My posts to the energyresources list

`From`	`Subject`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Science vs. Mysticism`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Science vs. Mysticism`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Net energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Energy Game`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Hydrogen Yields?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] More rigs give more oil?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Fwd: Re: [energyresources] Net energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Net energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Fwd: Re: [energyresources] Net energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Net energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Harry Parker: After petroleum is gone,`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Hydrogen in earth deep underground`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Hydrogen to the Rescue`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] "Scenarios" for the "decline"`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] New tech solar cells`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Something worth watching?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Eureka! An Epiphany!`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: A modest proposal from the brigadier`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Eureka! An Epiphany!`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] A modest proposal from the brigadier`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Suit against EIA and USGS (was Eureka)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Eureka! An Epiphany!`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Closed Coffin, article from Michael C.`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] oops`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: Fw: [energyresources] Gas depletion`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Clarification to Marvin about oil`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Why so negative??`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Gas depletion`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: World oil peaked in 2000 ... C.`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Yahoo's proposal for paying vs. free`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] A couple of questions for all of you.`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Technology Review/Limits to Growth`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: UCR....and subsidies`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: UCR....and subsidies`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: UCR....and subsidies`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Oil Bust/Boom Cycle (cont'd)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Potential for UCR: Sperm oil crisis`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Potential for Unconventional`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Potential for Unconvential Petroleum....`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Potential for Unconvential Petroleum....`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Limits to Growth`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Unbelievable Tinkerbelleism`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Fwd: [RunningOnEmpty2] Hybrid cars and vehicle fees in`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Scary thought`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Goodbye, though not so good....`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Mike Ruppert is Deluged with`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Perilous Optimism-Entropy-Order`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: Re: [energyresources] Mike Ruppert is Deluged with`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: Re: [energyresources] Mike Ruppert is Deluged with`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Yesterday, Today and Tommorrow --Was`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Entropy web sites`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Perilous Optimism-Entropy-Order`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] EROEI perspective`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Efficient computation of embodied`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Efficient computation of embodied`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Efficient computation of embodied`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Efficient computation of embodied energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Efficient computation of embodied energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Efficient computation of embodied energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Energy efficiency`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Embedded Energy Diagram`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Energy efficiency and EROEI`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Energy efficiency and EROEI forecasting`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Energy sources`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Energy efficiency and EROEI forecasting`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Oldest North Sea oil field to start`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] EROEI perspective`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Book on net energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Net Energy (again)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] EROEI an explanation`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Net energy (again...)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Heat`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Net energy (again...)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Net energy (again...)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Net energy (again...)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Net energy (again...)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Net energy (again... 2)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Net energy (again... 2)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Heat`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] David Fleming -- The great oil denial`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Market fundamentalists deny the environment`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Other recent examples of`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`RE: [energyresources] Future energy resources`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Other recent examples of "scientific`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re:The Law of Entropy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Alaskan Oil Production`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Even Lomborg's Critics Agree With Him On`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Impact of technology`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Out on an oil price limb`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re:The Law of Entropy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re:The Law of Entropy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Immigration, lifeboats, and denial`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Our "deeply psychological" flaw is`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Clarification please`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Indirect energy inputs and EROEI--was Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Indirect energy inputs and EROEI--was Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Correction: Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Economist Article`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] David Fleming's After Oil`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] David Fleming's After Oil`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Matthew Simmons and Limits to Growth`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] LLNL Energy Flow Charts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Matthew R. Simmons`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Matthew Simmons and Limits to Growth`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Nuclear Power`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] North Sea Capable of 50% More, Says Oil`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] More on new thermoelectric devices`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Thermal Electric May Be Alternative`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Latest from Matt Simmons`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: hemp energy - more numbers`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: hemp energy - more numbers`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: The price of oil and where are we`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Water: Salty & Not`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Water: Salty & Not`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Fwd: Raspberry Column`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: A Lot of Gas but not in Canada`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Energy Summary`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Energy Summary`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Questions and Observations on U.S.`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: A Lot of Gas but not in Canada`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: A Lot of Gas but not in Canada`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Fw: [PGP-Discuss] Fwd: [environment]`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Corporations are unsustainable (was Energy Giant Shell`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Dismissive review of Deffeyes's "Hubbert's Peak"`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Smallpox vaccine (was War in Afghanistan)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Jet fuel energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] False Dawn Plus`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] False Dawn Plus`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] why?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] For John Gray fans- Globalisation Era`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Deffeyes's "Hubbert's Peak"`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Why EROI is not always important`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] China / Tibet Oil - Does It Matter ?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] PV data`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] China / Tibet Oil - Does It Matter ?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: DepletionRates.XLS`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] False Dawn Author, John Gray in the`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Accurate Net Energy Analysis - Is it`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Re: [RunningOnEmpty] RE: Lynch: "reserves" is not "discovery"`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Canadian Business, August 20 Cover`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Importance of Alaskan Gas?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Canadian Business, August 20 Cover`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`RE: [energyresources] Deepwater Gulf of Mexico`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] [Fwd: Nuclear Power]`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Fw: Demand Side Management`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Conservation and efficiency`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`RE: [energyresources] Re: Fw: Demand Side Management`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] oil supply forecasting`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Syncrude energy use and CO2 emissions`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Syncrude energy use and CO2 emissions`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Forecasting Oil Supply`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] The potential of wind energy.`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] National Energy Policy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Macros to Eliminate Line Feeds`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Can Water be used as Fuel?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Iraq knows that US knows about shortage of OPEC excess capacity`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] CBC Radio Program: Fuelling the Future`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Canada is not a quick fix for US energy problems`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] another phantom crisis report`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] another phantom crisis report`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Nuclear Power's New Day`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Letter to Susan Riley, Ottawa Citizen`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] PV`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Usefulness, cross posting, broadening agenda`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: PV one more time...`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: caloric payback for PV`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] caloric payback for PV`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Re: First law, second law (was SONGS3)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] First law, second law (was SONGS3)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] First law, second law (was SONGS3)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Re: Still More on San Onofre Nuke`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Saunders's Solar Houses`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Re: Solar Hot Water at 40 below?`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Evaluating nukes as offset to declining oil`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: Olduvai Cliff Revisited`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Breeder Reactor Net Energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`RE: [energyresources] Jay's 30 kWh per day`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Breeder Reactor Net Energy`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`RE: [energyresources] nukes (American natural gas)`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: planetary triage`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Political Action`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Political Action`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] The high school kids waste-cooking-oils-to-biodiesel project and Hoof and Mouth Disease`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Re: PV facts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Measures of merit for PV`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: PV facts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: PV facts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`RE: [energyresources] Re: PV facts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`[energyresources] Oil sands`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: PV facts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Re: PV facts`
`David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca>`	`Re: [energyresources] Definitions, and the role of sicence in a conversation and in life.`

