Vaclav Smil: Moore’s Curse and the Great Energy Delusion

[GliderGuider]

This a devastating repudiation of the promise of renewable energy by someone who's been researching energy issues for decades.

Moore’s Curse and the Great Energy Delusion

By Vaclav Smil

During the early 1980s some aficionados of small-scale, distributed, “soft” (today’s “green”) energies saw America of the first decade of the 21st century drawing 30 percent to 50 percent of its energy use from renewables (solar,wind, biofuels). For the past three decades we have been told how natural gas will become the most important source of modern energy: widely cited forecasts of the early 1980s had the world deriving half of its energy from natural gas by 2000. And a decade ago the promoters of fuel cell cars were telling us that such vehicles would by now be on the road in large numbers, well on their way to displacing ancient and inefficient internal combustion engines.

These are the realities of 2008: coal-fired power plants produce half of all U.S. electricity, nuclear stations 20 percent, and there is not a single commercial breeder reactor operating anywhere in the world; in 2007 the United States derives about 1.7 percent of its energy from new renewable conversions (corn-based ethanol, wind, photovoltaic solar, geothermal); natural gas supplies about 24 percent of the world’s commercial energy—less than half the share predicted in the early 1980s and still less than coal with nearly 29 percent; and there are no fuel-cell cars.

This list of contrasts could be greatly extended, but the point is made: all of these forecasts and anticipations failed miserably because their authors and promoters ignored one of the most important realities ruling the behavior of complex energy systems—the inherently slow pace of energy transitions.

The scale of transition needed for electricity generation is perhaps best illustrated by deconstructing Al Gore’s July 2008 proposal to “re-power” America: “Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable, and transformative.”

Let’s see. In 2007 the country had about 870 gigawatts (GW) of electricity-generating capacity in fossil-fueled and nuclear stations, the two nonrenewable forms of generation that Gore wants to replace in their entirety. On average,these thermal power stations are at work about 50 percent of the time and hence they generated about 3.8 PWh (that is, 3.8 x 1015 watt-hours) of electricity in 2007. In contrast, wind turbines work on average only about 23 percent of the time, which means that even with all the requisite new high-voltage interconnections, slightly more than two units of wind-generating capacity would be needed to replace a unit in coal, gas, oil, and nuclear plants. And even if such an enormous capacity addition—in excess of 1,000 GW—could be accomplished in a single decade (since the year 2000, actual additions in all plants have averaged less than 30 GW/year!), the financial cost would be enormous: it would mean writing off the entire fossil-fuel and nuclear generation industry, an enterprise whose power plants alone have a replacement value of at least $1.5 trillion (assuming at least $1,700/installed kW), and spending at least $2.5 trillion to build the new capacity.

To think that the United States can install in 10 years wind and solar generating capacity equivalent to that of thermal power plants that took nearly 60 years to construct is delusional.

There's much more in the original article.

[phantom power]

1. I half agree.

I think it's possible to take a stab at it, but I also think it would require something like a war-footing command economy.

Which is a concept worth considering, actually. A massive energy development program for the new Great Depression. It could hypothetically be sold as part of the "Big Narrative" of climate change, economy and energy.

[Nihil]

3. I think that it should be attempted if only to get things into better shape

Even if a major production effort in wind turbines (for example)
can't displace many coal power stations, it will still move the
host community towards energy independence which will equate to
increased resilience when TSHTF.

(ETA: I was thinking of wind turbines at community level rather
than for offshore mega-farms feeding the grid as although the
latter are more of a "green vision" thing, the former will be
easier to ramp up and get the whole ball moving quicker.)

[nebenaube]

2. And yet...

And yet we ran up a 13.5 trillion deficit in eight years!

[bananas]

4. That's not what Gore proposes

Smil says, "In 2007 the country had about 870 gigawatts (GW) of electricity-generating capacity in fossil-fueled and nuclear stations, the two nonrenewable forms of generation that Gore wants to replace in their entirety."

