By Hideaway: Energy and Electricity

Dr. Tom Murphy today compares the energy and materials efficiency of biology vs. machines.

It reminds me of a quote I like:

“Evolution is cleverer than you are.” – Leslie Orgel

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/02/inexhaustible-flows/

Now let’s look at the material efficiency of the human body and compare to that of a solar panel. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the global average caloric intake is 2,800 kcal per day, translating to an average continuous power of about 135 W. The mineral requirements to accomplish this constitute just over 3% of body mass, or 2 kg for the global average body mass of 62 kg. Thus, a human achieves roughly 70 W per kilogram of minerals. Note that even though the human body is only 20–25% efficient at converting metabolic energy into external mechanical work, the rest is not waste to us: it provides crucial thermal energy to keep body temperature up, and thus counts as a critical contribution.

Let’s look at solar panels. Typical 60-cell panels produce 300 W in full sun, and have a mass around 20 kg. Straight away we compute 15 W/kg—a factor of five lower than human performance. But to be fair, we must account for the fact that the sun is not always directly in front of the panel, producing a typical capacity factor of 20%, or an average power delivery of 60 W. Now the deployed panel delivers 3 W/kg: less than 5% as “efficient” as a human, in mineral terms.

Massive wind turbines at 20% capacity factor (typical global average) score even worse, at 0.4–0.6 W/kg. Without the mass-dominant concrete pad, a wind turbine would pump out 1.6–2.4 W/kg, for the short time it remained standing.

Just as a wind turbine needs a mounting base, a realistic utility-scale solar deployment has a material mass far in excess of the bare panels: support structures, interconnect wiring, inverters, storage (if truly replacing fossil fuels). I would not be surprised if a whole-system figure dropped to 1 or 2 W/kg, while humans stay smugly perched at 70. The score for wind would erode as well once other necessary components are considered—especially storage. Moreover, the minerals needed by humans are in wide circulation within the community of life at the surface: no mining (and associated tailings, energy, processing, pollution) necessary.

Thus, biology has far exceeded technology in capturing the inexhaustible flow from the sun using a minimum of minerals—and those being extracted from and re-deposited to the soil in a continuous, self-sustaining cycle, importantly. Biology and evolution really figured things out! Modernity looks like a bumbling idiot by comparison—like R2D2 in a stair-climbing competition against an athlete.

The Inexhaustible Point

For all intents and purposes, biology has figured out a way to tap into the continuous and (seasonally) reliable flow of solar energy using a bare minimum of mineral requirements from the land’s surface. It took billions of years to solve this very hard problem. One could consider the result to be a “circular economy,” in that minerals are recycled into the environment and taken in by microbes, fungi, plants, and on up the food chain. By working within the strictures of multi-level selection (evolution) subject to long-term ecological viability in relation to other life, the result has the word “sustainable” effectively built in: sustain-a-built. No? Okay, yeah, that’s pretty lame.

Our technologies are clumsy and materially insatiable, by comparison—no surprise, given the short development time and our complete disregard for the unforgiving constraint of sustainable practices. Make no mistake: “renewable” energy is not the same as sustainable technology. The only demonstrated sustainable technologies to date are those found outside modernity, in the biodiverse ecological realm (including things made from wood and plant materials, for instance). Until a technology achieves closed-loop sustainability in concert with the rest of the community of life—which may not be possible—it’s not truly “renewable.” Systems that require mining, produce mine tailings/pollution, destroy habitats, and result in collateral damage in the form of permanent species extinctions can’t be considered to be long-term viable, in my view—just part of the jaw-dropping fireworks show that will soon shock itself by self-terminating. Nobody could have seen it coming!

A typical unsubstantiated knee-jerk reaction is that aggressive/complete recycling could address the concerns. But recycling yield is always going to disappoint, so that a moratorium on new mining (or simple exhaustion of economically recoverable material as the low-hanging fruit is depleted) would result in a slow dwindling of available materials until the weakest link falters below some minimum threshold required to keep the industry alive—likely on a timescale that is lightning-fast compared to that of ecological evolution. Recycling also consumes copious energy: more and more as higher and higher yields are sought. It becomes self-defeating: from what source does such energy come, and at what additional material cost? Plus, I always return to the question of what we use the energy to do. Thus far, it’s been 99.9% unsustainable activity (my crude guess: vanishingly little goes into restoration of ecological damage). Sixth mass extinction, anyone?

So: technology is on the verge of inexhaustibly tapping into inexhaustible flows? I don’t think so.