To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 13:42:44 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Science vs. Mysticism At 10:01 PM 5/9/02, szoraster wrote: >--- In energyresources@y..., David Delaney wrote: > > > They leave out the fact that the > > economy is a part of the finite environment, and > > needs services from the environment which may be > > damaged by economic activity. > >In a world of infinite resources there would be no >need to study economics. In fact, in one way or >another the whole study of economics involves the >how or why of making decisions about scarce >resources, .... Acknowledging the finitude of the environment leads immediately to two questions: 1) "How much of the environment should the economy be allowed to use up?, and 2) How can we insure the economy uses up no more of the environment than it should?". I challenge you to find any economist among the overwhelming ruling majority who takes these questions seriously. Instead, they focus on the price movements of the things we extract from the environment. They fail the elementary ecological intelligence question, "How do market prices of environmental inputs measure changes in the capacity of the environment to support us?" Correct answer: "They don't, until the feedback signal they give is too late to prevent irreversible damage much greater than that already experienced." >>They assume that natural resources and human >>capital investment are interchangeable. > >They think that many resources are >interchangeable, each with its unique costs. They do much more than this, they assume that there is always an interchangeable alternative with a cost that produces a "reasonable" supply curve. >>These mistakes are fundamental. > >They would be if they were real. > >>They permit a conclusion that economic growth can >>persist forever. > >Maybe you could quote me a "real" economist who >says this? Julian Simon is one of the few who dares to state and support the consequences of the assumptions I pointed out. Others choose not to contemplate obviously crazy consequences, but continue to rely on the crazy assumptions that generate them. Here's one of Dr. Simon's many notorious assertions, this one from Simon, J., The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving, Cato Policy Report, Vol. 17, No. 5, p. 131, September / October 1995. "We have in our hands now - actually in our libraries - the technology to feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years ..." >>To see that this conclusion is absurd does not >>require following the economists' ratiocinations. >>They are blind to the absurdity because of their >>ideological commitments. > >What "ideological commitments"? To Marxist theory? >Neo-Marxist theory? Monetarism? Keynesian? >Neo-Walrasian? The Austrian school? I was referring to the ideology of the ruling majority of economists: the doctrine that deregulation, privatization, "free" markets, free capital movement, free trade, and perpetual growth, will provide peace and plenty for all-- the doctrine quite properly called "market fundamentalism". David Delaney, Ottawa, 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com,energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 13:06:18 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Science vs. Mysticism At 10:42 AM 5/9/02, szoraster wrote: [Responding to a comment by Tom Robertson] ><snip> >Your emphasis on thermodynamics is interesting. I >guess that means that mathematicians aren't >scientists? ><snip> >I'll leave it to someone else to explain it to the >King of Sweden that economics isn't a science. ><snip> I would make the following comment without wanting to join a debate about whether economics is science. Economists do not go wrong because they use mathematics. They go wrong because the assumptions to which they apply their mathematics leave out too much reality. They leave out the second law of thermodynamics. They leave out the fact that the economy is a part of the finite environment, and needs services from the environment which may be damaged by economic activity. They assume that natural resources and human capital investment are interchangeable. These mistakes are fundamental. They permit a conclusion that economic growth can persist forever. To see that this conclusion is absurd does not require following the economists' ratiocinations. They are blind to the absurdity because of their ideological commitments. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: Htoeco@aol.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 12:31:42 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Net energy At 10:30 AM 5/3/02, Htoeco@aol.com wrote: >HT Odum 2nd reply to ddelaney May 3 2002 ><snip> >You propose to store a lot of the emergy of >presently available fossil fuels in high quality >infrastructure (especially solar photovoltaic >technology)? Then you ask if the electrical >quality exergy(electric power) from this structure >after fossil fuels might be enough to support >maintenance and replacements needed after PV >deterioration. Exactly. It is conceivable that the transformities of fossil fuels are much larger than the transformities of fuels created from PV output energy *in an economy powered entirely by PV*. The transition to such an economy might require a very large investment of high-transformity fossil fuels in order to leap the *transformity gap*. Just after the leap, new and replacement parts would be constructed with PV-derived fuels. We might calculate the transformities of such fuels by assuming they were created in a purely PV-based economy of long existence. If *treating* the PV based fuels in this way results in an indication of sustainability, then the economy is in fact sustainable, even though the economy was constructed recently with (since abandoned) fossil fuels. ><snip> >Your model might be simulated for comparison to >see if massive PV installation is a good strategy >for the prosperous way down (even if not >permanently sustainable). I do not have the facilities for such a simulation. Do you know someone who would like to undertake such a project? David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:02:37 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Energy Game At 06:53 AM 5/9/02, Andrew MacKillop wrote: >Now wouldnt it be true that falling energy >availability immediately disadvantages larger >entities and favors smaller entities (population >groups, energy systems, economic production and >distribution) ? > >Isnt the entropy function going to hit bigger, >spread out, more transport-dependent entities more >than smaller entities ? 'Small Is Beautiful', or >at least lower energy. Unfortunately, the growth enthusiasts are arranging the disappearance of all small entities. The extreme specialization of unrestrained capitalism is creating a world in which nothing works without everything else, nowhere works without everywhere else. Everything we use or consume comes from great distances. No place in the world retains the competence for isolated survival. Most farmers would starve quickly if the cities became disorganized. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 00:07:44 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Hydrogen Yields? At 05:34 PM 5/7/02, Ted Swarts wrote: >David Baerwald asked: > > > ... how much hydrogen can be > > > gained using solar production methods, > > > from, say, a gallon of seawater? Burning H2 in O2 to yield water produces approximately 120 MJ per kg of H2 burned. (1997 ASHRAE Fundamentals, p. 17.3 Table 4) This means that at least somewhat more than 120 MJ per kg of product H2 are required to split water into H2 and O2. This is independent of the "technology" by which the water is split. ("At least" from the first law, "somewhat more" from the second law.) Note the electricity used for electrolysis is pure exergy while the energy yield from burning the hydrogen is in the form of heat. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 14:29:04 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] More rigs give more oil? At 06:37 AM 5/5/02, Frith, Denis wrote: >The other aspect of this question, the misleading >use of EROEI, pertains to the use of renewable >sources of energy, like the flow of solar energy. ><snip> >Consequently it should not be included in >the embedded energy of a net energy analysis for a >renewable energy system. The reason the energy of sunlight should be excluded from energy invested in solar energy devices is that it's not invested energy. Energy is invested only if we would have used it as energy for some other purpose if we had not invested it. >Most net energy analyses do include it, for some >unfathomable reason. I'm not aware of anyone who does this. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W ~~~~~~~~~~ Moderator comment ~~~~~~~~~~~ You wouldn't beleive how many times we find folks carrying on this silly business of counting the energy in the resource as a part energy cost of making that energy available. If one were a God, and wondering how well your universe's resources were being used, it may make sense to count such things, and even then, I am not so sure. However, for us humans, the main reason we do analysis of energy returned on energy invested is to get a more or less value-free indication of the relative physical/ecological merit of diverse energy resource technology over others, so we can make decisions regarding the more likely contribution such resources bring to our (always more or less competitive) enterprises. When you do see someone trying to include the total resource flow along with the energy cost of its extraction, crank up your objectivity antennae a bit and try to see what they are hustling--it will surely be something and most often they are trying to confuse rather than be clear about what is involved. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tom Robertson ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 10:58:03 -0400 Subject: Fwd: Re: [energyresources] Net energy Dr. Odums next reply. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W >From: Htoeco@aol.com >Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 10:30:34 EDT >Subject: Re: [energyresources] Net energy >To: ddelaney@sympatico.ca >X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Mac - Post-GM sub 147 > >HT Odum 2nd reply to ddelaney May 3 2002 >Yes the discussion group should be interested in our discussion of your >hypothesis. You are welcome to pass my comments on (However, sometimes Tom >Robertson blocks emergy discussions on line). >Lets see if I understand your very interesting question? >You propose to store a lot of the emergy of presently available fossil fuels >in high quality infrastructure (especially solar photovoltaic technology)? >Then you ask if the electrical quality exergy(electric power) from this >structure after fossil fuels might be enough to support maintenance and >replacements needed after PV deterioration. We need a good calculation with >factual data on depreciation rates. (The solar cells I used in our rainforest >project in Puerto Rico lost much of their output in 3 years--Manufacturers >claim much longer lives now. Our calculations so far don't show enough net >emergy in 15 years from a PV to replace itself. >We have simulated a lot of overview models of civilization in relation to fu >els use.(Two are in Chapter 13 of my Environmental Accounting book, but they >don't include PVs). The controlling rate in these simulations is the >depreciation rate of civilization--represented by the shared information >which may have turnover times of 100 years or more (compared to photovoltaics >turnover time of 20 years?). Your model might be simulated for comparison to >see if massive PV installation is a good strategy for the prosperous way down >(even if not permanently sustainable). Best wishes Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 10:54:40 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Net energy My reply to Dr. Odum's reply to my question: >Dear Dr. Odum, > >Thanks for the response. > >At 11:13 PM 5/2/02, you wrote: > >>In a message dated 5/2/02 05:33:36 PM, ddelaney@sympatico.ca writes: >><< Why could a society not leap over the transformity >>gap by making a huge investment of fossil energy >>in PV construction and deployment? >> >> >>HTOdum replies: >>Society does contribute from fossil fuels, which >>makes the net emergy ratio less than one. > >Yes, I do understand that. The very high transformities of >these fuels practically guarantees it. > >>Net emergy ratio = EROI = (Emergy yield)/(emergy from >>society) > >I understand this definition. > >>Or in other words the net emergy from the solar >>technology is negative: net emergy contribution = >>(Emergy Yield minus Emergy from society). > >Yes. I do understand this. > >>Green plants do generate positive net emergy by >>collecting the solar energy in steps starting with >>green chlorplast photovoltaics then converging to >>stems and trunks to make wood. High density wood >>has been collected to a central power plant, for >>example at Jari Brazil-a case which we evaluated. >>My point is that these biomass systems are >>probably the best that can be achieved from >>inherently dilute solar energy. Technological >>photovoltaics have a long way to go to be >>equivalent. > >Hmmm.... I don't understand how your answer is >responsive to my question. > >Let me try again. The negative net eMergy of PV is >due to the high transformities of the fossil fuels >used to construct the PV equipment, including all >of the social and industrial infrastructure, and >services, supporting the construction activity. >Consider the following thought experiment. > >Suppose that we made a huge energy investment of >fossil fuel in the deployment of PV--an investment >sufficient to supply an amount of PV power >somewhat greater than the power use of society >before we started constructing the PV. The seJ cost >of this power is very high due to the large seJ >cost of the fossil fuel used to construct the PV. >Now we stop using fossil fuels altogether. Call the point >in time at which we cease using fossil fuels t0. >After t0, we have a power source for >society somewhat greater than the one we had when >we relied on fossil fuels alone. Now consider the >seJ cost of *replacements* to our PV facility, >or to any other infrastructure object. > >Actually, consider the *incremental* seJ cost of >replacing a substantial part of the infrastructure >soon after t0. I define the incremental seJ cost >*not* to include any share of the embodied eMergy >of any infrastructure item constructed before t0, >but it does include an appropriate share of the >incremental embodied eMergy of any part >constructed after t0 that contributes to the seJ >cost of the replacement part. We compute the >incremental seJ cost by adding up all the >incremental seJ costs of infrastructure operation, >services, materials, other parts that must be >replaced to support the replaced part, etc. > >The incremental seJ cost of a replacement part >just after t0 will be much smaller than the full >seJ cost of the original part, for two reasons. >First, the incremental seJ cost of a replacement >excludes the embodied eMergy of many >infrastructure items that contribute to the >creation of the replacement--namely those >constructed before t0. Second, and less important >initially, but more important finally, we get 10% >of the incident energy on an area of PV out as >pure exergy. This is far better performance >(relative to the purposes of human use) than the >same area of vegetation. > >In other words, just after t0 the incremental >transformities of fuels, etc, derived from the PV >is much lower than their transformities (their >incremental seJ cost is much less than their full >seJ cost). As time goes forward from t0, more and >more parts of the infrastructure built with fossil >fuels are replaced, and therefore become candidates >for having a portion of their embodied eMergy >included in the incremental seJ cost of >subsequent replacements. The incremental seJ cost >rises. The incremental transformities of derived >fuels also rise, but never approach the >transformities of fossil fuels. Eventually, all of >the infrastructure of society, including the PV, >has been replaced. The full seJ cost of >replacements to the system has declined slowly >until it is equal to the incremental seJ >cost of the replacements, which has risen to meet it. At >all times after t0, society has operated on solar >PV power alone, and can continue to do so >indefinitely. > >Now, this scenario may not be possible. If it is >not possible, I claim that its impossibility is >*not* a consequence of the correct statement that >a calculation of the net eMergy of PV that assumes >fossil fuel inputs to the construction of the PV >yields a negative result. > >By the way, I don't think your reply went to the >list, so I am not sending this to the list either. >May I send this again to the list? > >David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 10:51:15 -0400 Subject: Fwd: Re: [energyresources] Net energy I have Dr. Odum's permission to send our off-line correspondance on this topic to the list: David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W >From: Htoeco@aol.com >Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 23:13:52 EDT >Subject: Re: [energyresources] Net energy >To: ddelaney@sympatico.ca >X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Mac - Post-GM sub 147 > > >In a message dated 5/2/02 05:33:36 PM, ddelaney@sympatico.ca writes: ><< Why could a society not leap over the transformity >gap by making a huge investment of fossil energy >in PV construction and deployment? > >> >HTOdum replies: >Society does contribute from fossil fuels, which makes the net emergy ratio >less than one. Net emergy ratio = EROI = (Emergy yield)/(emergy from >society) >Or in other words the net emergy from the solar technology is negative: net >emergy contribution = (Emergy Yield minus Emergy from society). >Green plants do generate positive net emergy by collecting the solar energy >in steps starting with green chlorplast photovoltaics then converging to >stems and trunks to make wood. High density wood has been collected to a >central power plant, for example at Jari Brazil-a case which we evaluated. > My point is that these biomass systems are probably the best that can be >achieved from inherently dilute solar energy. Technological photovoltaics >have a long way to go to be equivalent. Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com,energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: HT Odum <Htoeco@aol.com> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 17:33:22 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Net energy Dr. Odum, I have trouble with the following sentences: At 11:06 AM 5/2/02, Htoeco@aol.com wrote: >Since solar energy reaching the earth is >inherently dilute, it <solar PV> is >thermodynamically limited to the efficiencies >already achieved by green plant's conversions to >biomass that start with green chloroplasts. >Chloroplasts contain natural solar photovoltaic >cells with a billion years or more of natural >selection for maximum performance (Maximum empower >principle). I would like to see a more discursive comment on the subject of these last two sentences. The first sentence seems to me to be false, and the second, although true, does not, support the first. The only way I can supply a context in which your comparison of efficiencies of photosynthesis (PS) and solar photovoltaic cells (PV) becomes true is to assume that you are insisting on using transformities for PS-derived energy sources to calculate the emjoules embodied in the equipment and infrastructure needed by the PV. This is valid for a society in which PV makes only a small contribution to the energy dissipated by that society. Such a society has no choice but to build its PV within an infrastructure constructed mainly with energy from fossil fuels and biomass. But after a certain large fraction of the energy used by a society is derived from solar PV, an entirely different and more advantageous set of transformities would come into force, because of PV's higher ratio of energy captured to incident light energy. Why could a society not leap over the transformity gap by making a huge investment of fossil energy in PV construction and deployment? David Delaney, Ottawa, 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com,ER <energyresources@yahoogroups.com> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 12:29:22 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Harry Parker: After petroleum is gone, At 07:57 PM 4/19/02, K Davies wrote: >[Has this article already been commented on? If so, where? If not...] > >After petroleum is gone, what then? >Analysis of seven organic carbon sources discusses possible alternatives >for transportation fuels >Harry W. Parker, PhD, PE, Texas Tech University >http://www.worldoil.com/magazine/MAGAZINE_DETAIL.asp?ART_ID=1543&MONTH_YEAR=Sep-2001 Most of the content of this article has been discussed more extensively in this list than in the article. The article is enthusiastic about coal gasification. One interesting statement: "The endothermic nature of the gasification process makes the overall thermal efficiency of gasification processes to liquid fuels and petrochemical about 50%, despite energy conservation efforts." (A maximum eroei of 0.5.) Very little detail given --no breakdown of energy inputs into high and low quality forms. The article briefly acknowledge the importance of high and stable prices for oil as a pre-requisite for the successful introduction of alternative fuels, but does not discuss the (im)probability of such conditions. David Delaney, Ottawa, 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: coopers@conscoop.ottawa.on.ca,energyresources@yahoogroups.com, From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 14:19:50 -0400 Subject: [energyresources] Hydrogen in earth deep underground At 07:33 AM 4/18/02, Steve Kurtz wrote: >Just got back from 17 day trip to UK. & haven't >researched this. The NET energy analysis obviously >isn't mentioned. > >>HUGE HYDROGEN STORES FOUND BELOW EARTH'S CRUST >>DISCOVERY SUGGESTS NEAR LIMITLESS SUPPLY OF CLEAN FUEL >>By Robert Matthews >>Vancouver Sun >>Monday, April 15, 2002 Very silly stuff. This story also appeared on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen a few days ago. It think it originated at the Sunday Telegraph in the UK. It seems likely that the journalist has drawn conclusions based on the original science on the energy source for bacteria in deep rock combined with off-the cuff reactions he solicited by telephone from "experts". The "as much as" 1000 liters of hydrogen supposedly available per cubic meter of deep rock is "as much as" 85 grams of H2. The ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals give the heating value of H2 as 120 MJ/kg, so 1000 liters of H2 has a heating value of approximately 10 MJ (10 million joules). A very efficient engine could produce 5 MJ of work from this heat. To be worth doing, extracting 1000 liters of hydrogen from one cubic meter of rock must take much less energy than the hydrogen provides. Using *all* the energy in 1000 liters of H2 would provide enough work to lift the one cubic meter of rock (2000 kg) about 250 meters (800 feet), or enough heat to raise its temperature by 6 degrees C. (Assuming a specific heat of 820 J/(kg.C) ) Neither process is going to get the hydrogen out. Suppose the rock needs to be crushed, as seems likely, to get the hydrogen out. The web site <http://www.elorantaassoc.com/eob97.htm> gives the work required to crush rock. It takes approximately 20 MJ of work to crush a cubic meter of rock into 2 cm stones, supposing this to be fine enough for some unknown extraction process. Since at most 5 MJ of work are available from the hydrogen sought, we hope crushing won't be necessary. Might there be vast undiscovered subterranean deposits of gaseous hydrogen which has sublimed out of its generating rock into adjacent porous rock, and is now trapped by an overlying cap of very impermeable rock? If we could find such deposits, mining hydrogen would be a matter of drilling a hole and letting the hydrogen flow up to the ground. But hydrogen is more difficult to contain than natural gas, so would presumably have few suitable natural capping structures to be found above porous rock adjacent to generating rocks. Even small hydrogen deposits of this kind have never yet been found. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 15:03:15 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Hydrogen to the Rescue At 11:52 PM 4/15/02, Dana Visalli forwarded wrote: >Limitless? Well, before you get your hopes up: >"The low yield of energy from burning hydrogen >compared to gas, however, means that vast >quantities of rock would have to be mined. ... >prohibitively expensive." Never mind expense, any suggestion of mining rock from the depths at which rocks have H2 to get "as much as 1000 liters per cubic meter" of hydrogen is pretty dumb on energy grounds. 1000 liters of H2 / 22.4 liters per gmole x 2 g /gmole gives 90 g mass of H2. The ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals gives the heat value of H2 as 120 MJ/kg, so 90 g of H2 has a heat value of about 10.8 MJ. An efficient (50%) lifting engine could get 5.4 MJ of work from burning 1000 liters of H2. To raise 1 cubic meter of rock (say 2000 Kg) from 1 km deep would require about 20,000 newtons x 1000 m = 20 MJ. In other words, lifting the rock from 1 km would require 4 times the work we could get from the H2 in the rock. David Delaney, Ottawa, 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 10:26:54 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] "Scenarios" for the "decline" At 09:03 PM 4/15/02, Andrew McKillop wrote in reply to Ted Swarts: >However, ironically maybe, oil shocks TRIGGER >ECONOMIC GROWTH. With inflation itis true. So the >'adjustment-through-panic' phase you hint at is >likely to take quite some time, maybe 15 years or >more counting from now. This analysis is all very well, and may be correct. But it depends on the ability of a sharp rise in oil prices to increase the total supply of oil and alternatives. It remains to be seen how long energy efficiency measures (producing as much or more with less energy) and alternatives brought on line by rising prices can overcome the rate of decline of NG and conventional oil, thereby permitting economic growth. (At any specific energy efficiency level, economic growth requires growth of energy consumption.) Ted's point was that once alternatives do not compensate for the decline, and are generally perceived not to do so, our economy, which depends on an expectation of growth to continue functioning, will collapse much more rapidly than physical analysis alone would suggest is necessary. Your argument does not refute his point. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 75W Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: Stan Ovshinsky <investor_relations@ovonic.com> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 10:01:35 -0400 Subject: Re: [energyresources] New tech solar cells At 05:22 PM 4/16/02, Robert Waldrop forwarded to the energyresources list an AP story on a new PV technology by Stan Ovshinsky and Energy Conversion Devices: >What made it all possible was Ovshinsky's >invention of a "multi-junction" that allows the >machinery to join six rolls of the material to >create one roll, nine miles long and 16 inches >wide, without any loss of generation capability at >the seams. > >Over the course of a year, Ovshinsky plans to >produce 1,000 miles of the material, which can >provide a total of 30 megawatts of electric >power. 1000 miles x 16 inches = 6.5e5 square meters 3e7 W / 6.5e5 m2 = 46 watts/square meter. About half the conversion efficiency of some other PV technologies. So ECD will have to beat the $cost and/or embodied energy per square meter of those technologies by substantially more than a factor of two to compensate for the $cost and embodied energy of the doubling of the panel area to be supported. This is copied to Stan Ovshinsky in the hope he will reply on both $cost and embodied energy. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 09:34:56 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Something worth watching? Last night I watched the first installment of the PBS feature "Commanding Heights: The battle for the world economy". I almost turned it off after a brief introductory comment by Dick Cheney. It seemed to me that Cheney's presence and comments were signalling that it would be OK to watch the program--no disturbing anti-globalization ideas would be presented without appropriate qualification. This will probably turn out to be true. This first two hours on the history of planning/regulation vs laissez-faire ("free" markets) were nonetheless worth watching. Major distortions: 1) The program conflated regulated capitalism with socialism by opposing them together to free markets. 2) The 1970's stagflation in the west is implied to be a result of a necessary and intrinsic incompetence of regulation and planning. The recovery from stagflation in the 1980s is presented as the result of the superiority of market freedoms introduced by Thatcher and Reagan. Oil prices are never mentioned. There is no hint that the stagflation of the seventies might have been due to the high price of oil in the 1970s, and that the recovery of the 1980s might have been largely due to North Sea oil and Reagan's deal with the Saudi's to bring down oil prices. David Delaney, Ottawa 45N 76W At 08:57 AM 4/3/02, Ron Patterson wrote: >Picked this up on another list. It looks like it >might be interesting, wherther or not you agree >with it. Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 22:07:55 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Eureka! An Epiphany! At 09:21 PM 3/31/02, Denis Frith wrote: >Having looked carefully at AEO2001, I do not believe that there is >any possibility of making a case that statistics were fabricated for >someone else's agenda. It was more a case of biased judgement in >making the assumptions to be included in the model. This bias was in >accord with the conventional economic growth paradigm. The model then >did what it had been told to do. Even if true, this does not mean that they have not been recklessly incompetent in the discharge of their statutory duty. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 22:05:06 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: A modest proposal from the brigadier At 08:53 PM 3/31/02, peaceloving2001 wrote: >This Brigadier suggests what? Because India has acted badly, >Brigadier Amanullah wants to teach India and Pakistan a lesson? I felt the Brigadier had gone beyond this level of response to the situation. Although his hatred of India remains, he seems to have reached a recognition of the hopelessness of both the Indian and the Pakistani situation, and sees cutting down both populations as a solution. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 21:58:40 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Eureka! An Epiphany! At 03:16 PM 3/31/02, Marvin wrote: >In a message dated 3/31/02 11:39:24 AM Pacific Standard Time, tedswarts@hotmail.com writes: > >>This is highly unlikely since such supply side projections do not exist. >>Sure, the work of Campbell, Defreyes, Laherrere, et al suggests that on a >>balance of probabilities the extraction of conventional oil may peak within >>the next ten years. But in and of itself that does not prove that the >>USEIA's forecasts are wrong. > >Dear Ted: > >David Delaney had a very similar comment. I responded to him alone but should have sent it to the list, too. As follows: Marvin As I think I've made clear, I support the idea of a suit. What I don't support is the idea that a half baked filing is worth something. I believe that no matter how good a case we present, it will be ignored by the media unless and until a crucial event happens, namely denial of a government motion to dismiss our case. This means that our case has to be good enough to earn that denial. I do agree that proving their projections are wrong may be difficult or impossible. That does not mean that we cannot show that the EIA and the USGS have failed in their statutory duty because of a reckless disregard for that duty, thereby imposing unnecessary risks and costs on Americans and/or Canadian companies protected under NAFTA. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com,runningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.com, From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 13:51:03 -0500 Subject: [energyresources] A modest proposal from the brigadier Evidence for the proposition that those with their hands on suitable means may view our situation as a longage of critters. Article on line at <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/landesman.htm> and copied below Start of article from Atlantic Monthly March 2002 A Modest Proposal From the Brigadier What one prominent Pakistani thinks his country should do with its atomic weapons by Peter Landesman In the center of the biggest traffic circle of every major city in Pakistan sits a craggy, Gibraltarish replica of a nameless peak in the Chagai range. This mountain is the home of Pakistan's nuclear test site. The development, in 1998, of the "Islamic Bomb," intended as a counter to India's nuclear capability, is Pakistan's only celebrated achievement since its formation, in 1947. The mountain replicas, about three stories tall, are surrounded by flower beds that are lovingly weeded, watered, and manicured. At dusk, when the streetlights come on, so do the mountains, glowing a weird molten yellow. Islamabad's monument to the atomic bomb occupies a rotary between the airport and the city center. Nearby stand models of Pakistan's two classes of missile: Shaheen and Ghauri. The Islamabad nuclear shrine stands at a place where the city is dissolving into an incoherent edge town of shabby strip malls and empty boulevards and rows of desolate government buildings. A little farther in one comes to the gridded blocks of gated homes. The neighborhoods are called sectors. The streets are numbered, not named. Late last year, after nearly two months in Pakistan, I paid the last of many visits to house No. 8 on street 19, sector F-8/2, a modern white mansion known as Zardari House. The house has been used by Asif Ali Zardari, the imprisoned husband of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's exiled former Prime Minister. Neither Zardari nor Bhutto has been there for a long time. Zardari has been confined for five years, most recently in Attock Fort, a medieval fortress perched over the Indus River between Islamabad and Peshawar. He is charged with a slew of crimes: large-scale corruption; conspiracy in the murder of Bhutto's brother Mir Murtaza; conspiracy to smuggle narcotics. Bhutto, who also faces corruption charges in Pakistan, lives in Dubai with their three children. Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, has promised to have her arrested and tried if she ever returns to Pakistan. Outside the gate to the empty Zardari House sits a man with his back to the wall, a sawed-off shotgun across his knees. I had been going there to consult with Brigadier Amanullah, known to his friends as Aman. Aman, in his early fifties and now retired, is lithe and gentle-natured and seemed to me slightly depressed. He works in a small office behind Zardari House, where, as the secretary to Benazir Bhutto in Islamabad, he coordinates Bhutto's efforts to return to Pakistan and regain its prime ministership. He also keeps in close touch with old colleagues, who include many powerful people in Pakistan. Aman was once the chief of Pakistan's military intelligence in Sind Province, which borders India. Pakistan's biggest city and a cultural center, Karachi, is in Sind. That put Aman squarely in the middle of things, his finger near many sorts of buttons. Today Aman is believed to act as Bhutto's liaison with the armed forces, and he maintains contacts with serving army officers, including senior generals. When I wanted to speak to someone in the Pakistani government, I asked Aman. When I wanted to speak to someone in the Taliban, or in military intelligence, or in the political opposition, I asked Aman. His replies were mumbled and monosyllabic. He never offered opinions. He would simply hear me out and, most times, tip his head and say, "Why not?" Within an hour after Aman and I parted, I would receive a phone call from his secretary. References would be made to "that man" or "that matter," and I would be given a phone number and a time to call. Having spoken with Aman, I was always expected. On the day of my final visit Aman seemed more sullen than usual. He ushered me into a room adjoining the office. The room was long and spare. There was an oil painting on the far wall. The other walls were empty and lined with cushioned chairs. Aman sat across from me. We had tea and spoke about the latest events. As we were wrapping up our conversation, I looked at the oil painting. It was a strange picture, a horizontal landscape about four feet across, with overtones of socialist realism. In the foreground a youthful Benazir Bhutto stood in heroic pose on an escarpment overlooking the featureless grid of Islamabad. Beside her stood her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Prime Minister who in 1977 was ousted in a coup and two years later hanged. On the other side of Bhutto was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the long-dead founding father of Pakistan. Their postures were exalted, their expressions a combination of pride and awe. Jinnah's arm pointed to the vast plain beyond the city, where a rocket was lifting out of billowing clouds of vapor and fire into the sky. Aman noticed me looking at the painting and followed my gaze. I asked him if Benazir Bhutto had commissioned it, and Aman said no. He told me that one day when she was still Prime Minister, an unknown man, an ordinary Pakistani citizen, had come to the gate of Zardari House with the picture and told Aman that he'd painted it for the Prime Minister and wanted to present it to her as a gift. Aman said that he was immediately transfixed by the painting. He called to Bhutto inside the house, but she refused to come down to see the man. Aman was persistent, and eventually she came down. "I insisted Benazir accept it as a gift," Aman told me. We both looked up at the painting in silence. "A rocket ship heading to the moon?" I asked. Aman tipped his head to the side. