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By Paul Mobbs: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – The Gaping Hole in the Middle of the Circular Economy

Circular Economy Thermodynamics

The laws of thermodynamics govern the universe. Of all our scientific theories, thermodynamics is the least likely to change as we learn more. In other words, thermodynamics is the bedrock of science.

As a consequence, any “sustainable” solution to our overshoot predicament must first be checked to confirm that it does not conflict with the laws of thermodynamics. Unfortunately, most solutions promoted today, like renewable energy, recycling, and a circular economy, do conflict with thermodynamics and therefore are not useful strategies.

We must reduce our population and our consumption. And we will, one way or the other.

Here is a nice essay on the thermodynamics of a circular economy by Paul Mobbs.

http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/musings/2018/20180417-2nd_law_circular_economy.html

Just because renewable energy is ‘renewable’, it doesn’t mean the machines we require to harvest that energy are freed from the finite limits of the Earth’s resources[10].

There are grand schemes to power the world using renewable energy. The difficulty is that no one has bothered to check to see if the resources are available to produce that energy. Recent research suggests that the resources required to produce that level of capacity cannot currently be supplied[11].

The crunch point is that while there might be enough indium, gallium, neodymium and other rare metals to manufacture wind turbines or PV panels for the worlds half-a-billion or so affluent consumers (i.e., the people most likely to be reading this), there is not enough to give everyone on the planet that same level of energy consumption – we’d run out long before then.

 

The ‘circular economy’ is, I my opinion, a ruse to make affluent consumers feel that they can keep consuming without the need to change their habits. Nothing could be further[25] from the truth, and the central reason for that is the necessity for energy to power economic activity[26].

While the ‘circular economy’ concept admittedly has the right ideas, it detracts from the most important aspects of our ecological crisis today[27] – it is consumption that is the issue, not the simply the use of resources. Though the principle could be made to work for a relatively small proportion[28] of the human population, it could never be a mainstream solution for the whole world because of its reliance on renewable energy technologies to make it function – and the over-riding resource limitations on harvesting renewable energy.

In order to reconcile the circular economy with the Second Law we have to apply not only changes to the way we use materials, but how we consume them. Moreover, that implies such a large reduction in resource use[29] by the most affluent, developed consumers, that in no way does the image of the circular economy, portrayed by its proponents, match up to the reality[30] of making it work for the majority of the world’s population.

In the absence of a proposal that meets both the global energy and resource limitations[30] on the human system, including the limits on renewable energy production, the current portrayal of the ‘circular economy’ is not a viable option. Practically then, it is nothing more than a salve for the conscience of affluent consumers who, deep down, are conscious enough to realize that their life of luxury will soon be over as the related ecological and economic crises[31] bite further up the income scale.

On Superior Pattern Processing, Magical Thinking, and Human Success

Cerebral Cortex

A friend brought to my attention an interesting paper by Mark P. Mattson titled “Superior pattern processing is the essence of the evolved human brain“. It discusses the uniquely powerful capabilities of the human brain, and provides a partial theory for why these capabilities evolved.

Here is summary of what I consider to be the paper’s key points:

  • Humans have a uniquely powerful brain.
  • The human brain has the same structure and components as the brains of other mammals; what distinguishes the human brain is a higher quantity of neurons and synapses that enable superior pattern processing (SPP).
  • SPP is sufficient to explain unique human capabilities such as creativity, imagination, language, and magical thinking.
  • The human brain began to enlarge about 5-8 million years ago via a self-reinforcing feedback loop created by the synergy of increased brain power in a social species with an upright posture able to forage longer distances.
  • Human survival depended on social cooperation which created another self-reinforcing relationship between social interactions and SPP ability, and which led to an extended theory of mind with which humans understand that others have thoughts and emotions very similar to their own.
  • SPP led to language emerging about 100,000 years ago, and language is likely a major reason for the current dominance of Homo sapiens.
  • The ability to draw came after language about 30,000 years ago and enhanced the ability to communicate important spatial information like maps.
  • SPP enabled human imagination and invention which enhanced the success of humans via tool making, but also created a human tendency for magical thinking such as religious beliefs.
  • Gods were fabricated as explanations for phenomena that were not understood. As those phenomena were later explained by science those Gods were abandoned. With one exception, there is exceptional resistance to the science of human evolution and magical thinking persists on the origin of humans.
  • Psychiatric disorders result from abnormal SPP that blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination.
  • Homo sapiens is the only hominid to survive from an original pool of from 8 to 27 species. This suggests that only Homo sapiens evolved superior pattern processing which it used to outcompete its cousins.

So far so good, but then Mattson veers off into what feels like just so stories for his SPP theory:

  • Mattson thinks differences in SPP between populations today explains why some groups prosper and others struggle. For example, Africans must have a low SPP because they are poor, and Americans, Europeans, and Asians must have high SPP because they are affluent. Mattson might be right here, but I think it more likely that the self-reinforcing relationship between early access to low-cost energy, wealth creation, and wealth multiplication via growth enabled debt is a more likely explanation.
  • Mattson thinks differences in SPP between groups today is likely explained by epigenetics. For (my) example, malnourished mothers may have babies will less powerful brains.
  • Mattson concludes with a cheery prediction that humans will continue to evolve SPP which they will use to make better decisions and to invent technologies that eliminate suffering and ensure long-term survival. This sounds to me like a grade 12 valedictorian speech.
  • Mattson also concludes that we should educate everyone about how SPP works so that we can once and for all end our silly beliefs in god and the suffering this causes.  Here he seems almost as delusional as my earlier hope that awareness of genetic reality deny might help mitigate our impending overshoot collapse.
  • Finally he suggests further research into SPP might help us design better AI computers.