That's incorrect, Gore's proposal leaves nuclear at current levels, and a large portion of generation is eliminated through efficiency.

http://www.repoweramerica.org/elements/analysis/

What does it mean that all electricity generation within 10 years will be met only by zero-carbon sources of power? The We Campaign, with assistance and advice from dozens of energy experts, assessed the potential for meeting electricity demand from a combination of well-understood sources: improved energy efficiency, renewable sources like wind, solar, and geothermal, and fossil fuel power plants that capture and store their carbon pollution. Generation from existing carbon-free sources like conventional hydropower and nuclear power plants was assumed to remain unchanged from current levels.

<snip>

* Repower America Scenario A: Energy efficiency policies and programs reduce demand by 28%, nuclear and hydropower – neither of which emits CO2 – remain at current levels, America ramps up wind consistent with recent sectoral growth rates, solar thermal with storage is deployed at scale, and solar PV and geothermal grow at levels consistent with the projections of industry experts.

* Repower America Scenario B: Like Scenario A, includes a mix of efficiency, renewables, and existing generation but assumes fossil fuel industries deploy approximately 20 large coal and natural gas power plants that capture and sequester their CO2 emissions (these are known as coal and natural gas plants with CCS). Wind levels are reduced commensurate with the additional contribution from fossil power with CCS.

* Additional Scenarios: Industry experts indicate that the 2020 generation mix could include larger contributions from geothermal and solar photovoltaics, which would be balanced with comparatively smaller contributions from other technologies. The ranges described below represent Scenarios A, B, and potentially other levels of renewable energy contributions supported by industry analysis.

<snip>

[NNadir]

6. Eliminated through efficiency? Whose? Yours?

You waste your share of 12,000 watts of continuous power in this country claiming to speak for Al Gore or be Al Gore.

You couldn't live on the average power consumption of a Chinese citizen and produce 1/10th of this derivative crap.

And guess what?

Neither the Chinese, nor the Africans nor the Indians believe that they should conserve when you live like a pig.

Your claptrap about conservation is the same as the rest of your claims, hand-waving and delusion.

Al Gore is wrong. The solution to climate change does not involve repeating stupid rhetoric from Amory Lovins that was a lie when it first came out 30 years ago and morphed into consumer bullshit like the hydrogen HYPErcar.

The answer now lies in disaster itself, which is already under way.

Heckuva job. You must be very proud of yourself.

[bananas]

9. NNadir is delusional.

"You waste your share of 12,000 watts of continuous power in this country claiming to speak for Al Gore or be Al Gore."

NNadir is delusional - I've never claimed to speak for or be Al Gore.

It's amazing how much misinformation is in this thread.
In the OP, Al Gore's proposal is mischaracterized.
I pointed this out, using direct quotes.
NNadir responds with a delusional outburst,
violating the DU rules about civility,
and attacking a leading Democratic figure at the forefront of the fight against global warming.

It's going to be interesting next year, when President Obama starts implementing the policies advocated by Al Gore, Amory Lovins, James Hansen, Joe Romm, etc etc.

I wonder what kinds of things NNadir will say about President Obama?

:popcorn:

[jpak]

10. Koo koo, Koo koo. Koo koo

We hateses nasty Algores.

Channel Rush much?

:rofl:

[Kolesar]

14. Pathetic excuse for a thesis...eom

[NNadir]

5. Smil is an interesting thinker. When I was researching the background for my nitrogen fixation

series, Smil's work was routinely cited in many papers on the literature, including some in journals like Nature. He was cited by at least one Nobel Laureate on this topic.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/8/194846/997">Troll Rating Fritz Haber, Jimmy Kunstler, and The Oracle at Snowmass, Part 3.

He has also, besides his work on nitrogen, written important seminal stuff on phosphorous.

He is one of the most important thinkers of his age.