It should not be surprising that we have not yet been—and may never be—able to engineer long-term-sustainable modernity (i.e., high-tech). I strongly suspect that’s not even a thing. Why on Earth would we just assume that it’s possible? Where does that hubris come from? It’s not from a thorough analysis in full ecological context, and certainly not from any demonstration. It’s just a lazy and wishful assumption based on the brief and highly anomalous window on the world to which we’ve been exposed. Comparing modernity-relevant timescales to those relevant to evolution, and looking at the profligate rate of one-time inheritance spending (i.e., of non-renewable resources) that has been required to produce modernity tells us a lot. Unlike biology, this ain’t built to last. I know which team is a better long-term investment—the ultimate victors unless everyone loses first.

The comments are getting pretty deep.

We need another guest essay to start fresh.

Who’s got something they want to say?

https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770594

George Kaplan:

I’d guess that there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in the cornucopian camp at the moment because it is becoming apparent that nothing that they expected to happen to ensure that their middle class BAU will continue is succeeding, and they are looking for someone to blame. Like most on the “doomer” side I started off somewhere around “concerned but optimistic” and after looking deeper ended up pessimistic, but at every stage, however pessimistic I’ve been, things have turned out worse. I read Hideaway’s pieces and the sense I get is that he has tried every way to get the numbers to add up differently and each time they come out worse (forgive my presumption if I am wrong). Who would have expected the Keeling curve to continue without a single dent from any green initiative. Who expected EVs to turn into nothing much more than a virtue signaling distraction, which is just now showing its inadequacies as a solution. Who would have expected such large temperature jumps in the last two years. Who would think we could initiate the fastest extinction rate ever seen and devastate most of the wildlife, insects and fisheries in just fifty years and without really noticing as it happened or realising that this is a really bad thing.

The future scares the shit out of me but I don’t own any super chromatic peril sensitive sunglasses so have to face it. As the freight train approaches it just gets clearer and louder. The past I see with some confused and overwhelming sense of guilt, grief but, especially, regret at my own, perhaps willful, ignorance.

It took time to understand that overshoot is a systemic issue where the individual symptoms (peak oil, climate change etc.) cannot be solved individually but only by eliminating the overshoot. Biodiversity loss is an unavoidable consequence of overshoot because almost all species compete with others for resources. Usually dynamic equilibria are eventually reached, but not with industrial humankind, we just keep on steamrollering over everything. I see no technical solutions to the other issues that won’t ultimately make this one worse.

The UK seems to be about to lead the way in economic decline amongst (putative) developed countries (plenty of opportunities for schadenfreude ahead). We might miss out on a swing towards right wing populist demagogues for a few years as we currently have a conservative government that will be voted out in a potential landslide, but I expect it will be coming as things deteriorate. Currently ESG and “green” initiatives and action are all getting pushed aside by economic issues. In my personal life it might well go the same way, short term acts to keep me half way comfortable in the short term will likely trump long term environmental concerns when push comes to shove.

Hideaway:

Great summary George. I’ve been aware of our situation for 49 years since learning about Limits to Growth in an Environmental Studies tertiary course in the mid ’70’s, always looking at the ‘problem’ from the point of view of what would humanity do to overcome the problem.
I’ve even been very much in favour of the turn to renewables in the past, as I’ve previously mentioned buying our first solar panel in 1985 and other solar setups since.

It’s only in the last few years I’ve come to the realization that all the ‘fixes’ are an elusion, the numbers simply don’t add up, when I do the full calculations for myself, instead of just believing a whole lot of the literature that states wonderful numbers of a technological future, by deliberately (or perhaps inadvertently) leaving out great swaths of energy inputs into the construction.

Of course energy is just one part of the overshoot problem, something never acknowledged by the cornucopians. We have myriads of other problems that more mining for “renewable minerals” (sic) just exacerbates.

It’s probably a very nice existence believing everything is going to fine in the future, very calming believing technology will solve everything and magic energy grows on wind turbines and solar panels, however I don’t know of any situation where denial of reality worked in the long term.

https://climatecasino.net/2024/02/aint-gonna-happen/

Inspired by Sam Mitchell of Collapse Chronicles, here is my “Ain’t Gonna’ Happen” list, also known as AGH. This list arose from the almost daily onslaught of “we must”, “we should”, “we have to”, “if only we” and “if we don’t” aspirational rhetoric that floods mass media, climate journalism and social networks. This list is also inspired by Michael Dowd’s concept of “The Almighty We“ and my previous essay titled “The Tyranny of We.“

Some of these were one-off comments from Tweets, YouTube videos or other social media. Others are policy or social suggestions, green industry ideas and other social movements. Others are actual technologies or systems that are being developed or already exist in part. None of these will save us. As Sam cogently put it in our last video, “we won’t.”