Setting aside Mattson’s concluding unicorns and rainbows, I agree with his earlier points. Unfortunately he spends a lot of time discussing the obvious bits and ignores the interesting bits:

  • After 8 million years of slowly improving brain power in many hominids species, there was a dramatic jump about 100,000 years ago in one of the species that enabled language and enhanced tools making, and that species used its unique skills to outcompete all the others.  That species also simultaneously began to believe in life after death which was later elaborated into religions, something no other species does. Using Mattson’s reasoning, brain power should have simultaneously improved for all hominids with no unusual discontinuity.
  • Mattson is mistaken about the adaptive value of religion. He thinks that the magical thinking associated with religion has some adaptive value. I think the evidence is clear that humans apply magical thinking to many aspects of their lives, including religion. The adaptive value of religions is not magical thinking, rather it is that religions serve to define, unite, govern, motivate, and entertain tribes, and (especially in times of scarcity) define outside tribes as enemies. In other words, religions improve survival via enhanced social cooperation.
  • Mattson acknowledges that magical thinking about human divinity is a unique and fascinating persistent behavior but does not offer an explanation. I think the explanation is clear. Given the human brain’s tendency for magical thinking we should expect religious beliefs to include every conceivable wacky story, as they do, and we should statistically expect a few of those wacky stories to involve life after death, but they don’t, instead every one of the thousands of human religions has a life after death story which suggests there must be a separate genetic reason for the universal belief in life after death.
  • Mattson thinks the primary cause of anxiety disorders and depression is defective SPP resulting in a blurring of reality, self-doubt, and hopelessness. While no doubt true in some cases, Mattson does not consider that a defective ability to deny unpleasant realities can be the cause of mental illness. For example, fully accepting the science of human overshoot, climate change, and net energy decline coupled with an understanding that an individual cannot influence the outcome is a plenty strong reason for depression. In other words, magical thinking likely improves mental health.

All of these interesting bits, and more, are explained by Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory.

Following are a few excerpts from Mattson’s paper that highlight ideas I thought were noteworthy, but I recommend you read the entire paper for proper context.

The cognitive repertoire of humans far exceeds that of all other animals, and understanding the neurobiological basis of this superiority is therefore of interest not only to scientists, but also to society. As humans evolved from their anthropoid ancestors, and the size of their cerebral cortex expanded, novel pattern processing capabilities emerged.

The main purposes of the present article are to describe the superior pattern processing (SPP) capabilities of the human brain, to forward the hypothesis that SPP is the neurobiological foundation of human sociocultural evolution, and to describe the roles of aberrant SPP in some major neurological disorders.

The types of pattern processing that appear to occur robustly, if not uniquely in the human brain and are therefore considered as SPP include:

  1. Creativity and invention, which have resulted in the development of tools, processes and protocols for solving problems and saving time, and the arts (Goel, 2014; Orban and Caruana, 2014; Zaidel, 2014). Examples include all aspects of agriculture, transportation, science, commerce defense/security, and music;
  2. Spoken and written languages that enable rapid communication of highly specific information about all aspects of the physical universe and human experiences;
  3. Reasoning and rapid decision-making;
  4. Imagination and mental time travel which enables the formulation and rehearsal of potential future scenarios; and
  5. Magical thinking/fantasy, cognitive process that involves beliefs in entities and processes that defy accepted laws of causality including telepathy, spirits, and gods (Einstein and Menzies, 2004).

A major purpose of the present article is to forward the proposal that not only is pattern processing necessary for higher brain functions of humans, but SPP is sufficient to explain many such higher brain functions including creativity, imagination, language, and magical thinking.

 

The human brain has retained many features of brain structure and cellular organization of the brains of birds and lower mammals, but has greatly elaborated upon them by developing more robust cortical neuronal networks involved in the processing of visual and auditory patterns. As in lower mammals, being aware of one’s position in the environment, and remembering the locations of resources (food, shelter, etc.) and hazards (predators, cliffs, etc.) is of fundamental importance for the survival of humans. However, the encoding of visual inputs into “cognitive maps” of spatial relationships between objects in the environment (spatial pattern separation), and the encoding of auditory inputs, is necessary but not sufficient for the advanced pattern processing  abilities of humans including imagination, invention, and pattern transfer (language). The evidence suggests that expansion of the visual cortex, prefrontal cortex, and parietal—temporal—occipital (PTO) association area enabled the SPP that defines the human intellect capacity and all of its manifestations, including consciousness, language and mental fabrication and time travel. The remainder of this article describes some of the salient evidence for SPP as the basis of most, if not all, higher cortical functions in humans.

 

Thus, findings from neuroscience research has confirmed the general conclusion of Charles Darwin who proposed in The Descent of Man that the minds of humans and related species are fundamentally similar (Darwin, 1871).

Neuroanatomical and neurochemical considerations… section suggest that the superior intellectual capabilities of humans are solely or largely the result of the increase in the number of neurons and synapses that mediate enhanced encoding, integration and inter-individual transfer of patterns. There is little or no uniqueness in the structural or functional properties of the neuronal circuits that mediate intelligence in humans. Moreover, the intellectual capability of any individual requires the integrated function of pattern-processing networks distributed throughout the cerebral cortex, indicating that there is no single brain structure responsible for the mental superiority of humans.