However Smil is misleading on several points, particularly when he speaks on a topic on which he is less expert than on biological mass flows, nuclear energy.

Note that several commercial nuclear breeder reactors did operate, the Kazakh/Soviet one for several decades, but the problem was that the world was awash in Uranium, and that the element, thought to be scarce in the 1950's when the breeder program was first under investigation, turns out to be as common as tin. It is the ready availability of uranium (and now thorium) that has prevented the application of slightly more expensive technology that could vastly increase supplies.

Nor it is a correct statement to say that nuclear energy is non-renewable. The argument is easily made that it is more sustainable than any other energy supply, including the often hyped solar electricity schemes. This is immediately discernable by merely noting that almost all of the internal heat of the earth - with the exception of potassium-40 derived heat - comes from the highly inefficent alpha decay of the uranium and thorium series, which recover only a fraction of the available energy. The cycling of these elements through the crust has been a continuous feature of earth's history since life evolved, and will be so for as long as life exists.

Nuclear power is the only new energy invention to have been scaled to a tens of exajoule scale since the economic and environmental phase out of renewable energy that commenced at the end of the 18th century.

Thus it is disingenuous to claim that nuclear energy is a failure, especially when compared to grotesque failures like solar PV electric energy, which has been hyped since its discovery in 1954 as "the future" and has still, yet, to produce even 0.1 exajoules of earth's energy demand.

The fact that nuclear energy is not doing more for humanity is not economic - since the Shippingport nuclear reactor was built for less than $100 million in 1957 and operated economically for decades.

Rather, the reason is ignorance itself. Somewhere along the line, egged on by stupid people and apologists for the dangerous fossil fuel industries, nuclear was <em>arbitrarily</em> required to meet standards that no other form of energy, including solar, wind, and geothermal <em>could</em> meet under any circumstances. This has amounted to the spending of billion dollar quantities of money to save one theoretical life while tens of millions are actually killed and while hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, face imminent risks from the dangerous fossil fuel industry.

It is now too late - ignorance kills - to enable nuclear energy to do what it could have done, but it happened not because of technical limitations as this excerpt seems to imply, but rather because of the failure of a rational imagination and the running wild of an irrational imagination.

It didn't have to be this way. Reason might have won.

But again, although I do not agree on everything he says, Smil is one of the most important thinkers now living and working, by far. He's not some media twirp cited endlessly by stupid people - including one notable retard here - in an endless series of "appeal to authority" logical fallacies of the type that "Al Gore says..." and "Joe Romm says..." and "Humptey Dumpty says..." statements.

It doesn't matter what Al Gore says about anything anymore. The issue moved long past him years ago, and in any case, Gore's presence in the debate derives entirely from "Appeal to Authority" arguments in their own right. Gore is neither a scientist nor an engineer.

So what Gore says about energy production - and in fact what most environmental scientists say about energy production - is meaningless. An oncologist who diagnoses cancer may not know anything at all about how to cure it. There are many disiplines, indeed, where making a correct diagnosis implies nothing about understanding its solution.

Nuclear power need not prove that it can produce an endless era of our ridiculous lifestyle to be vastly superior to all other options. It merely needs to be vastly superior to all other options, which it is and has experimentally shown to be. Even if it were true that nuclear could only be roughly scaled to 100 exajoules - a mere factor of 3 from current levels - there is no other form of climate change gas free energy that could come remotely close.

[GliderGuider]

7. Smil also doesn't totally get Peak Oil

I feel his desire to be formally correct causes him to miss the point sometimes as he gets close to the edges of his domain. But there's no question that he dives deeper on any of these topics than most people even can, so I usually listen carefully to what he has to say.

[NNadir]

8. From my perspective, people who are never wrong about anything are usually worthless.

There is a difference between regurgitation and pushing the edges.

Things get done at the edges.

Smil's contributions to the mass balance implications of agriculture stand on their own.

