random notes

IEA 2010 World Energy Outlook

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The IEA's vision is unchanged. It's the market and technology paradigm, supported by optimism that reduces serious problems to "challenges"
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The similarities between the IEA projections are that they are invariably pointing upward. Any difficulty can be mastered by technological developments, new finds, and alternatives to fossil fuels. The destruction of the environment, the huge problems connected with unconventional gas and oil are discounted against the "need" for more, more oil, more economic growth, more people on this planet.
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"Peak Oil" is non-existent in the minds of the leaders.
...The Swiss government is still discussing how to fund the construction of more roads and more railway lines and tunnels, without considering the energy question.
Even the Swiss ASPO puts peak oil towards after 2020, happily discusssing so-called "renewable" alternatives, and liaising with the HOT-people of "SwissCleanTech".
(HOT = Hope Optimism Technology)
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The IEA team do not consider the EROEI condition, it seems.
The Energetic Return On Energetic Investment has to be at least five to one in order to maintain present structures. Below 1:1 Energetic Return On Energetic Investment it is more expensive to extract oil and fossil fuels than the fossil energy that is obtained. No technology can undo this basic fact.

Yet the IEA sees technology and the market Demand-Supply-Price mechanisms capable of producing sufficient energy in the future. These are illusions based on economic theory.
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Presently the EROEI lies around 25:1, whereas a hundred years ago it was over 100:1. It could soon be at the minimum useful level, 5:1. Thereafter the party is over. No "market mechanism" will invalidate the EROEI equation.
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It's painful to notice that the IEA projects Aviation oil consumption to rise by more than 50 percent from 2008 till 2035.

Biofuels was a short-sighted model of the past few years. Some say biofuels are a crime against humanity, because of the "Fuel or Food" choice and the disastrous effects on biodiversity. Even if many millions of farmers would produce biomass harvests - e.g. agave trees on lands that have not been used for agriculture so far - these people would still need food, produced elsewhere. Similarly, forests can not produce biomass for fuels and simultaneously be reserved for biodiversity and provide food for people living in or nearby forests.

The equation remains food or fuel.
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On the downslope after Peak-Oil our biggest problem will be how to plant, harvest, convert and distribute food crops with less fossil fuels for tractors and all equipment needed.
Our growth paradigm will be ended by the end of oil. Modernity will end.
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... try my latest version of I=PAT ...
... GMCI=PARTZ ...
... where G is the total planetary available net resource amount ...
... M is the monetary interest inefficiency multiplier ...
... C is the degree of the tradition dogmatic damage multiplier ...
... R is the logarithmically growing residual vapor wealth introduced in the monetary system ...
... Z is the inequality of market wealth distribution parameter ...
... and the other variables are as usual ...

... it can be easy to verify ...
... that where the monetary interest and religion inefficiency multipliers trend to zero ...
... the environmental impact goes to zero ...
... and the global resources depletion versus time curve inverts ...
... this is the picture of a local tribal society ...
... consuming one caloric of energy per one caloric of food ...

... on the right side ...
... neither the technology intensiveness parameter can reach zero ...
... nor can the degree of inequality impact of the market distribution disappear ...
... those are 'solutions" not solving "sufficiently" the main problems ...
... because the residual smoke in the monetary system grows exponentially ...
... and there is no substitute for reduction of population ...

... however it is easy to see ...
... that increase of population and vapor wealth ...
... both increase the impact on planetary damage ...
... in turn destroying resources ...
... forcing a permanent decrease in affluence ...
... and right after a drastic decrease of population ...
... and this is a picture of our global society ...
... consuming ten calorics of energy per caloric of food ...
... and reproducing insanely at a geometric rate ...
... and thus at the verge of of a third world war ...
... the maybe final planetary war ? ...

... don't mind my rants, just joking ...
... try it, insert real 2006 and 2010 data ...
... see what you come out with ...
:)

Labels: ... from the desk of the grand joker ...