 

One prominent phenotypic change that is believed to have occurred during the evolutionary transition from the Genus Pan (chimpanzees) to the Genus Homo (approximately 5–8 million years ago), was the acquisition of an upright bipedal endurance/distance runner phenotype (Bramble and Lieberman, 2004; Lieberman and Bramble, 2007; Mattson, 2012). Bipedalism also enabled the evolution of the shoulder in ways that allowed humans to throw objects accurately at a high velocity, greatly improving their ability as hunters (Roach et al., 2013). This was also the period in the evolution of our species when the size of the cerebral cortex increased relatively rapidly, which suggests that the expansion of the territory covered by individuals and groups of humans (enabled by endurance running) played a role in the expansion of the cerebral cortex. Coverage of a larger territory during the great human expansion (Henn et al., 2012) would have provided the opportunity to access more resources (food, water, and shelter), and required a greater pattern processing capacity to remember details of the location and nature of the resources. Importantly, humans evolved the ability to transfer the information acquired and processed in their brains during their journeys to other individuals via gestures, map drawing, and language. Visual and auditory patterns were likely the most commonly processed and transferred because of the ability to readily and accurately reproduce sights and sounds. Accordingly, the regions of the brain that expanded in humans are mostly involved in pattern processing of sights and sounds, and their codification as written and spoken languages. Very interestingly, specialized motor training (sports) enhances language understanding by a mechanism involving recruitment of the left dorsal lateral premotor cortex, suggesting that the language system is functionally connected to motor skill-related areas outside of the core language networks (Beilock et al., 2008). The latter findings suggest that the language SPP capabilities of the human brain co-evolved with development of organized “teamwork,” which may have bolstered functional interactions between brain regions involved in language and those responsible for specialized sensory-motor skills.

 

Emotions such as fear, anger, pleasure, and love are elevated states of arousal that enhance memory and recall of the events occurring during those emotional states (Bergado et al., 2011; Maren et al., 2013). This is a major, if not singular, function of emotions. Emotions evolved to reinforce memories of patterns of particular significance vis-à-vis survival and reproduction. Remembering the details of the events of an attack by a predator or intra-species rival will increase the probability of avoidance of such potentially deadly encounters in the future. Memories of the pleasurable experience of intercourse with fertile individuals of the opposite sex provides motivation for additional bouts of intercourse, and so increases the probability of passing one’s genes on to future generations.

….

Humans have evolved as highly social animals (Chang et al., 2013) with close emotional ties to mates, offspring, parents and close friends that enhance their survival and reproductive success (Damasio and Carvalho, 2013). As with other emotions, those associated with social interactions may have evolved to enhance SPP. In this view, there is a self-amplifying reciprocal relationship between social interactions and SPP ability. Thus, advanced PP abilities enable the development of social bonds and networks and, conversely, social interactions stimulate SPP. Success in social interactions requires that one recognize others, remember their past experiences with those individuals, and communicate their intentions. Dunbar’s social brain hypothesis of evolution of the primate brain includes the possible role of emotional attachments to mates and friends in complex social networks in the expansion of the cerebral cortex during anthropoid evolution (Dunbar, 2009; Sutcliffe et al., 2012). Because the memories of specific patterns (faces, places, conversations, etc.) can be reinforced or even embellished by emotions (Holland and Kensinger, 2010), it is reasonable to consider that evolution of the social brain was bolstered by emotional relationships. In addition to their use of complex language (see next Section), humans have added another dimension to social interactions—they are aware that others have thoughts and emotions very similar to their own. Humans therefore not only encode and process patterns representing their own experiences, but also the experiences of their family, friends and workmates. Social interactions require processing of information regarding the histories, behaviors and thoughts of many other individuals. Whether family members, employees or competitors, there are clear advantages to being able to know what others have done in the past, and to predict their future behaviors. Thus, inter-personal SPP is critical for success in most aspects of life, including acquiring and retaining friends, a job and a mate. Emotions reinforce inter-personal SPP, such that interactions involving anger, pleasure, sadness, etc. are retained, recalled and processed more thoroughly than interactions occurring in a neutral emotional context.

 

Language is the quintessential example of the evolved SPP capabilities of the human brain as it involves (once learned) the instantaneous conversion of sounds to visual symbols, and vice-versa. Language is a complex behavior in which auditory and/or visual patterns learned from other individuals or perceived in the environment are encoded, processed and modified for the purpose of transfer of information to other individuals. Language involves the use of patterns (symbols, words, and sounds) to code for objects and events encountered either via direct experience or communication from other individuals. Language-related SPP can create new patterns (stories, paintings, songs, etc.) of “things” that may (reality) or may not (fiction) exist. Language-mediated encoding and transfer of auditory and visual patterns enabled the rapid evolution of the human brain and is likely a major reason for the current dominance of Homo sapiens. (Aboitiz et al., 2006; Berwick et al., 2013).

 

While birds and non-human primates exhibit auditory communication, their vocalizations convey general information such as danger, rather than detailed instructions. It has been proposed by Tomasello (2008) that the kinds of gestures used by great apes is an evolutionary precursor of language. Studies of infant humans further support the notion that pointing and gestures are an ontogenic precursor to language (Goldin-Meadow, 2007; Liszkowski et al., 2009). Languages involving complex vocabularies and written symbols and words are believed to have arisen in Homo sapiens beginning approximately 100,000 years ago (Berwick et al., 2013). The rapid evolution of language skills, and the underlying neural circuits that mediate language processes, is fully consistent with its fundamental role in the rapid advancement of human societies. Language provides powerful reproductive and survival advantages. A man who engages a woman in stimulating conversation is more likely to attract her as a mate than is an inarticulate man. An army whose soldiers use detailed maps and advanced communication skills is more likely to win a battle than is an army that charges forward “blindly.”

 

The importance of imagination and invention for the rapid advancement of the human species cannot be overstated. The invention of tools and technologies have dominated the recent development of civilizations throughout the world. The earliest evidence for the invention of tools by our human ancestors dates to approximately 2.5 million years ago in Ethiopia and Kenya where stones were fashioned into cutting tools (Plummer, 2004). At that time hominid brains were about the same size as those of apes (approximately 500 grams), whereas the brain of modern humans is nearly three times larger.