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "No," he said. "A nuclear warhead heading to India." I thought he was making a joke. Then I saw he wasn't. I thought of the shrines to Pakistan's nuclear-weapons site, prominently displayed in every city. I told Aman that I was disturbed by the ease with which Pakistanis talk of nuclear war with India. Aman shook his head. "No," he said matter-of-factly. "This should happen. We should use the bomb." "For what purpose?" He didn't seem to understand my question. "In retaliation?" I asked. "Why not?" "Or first strike?" "Why not?" I looked for a sign of irony. None was visible. Rocking his head side to side, his expression becoming more and more withdrawn, Aman launched into a monologue that neither of us, I am sure, knew was coming: "We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities�Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta," he said. "They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people. They should fire at us and it would all be over. They have acted so badly toward us; they have been so mean. We should teach them a lesson. It would teach all of us a lesson. There is no future here, and we need to start over. So many people think this. Have you been to the villages of Pakistan, the interior? There is nothing but dire poverty and pain. The children have no education; there is nothing to look forward to. Go into the villages, see the poverty. There is no drinking water. Small children without shoes walk miles for a drink of water. I go to the villages and I want to cry. My children have no future. None of the children of Pakistan have a future. We are surrounded by nothing but war and suffering. Millions should die away." "Pakistan should fire pre-emptively?" I asked. Aman nodded. "And you are willing to see your children die?" "Tens of thousands of people are dying in Kashmir, and the only superpower says nothing," Aman said. "America has sided with India because it has interests there." He told me he was willing to see his children be killed. He repeated that they didn't have any future�his children or any other children. I asked him if he thought he was alone in his thoughts, and Aman made it clear to me that he was not. "Believe me," he went on, "If I were in charge, I would have already done it." Aman stopped, as though he'd stunned even himself. Then he added, with quiet forcefulness, "Before I die, I hope I should see it." End of article Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com,energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 11:54:53 -0500 Subject: [energyresources] Suit against EIA and USGS (was Eureka) Marvin I know very little about tort law, (or any other kind of law) but I believe there has to be an act of omission or commission that fails to discharge a duty, and consequent actual damage, or probable future damage, to those to whom the duty is owed. The failure of duty by EIA and/or USGS would be that they have been recklessly incompetent in the discharge of their duty to provide information for policy formation and public awareness in the face of a serious hazard in an area in which they are mandated to provide such information. The consequential damage is ... what? There are obvious possible future damages due to opportunities missed to respond to the crisis. These would need to be characterized and detailed. I understand that it is more difficult to obtain injunctive relief to preclude possible future damages than to obtain compensation for actual damages. It might be possible to build a case for actual damages as well, by getting a company that has bet on renewables to claim that its profit has been reduced by unreasonable optimism about oil and gas created by EIA and USGS. One interesting possibility would be a suit under NAFTA on behalf of a Canadian renewables company. But our main objective and burden should probably be to demonstrate probable future damage, or at least probable and avoidable hazard, due to incompetent methods of projection of reserves. It is likely to be difficult to show convincingly that EIA and USGS projections are wrong. It does not seem to me that it would be necessary to prove that the projections are wrong in order to establish reckless incompetence. On the other hand, the fact that only reckless incompetence is claimed, rather than wrong results, may make the claim for damages or injunctive relief more difficult, and therefore make the suit less likely to be entertained--unless we are artful in our construction of the hazard and its potential for mitigation by accurate information. We could solicit chapter and verse descriptions from Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrere, and others as to the ways in which EIA and USGS have failed in their duty of competence. Internal evidence in EIA and USGS reports of giving more heed to the desirability of generous projections than to a duty of competent projection would be the very best, and I seem to recall that there are some such. The same commenters could suggest what kind of injunctive relief might be sought--probably suggestions as to processes that should be followed and types of information that should be presented. I would say that it would be best to explore some of these issues and to prepare a position paper before soliciting help from government agencies and/or media. David Delaney, Ottawa At 01:51 AM 3/30/02, Marvin wrote: >While glancing through the front section of one of >our local newspapers, I happened upon an article, >"Government study says drilling in Arctic refuge >poses threat to wildlife." The article itself >didn't interest me all that much because I know >that when the crunch hits, no one will be able to >stand in our way of drilling in the ANWR: "The >hell with the damn reindeer and the Eskimos and >the polar bears and wildlife stuff, I can't stand >paying three bucks a gallon for my SUV. Fill her >up or unfill her up, whatever the case may be!" > >What did interest me was a report on the report >that said, "The 78-page report was developed by >scientists at the U.S. Biological Survey and the >U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, both agencies >within the Interior Department, and peer-reviewed >by outside scientists." > >What this indicates to me is that with >perseverance and great good luck, one might be >able to locate someone in government or the media >who would take on the puzzling discrepancy between >the EIA's figures and the Campbell-Laherrere >depletion figures. What is at stake, of course, is >the small amount of time remaining before the >first impact of world oil topping out hits and our >energy situation changes dramatically thereafter. >Any suggestions? I shall use impressive stationery >and snail mail and elegant English. Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:25:10 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Eureka! An Epiphany! Of course! WDITOT I'd contribute. David Delaney, Ottawa At 02:37 AM 3/29/02, Marvin wrote: >I suddenly saw to the very nature of things and >what we should do to get the message about the >peak in world oil production almost upon us is to >sue the EIA, either in a real suit or a mock one, >over their publication of false information which >jeopardizes the future security of the nation. >Even filing to sue would reap reams of newpaper >print on the subject. The arguments themselves >could be sent to various representatives and >officials, and we could go down in history as the >energy list that shook the world. I could donate >(gulp) as high as (gulp) $100 -- on a one time >basis of course. We could sell movie rights. We >would be on television. I would get my pitcher in >the paper. A whole film crew and an interviewer >would come around come around to YOUR place for >exclusive filming. For once in or history our >government would be on top of things and do things >right. I can hardly wait for the group's >reaction.... Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: "wilfrid02144" <lynch@wefa.com> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 09:10:15 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Closed Coffin, article from Michael C. Is anyone aware of Mr. Lynch having predicted a date for the peak? The following asserts the predictions of Campbell and Laherrere are wrong, but does not estimate by how much. Does Mr. Lynch accept the reality of a peak? Does he place it 100 years away, or thirty years away. Does he accept the importance of the question? David Delaney, Ottawa At 10:14 PM 3/4/02, Karl Davies forwarded >Article: > >Closed Coffin: Ending the Debate on "The End of >Cheap Oil" A commentary Michael C. Lynch, Chief >Energy Economist, DRI-WEFA, Inc. September 2001 > >The past five years have seen a renewed debate on >the issue of oil supply and the possibility of a >near-term peak in production and the concomitant >adverse economic consequences. A number of >articles have stated that discoveries over the >past thirty years have been only a fraction of >consumption and that according to the Hubbert >Curve method, world oil production is close to a >peak. What few people realize is that these >arguments are based entirely on a very particular >technical argument, and recent evidence has >highlighted its fallacy. > >The greatest attention was achieved by the March >1998 Scientific American article "The End of Cheap >Oil" by Jean Laherrere and Colin Campbell, largely >due to the extreme nature of their warning -- >production peaking within a few years -- and the >alleged irrefutability of it. Subsequently, the >authors have been very active publicizing their >views, including testimony to the British House of >Commons, speaking on BBC, and a number of other >venues. A few articles in the general press have >been at least skeptical, but most of the work >refuting their arguments has been treated >cautiously and quite a few lay observers have >taken their arguments as truth rather than >speculation. Critics of these arguments (like >myself) have noted that these forecasts have >repeatedly proven to be incorrect, including those >by Colin Campbell in particular, who as early as >1989 predicted a peak in world oil production for >that year. Their rejoinder has been to note >correctly that -- past performance is not proof of >future performance. > >However, to the more explicit charge that their >model is mis-specified, the authors have made a >more substantive response. The primary flaw in >this type of model is the assumption that >recoverable petroleum resources are fixed, when >the amount of oil which can be recovered depends >on both the total amount of oil (a geological >factor which is fixed), but also dynamic variables >like price, infrastructure, and technology. If the >amount of recoverable oil increases, as it has in >the past, then the level predicted for peak >production must increase and the date pushed >further into the future. This has been observed >many times from forecasters using this type of >model and relying on estimates of ultimately >recoverable resources (URR). But Campbell and >Laherrere have asserted that their estimate of URR >is both highly accurate and stable because of >their calculation using field size estimates >showing declining discovery size, moving towards >an asymptote. Since they have relied heavily on a >privately held database, which is unavailable to >the general researcher, it has been difficult for >critics to respond to this specifically. > >The reliance on discovery trends to estimate URR >has received similar criticism as the faulty URR >estimates, namely that estimates of field size >tend to increase over time with improved recovery >methods, better examination of seismic data, >infill drilling, and so forth. This means that the >size of the recent fields is being underestimated >compared to older fields, exaggerating the >nearness of the asymptote and understating its >size. An analogy would be to plant trees over >twenty years and note that the size of the most >recently planted trees was shrinking, and >concluding that timber resources would become >scarce. Campbell and Laherrere have argued in >response that increases in recovery at existing >fields are artifacts of accounting rules (which is >only partly true) and that they have overcome this >flaw by their reliance on a database whose reserve >estimates do not suffer from this bias. Since the >estimate of ultimately recoverable resources is >based on their field size estimates, the question >of field growth becomes central to the entire >debate. And their primary line of defense has been >that their critics lack access to this database. > >Last year, the publication of the USGS's World >Petroleum Assessment provided one particularly >sharp nail in the coffin of this argument, when >(among other things) they examined the development >of field size estimates over time using the same >proprietary database which Campbell and Laherrere >relied on, and concluded that reserve growth from >existing fields, although uncertain, would be >substantial. They published a mean estimate of 612 >billion barrels (nearly 30 years of current >consumption), significantly increasing their >estimate of the world's URR. > >But the final nails seem to be located in this >summer's little-noticed announcement by IHS Energy >-- the firm whose field database Campbell and >Laherrere have utilized -- of estimated >discoveries. According to the firm, discoveries in >2000 were 14.3 billion barrels in 2000, a 10% drop >from 1999. This has two interesting implications: >first, discoveries have risen sharply the past two >years, refuting the statement that poor geology, >rather than lack of access to the most prospective >areas in OPEC, has kept discoveries low for the >past three decades. But also, this implies that >discoveries in the past two years have amounted to >nearly 20% of the total undiscovered oil which >Campbell and Laherrere argued remain! Undoubtedly >they -- and others -- will argue that this is due >to the firm's inclusion of deepwater reserves, >which they are not considering, and that is a >factor in the recent robustness of discoveries. >However, the primary element behind the greater >discovery rates has been the finding of two new >supergiant fields in Kazakhstan and Iran. Again, >this refutes the argument that discoveries have >been relatively low in recent decades due to >geological scarcity and supports the optimists' >arguments that the lower discoveries are partly >due to reduced drilling in the Middle East after >the 1970s nationalizations. > >And the most crucial fact is actually IHS Energy's >reference to earlier discoveries. They have >revised their estimates of remaining reserves at >end -- 1991 to 1200 billion barrels, implying that >oil discovered to that date was close to 1900 >billion barrels (since about 675 billion barrels >had been produced). This despite the >Campbell/Laherrere argument that their data does >not experience revisions due to their reliance on >P50 (50% probability) estimates, compared to P90 >(90% probability) used in the US and by many US >oil companies. While there remain uncertainties >about future field reserve growth versus >historical growth, it becomes clear that it is >still continuing and the arguments that they had >corrected for the problem are fallacious at best. > >Indeed, the sheer size of the revisions are >themselves significant. Although I lack access to >historical IHS Energy estimates, Campbell and >Laherrere had placed "back-dated" reserves in the >early 1990s at barely over 1000 billion barrels in >their 1998 article. This implies (to be generous) >an increase due to revisions of 150 billion >barrels or more in a mere five years: 30% more >than actual consumption! It means (as I have >repeatedly argued) that their discovery trend >curves are misleading, because the more recent >numbers were understated, and in the future will >likely be too low again. The method they use is >flawed because of this definitional mistake. > >Note also that the amount discovered to 1991 >(which would include only minimal deepwater >discoveries) is actually significantly greater >than the two now estimate would ever be >discovered. In fact, IHS Energy puts current >reserves at 1100 billion barrels, which, with past >production, yields almost 2000 billion barrels, >about 10% or 200 billion barrels over the 1800 >billion barrels which the duo have confidently >predicted would be the ultimate total. Presumably >we can expect them to make yet another upwards >revision in their URR estimate. Indeed, despite >fears of declining discoveries, estimated >recoverable resources -- even by pessimists -- >have grown faster than consumption. This can >hardly be argued as a sign of resource scarcity. > >There are many other arguments that have made up >part of this debate, and I have tried to deal with >each of them in the articles cited below, as well >as further forthcoming work. But while we need be >concerned about quite a number of issues related >to petroleum supply -- depletion, change in >reserve growth, concentration of production in >politically stable areas -- a possible near-term >peak in production (conventional or otherwise) is >not one of them. It takes a lot of nails to close >a coffin, but the size and quality of these will >hopefully ensure that it remains closed. > >"Forecasting Oil Supply: Theory and Practice," >Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2001, >forthcoming. "The Debate Over Oil Supply: Science >or Religion?" Geopolitics of Energy, August 1999. >"Farce this Time: Renewed Pessimism About Oil >Supply" Geopolitics of Energy, December >1998-January 1999. "The Analysis and Forecasting >of Petroleum Supply: Sources of Error and Bias," >in Energy Watchers VII, ed. by Dorothea H. El >Mallakh, International Research Center for Energy >and Economic Development, 1996. > >From: >http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon/world-oil.dir/lynch2.html Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 10:12:47 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] oops At 06:53 AM 3/4/02, you wrote: >HT Odum reply about energy equivalence of goods and services March 5 2002 >The emergy per money ratio for the US economy now is about 1 E12 solar >emjoules/$. We put everything in the solar energy previously required (solar >emergy). However if you are trying to put everything in fossil fuel >equivalents previously required (coal emergy), then convert the solar >emjoules to coal emjoules using 40,000 solar emjoules per coal joule. (It is >incorrect to use energies of different kinds without converting to a common >form required to generate each). This would give about 25e6 J/$, which is about twice the value usually calculated and used (12000 Btu/$ approx = 12e6 J/$. Whence the discrepancy? David Delaney, Ottawa, 45N Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: "Kermit Schlansker" <kssustain@provide.net> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 00:15:02 -0500 Subject: Re: Fw: [energyresources] Gas depletion Kermit At 09:32 AM 3/3/02, you wrote: >I have MSword. If you send me a copy of your info >to northwest power I will tell you if it is >received okay. The inserted graph is the one >referred to. If you take it literally it is a very >grim mesage. I haven't figured out yet how to send >these graphs in Email. They always disappear. You are probably sending a .bmp or some other MS graphic. Use Adobe Photo Shop or some other image manipulating program. Cut images from a .pdf or .doc document, then paste them into the graphic program. Export a .gif from the graphic program. The .gif is your attachment. You will have to do a bit of fiddling to get the image to look they way you think it should. David Delaney, Ottawa, 45N Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 09:48:21 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Clarification to Marvin about oil At 06:45 AM 3/2/02, mainster2002 wrote: >If the price of energy is high for everyone the >price of all products produced will also be higher >to cover the increased cost. Thus there is no >reson that companies will go bankrupt if energy >prices rise. People will just have to adsjust in >general... Smooth adjustment requires that the consumption of transportation fuel continues to grow, possibly after a short period of adjustment to a generally lower level of consumption. If a rapid, decades long, decline in transportation fuel cannot be overcome by alternative fuels, then our economy must decline during those decades. Our economy cannot stand a decades long decline--it works only with the expectation of short term growth. Radical instability would result, with conditions much worse than the 1930s. Take a look at some of the graphs in, say, Jean Laherrere's paper; Forecasting future production from past discovery, presented at the conference OPEC and the global energy balance: towards a sustainable energy future, Vienna, Sept. 28-29, 2001. The paper is available on the web at <http://www.oilcrisis.com/laherrere/opec2001>.pdf. With these rates of decline, try to imagine what we would have to go through to get to a state in which consumption of transportation fuels can grow again. An economy that does not depend on growth may be possible, but we cannot get to it without radical change. If we wait for change to be imposed on us by circumstances and "the market", the change will inevitably be chaotic and deadly. David Delaney, Ottawa, 45.3N Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 09:19:31 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Why so negative?? At 03:20 PM 2/28/02, Mary Lehmann wrote: > >"We are very gratified to know the World Bank wishes to give us money, > >and we anxiously await the impossibly strict policies attached to these > >loans that will keep us from being able to escape poverty for decades," > >said Afghan tribal leader Hamid Karzai. "We are all very tired of war, > >and hopeless destitution will be a welcome respite". > ------------------------------------------ This is much too good to be true. Reference? David Delaney Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: "Kermit Schlansker" <kssustain@provide.net> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 22:34:49 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Gas depletion At 07:49 PM 2/26/02, Kermit Schlansker wrote: > Unlike others who are just chatting I am still trying to generate material to influence public opinion. Please review this pass out sheet to find any errors or write your own version. Kermit, There was no graph in your attachment, just some colored geometric figures. David Delaney, ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 22:14:42 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: World oil peaked in 2000 ... C. At 08:11 PM 2/24/02, KD and TR wrote: >The powers that be can't mention the truth on this subject, or even >discuss it, because to do so would upset the stock market - maybe even >kill it. The stock market is their god. They don't want to anger their >god, much less kill it. > >~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~ >Could you-all be giving "these folks" more credit than they warrant? I think so. A large conspiracy is simply not credible. And this would have to be a large conspiracy. It is completely obvious that there will be a crash of the human population sometime this century unless there is a miraculous energy discovery. Yet very few acknowledge this obvious truth. Many intelligent people with access to sufficient information to know this truth deny it with passionate conviction. If even "sometime this century, obviously" arouses such denial, why is it surprising that the even more threatening "very possibly within 15 or 20 years" would be almost universally denied, especially in high places, where people have bigger bets on business as usual? This earlier threat requires considerable intellectual commitment to understand and accept, even for a relatively free mind. A mind bound by preserving political or corporate power finds it easy to turn away from such possibilities, when turning away has such a large constituency. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 19:24:20 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Yahoo's proposal for paying vs. free I find it difficult to search the archive. It would be very useful to be able to do a google search on it. David Delaney At 01:17 PM 2/19/02, Jack Dingler wrote: >I'd be happy enough doing this on UseNet or setting up a mailing group >outside of Yahoo. > >Jack Dingler > >~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~ > >Lets see exactly what Yahoo is offering and then look at alternatives. > >I have a web site we may use that is paid for, vacant, very good access, and with whatever capacity we may want to use. > >~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~ Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 14:31:16 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] A couple of questions for all of you. At 12:27 AM 2/18/02, Brian ("bebaba" <bjdephillips@micron.com>) wrote: I'll give my answers in reverse order: >2) do you honestly believe that our society will >be able to make it through the coming crisis >without much death and panic? Our "society" , meaning its current organization and values, has no chance at all of surviving another 25 years. Whether there will be a die-off in North America and Europe in that time frame is an interesting and depressing question to contemplate. In 2100, I believe, the world will have only a fraction of the people it has today. In the very best case we will have brought our numbers and consumption levels down to live within the long-term tolerance of the environment for human beings. In the much more probable case, the huge overshoot of the human population relative to long term carrying capacity will ensure the permanent destruction of much of that long term carrying capacity. The resulting crash will, before 2100, probably much before, reduce our numbers way below the current long term carrying capacity, which is already a small fraction of current population. If you trust the Campbell, Laherrere, Youngquist, Deffeyes, etc., thread of analysis of the oil supply, as I do, and understand a few facts about ecology, you must expect severe economic and social disruption to begin everywhere within 15 years, including the beginning of a worldwide die-off of humans. I believe the scenario is inevitable, although there must be uncertainty as to its schedule. There is a physical possibility that some countries could avoid a die-off, or mitigate it greatly, but denial of the problem, and the manipulations of vested interests, give those physical possibilities approximately zero chance of realization. To avoid or mitigate a die-off, any country needs to start immediately eliminating all products that do not contribute something clearly identifiable as useful after the peak. Also required: an immediate beginning on enforced birth control having a target of population reduction, not a target of restraining growth, complete suppression of immigration, radical reconstruction of farming, industry, and the patterns and location of habitation relative to work, relieved somewhat by massive development of public transport and freight trains. Last but not least: government planning for management of energy resources and the deployment of renewable energy sources. I believe every society in the world will try to undergo these changes eventually, but only too late, when a die-off is upon us, and when it will have been made impossible to avoid. Just to state these requirements is to recognize the impossibility of addressing them now, in the circumstances of current attitudes, beliefs, and interests. But embracing these requirements now, this year, this month, before severe constraints limit our ability to react to them, is necessary to exploit any remaining physical possibility of avoiding die-off and violence. >1) what do you plan to do in the next 5 years to >prepare for the coming crisis? Even if you believe that the astronomically remote chance of creating the necessary consensus in time to mitigate the approaching awfulness is worth your commitment, as I still do, it would be prudent, as someone recently said to me, to start building your fox hole. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 20:57:39 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Technology Review/Limits to Growth At 09:41 AM 2/17/02, Heiko wrote: <snip> >Mr Delaney made a similar comment (saying it was >plausible that the Limits to Growth believed oil >would run out sometime between 1992 and 2022, but >they didn't predict anything really). This is a disgraceful way to summarize what I said. Let me say it again more simply: To dismiss Limits to Growth by saying it's all wrong because it predicted oil would run out in 1992 is to tell a malicious lie. <snip> >This model prediction was wrong, and it's a faulty >prediction that matters, because it's contrary to >one of the basic assumptions in the model that >affect the fundamental way it behaves. <snip> > Once those fundamentals >are thrown into doubt, the model is rendered >useless. The argument concluded by the above statements is a thorough misrepresentation of what Limits to Growth was about. Heiko refuses to acknowledge the distinction between the *predictions* of LTG and the results of model runs--distinctions clearly stated and emphasized by LTG itself. The purpose of the model was to identify the shape of the response functions. LTG used the model to identify overshoot as a structural implication of the world's human systems--a consequence of rapid growth and feedback delays--and the necessity of a following crash due to resource exhaustion. Heiko's criticisms are not even relevant to LTG's conclusions in this regard. LTG's careful choice of 2100 as the date by which a crash was likely to have happened with business as usual was intended to draw the implications of the response shape while allowing a generous margin to render certain considerations moot--considerations of the kind Heiko dwells on. LTG's authors greatly underestimated how irrationality, wishful thinking, even malice, would be given free rein in discussion of their work. For those who have eyes to see, the intervening 30 years have shown the value of LTG, a value that was largely thrown away. David Delaney, Ottawa ~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~ Folks, we not only threw away the value of the Limits to Growth exercise, but we did so at great and accelerating cost to our society. Most importantly, we lost out on gaining improvements in perceptual/analytical accuracy. The consequences of these actions seriously affect our ability to navigate our social enterprise through the increasingly uncertain sea of the future. In fact, our society, particularly influenced by its dominant discipline-oriented intellectual traditions, took advantage of the early findings in modeling by using the LTG results and their contradictions to "common sense" as a basis for claiming that it is impossible to model or otherwise apply science to know the future. Of course, among our dominant intellectual traditions of the time, it was and still is the economists and associated social scientists and policy-directing hangers-on who made and elaborated on such claims. Systems Dynamics, the intellectual foundation for Limits to Growth, has moved far beyond the analytical processes of a third of a century ago. Further, other analytical processes, particularly Odum's Systems Ecology/EMergy offer powerful complements, as in fact do economics and other analytical processes. The main problem today is first there is no working epistemology to sort out and take advantage of the relative merit of the diverse perceptual/analytical processes available to us, and, we should fully appreciate the inertial force of the conventional wisdom. If it were up to those holding the conventional view, as well as those advocating this or that policy or course of action, we would simply do what they see as obviouis--totally independent of the reality of our times and the great transitions just about any one willing (and able) to look can see. ~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~ Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 19:08:24 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: UCR....and subsidies At 01:57 PM 2/17/02, Steven Zoraster wrote: >Mr. Delaney, > >You recognize a problem. I recognize a slightly >different problem. The answer for you - in my >opinion - is to invest some money in those wind >turbine, power generation companies in Denmark. >Or in fuel cells, or in Toyota or Honda because >they seem to be leading the pack in hybrid >vehicles. Or whatever you believe is the answer. Well, no. If you can make this suggestion you only half understand my point. Renewables are going to lose money and be unattractive as investments until *nothing* is attractive as an investment, because the only way they can be successful and achieve the necessary level of deployment is with favorable government "interference" that will not happen because of the dominance of market fundamentalism and denial of problems that require "collectivist" solutions. >The answer for me definitely is to invest in >petroleum companies on the fringes of the industry >that I think can take advantage of the coming >changes in the industry. My guess is that the >companies I pick get less government subsidies >than those windmill people in Denmark. Damn! The fossil fuel business enjoys hugely greater subsidies than any renewables business--depletion allowances, exploration incentives, R&D subsidies, public roads, public acceptance of the cost of externalities, military and diplomatic support for continued access to resources. The barriers to renewables would be hugely reduced if fossil fuels were made to pay their full costs, or otherwise put on a level playing field with renewables. >Hopefully, one of us will make money. And save the >world in the process. Even more hopefully, it will >be me, and I can retire early. Or, maybe my kids >will not have to work for a living. As I say above, renewables will not be successful. I too am investing in fossil fuels, because I expect that I will be able to take advantage of one of those saw teeth. Our actions in this regard will do nothing to save the world. <snip description of unsuccessful subsidies of automobile energy efficiency> >I assume that there are similar programs in Canada >from which you would like you money back? What I'd like is a careful but committed retreat from economic growth. >P.S. I can't think how we are going to argue our >way to an agreement on this issue. I agree. Our positions proceed from what Herman Daly calls different pre-analytic visions. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 13:06:52 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: UCR....and subsidies Steven It just occurred to me why you did not understand the argument in my post below. Until I had this flash, I simply could not see how it was possible for you not to understand, just as I found it a bit strange that you even asked your original question. At 10:31 AM 2/17/02, Steven Zoraster wrote: >--- In energyresources@y..., David Delaney <ddelaney@s...> wrote: > > At 04:59 PM 2/16/02, Steven Zoraster wrote: > > > > >I trust that this logic also applies to renewable-based resources: > > >they should "bootstrap themselves without subsidies". If not, > > >why not? > > > > That's easy. > > >> > I don't know if renewables have sufficient EROEI >so that they could in principle bootstrap >themselves. I do know that an economy that prices >fossil fuels sufficiently low--fuels that >obviously have a higher EROEI than >renewables--could easily make even an energy >source that is in principle capable of supporting >itself "uneconomic". > > > David Delaney, Ottawa > >I find it impossible to parse the above argument, even if it is easy. Your problem, I think, is that you did not realize that when I said "an energy source that is capable of supporting itself" I left out a final word "energetically". It puzzles me slightly that the absence of this word, in this context, caused such confusion. A primary energy source that might well have enough eroei to sustain itself and a whole economy would not be able to compete in another economy based on a higher eroei source, in the absence of countervailing extra-market incentives. The cheap would drive out the dear. I also left out context that I assumed would be instantly evoked in participants in this group: many of us believe that it is necessary to deploy more expensive, lower eroei, renewable sources to mitigate a future decline of fossil fuels too rapid to permit adequate deployment of renewables after the decline is under way. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 12:30:53 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: UCR....and subsidies At 10:31 AM 2/17/02, Steven Zoraster wrote: >--- In energyresources@y..., David Delaney <ddelaney@s...> wrote: > > > That's easy. > > > > I don't know if renewables have sufficient EROEI so that they could > > in principle bootstrap themselves. I do know that an economy that > > prices fossil fuels sufficiently low--fuels that obviously have a > > higher EROEI than renewables--could easily make even an energy > > source that is in principle capable of supporting itself > > "uneconomic". > >I find it impossible to parse the above argument, even if it is easy. ><snip> >And let the technology with the "best" EROEI win without subsidies. This is a prescription for disaster. The best eroei is for fossil fuels, by far. Fossil fuels will have the best eroei until they start declining so fast that renewables cannot be built fast enough to compensate for the shortfall. Only government "interference" can remedy the lack of market incentive to fill this gap before we get to it. But we refuse to acknowledge the problem, or do the work needed to know what actions would be most sensible. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 00:19:04 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Oil Bust/Boom Cycle (cont'd) At 07:58 PM 2/16/02, Dick Lawrence wrote: >What I'm saying is that, below some broad >threshold, demand becomes a lot less flexible, >because people have to eat, and avoid freezing in >the winter (yes it's February in New England!). >If you go back to "Beyond Oil" and models like >that, the models quantify those lower levels of >demand that I expect to be relatively impervious >to price. To a point, yes. But nothing says that everybody will eat or be warm. How well did everyone eat even in the thirties in the US? Certainly the third world doesn't "have" to eat, in the sense that when the oil price shoots up they won't be able to pay for oil or food. Even in the US massive unemployment and business failure can hugely and progressively reduce the demand for oil. I don't know what the interim dynamics will be, but the scenario of a sawtooth profile for oil prices against a general decline, and with only very short duration for high price spikes at the tip of each tooth, is very plausible. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 00:02:09 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Potential for UCR: Sperm oil crisis At 06:51 PM 2/16/02, Steven Zoraster wrote: >--- In energyresources@y..., David Delaney <ddelaney@s...> wrote: > > > I don't know if the situation of rising price and > > falling supply (not slowly rising) is precedented. > > If it is not, the proposed reaction of the economy > > may not be falsifiable by historical analysis. > >What about the famous sperm oil crisis during the 1860s? Well, maybe >not so famous, but certainly an analogy which doesn't imply the end >of the world as we know it today is near. > >http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/protectio >nismpopulismandinterventionism/thresholdless.html Stephen I presume you are joking. If not, then I don't see that a crisis in sperm whale oil in the middle of the nineteenth century is in any way analogous to a reduction of the energy available to operate most businesses. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 23:52:42 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Potential for Unconventional At 04:59 PM 2/16/02, Steven Zoraster wrote: >I trust that this logic also applies to renewable-based resources: >they should "bootstrap themselves without subsidies". If not, >why not? That's easy. I don't know if renewables have sufficient EROEI so that they could in principle bootstrap themselves. I do know that an economy that prices fossil fuels sufficiently low--fuels that obviously have a higher EROEI than renewables-- could easily make even an energy source that is in principle capable of supporting itself "uneconomic". David Delaney, Ottawa ~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~ Which is exactly what is happening as high EROEI resources outcompete the low EROEI resources that we will come to need in the future--but do not now have the analytical capacity to value in relative physical terms. This is the main irony in the solar-roller resistance to EROEI analysis. Low yield energy resource/technologies can provide increasingly substantial benefits if they are judiciously devaloped and phased in meeting the systemic needs of an increasingly high-EROEI deprived world. But we must have an accurate and commonly understood basis for such analysis--and there will be no margin for Enron-like games. ~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~ Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 12:37:11 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Potential for Unconvential Petroleum.... At 09:28 AM 2/16/02, b wrote: >It seems to me more that oil has more or less >stabilized because on a per capita basis there is >and has been a sufficient supply for quite some >time. Once the availability per capita starts >heading down I fail to see how the price will not >rise. It will rise, of course. The key question is "What happens when it rises?" If a small rise in price creates a prompt small increase in the supply of crucial energy supplies, then the price will rise smoothly and keep rising as long as this nice relationship holds. Inflation will relieve some of the consequences of the price rises, and there will be a smooth shift of society's resources toward extracting oil and providing alternatives. This is what the economists expect to happen. But if, (when) a significant price rise is followed by a decrease in the supply of crucial kinds of energy, we can expect very surprising things to happen. Such a negatively sloped supply curve can happen, of course, if conventional oil declines faster than alternatives are brought on line. In this case, the economy *must* contract. Plausibly, such contraction will reduce the absolute demand for oil, exerting strong negative feedback on its rising price, probably reducing demand to the point where the supply curve is positively sloped. The interim balance of these effects is hard to predict, but it seems most probable that the result will be a profound depression of the kind we had in the thirties. However, when this depression starts to end, the rising economy will quickly run into the same limit again. And again. And again.... I don't know if the situation of rising price and falling supply (not slowly rising) is precedented. If it is not, the proposed reaction of the economy may not be falsifiable by historical analysis. The requirement to keep our present economy stable is that energy supply, especially the supply of transportation fuels, continue to rise to allow growth. Decreases in supply could be postponed by government interference in the market to cause very high cost extraction to happen, keeping (for a while) price rises from "resulting" in supply decreases. The result would be government forcing of a massive shift of economic activity to extraction and alternatives. We are, of course seeing this already in the massive subsidies being lined up by the Bush administration for extraction. So much for free markets. Eventually, of course, the finite nature of all resources will catch up with us, and the resulting collapse will be much worse than it would have been if we had wisely anticipated it by finding a way to reduce the economy gracefully. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 20:15:45 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Potential for Unconvential Petroleum.... At 04:16 PM 2/15/02, b wrote: >Interesting, but no mention of what the price of >conventional oil must go to before it enables >investment in unconventionals. I realize that >would be pure speculation, but it would still be >interesting to hear professional opinion. Rising oil prices due to shortages will not rise far before killing the economic activity that would be required to maintain them. The resulting oil price saw tooth will not provide oil prices consistently high enough to motivate the development of resources at substantially higher cost. There may well be non-market solutions to this weakness of the market in the face of oil shortages, but even so, permanently worsening economic depression seems inevitable. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 19:25:15 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Limits to Growth At 05:08 AM 2/15/02, Heiko wrote: >The Limits to Growth DID predict for all intents and purposes that >we'd run out of oil (defined as clearly rising production costs) by >around the 1990's at the latest, even though they were a bit vague as >to the exact date. > >I went into more detail, but it seems the post was too long for the >taste of the moderator, so I just provide a link: >http://www.geocities.com/hgerhauser/limits.htm Heiko, I read what you wrote about LTG. You make a plausible case that the writers of LTG may have believed that oil would run out of petroleum sometime between 20 years (1992) and 50 years (2022) after the 1972 date of publication of LTG. Your argument that this conclusion can be deduced from the text is also plausible. Your belief that this means LTG predicted a date, or even a range of dates for the exhaustion of oil is just silly in view of LTG's repeated and explicit denial of such predictions, and the absence in LTG of words stating such predictions. Your argument that LTG, in contradiction of its authors' explicitly stated intentions, gives a prediction of the date or of a ranges of dates of exhaustion of petroleum is so tenuous that any statement of its conclusion that does not qualify it as a debatable and extreme interpretation of LTG and describe the tenuous nature of the argument, or that does not quote the explicit denials of such predictions, must be viewed as deliberately giving a false impression of the intent of LTG. In other words, such bare statements, at least when coming from those who have reason to know better, must be viewed either as lies, or as unknowing and careless repetition of lies. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 21:30:46 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Unbelievable Tinkerbelleism At 12:54 PM 2/11/02, lawrence_01749 wrote: >Then there's the Club of Rome (Limits to Growth) >part: does it actually predict oil depletion by >1992? I read Simmons' rebuttal to criticism of >Limits to Growth, and he says their projections >are for 70 to 100 years out (from 1972), not 20. >Therefore, the critiques were off the mark, >because it hasn't played out yet - it's got >another 50 years to go! Anyone here got the book? > Please help us! Limits to Growth is repetitively clear about what it does and does not predict. The reference to oil running out undoubtedly refers to a Table 4 Non-Renewable Natural Resources, which is included to demonstrate the power of exponential growth. Petroleum is shown running out in twenty years from 1972, the date of publication, if no change in the rate of growth of consumption takes place, and no further supplies are found, assuming the then known reserves of 455e9 bbls the only oil. The same entry gives 50 years if there is no change in rate of consumption and the 455e9 is only one fifth of the real total. This table was definitely and explicitly not intended as a prediction, and there is no corresponding statement about the exhaustion of oil in the text. In fact there are many disclaimers having the total effect that the only prediction in the book is that without changes in the way we organize our economy, there will be overshoot and collapse before 2100. As far as I can see, those who say LTG was wrong, and have been proven so by experience, either don't know what they are talking about, or are trying to mislead, or both. I extracted a set of all the passages I could find in LTG that relate to prediction. Here they are: Start of excerpts from LTG Limits to Growth, Donella H. Meadows, et al, 1972, Earth Island Limited, London, ISBN 0 85644 010 8 Chaper III: Growth in the world system p. 91-92 THE PURPOSE OF THE WORLD MODEL In this first simple world model, we are interested only in the broad behavior modes of the population-capital system. By behavior modes we mean the tendencies of the variables in the system (population or pollution, for example) to change as time progresses. A variable may increase, decrease, remain constant, oscillate, or combine several of these characteristic modes. For example, a population growing in a limited environment can approach the ultimate carrying capacity of that environment in several possible ways. It can adjust smoothly to an equilibrium below the environmental limit by means of a gradual decrease in growth rate, as shown below. It can over-shoot the limit and then die back again in either a smooth or an oscillatory way, also as shown below. Or it can overshoot the limit and in the process decrease the ultimate carrying capacity by consuming some necessary nonrenewable resource..... This behavior has been noted in many natural systems. For instance, deer or goats, when natural enemies are absent, often overgraze their range and cause erosion or destruction of the vegetation. p. 94 Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful. We cannot forecast the precise population of the United States nor the GNP of Brazil nor even the total world food production for the year 2015. The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, *even if it were our purpose to make them*. [Emphasis mine. DD] On the other hand, it is vitally important to gain some understanding of the causes of growth in human society, the limits to growth, and the behavior of our socioeconomic systems when the limits are reached. p. 121-122 ... Even in the absence of improved data, information now available is sufficient to generate valid basic behavior modes for the world system. This is true because the model's feedback loop structure is a much more important determinant of overall behavior than the exact numbers used to quantify the feedback loops. Even rather large changes in input data do not generally alter the mode of behavior, as we shall see in the following pages. Numerical changes may well affect the period of an oscillation or the rate of growth or the time of a collapse, but they will not affect the fact that the basic mode is oscillation or growth or collapse.* Since we intend to use the world model only to answer questions about behavior modes, *not to make exact predictions*, [emphasis mine -- DD] we are primarily concerned with the correctness of the feedback loop structure and only secondarily with the accuracy of the data. Footnote on p. 121: * The importance of structure rather than numbers is a most difficult concept to present without extensive examples from the observation and modeling of dynamic systems. For further discussion of this point, see chapter 6 of I. W. Forrester's Urban Dynamics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969). p. 122 ... If decision-makers at any level had access to precise predictions and scientifically correct analyses of alternate policies, we would certainly not bother to construct or publish a simulation model based on partial knowledge. Unfortunately, there is no perfect model available for use in evaluating today's important policy issues. At the moment, our only alternatives to a. model like this, based on partial knowledge, are mental models, based on the mixture of incomplete information and intuition that currently lies behind most political decisions. A dynamic model deals with the same incomplete information available to an intuitive model, but it allows the organization of information from many different sources into a feedback loop structure that can be exactly analyzed. Once all the assumptions are together and written down, they can be exposed to criticism, and the system's response to alternative policies can be tested. p. 126 We can thus say with some confidence that, under the assumption of no major change in the present system, population and industrial growth will certainly stop within the next century, at the latest. [Emphasized by italics in the original. DD] Chapter IV: Technology and the limits to growth p. 142-143 Although we have many reservations about the approximations and simplifications in the present world model, it has led us to one conclusion that appears to be justified under all the assumptions we have tested so far. *The basic behavior mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital, followed by collapse.