Chris, not to be disagreeable, but the tech either works or it does
not, is either clean or its not, is abundant or it isn't, is affordable
or it ain't. We need it all to work in a newtonian sense, or its
useless. Fuel efficiency has been promoted by greens, as an ideological
thing. It has its thermodynamic limit. It is like the hypercar of 25
years ago, promoted by Amory Lovin. Everything that wasn't kevlar, was
aluminium. Everything that was not magnesium, was fibreglass, but was
light. So light, that a passing 18 wheeler, driving in the next lane,
would blow it off the road. Unsafe at any speed. Good on fuel though.
No talking can replace physics.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris de Morsella <[email protected]>
To: everything-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, Mar 5, 2014 4:43 pm
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
From: John Clark <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2014 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:38 PM, Chris de Morsella
<[email protected]> wrote:> The biggest energy source we
have available in fact is energy efficiency.
>>I am certainly in favor of energy efficiency, only a fool would
not be, but it is not the solution to our energy problem because when a
commodity like energy becomes cheaper people simply use more of it. If
somebody invented a gadget that doubled the fuel efficiency of
jetliners it would not cut in half the amount of fuel that airlines use
because people would fly more often and airplanes would hold fewer
people due to their larger more comfortable seats.
That is a failure of the markets. If energy efficiency marginally
lowers the rate of consumption of fossil (and other) energy resources
thus increasing the available current supply -- because we almost
exclusively rely on these short term market price signals to determine
consumption/production -- demand will tend to rise. This is well
known.... paradoxically in effect punishing virtue and rewarding a self
centered I-don't-give-a-damn mentality of consuming every resource as
fast as possible.
Over the long term this will lead to our species discovering what the
meaning of going over a cliff really is in the hardest of hard terms --
up to and including species extinction.
Energy and all other non-renewable and critical resources should be
taxed and taxed heavily -- IMO. This is the other side of encouraging
conserving these critical and non-renewable resources. Take phosphate
for example -- the world is running out of the economically recoverable
sources -- mined principally from just three sources: in Morocco (land
seized by Morocco actually) , Florida, and if I recall somewhere in
Russia. There is no incentive to conserve this vital resource and
global supplies seem to have already peaked. Phosphorous is a critical
ingredient of fertilizers.
Relying on market signals alone to determine how -- and at what pace --
finite resources are consumed is a recipe for disaster. The market will
encourage us to burn through these resources as fast as we can, which
is precisely what our species is doing.
Not the wisest course of action though, and a clear example of how the
market mechanism is sending our civilization over the cliff.
>>By the way, have you noticed that politicians are always urging
us to conserve energy but they don't seem to find it necessary to
command us to conserve angular momentum?
Is there any real point here; or is this a political rant freebie?
Chris
John K Clark
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