 

A fascinating aspect of human SPP is the ability to fabricate mental entities that do not exist in the real world, including magical thinking. Magical thinking can be defined as “beliefs that defy culturally accepted laws of causality. In Western culture magical thinking refers to beliefs in, among other things, clairvoyance, astrology, spirit influences, and telepathy.” (Einstein and Menzies, 2004). Superstitions and rituals are examples of types of magical thinking. The cognitive fabrication of imaginary patterns is prominently illustrated in religious beliefs which have presumably provided an adaptive advantage to many societies. Magical thinking is at the core of all major religions wherein specific life events are believed to be controlled by “God,” and the “believers” behavior is designed to please “God” and avoid “his” wrath (Bloom, 2012). Figure 3 illustrates how a type of SPP, magical thinking, has had a major influence on cultural evolution. A recent functional MRI study suggests that religious belief involves neural networks that process information regarding intent and emotion, abstract semantics and imagery (Kapogiannis et al., 2009a). Transcranial magnetic stimulation focused on the left lateral temporal lobe, but not the right lateral temporal lobe or vertex, reduced magical thinking (Bell et al., 2007) providing further insight into the neural networks involved in magical thinking. Interestingly, structural differences between religious and non-religious subjects have been demonstrated including increased volume of right middle temporal cortex and reduced volumes of left precuneus and orbitofrontal cortex in religious subjects (Kapogiannis et al., 2009b). These findings are consistent with psychological theories of the evolution of religious belief which posit adaptive cognitive functions of such magical thinking (Culotta, 2009).

 

In general, psychiatric disorders result from an abnormal skewing of SPP in ways that dissolve the neural circuit-based boundaries between reality and imagination, between the realms of possibilities and probabilities. There are likely evolution-based reasons that anxiety and depression, and “paranoia spectrum disorders” are so common. Everyone experiences anxiety transiently in situations that involve real threats to oneself or loved ones; this heightened state of arousal is an adaptive response that provides motivation toward actions that can mitigate the danger. However, individuals with an anxiety disorder react to perceived threats that either do not in fact exist or are highly unlikely to occur. Depression is a state of self-doubt and hopelessness that often follows a period of chronic anxiety or a catastrophic life event. It involves a pervasive distortion of reality and an unrealistic catastrophic view of the future.

 

If SPP has played a fundamental role in the evolution of the human brain, then this should be evident in both the historical record and trajectories of different human populations throughout the world. The SPP theory predicts that populations that more rapidly develop SPP capabilities will experience accelerated accrual of resources and prosperity. The examples of major SPP abilities acquired during human evolution that were considered above (language, invention, imagination, reasoning, and planning for the future) should have each provided a survival and resource-accumulating advantage. The SPP theory therefore predicts that populations that did not develop each of these SPP capabilities would have been outcompeted by those populations with brains that did acquire, through evolution, those SPP capabilities. This prediction is supported by the fact that all surviving populations of H. sapiens use language, invent tools and exhibit imagination and complex reasoning. Hominin populations lacking, or with relatively poorer, SPP capabilities presumably failed to compete successfully, and so no longer exist.

 

The SPP theory predicts that variability in SPP capabilities among current human populations will be associated with variations in resources, health and welfare (indicators of fitness) of the different populations. Studies have documented positive associations of brain size with greater intelligence, faster decision making and greater cultural achievements between and within genetically differentiated populations of modern humans (Rushton and Jensen, 2008). This suggests that variability in SPP among existing groups of humans may be sufficiently robust to influence their relative fitness and so the future evolution of the human brain. The differential SPP-mediated development of technologies to improve transportation, manufacturing, scientific discovery and health care have resulted in the advancement of some populations above others. Individuals in populations that have most heavily utilized the SPP capabilities of their brains currently enjoy the greatest levels of prosperity, better health and longer lives. The disparities between and within countries are in some cases quite striking, with African countries exhibiting considerably less propensity for SPP, as reflected in poverty, low levels of education, high infant mortality and short lifespans. In contrast, the United States, and many countries in Europe and Asia are experiencing economic growth that is arguably resulting, in large part, from development of SPP-based technologies, with computer-based systems being a prominent example of a human invention that enables processing of information at rates many orders of magnitude beyond the capability of the human brain. Clearly, humans have recognized the central importance of SPP for their advancement as a species.

 

Finally, the SPP theory predicts that human evolution will continue to involve expansion of the prefrontal cortex and functionally associated brain regions, with resulting improvements in the brain’s ability to rapidly process information and make (good) decisions. The specific outcomes of advanced SPP for future generations remain to be determined, but may (hopefully) include the invention of technologies that eliminate suffering and help ensure the long-term survival of our species.

On Apollo: The Most Impressive Human Achievement

How Apollo Flew to the Moon

I’m an electrical engineer that specialized in operating system design. I built my first computer in 1981 before the IBM PC was available. I designed an integrated circuit in 1983 for my Masters thesis. I managed large R&D groups for most of my 25 year career. I continue to be a technology geek in my personal life. As a consequence, I have a pretty good sense of what is impressive, and what is not, from an engineering perspective.

As readers probably know, I think net energy constraints have placed us at, or passed, the peak of all forms of complexity, including technology. I see evidence everywhere of peak technology.

The highlights of human engineering accomplishments for me include: steel, concrete, glass, Haber-Bosch fertilizer, diesel engines, turbine engines, turbine electricity generators, electric motors, electromagnetic communications, hydraulics, heat pumps, Panama canal, Golden Gate bridge, Chunnel, Concorde, Apollo, Hubble, Voyager, nuclear submarines, skyscrapers, deep-sea oil rigs, integrated circuits, microprocessors, magnetic storage, lasers, LED lights, internet, lithium-ion batteries, robotics, and DNA sequencing.

Notice that everything on this list is over 20 years old.  I can’t think of anything of equal importance that was invented in the last 20 years.

Gasoline and turbine engine efficiency gains have stalled. Diesel engine efficiency is going backwards due to new pollution regulations. Air travel speed plateaued many years ago.  The promise of too cheap to meter nuclear electricity appears certain to remain a dream. Battery performance barely creeps forward despite a hundred years of promises. My 3 year old smart phone works fine with no compelling reason to upgrade. Cameras were good enough many years ago. Household appliances are getting smarter, but their core functions are not improving, and they don’t last as long due to cost reduction pressures. TV resolution is increasing but few need it. LED lights are getting cheaper, but the technology was invented many years ago. Popular Mechanics magazine no longer writes about jet packs and flying cars.