* {Emphasized by italics in the original. DD] As we have shown in the model runs presented here, this behavior mode occurs if we assume no change in the present system or if we assume any number of technological changes in the system. The unspoken assumption behind all of the model runs we have presented in this chapter is that population and capital growth should be allowed to continue until they reach some "natural" limit. This assumption also appears to be a basic part of the human value system currently operational in the real world. Whenever we incorporate this value into the model, the result is that the growing system rises above its ultimate limit and then collapses. When we introduce technological developments that successfully lift some restraint to growth or avoid some collapse, the system simply grows to another limit, temporarily surpasses it, and falls back. Given that first assumption, that population and capital growth should not be deliberately limited, but should be left to "seek their own levels," we have not been able to find a set of policies that avoids the collapse mode of behavior. It is not really difficult to understand how the collapse mode comes about. Everywhere in the web of interlocking feedback loops that constitutes the world system we have �ound it necessary to represent the real-world situation by introducing time delays between causes and their ultimate effects. These are natural delays that cannot be controlled by technological means. They include, �or example, the delay of about fifteen years between the birth of a baby and the time that baby can first reproduce itself. p. 144-145 In exactly the same way, the delays in the �eedback loops of the world system would be no problem if the system were growing very slowly or not at all. Under those conditions any new action or policy could be instituted gradually, and the changes could work their way through the delays to �eed back on every part of the system be�ore some other action or policy would have to be introduced. Under conditions of rapid growth, however, the system is �orced into new policies and actions long before the results of old policies and actions can be properly assessed. The situation is even worse when the growth is exponential and the system is changing ever more rapidly. End of excerpts from LTG David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 09:02:09 -0500 Subject: [energyresources] Fwd: [RunningOnEmpty2] Hybrid cars and vehicle fees in >To: toeslist@egroups.com, Linda Wallace <pika@bigsky.net>, > RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.com >From: "Drusha L. Mayhue" <drusha@bigsky.net> >Delivered-To: mailing list RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.com >Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 01:32:46 -0700 >Subject: [RunningOnEmpty2] Hybrid cars and vehicle fees in Oregon... > >This is from another list. How outrageous and ridiculous! I checked the >website below and sure enough, the registration for hybrid cars [in Oregon] is twice >that of regular cars. And for hybrid or electric powered motorcycle/mopeds >it's more than 3 times that of regular mopeds and motorcycles. > >Drusha, Montana >---------------------------------------------------------- > >Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 13:52:30 -0500 >From: >Subject: a new outrage > >Here's something appalling -- if true (I can hardly believe it!) -- that I >thought you'd want to know about. Oregon recently decided to double the >vehicle registration fees for hybrid and electric cars. It's said that the >rationale is that owners of high-mileage vehicles do not pay their fair >share to support highway maintenance through gasoline taxes. Thus, the >extra registration charge compensates for their failure to buy enough gas! >You can check out the registration fee schedule at: > >http://www.odot.state.or.us/dmv/Vehicles/veh_fees.htm Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 22:26:13 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins At 11:09 AM 2/10/02, Murray Duffin wrote: >Oh yeah, I forgot this part. 26W/sq. cm. is no big deal. See pentium >3 specs or any large power transistor. High power pentiums *do* dissipate power of this order. But they have top surface areas of the order of 16-20 cm2. Say, one fifteenth of the power density. Also, they always have at least forced air cooling, or they will destroy themselves. Some of them even have their own dedicated active cooling. >The mounting frame will likely >handle that load, and if not the addition of a simple finned heat >sink will. I don't think the mounting frame will handle it. To get heat to the frame you would need a very large temperature gradient in the PV itself. Relatively very large aluminium heat sinks would probably keep the PV from destroying itself, but would they keep its temperature low enough for efficiency? I don't know. I'll bet you'd still need fans. Water cooling is very complicated and maintenance intensive. >My apologies for the previous note. You did remember the >electricity. Murray Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 22:02:28 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins At 11:00 AM 2/10/02, Murray Duffin wrote: >Remember 30+% 0f the incident energy is removed as >electricity. You are almost certainly exaggerating >by implication the drawbacks. How can anyone know? >Anyway, the Arizona application will provide good >data soon enough. I suspect the folks in Arizona >have already answered these questions to their own >satisfaction. They run an energy efficient model >home, and the people I have talked to there are >pretty intelligent and knowledgable. Murray Interesting, I had an impression (without any good basis) that this was just a lab curiosity so far. Do you have any references to field trials? David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 22:26:01 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins At 01:40 AM 2/8/02 +0000, Murray Duffin wrote: >Without a concentrator your low efficiency panel >needs 1 sq. m. of silicon to collect 1 sq. m. o f >sunshine. With a 400 sun concentrator you need 25 >sq. cm. of silicon and a 1 sq. m. polycarbonate >lense. The lense can be made for maybe 10% of the >energy of the silicon. even if the frame, tracker >etc. require 25% of the total build energy you >have just reduced Ein by 68% at equal efficiency. >At 2-3x efficiency you are so much better off. >Murray How do you know it's only 25% of the total build energy? You have to have motors and computer control, gears, etc., for tracking. These complicated mechanisms have to be maintained and repaired much more often than unmoving low efficiency panels. You have forgotten about cooling. Your high efficiency panels will have to have fans and radiators to cool them, since each square cm of panel will have to discard a large fraction of 26 watts of heat = (1 - 0.34)(400 x 1000 W/m2 / 10,000 cm2/m2), or melt itself. If these fans fail, the panels will be destroyed. Are they valuable enough to have to be protected against such failures. If so, there is further complexity. There is enough complexity here that no one can know whether such highly concentrating panels are better than current technology without a lot of analysis that has not been done. It may be that these new panels could operate at say 10% efficiency at much lower concentration, say 10 to one with non-imaging optics for concentration and no tracking and no active cooling. A tenth as much silicon as current technology, but the same interception area and other costs--that might turn out to be much more interesting. My point is that no can know without detailed net energy analysis. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 16:24:27 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins At 04:24 PM 2/7/02 +0000, Murray Duffin wrote: >Not quite the right analysis. At 400 suns you have in theory 1/400th >the silicon, and you add a polycarbonate fresnel lense aperture that >takes maybe 1/10th the energy of the silicon to produce. The frame >and tracker are little changed, if you are comparing a non- >concentrating tracking system with a concentrating system. Murray Murray, read it again. I asked for a comparison of non-tracking low efficiency panel to tracking hi-efficiency panel. I allowed an interception area ratio of five low to 1 high efficiency panels. I absolutely did not assume more than 1/400 th of the silicon for the high efficiency. I am saying I don't know, and you don't know, which is better. David Delaney, Ottawa >--- In energyresources@y..., David Delaney <ddelaney@s...> wrote: > > At 05:50 PM 2/1/02 +0000, Murray Duffin wrote: > > > > [about new 34% efficient PV requiring 400 suns] > > > > >My target for 2010 arrives in 2001. The Arizona purchase will move >it > > >from lab to production by 2003. How's that you pessimists?? Murray > > > > Hmm.... If it requires 400 suns for 34% > > efficiency, then the embodied energy of its > > concentrating equipment would have to compete with > > ordinary PV at say 10%. > > > > A field of 10% efficiency PV panels would have to > > intercept 3.4 times as great an area of sunlight > > as these high efficiency panels. The high > > concentration would almost certainly require > > tracking. Lets make the ratio of areas 5:1 to > > allows for unmoving low efficiency PV panels. > > > > So here's the thing: Is the embodied energy in the > > concentrator and the steering mechanism, including > > installation, and maintenance, for the high > > efficiency PV less than, comparable to, or greater > > than the embodied energy of the equivalent > > unmoving PV panel? > > > > I don't know. I would need to have at least an idea > > before I got excited. > > > > David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 23:28:14 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Scary thought At 06:50 PM 2/5/02 -0500, KD wrote: >...What if the CIA, M16, Mossad and other >intelligence agencies had all the information on >http://hubbertpeak.com and http://dieoff.com , >PLUS additional information that they have >obtained by hook or by crook from private and >national oil companies? What if all the info >indicates that the oil reserve/resource situation >is even WORSE than depicted by the so-called >Cassandras? It will happen sooner or later. Why not already? I am sure that some people in those organizations know. Their difficulties of communication within their organizations, however, will be the same as ours: denial from many sources, acquiescence in the denial propelled by fear of the power shifts that acknowledgement will produce, and by fear of the reaction of interested "clients". One thing is sure: the knowledge will not be widespread within the security organizations for long before it will leak out everywhere. (The direction of the flow of general awareness may well be in the opposite direction.) As long as it is not widespread, the forces of denial will marginalize it, even there. I think the situation is, and will remain, much the same inside and outside the security apparatus--only obvious and immediately imminent disaster will let reality be perceived. However, once such knowledge is widespread within the security apparatus (and therefore in intellectual society generally), look out. At that point the security apparatus will start recommending, or even creating, "solutions". We have discussed at length in this forum , under Jay's tutelage, what some of those "solutions" may be. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com CC: "terrell_larson" <terr@terralogic.net> From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 19:45:14 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Goodbye, though not so good.... At 02:51 AM 2/3/02 +0000, Terrell wrote: >I'd like to find some good practical +ve >solutions. I've been asking how to go about >building energy efficient housing now for months >with no forward progress. Terrel asked about sources on renewable energy for personal projects. I own many books on these subjects. Here are the ones I have found most useful. I have read all of these quite thoroughly, and have worked intensively with at least a part of each book. Try <www.abebooks.com> for the books that are out of print. (Or for any used book purchase. I recommend abebooks.) My primary interest is in a cold winter climate with hot humid summers--continental, latitude 45 degrees. The best general advice is "insulate and conserve first". S. Robert Hastings and Ove Morck, eds., Solar air systems, A design handbook, James and James (Science Publishers) Ltd, 35-37 William Road, London NW1 3ER, UK, 2000, 286 pp. The best (only?) book dedicated to solar air heaters since the book by Kornher and Zaugg (below). This book gives a very thorough set of designs and design methods for air heaters. It's very recent and very European, so entirely in SI units. Steve Kornher and Andy Zaugg, The complete handbook of solar air heating systems, Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 1984, 350. Many good ideas and down to earth practical construction advice. Written by guys who have built a lot of air heaters. J. D. Ned Nisson and Guatam Dutt, The superinsulated home book, John Wiley and Sons, New York, Toronto, 1985, 316 pp. Very detailed and practical presentations of principles, problems, and practices of superinsulation. William A. Shurcliff, Super solar houses, Saunders's 100%-solar, low-cost designs, Brick House Publishing, Andover Mass., 1983, pp. 140. A revolutionary book that turns its back on passive solar design in favor of active solar designs to provide 100% of space heat and most of the domestic hot water (DHW) heat in a cold climate. All designs use air as the collector medium. William A. Shurcliff, New inventions in low-cost solar heating, 100 daring schemes tried and untried, Brick House Publishing, Andover, Mass., 1979, 293. A delightfully stimulating book. Filled with ideas. William A. Shurcliff, Thermal shutters and shades, Brick House Publishing, Andover Mass., 1980, 238 pp. An exhasutive book on this topic. William A. Shurcliff, Solar heated buildings of North America, 120 outstanding examples, Brick House Publishing, Andover Mass., 1978, 293 pp. Fascinating to see how much activity there was in this field in the seventies and early eighties, until Reagan torpedoed renewable energy. William A. Shurcliff, Super insulated houses and double envelope houses, Brick House Publishing, Andover, Mass., 1981, 182 pp. As with everything Shurcliff writes, filled with insight. John A Duffie and William A. Beckman, Solar engineering of thermal processes, John Wiley and Sons, New York, Toronto, 1991, 919 pp. For engineers. Mathematical. Comprehensive. A wonderful reference. Indispensable if you really do have to get into detailed solar thermal engineering. Jeffrey Cook, ed., Passive cooling, Massachussets Institute of Engineering, Cambridge, Mass., 1989, 583 pp. Sam Clark, The Real Goods independent builder, designing and building a house your own way, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, 1996, 522 pp. If you are building a house, or having one built for you, this well written book will sensitize you to many issues. James Kachadorian, The passive solar house, Chelsea Green Publishing, Whit River Junction, Vermont, 1997, 210 pp. A very particular passive design. Beautifully done book with wonderful drawings. Good detailed presentation of a thermal design method for passive solar that anyone can do. Some good ideas, but the design has the limitations of passive designs--you cannot get 100% space heat, and no DHW preheat. David Lyle, The book of masonry stoves, rediscovering an old way of warming, Brick House Publishing, Andover Mass., 1984, 192 pp. If you are interested in wood heat you should consider masonry heaters. As efficient as the best steel catalytics, as low in particulate emissions, and safer, this old technology is relevant again. Masonry heaters don't care whether they're fed softwood or hardwood, they work equally well with both. John Schaeffer and The Real Goods Staff, The Real Goods solar living sourcebook, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, 1996, 689 pp. In reality, almost entirely about solar electricity. Indispensable if you are embarking on solar electricity. Nick Pine's archive of his internet posts on solar thermal aplications. <http://www.ece.villanova.edu/~nick/> Mr. Pine's posts are informed by good engineering knowledge and judgment, and are loaded with practical ideas. You can often get very expert help with questions about solar thermal applications on the alt.thermal.solar newsgroup (Nick Pine founded it.) Last but not least, if you are an engineer, or are willing to deal with engineering handbooks, the ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers) handbooks are a source of authoritative information on almost everything relating to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Very little directly about renewables, but many principles, components, and sub-systems are independent of the energy source. I own four: Fundamentals, Applications, HVAC Systems and Equipment, and Refrigeration. David Delaney, Ottawa ~~~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Comment ~~~~~~~~ David, if it is OK with you I would like to put the above into the EnergyResources Group Files section under Energy Efficiency. Anybody want to add to it, let's see it. ~~~~~ EnergyResources Moderator Tom Robertson ~~~~~~ Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 18:21:54 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Mike Ruppert is Deluged with At 05:16 PM 2/5/02 -0500, b wrote: >I thought the point of Gold's questionable theories is not that oil will >replenish, but that there is countless billions of barrels waiting to be >discovered by deep-drilling (deeper than we do now). b Well, if there are hydrocarbons down there, they're not oil, since oil below 15,000 feet is quickly cracked to natural gas by the high temperature-- they're below the "oil window". See Deffeyes book. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 17:55:05 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Perilous Optimism-Entropy-Order At 07:36 PM 2/3/02 -0800, Arthur Noll wrote: >I don't see how this refutes my points at all, David. I'm not aiming to refute your points in general, just to correct a particular mistaken statement about entropy. >I don't see how the >entropy of a true adiabatic system could change. After a sufficiently long time, after reaching equilibrium, it won't. But an isolated system that is not in equilibrium will progress toward equilibrium--its entropy will increase gradually or rapidly, but in any case inexorably. The objection that true adiabatic isolation is impossible is irrelevant--we can easily, in at least some cases, create walls, or postulate walls, sufficiently adiabatic that entropy changes resulting from interactions with the environment are insignificant compared to those due to internal energy flows. My reason for introducing the adiabatic system was to make the point that the Clausius integral (the integral of dQ/T over the surface of the system during a heat transfer) does not in general define the entropy change within the system in question. For an isolated system that is not in equilibrium the Clausius integral is always zero but the entropy of the system does increase until the system is in equilibrium. Similarly the Clausius integral does not, *in general*, compute the entropy change in any system-- isolated, closed, or open. The condition that it does compute the entropy change of the system are restrictive--the system has to be closed *and in equilibrium* during the heat transfers over which integration takes place. Being in equilibrium means, among other things, that its temperature is uniform throughout at all times. For any closed system, including systems not in equilibrium, the Clausius integral computes the entropy *transfer* into the system from its environment. The entropy transferred into the system is the negative of the entropy transferred from the environment. If the system is open, then you have also to take into account entropy carried across the system boundary by mass transport. If system is closed and cyclic, returning periodically to the same state, the Clausius integral over a complete cycle is always negative unless the system is always in equilibrium during the integration, in which case the Clausius integral is zero. The negative of this cyclic Clausius integral, always a positive quantity, is exactly the direct entropy contribution of the system to the surroundings. But unless the system is in equilibrium with its surroundings throughout the cycle (very unlikely) still more entropy is created in the surroundings due to heat transfer through temperature gradients near the system. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:35:46 -0500 Subject: Re: Re: [energyresources] Mike Ruppert is Deluged with At 11:31 AM 2/5/02 -0800, Dale Allen Pfeiffer wrote: >Concerning government involvement in 9-11, there >is a huge body of evidence to support this >thesis. I'm with Ron on this. God knows I'm as reasonably cynical about W and his cronies as the next radical, but any one of 1) thinking he or his cronies would want to do this, 2) thinking they would be crazy enough to think they could get away with it, 3) thinking they could in fact get away with it, is just paranoid nonsense. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:26:31 -0500 Subject: Re: Re: [energyresources] Mike Ruppert is Deluged with At 10:26 AM 2/5/02 -0800, Ron Patterson wrote: >I think most of us on this list believe that there >will be a massive dieoff. I don�t think any of >would call it murder. Ron Maybe the article was referring to Jay's very plausible belief that some powerful group will suddenly wake up to the impending awfulness and decide to improve their chances by anticipating it. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:06:33 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Yesterday, Today and Tommorrow --Was At 09:05 AM 2/5/02 -0600, MH wrote: >"DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab (suggests) >the entire U.S. electricity load could be >generated by a swath of solar panels covering just >100 square miles. Someone at DOE suffers from number numbness. Let's assume 100% efficiency of conversion of sunlight to electricity (a ridiculous assumption) and 1000 watts insolation per square meter for 10 hours a day (very high). 100 square miles is 2.6e8 square meters. 2.6e8 m2 x 1000 watts/m2 x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 10 hours/day x 365 days/year = 3.4e18 joules/year (3.4 EJ/year). 3.4e18 J is 9.5% of the 36e18 J (36 quads) of electricity that the US generated in 1999. If the efficiency of the solar panels is reduced to a more reasonable 10%, 100 square miles of panels yields 0.95% of the electricity generated in 1999. Now, if he meant 100 miles *square*, (10,000 square miles, 2.6e10 square meters) rather than 100 square miles, the statement begins to seem within striking distance of reality.... However, to get 10 percent efficiency, you have to orient the panels well to the sun, and this requires substantially more than a square foot of land for each square foot of panel, to prevent mutual shade. Let's say, conservatively, a factor of two. So, a more sensible statement would have required 20,000 square miles of land, even if only 10,000 square miles of panel. If the energy recuperation period for the panels were 3 years, and they were built evenly over ten years, the US would be expanding its electrical energy output by 3.6e18 joules per year, which, because of the 3 year energy recuperation period, would require an energy investment of 3 x 3.6e18 joules per year or 11 EJ (11 quads) per year. This investment would produce only the panels, not their mounts, or their installation and transmission. This 11 EJ per year is roughly a third of all the electricity produced per year in the US today, or 10% of all current annual energy use. This 11 EJ is such a large fraction of the GDP that the total cost could be estimated pretty well by taking 11 EJ as a fraction of the total US energy use of 100 EJ times the GDP, say 10 percent of six trillion dollars per year, or 600 billion dollars per year. (This is close to $5 per watt, pretty close to current panel prices.) This resulting $/W is much less important than the fact that any project that uses 5 or 10% of the total available energy in a year is going to represent 5 or 10 percent of the GDP.) Spread it out over 20 years, and you could get it down to 5% of GDP, say 300 billion dollars per year--just for panels, never mind their mounts, installation, land, maintenance, inverters, transmission. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 13:54:48 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Entropy web sites At 05:17 AM 2/4/02 +0000, Albert Darimont wrote: >The web page below features a clear explanation of >the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, written by a >Professor Frank Lambert for university students. > >http://www.secondlaw.com/default.htm Many thanks for this stunningly good reference on the second law and entropy. The site refers to three other sites by the same author, Prof. Frank Lambert. The sites deal in various levels of detail with entropy. I found the evening I spent reading these sites very rewarding. Even the most detailed site, <http://www.2ndlaw.com>, is, accept for the last section on free energy, accessible to almost everyone. Even people who know a lot about thermodynamics will benefit from the extreme clarity of Lambert's elementary presentation. Of particular benefit to me was Lambert's clarification of the relationship of entropy to order, disorder, and probability. Lambert has published a separate article on this subject in the Journal of Chemical Education: Lambert, Frank L., "Shuffled Cards, Messy Desks, and Disorderly Dorm Rooms - Examples of Entropy Increase? Nonsense!" J. Chem. Educ. 1999 76 1385. This article is available on the web at: <http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1999/Oct/abs1385.html> Lambert explains clearly how the second law favors the spontaneous creation of complex compounds, and even hints, with hurricanes as an example, how it favors the spontaneous creation of self organizing systems. Here's Lambert's description of <http://www.2ndlaw.com> ><http://www.2ndlaw.com> has five parts. >The first, "Entropy and the second law of >thermodynamics" gives a superior introduction to >entropy from the standpoint of molecular behavior >("molecular thermodynamics") and quantized >microstates, but does not introduce math or >quantum mechanics. The second, "The second law of >thermodynamics is a tendency" is almost a >repetition of material from secondlaw.com. The >third, "Obstructions to the second law make life >possible" develops the concept of activation >energies as does secondlaw.com but goes further in >showing the relationship of endothermic reactions >to energy input, including some material on >substances found in space: how they could arise. >The fourth, "The second law of thermodyamics and >evolution", responds to many questions sent to >secondlaw.com by individuals who did not realize >that the second law favors the formation of more >complex compounds from the simple elements. The >fifth, "Entropy and Gibbs free energy", is only >for chemistry students, whereas all preceding >material was for science and for non-science >majors. It really should be named "The Gibbs >equation is ALL entropy!" � just to surprise chem >students who have to work with it. (It�s an >exciting discovery to most students to realize >that the "conflict" between enthalpy and entropy >in the equation is misleading: The enthalpy in >Gibbs is q that can move into the surroundings and >be the surroundings� entropy. Makes things a lot >clearer after you think about if for a few >minutes�.) David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 21:40:59 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Perilous Optimism-Entropy-Order At 09:48 AM 2/2/02 -0800, Arthur Noll wrote: >How many times must I go over this. No, No, NO! >First, this equation gives only changes in >entropy. And as you can see from looking at it, as >a single system loses heat, the changes possible >will be less and less. When you look at the >system that the heat is lost into, and consider >the two systems as a whole, it's change in entropy >must be calculated on the basis of heat flow in or >out of this larger system. This is just wrong. The entropy of an isolated system (a system with an adiabatic wall dividing it from the universe) can change without *any* heat transfer across its boundary. (Any change in such a system increases its entropy.) The integral of dQ/dT over the surface bounding a closed (no mass transfer) but not isolated (energy exchange with the environment allowed) system gives, in general, only a part of the entropy change of the system during the heat transfer. The integral represents the whole entropy change of the system *only* if (1) the system remains in equilibrium within itself and with its environment during the whole heat transfer, or (2) the system state happens to be identical before and after the heat transfer. Any non-equilibrium changes within a closed system during a heat transfer across its system boundary means that the entropy change within the system during the heat transfer is *greater* than the integral of dQ/t on the boundary. This is true even if such non-equilibrium changes are due to the heat transfer, e.g. when a heat transfer across the system boundary creates a temperature gradient within the system. >The previously considered heat flow is now just an >internal heat flow, has nothing to do with the >definition given by the equation. > The reason the concept of entropy as given by this >equation, works with engine problems, is because >people are only using it on single systems. No. It always "works". The heat and entropy (in mass flows) transfer across the boundary of an engine characterizes its total creation of entropy because the heat and entropy flows are considered over a *cycle* of the engine, 1.e. a period between identical internal states of the engine. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 16:24:12 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: High-efficiency solar cell wins At 05:50 PM 2/1/02 +0000, Murray Duffin wrote: [about new 34% efficient PV requiring 400 suns] >My target for 2010 arrives in 2001. The Arizona purchase will move it >from lab to production by 2003. How's that you pessimists?? Murray Hmm.... If it requires 400 suns for 34% efficiency, then the embodied energy of its concentrating equipment would have to compete with ordinary PV at say 10%. A field of 10% efficiency PV panels would have to intercept 3.4 times as great an area of sunlight as these high efficiency panels. The high concentration would almost certainly require tracking. Lets make the ratio of areas 5:1 to allows for unmoving low efficiency PV panels. So here's the thing: Is the embodied energy in the concentrator and the steering mechanism, including installation, and maintenance, for the high efficiency PV less than, comparable to, or greater than the embodied energy of the equivalent unmoving PV panel? I don't know. I would need to have at least an idea before I got excited. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 19:05:56 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] EROEI perspective At 03:27 PM 1/27/02 +1100, Denis Frith wrote: >I believe the top priority of this list should be >to convey the message that society needs to turn >to using the energy flows rather than the >depleting store as quickly as possible. It is too late for that message to prevent disaster. In any case, vested interests and our disposition to avoid and marginalize doom sayers will effectively prevent the message being heard until disaster is upon us. I hope we may learn some things that will be useful to decision makers when realization strikes. It will then be time to make huge investments of *energy* at a time when investing wrongly will risk the survival of civilization. >The use of EROEI does not help in that regard. In one way, it does. There is too much unreasonable confidence that we will be saved by a smooth transition to renewable energy sources to replace oil and gas. Because of the low EROEI of these alternatives, oil and gas can be replaced only partially by them--an economy based on them will operate at a much lower rate of energy use, and get going only after massive long term energy investment. Understanding this fact certainly convinced me of the truth of the message. Nonetheless, you are right, EROEI will not help much in sending the message you want to send--only disaster itself will do that. Maybe EROEI will help us choose rationally between alternatives when disaster has sent the message. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 17:38:04 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Efficient computation of embodied I have addressed some of the comments I have received about my paper on computation of embodied energy. I have added an abstract, and I've improved the arguments that the procedure gives the right answer. See: Efficient computation of embodied energy from a dependency tree. v1.5 January 22 <http://www.geocities.com/~dmdelaney/Net_embodied_energy.html> Abstract: Presents a procedure to compute the energy embodied in an object as specified in its energy dependency tree. The procedure uses estimates of the embodied energy of constituent and contributing objects to guide its decisions about which parts of the infinite tree to visit. The costs of objects and services may be used to generate suitable estimates. The accuracy of the procedure is insensitive to the accuracy of the estimates. The procedure visits only the number of nodes of the tree required to achieve the desired accuracy. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 13:47:28 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Efficient computation of embodied At 05:10 PM 1/22/02 +0000, mduffin wrote: >Two such human beings produce two children. >Each child at birth embodies 2"m"/2 for it's parents, but also >embodies like amounts for grandparents, great gran... etc. That >seems to me to be the machine analogy. >On the other hand we could ignore the embodied energy in the human >being, and use statistics for the average daily calorie consumption >of adults times the fraction of the day spent at work, and add in >some amount for transportation, which will be small enough that, as >you note, even a fairly large error will not be significant. >I guess my question is "do you ignore the embodied energy of people, >which does not become trivially small in one or two generations as >does that for machines?" Murray Let's assume we agree to ignore the energy embodied in the people. I would then disagree that their appropriate energy input to their work is their calorie consumption and transportation energies times a utilization factor. This is too little. I agree with Gene Tyner that the energy required to obtain the workers services is the sum of all energies purchased, direct and embodied, with his salary. I did not state this view in the document, because the procedure of the document is useful with several different views on this matter. David Delaney, Ottawa Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments? Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@bellatlantic.net Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Back to top... To: energyresources@yahoogroups.com From: David Delaney <ddelaney@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 06:47:26 -0500 Subject: Re: [energyresources] Re: Efficient computation of embodied Murray Thanks for these comments. To include the indirect energy input of labor, you must use an estimate, because tracking the energy expenditure of a person for these purposes is, of course, impracticable. We would define a labor node with one child. The child would be a direct energy node representing your estimate of the total energy consumption of the people contributing the labor. The labor node would specify the contribution factor of the labor pool to the object of which it was a child. Your estimate of the energy would probably be closely related to cost x E/GDP. You refer to pairs of parent nodes having common children. In energy dependency trees, each node can have only a single parent. If the embodied energy of an object depends on that of another in several different ways, the contributing object appears multiple times in different parts of the tree. I may have tripped over gender-neutral language here. Exclusive use of either "mother", or "father" would have made this clearer. David Delaney, Ottawa At 11:57 PM 1/21/02 +0000, mduffin3 wrote: >I can buy this approach, and I agree that you quickly get to the >point where small energy inputs are subsumed in the margin of error. >However several critics of embodied energy computations insist on >including people energy. How do we do that, either with this >mechanism or outside of it? >If we treat people as analogous to machinery and equipment (they are >often interchangeable to a degree) then we do not spread the >progenitor's energy input over countless outputs making it >meaninglessly small. Most pairs of parents have very few children, >and adding the energy put into prior generations from conception to >parenthood (that energy needed to "make" a person) would become a >very large number. If we don't treat people as analogous to >equipment, how do we deal with them? >Personally I prefer to leave people out of the computation, or if >they are included, include only their curren