what it had previously. It did not smoothly ratchet down to zero fossil fuel use and a pre-industrial economy. Conservation and efficiency can work to a point of about half of what previously was required to run an industrial economy, but when for forced to choose between vital energy usages such as winter heat, transportation of goods and industrial agriculture, the system breaks down. The best case I could imagine was alternative energy supplying around 15% of what an industrial economy needs and conservation slimming energy usage to about a third. It is simply impossible to power an industrial economy on alternative energy. The biggest point of vulnerability is transportation fuels. Modern cities are scaled to run on fossil fuels. Without them you could not deliver sufficient food and other vital goods. You could not walk to work from the outer suburbs. In the nineteenth century, cities were about a tenth of the present size. They are not sustainable without fossil fuels at their present size.
I live on the side of a mountain that is always filled with lava ----very hot liquid lava. What type of engineer could design a system to tap into that constant heat? Less drilling than the deep oil wells. High temp ceramic casing. Water in and high pressure steam out. I think this has already been designed 😮😮
iceland svartsengi does that and krafla or
great show. congrats. Top content.
Rachel, It would help if you would stop him more often and restate and summarize for us.
Agree!❤
I love your work here herding these thoughts into accessible constructs.
Sounds very wooey at the intro. At least "Quantum" wasn't invoked.
Assertion1- current Energy system is collapsing
Assertion2-Green Transition adds more stress
Conclusion-Double Impossible, OMG we're doomed.
Citations needed.
1@@sandorski56
Endless rhetoric. Even the Linkedin is endless filler. He does everything or nothing, can't tell. Flat Earthers are more amusing.
If AI ever embraces this, the Internet will turn into a Wall of Text.
Doom!!
Louis' perspective is slightly antiquated. It is completely possible to engineer a society that CAN transit to a sustainable thermodynamic level in concert with balanced economics. We've just chosen not to. We have the technology to mitigate excess solar irradiance. we have the technology to manufacture without engaging in hydrocarbon fuel exploitation. again.. we are CHOSING not to. But he is right about the avalanche. Now that's we've started it we need exponentially more energy to stop it. The geological cascades we've tipped over are going to prove nearly impossible to stop without orders of magnitude more energy and engineering deployed.
He reminds me of Simon Micheax, except Simon is far more specific.
He does!
me too
you mean Simon Michaux , right?
Yeah, they should collaborate on the Prometheus project!
Attempting to sustain what cannot be sustained is #Unsustainability This is not a rational position.
That last part he's talking about with the one central source of where the energy starts out, will lose it's capacity to power things over the time it takes to travel to a person's home. It's called attenuation. Having the smaller systems will maintain the energy, and be more efficient and we wouldn't lose energy.
Please please stop saying "save the planet", the planet does not care ... it is about saving ourselves!!!!!
It implies the complex LIVING planet.
No one thinks the actual planet is going to literally break apart