It’s been 6 years since I built my current desktop computer. There’s still no compelling reason to upgrade it. If I spend the thousand dollars required to upgrade it, I will gain 25% performance. That’s nothing compared to the gains we saw 20 years ago.

I can see how a non-engineer might think otherwise. A computer in your pocket with a wireless connection to the internet feels like magic, but advances in the technologies used to build smart phones began to level off years ago. It’s not advances in fundamental technology that’s creating today’s magic. It’s thousands of small innovative apps, plus a few monster apps that leverage a 25 year old internet to connect us with friends and businesses, that creates the illusion of magic. Apps are software, and software is not new. There’s just a lot more software variety available to supply a much larger market created by everyone having a networked computer camera in their pocket.

For a long time I’ve felt our most impressive technology accomplishment occurred 50 years ago when we visited the moon. I vividly remember as an 11 year boy going outside at night and looking up in awe at Armstrong on the moon.

Over the years I’ve read and watched much about the Apollo program but never encountered anything that got into the details of Apollo’s engineering. I intuitively suspected there was a lot of impressive technology depth to Apollo, but never had the facts to back up my intuition.

I’ve just finished the book How Apollo Flew to the Moon by W. David Woods and now I have the facts to confirm my intuition. The book covers all of the technical details for every phase of the mission from launch to splashdown. I love the clear, concise, and engaging writing style of the author.

What those 400,000 people 50 years ago accomplished over 10 years is breath-taking. Every step of the mission involved staggering engineering challenges and trade-offs.  Lives were at stake on prime time television. The scale is hard to fathom. For example, the power produced by the Saturn V first stage was equivalent to the entire electricity consumption of the UK. More recent engineering accomplishments are not even in the same league.

Wood’s book answered all of my questions plus many I had not thought of:

  • how did the engines work?
  • how did they navigate?
  • how did they steer?
  • how did the stages separate?
  • how do you move from an earth orbit to a lunar orbit and back?
  • how did the lunar module land?
  • how did the lunar module take off, find, and rendezvous with the command module?
  • how did mission control track location and monitor systems?
  • what did the computers do?
  • what were the emergency contingency plans?

If you prefer to listen than read, here are some excellent podcasts with W. David Woods discussing the Apollo program:

Omega Tau 083 – How Apollo Flew to the Moon (December 15, 2011)

Omega Tau 097 – How Apollo Explored the Moon (June 18, 2012)

Omega Tau 176 – The Gemini Programme (July 18, 2015)

Omega Tau 239 – The Saturn V Launch Vehicle (March 12, 2017)

If you prefer to watch than read, here is a video presentation by W. David Woods in which the production quality is mediocre, but the content is strong.

 

If you are wondering why we have not accomplished anything even close to the Apollo program in the intervening 50 years, it’s because per capita net energy peaked around 1970, and has been declining ever since. In other words, our most complex achievement coincided with the peak of per capita net energy, as students of thermodynamics should expect.

I predict that the Apollo program will remain in perpetuity the most impressive achievement of the human species.

 

Per Capita Net Energy

http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2013/09/what-might-the-dynamics-of-net-energy-per-capita-look-like.html

 

On the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Trans Mountain pipeline

Many environmental groups in my province of B.C. oppose construction of a new pipeline from Alberta to the west coast. The motives of these groups include:

  • preventing dirty oil from contributing to climate change;
  • preventing environmental damage from pipeline and oil tanker spills;
  • concern for First Nation rights.

While these motives are admirable, all of the groups lack an understanding of, and/or deny, the laws of thermodynamics that govern our economy, and our overshoot predicament.

It’s true that climate change is a serious threat. In fact it’s much more serious than most environmental groups acknowledge. We are already locked into a dangerous 2C higher climate with 10m of sea level rise no matter what we do. There are no actions we can take today to solve the climate problem and avoid future suffering. Our choices today are to try to maintain our current lifestyle and increase future suffering, or reduce our population and consumption, and constrain future suffering.

It’s also true that the pipeline will create some new risks for environmental damage, but these risks pale in comparison to the damage the human footprint is already causing. Habitat loss, species extinction, soil depletion, nitrogen imbalance, pollution, deforestation, overfishing, and non-renewable resource depletion are the real threats environmental groups should focus on. As with climate change, nothing can be done about these threats unless we reduce human population and consumption.

In addition, if you want to maintain our current lifestyle, and you are concerned about the risk of oil spills, then there is a good argument to build the pipeline.

With regard to First Nations rights, all 7.6 billion humans descended from one small tribe in Africa about 100,000 years ago, meaning we’re all basically the same. Environmentalists should focus on the rights of all future generations, including First Nations.

Our standard of living is completely dependent on the burning of fossil energy, especially oil. We have already burned most of the cleaner and cheaper oil. That’s why we are mining dirty expensive oil sands, and fracking. To reduce our use of fossil energy we must reduce our standard living and our population.

Put another way, new pipelines will be built for another decade or so, until even the dirty oil is gone, unless we reduce our consumption of oil, and the only way to accomplish that is to shrink our economy, standard of living, and population.

If environmental groups want to make a difference on the issues that matter, as well as lesser issues like preventing new pipelines, they must:

  • set good examples in their personal lives (no more than one child, no long distance travel, reduced consumption of everything);
  • advocate for a global one child policy;
  • advocate for austerity, conservation, and a smaller economy (the simplest and most effective way to accomplish this would be to implement a higher interest rate).