Please feel free to suggest additions to this list in the comments. Likewise, I will surely be adding/modifying this list as time goes by, but this is what I have so far.

I wish Chuck Watson would write more frequently.

https://enkiops.org/2024/02/17/space-nukes-navalny-and-the-most-important-issue-of-the-day-assange/

Very busy week in the geopolitical realm. By most reports the Ukrainian armed forces are being absolutely hammered and the Avdeevka sector has collapsed. The bases there have been used to attack civilians in Donetsk for the last ten years of the civil war, and it is a major fortress. For it to be unraveling is a bad sign for Ukraine. Is this the end game? Maybe – but Russia is trying to minimize their own casualties, and are also nervous about what kind of stupid moves the US/NATO might make, given the ongoing “Steadfast Defender 24” exercise and the major troop movements along the border with Russia and Ukraine. Hopefully the Biden administration won’t do anything escalatory and foolish. I think there is much more to come before the end, but the end for Ukraine is likely coming sooner or later. US aid is only making the carnage worse, and delaying the inevitable. Well past time to negotiate – honestly, this time.

The news out of Ukraine may also help put a couple of other recent events in perspective (and contribute to conspiracy theories). The first is the “leak” about a “disturbing” new Russian satellite capability that involves nuclear weapons. Or nuclear power. Or something, you just need to be scared. The latest public reporting has it as a nuclear weapons based system to disable satellites. As near as I can tell this is nothing new, and is just theater to try to push US House Members in to supporting the insane supplemental budget bill to waste more money on Ukraine, as well as throw some stuff at Israel and Taiwan. In this case I don’t doubt at all that this was a pretty transparent stunt as to try to gin up support for the funding bill.

The reporting on it was horrible as usual – little to no context that the Soviet Union launched its first nuclear powered military spacecraft in 1968(!), that the US and UK both actually tested nuclear weapons in space already (Operation Fishbowl in the early 1960’s), or that both the US and the Soviets (and now Russia) continued to work on both nuclear powered military spacecraft as well as ways of using nuclear weapons in space (despite the UN Outer Space Treaty that prohibits them). So I suspect that another aspect to all this is the utter lack of institutional memory in Congress, the Administration, the media, and I suspect even in the Intelligence community, much less the public. But the leak – yeah, that was all about pushing Ukraine funding.

Which brings us to the most important topic of the day: Julian Assange. It’s hard to write this without resorting to invective. The sheer hypocrisy of the US complaining about Gershkovich or Navalny is absurd given what it is doing to Assange. It seems that the only thing Assange did was commit journalism. It is my understanding that nothing Wikileaks has released has been disproved – in fact, the prosecution (persecution, to be accurate) is precisely because it was factual. Going after him is an obvious attempt to intimidate reporters, something it’s hard to imagine the government being much concerned about given their record at this point. His last chance to avoid extradition from Great Britain to certain convection or worse here in the US is next week. There are many ways you can add your voice to those opposing this travesty – please speak up.

Technically speaking, since Wikileaks published classified information, the problem wasn’t really with Wikileaks publishing it (a long standing US tradition – Pentagon papers anybody?). The criminal act was really the people who gave Assange the original classified documents. However, there is just one problem: these documents were in fact proof of illegal activity on the part of the US Government … the fact that government officials can hide behind classification as a shield against prosecution – and turn the tables on whistleblowers and now journalists who try to report on it – is a serious problem in our system.

Speaking as someone who has held clearances and takes them very seriously, revelation of illegal acts should be an absolute defense against any security violation. I have no problem with the person doing so being charged and tried – security is that important – but if action being uncovered is illegal, that should be able to be raised as a defense and if proven the charges dismissed. That said, there should never be a charge brought against a journalist for reporting something given to them, even if classified and even if that classification turns out to be legitimate. The breach was the person who had access abusing their clearance – with the caveat again being if it was to expose wrongdoing, they should be exonerated. Journalism and the free flow of information is too vital to our democracy and government accountability to do otherwise. The silence of the major media on this subject is incredible.

How is all of this related? All of the above stories – Ukraine, supposed new nuclear threat from Russia, and the death of Navalny – require knowledgeable, nuanced, balanced reporting that is independent of government narratives of the day. That requires an independent press free from intimidation and threats. The epic hypocrisy of the US prosecuting Assange, while in the same breath complaining about Gershkovich in Russia, much less remaining silent over the torture and death of Gonzalo Lira (a US Citizen) in Ukraine, is disgusting. And for the press to simply parrot government narratives without context means they are stenographers, not journalists. This country is supposed to be different. It is supposed to be the “shining city on the hill” with integrity and honor.

Sadly, in these matters, our major institutions of media and government have neither.