It’s true that our choices are unpalatable, but they are reality, and there is a key point that must be understood when weighing what to do. The remaining affordable fossil energy is depleting quickly. Extraction will, in a decade or so, become too expensive for us to afford, meaning fossil energy will be gone for all intents and purposes. When this happens, our lifestyles and population will collapse, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, no matter what we choose to do.

The advantage of choosing to voluntarily contract today is twofold. First, we would constrain future suffering caused by climate change. Second, we could use some of our remaining wealth to prepare a softer landing zone and to orchestrate a fairer and more humane descent. The alternative of doing nothing until thermodynamics forces the issue is chaos, war, and much more suffering for all species, including humans.

This article today suggests that environmental groups may have succeeded in preventing construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline:

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Disaster-Hits-Canadas-Oil-Sands.html

Kinder Morgan said it would halt nearly all work on a pipeline project that is crucial to the entire Canadian oil sands industry, representing a huge blow to Alberta’s efforts to move oil to market.

Here is what I predict will happen:

  1. Environmentalists will continue to deny reality and focus on the wrong things.
  2. We will not voluntarily contract the economy.
  3. We will not implement a one child policy.
  4. The Trans Mountain pipeline will be built, provided that our luck persists at avoiding an accidental crash caused by the instability we have created by using extreme debt to maintain an illusion of economic growth.

Let’s check back in a year to see if I am correct.

By Paul Arbair: The World in 2018 (part 4)

Paul Arbair - The World in 2018

I just stumbled on Paul Arbair. I’m very impressed.

I now need two hands to count the number of people in the world that understand and regularly write about the reality of our predicament. Although apparently Paul Arbair is a pen name (his avatar is a Polar Bear), so maybe one hand will continue to suffice.

Here Arbair explains the history and centrality of energy to the success of humans, how economics (and all the other social sciences) are embarrassingly ignorant of this vital relationship, how we have used debt to mask a decline in the quality of energy and to accelerate ecosystem damage, and how we are fast approaching an unpleasant end game.

I note that Arbair concludes his essay by discussing our near universal denial of reality.

Following are a few paragraphs I extracted from the essay, but I recommend you read the whole thing.

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/102935372/posts/1485

 

The issues with conventional economic theories and models are many, varied and complex. They include a number of flaws and blind spots, which have been laid bare by the Great Financial Crisis and its aftermath. Most importantly, they include the almost complete ignorance – or rather voluntary omission – of the fundamental biophysical foundations of the economic process. This ignorance of how the flows of energy and matter underpin economic activity – and economic growth – results from the evacuation of the natural world from mainstream economic thought, which occurred in the 20thcentury, when it suddenly looked like homo sapiens had managed to conquer nature and the curse of resource scarcity had been all but defeated.

 

Losing thrust at high altitude

However, in advanced economies this energy boost started to wear out in the 1970s, for several reasons. First, energy use ran into a classic phenomenon of diminishing returns: the low-hanging fruits of economic growth had been picked first, many large-scale infrastructure investments with a high economic multiplier effect (including electrification) had already been made, and in many industries and sectors maximum machine speed/velocity was already being reached. Just like the average speed of automobiles, motorbikes or planes, the average speed of industrial machines in many sectors increased much faster until the late 1960s/early 1970s than after that. The physical and economic limits to energy-based speed-ups thus probably played a role in the sudden slowdown in productivity growth at the turn of the 1970s. Second, increasing concerns about the atmospheric and ground pollution resulting from fossil energy use – and from material use made possible by fossil fuels – triggered the adoption at the beginning of the 1970s of the first set of environmental regulations in Western countries, which established some constraints on the further expansion of energy use. Third, oil depletion in the U.S. – until then the world’s largest producer – and a subsequent realignment of energy geopolitics lead to a dramatic rise in the price of oil (i.e. the 1973 oil crisis), which rapidly reverberated across the economy. This triggered a considerable slowdown of the rate of increase of energy consumption, resulting in much slower economic growth. The combination of economic stagnation and soaring price inflation came to be known as ‘stagflation’, and lasted until the beginning of the 1980s, when oil prices finally started to decrease. After a sharp growth slowdown in the 1970s, world energy use per capita started to decline slightly in the 1980s and 1990s, an only picked up again at the beginning of the 21st century, as a result of China’s rapid expansion and massive use of domestic coal resources.

Oil depletion and its effects have remained a constant source of concern – and of geopolitical tensions – since the oil crises of the 1970s. The threat of oil supply shortages was partly alleviated in the 1980s and 1990s by the discovery and exploitation of new major oil fields in North America (Alaska) and Europe (North Sea), but it resurfaced in the 2000s when wars disrupted production in the Middle East, oil prices spiked, and fears of an imminent peak and decline of global oil production (‘peak oil’) grew. These fears have since then receded, largely as a result of the exploitation of ‘tight oil’ (also called ‘shale oil’) in North America, using hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) and horizontal drilling, as well as to other ‘unconventional’ sources (oil sands, deepwater oil) and to the use of enhanced recovery techniques in conventional oil fields. These are however temporary fixes: shale oil production is expected to peak in just a few years time, and global oil discoveries have fallen to their lowest point since the 1940s, prompting rising fears of a supply crunch – and possible price spike – around 2020.

While concerns about oil depletion – and fossil fuels depletion in general – tend to mostly focus on quantitative aspects (i.e. availability and affordability), qualitative aspects are often overlooked. Yet they are as, or even more, significant. In fact, depletion means that it is getting more and more difficult, costly, resource-intensive and polluting to get oil – and other fossil fuels – out of the ground. It also means that the energetic quality (measured in terms of exergy) and productivity (measured in terms of net energy or EROI) of what is extracted tends to go down, resulting in a decreasing capacity to power useful and productive work, and in a decreasing ability to provide ‘surplus energy’ to society (i.e. energy that can effectively be used for doing other things than finding, extracting, processing, converting, transporting and distributing energy). According to some estimates the EROI of global oil and gas has declined by nearly 50% in the last two decades, meaning that new technology and production methods (deep water or horizontal drilling) help to maintain production but appear insufficient to counter the decline in the energetic productivity of conventional oil and gas. In other words, we are now entering the age of ‘crappy oil’, or at least we are clearly heading that way…

The declining energetic quality and productivity of fossil energy resources has resulted in the last decades in a rising energy intensity of the global energy system. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the share of the world’s Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) used by the energy supply sector (which comprises all energy extraction, conversion, storage, transmission, and distribution processes that deliver final energy to end users) expanded from 24% in 1973 to 31% in 2015, while the share available for Total Final Consumption (TFC) by other sectors of the economy went down from 76% to 69%. Overall, the quantity of energy supplied to end-use sectors (i.e. industry, transport, residential, services, agriculture, etc.) rose by 101% over the period, but the quantity of energy that had to be used by the energy system to supply this energy to end users increased by 196% (source: IEA Key World Energy Statistics 2017). Overall, a rising share of the fossil energy we get out of the ground therefore ends up being used by the energy system itself – or in other words the ‘energy cost of energy’ (ECOE) is rising, and the trend is accelerating. This relative energetic productivity decline not only constrains the growth the amount of ‘net energy’ that the global energy system can make available for use by other sectors, it also increases the share of those sectors’ output that has to be consumed by the energy sector. As the energy sector becomes less productive, it indeed tends to consume not only more energy but also more materials, more labour, more services, etc. A rising share of the output of other sectors has to be dedicated to servicing the needs of the energy sector, which ends up constraining economic growth and eroding economic prosperity (i.e. the capacity for societies to dedicate a rising fraction of economic output to discretionary uses).

Therefore, starting in the 1970s fossil energy progressively ceased to boost global economic growth as it had done since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and most particularly during the post-WWII period. The world’s energy-based growth engines, it suddenly appeared, were losing thrust, exposing the global economy to growing and hazardous turbulence while flying fast and at high altitude…

 

We are now in the tail end of what arguably constitutes the biggest bubble in economic history, the ‘everything bubble’ that has been blown in response to the Great Financial Crisis. This ‘everything bubble’ concerns all asset classes, and its effects directly or indirectly extend to the whole of the global economy. There is no single activity, sector, firm, household or public body in advanced economies – as well as in most emerging economies – whose current economic and financial situation is not either determined, underpinned or heavily influenced by the ‘everything bubble’, and not a single of them will remain unaffected when the bubble pops. To some extent, it could be argued that it’s the global economic and financial system itself that has now become the bubble. Most of us fail to understand or acknowledge it, probably because the bubble is so massive and so extended this time that it is paradoxically more difficult to recognise than more circumscribed and classic asset bubbles. Probably, as well, because our collective intoxication with technology and with the promises of a techno future is increasingly blinding us to the reality of the economic system we’re living in. Probably, also, because the consequences of our global economy being predicated on the existence and perpetuation of an all-encompassing financial bubble are too uncomfortable to contemplate. Yet we are inevitably approaching the unavoidable denouement of our bubble cycle, and the slight economic recovery about which we have been rejoicing of late might now be bringing us there faster as it puts pressure on central banks to tighten monetary policies more rapidly and decisively, thus getting us closer to the point where the bubble edifice starts to unravel.

Debt accumulation and financialisation, globalisation, liberalisation and ‘technologisation’ have thus largely failed, over the last four decades, to adequately compensate the global economy’s waning fossil energy boost. They have nevertheless lifted economic growth enough to continuously push up the use of fossil fuels and of other natural resources, as well as the environmental damage resulting from this use. Half of all oil burned by the human race has been burned since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and almost one-third of all human emissions of greenhouse gases occurred in the last twenty years. After remaining flat during the 2014-16 period, these emissions started to rise again in 2017 as economic growth was picking up. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising increasingly fast over the last decades, destabilising the planet’s climate system and setting in motion a climate change dynamic that we only partly understand, that we cannot control, and that we already know we will be unable to fully mitigate. And if climate change is probably the major threat facing humanity, it is also just one of the symptoms of the destabilisation of the Earth system that is occurring and accelerating as a result of homo sapiens’ relentless activity. Every year we consistently increase our use of non-renewable resources, thus drawing down our reserves, degrading our environment and crowding out other life forms ever faster. Earth Overshoot Day (EOD), i.e. the date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds the planet’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year, now falls in early August, vs. the end of December at the beginning of the 1970s. Our demand for renewable natural resources and the services they provide is now equivalent to that of more than 1.5 Earths, and is on track to require the resources of two planets well before mid-century. All this, it needs to be remembered, is only occurring because of the burning of fossil fuels and the energy and material input into human activity that it makes possible. Scaling back our use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and eradicating it before the end of the 21st century, has now become the only way for humans to avoid terminal environmental catastrophe.

 

‘The World in 2018’, hence, is a world that has been unable to find adequate substitutes to the long-term economic boost it received from exploiting fossil energy, and that has merely managed to substitute genuine economic growth with debt accumulation and financial manipulation. It is a world that has been deceiving itself through financial leverage about the essence of its economic growth and progress, and that is still very much in denial about the scale of the consequences of the energy and resources binge this growth and progress have entailed. It is a world that has now left itself just a few decades to stop using the energy sources that underpin its modern economy and even modern civilization – or that risks seeing this modern economy crashing down and modern civilization burn itself to the ground. All this, of course, is not exactly how economists and policy makers typically talk about the state of the world or of the economy. It is also not exactly what dominates most people’s perceptions of their economic and financial conditions, which remain largely based on shorter-term considerations. Yet it is nevertheless the reality of our world – a reality that increasingly influences and shapes the course of events around us, and that will increasingly impose itself to all of us over the coming years. A reality, as well, that determines or at least significantly constrains the economic, social and political prospects and options we now have. We will start looking at these prospects and options in more details in the next instalment of this series.

By Steven Spencer: Interview with Richard Nolthenius

Environmental Professionals Postulating

Steven Spencer hosts a new podcast called Environmental Professionals Postulating.

On October 27, 2017 Spencer interviewed Dr. Richard Nolthenius, a professor of climate science at Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz California. I recently discovered Nolthenius and am very impressed, in part because he respects and acknowledges Tim Garrett’s work, and in part because he is so knowledgeable.

I’ve listened to hundreds of interviews with climate scientists over the years and this ranks among the very best.  Spencer asked good questions and Nolthenius responded with lots of depth, breadth, and candor.

Given that Nolthenius understands Garrett’s thermodynamics of climate change you will detect segments where he lapses into denial, but he does far better than most climate scientists.

Highly recommended.

The 3 hour interview was broken into 3 parts:

Part 1 – Policy Mechanisms for fighting Climate Change

Part 2 – Technological Solutions for fighting Climate Change

Part 3 – GeoEngineering and the “Garrett Relation”

 

Dr. Richard Nolthenius has a background in thermal engineering and astronomy. He currently runs the Astronomy Program at Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz California. He also lecturers and has been a visiting researcher for UC Santa Cruz since 1987. He describes his professional transition in to climate science as “quite a shock, not necessarily a pleasant one”!

Dr. Nolthenius suggests that Professor Tim Garrett’s work on linking global wealth and energy consumption has not been given the attention it deserves, Dr. Nolthenius also concludes that the only way to advert the increasingly critical climate change situation is in line with Prof. Garretts publications and therefore requires sharp, rapid cuts to our use of fossil fuels.

To achieve this end Dr. Nolthenius has compiled a list of 7 Policy Mechanisms which he will discuss in Part one. These include:

  • Tax and Dividend
  • End government subsidies to fossil fuel companies
  • Trade sanctions against all countries who do not enact Tax and Dividend or end fossil fuel subsidies.
  • Devise an efficient mechanism to impose Tax/Dividend on all externalized costs.
  • Tax consumption, not income.
  • End Child Tax Credit, and promote policies which economically discourage population growth.
  • Amend the Constitution.

Dr. Nolthenius explains exactly what the above may involve, and discusses ideas for getting them implemented with a million person Occupy DC movement.

In Part Two Dr. Nolthenius highlights potential technological ‘band aids’ (and their short falls) which could potentially be implemented alongside the Policy Mechanisms discussed in Part 1. These include:

  • Energy technologies (PV, Wind, Hydroelectric, Geothermal and Nuclear).
  • Carbon Capture and storage
  • Artificial capture of CO2 from the atmosphere via ‘Air Capture’
  • Climeworks commercially operated Air Capture CO2 machine.
  • BECCS – BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration.

Dr. Nolthenius also points out how even if we ended all our carbon emissions today, the effect of Thermal Inertia would still cause global temperatures to rise.

Part 3 covers GeoEngineering including:

  • Permafrost Carbon
  • How do we choose?
  • Solar Radiation Management
    1. ‘Butterflies’
    2. Asteroids with dust secretion
    3. Reflective Aerosols
    4. Refreezing the Artic using pumped sea water.
  • ‘Loan Shark’ methods that won’t work long term
  • Why there is no ‘Magic Bullet’

Finally, in Part 3 Dr. Nolthenius takes some time to explain how economics is related to climate change, and why we need to stop our obsession with Growth.  The work of Prof. Tim Garrett / “The Garrett Relation” is expanded upon and discussed.

Reference is made by Dr Noltheius to “E.C.S”, although not covered in the series this stands for Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. More information on this is available in Dr Noltheniuss presentation ‘Earth Climate Change in One (very long) Lecture’ available here: https://www.cabrillo.edu/~rnolthenius/Apowers/ClimateInOne.pptx

Many thanks to Dr Richard Nolthenius for joining me for this 3-part series, I hope I can discuss more issues with him in the future. I highly recommend visiting his website where there is a wealth of information freely available: https://www.cabrillo.edu/~rnolthenius/. His University lecture presentations (powerpoint and pdf versions) relevant to the topics covered can be found at: https://www.cabrillo.edu/~rnolthenius/astro7/A7PowerIndex.html .

Professor Tim Garretts work as discussed can be found here: http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Economics.html

All 3 parts where recorded Friday 27th October 2017.

By Richard Nolthenius: The Thermodynamics of Civilization

A7-K43-Garrett

James @ Megacancer posted a link to a presentation on the thermodynamics of civilization by Dr. Richard Nolthenius who is Program Chair of Astronomy at Cabrillo College.

Nolthenius is an admirer of the work of Tim Garrett and here explains and elaborates on Garrett’s work.

Garrett has the best understanding in the world of the relationship between climate change and the economy, so it’s very nice to see a peer amplify Garrett’s novel and important work, which sadly has been mostly ignored to date.

It’s complex stuff and I don’t pretend to have absorbed all 260 pages but it’s worth a read because it conveys the unvarnished reality of the challenge and threat we face, which you won’t often find.

The only possible flaw in the logic that I was able to detect is that both Nolthenius and Garrett appear to think the most probable scenario is that we will continue to achieve 2% economic growth per year until climate change does so much damage to the economy that it can no longer grow and then collapses.

I think economic growth is slowing and the economy will within a few years begin to contract due to the depletion of high quality fossil energy and the resulting decline in net energy and exploding debt.

I recall Garrett saying a couple of years ago that fracking had solved the peak oil problem and you can see this thinking in the presentation.

I suspect that declining net energy will collapse the economy before climate change, but I have no idea if this will occur soon enough to prevent a climate incompatible with what remains of civilization. Maybe war will pre-empt both.

Here is the PDF version and here is the PowerPoint version.

Here is the concluding summary:

Richard Nolthenius - The Thermodynamics of Civilzation - 2018