They would do so even if he started palling around with Amory Lovins at the greasiest Walmart shopping mall in Yuppieville, Colorado talking about how great Hydrogen Hummers are.

[Greyskye]

16. Pot, meet Kettle?

"From my perspective, people who are never wrong about anything are usually worthless."

This from the person who is apparently fixated on how anyone who disagrees with him is an ignorant 'cultist'? OK..........

:shrug:

[jpak]

11. Koo koo, Koo koo. Koo koo

:rofl:

[Name removed]

12. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bananas]

13. You have a nitrogen fixation?

What happened to your fixation on Uranus?
:rofl:

[riverdeep]

15. You have to wonder how far along we'd be if Reagan hadn't

ripped the solar panels off the white house.

[BR_Parkway]

17. I'd rather fail miserably, say only get 50% replaced in 10 years than

not try at all.

[Strelnikov_]

28. Agree. At least we can then say we tried. n/t

[kristopher]

18. This "analysis" is on a par with Limbaugh and Hannity

Virtually every "fact" is false and every train of logic corrupt. Pure shit, in other words.

[NickB79]

19. Hmmm, who's word to believe here?

In this corner, we have Vaclav Smil:

"Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba and the author of many books, including Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems; Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties; The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change; and Energies: An Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization, all of which are published by The MIT Press. He was awarded the 2007 Olivia Schieffelin Nordberg Award for excellence in writing and editing in the population sciences."

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=41

And in the other corner, we have kristopher, who is, um, ah, well.....a user of the Internet?

[bananas]

20. So why did Smil get Gore's plan wrong?

As I posted above, what Smil "deconstructed" was not Gore's plan.
It takes two seconds to verify this.
Was Smil just mistaken, or was he intentionally dishonest?
Why didn't the editors catch this obvious error?
Hmm, who are the editors?

Let's see, at the bottom of http://www.american.com/about-us it says:
"Copyright © 2008, American Enterprise Institute."

So who is "American Enterprise Institute"?
They are a neocon think-tank that promoted the Iraq war, said cigarettes are good for you, and:

'In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that AEI was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, "to undermine a major climate change report" from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).'

Oh, THAT explains why they are publishing false information, it's what they do.
Sourcewatch has a long entry on them: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is an extremely influential, pro-business right-wing think tank founded in 1943 by Lewis H. Brown. It promotes the advancement of free enterprise capitalism<1>, and succeeds in placing its people in influential governmental positions. It is the center base for many neo-conservatives.

<snip>

Iraq

More recently, it has emerged as one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. AEI rents office space to the Project for the New American Century, one of the leading voices that pushed the Bush administration's plan for "regime change" through war in Iraq. AEI reps have also aggressively denied that the war has anything to do with oil.

Tobacco issues

In 1980, the American Enterprise Institute for the sum of $25,000 produced a study in support of the tobacco industry titled, Cost-Benefit Analysis of Regulation: Consumer Products. The study was designed to counteract "social cost" arguments against smoking by broadening the social cost issue to include other consumer products such as alcohol and saccharin. The social cost arguments against smoking hold that smoking burdens society with additional costs from on-the-job absenteeism, medical costs, cleaning costs and fires.<3> The report was part of the global tobacco industry's 1980s Social Costs/Social Values Project, carried out to refute emerging social cost arguments against smoking.

<snip>

Casting Doubt on Global Warming

In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that AEI was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, "to undermine a major climate change report" from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). AEI asked for "articles that emphasise the shortcomings" of the IPCC report, which "is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science." AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer "to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere," in a letter describing the IPCC as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent." <7>

The Guardian reported further that AEI "has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil, and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees," added The Guardian. <8>

<snip>

Why is this crap from AEI even being posted here?

[kristopher]

23. I should have known...

I almost always consult Sourcewatch on these bullshit articles, but I neglected to this time.

[kristopher]

22. See post #33.

First let me say that I appreciate your challenge regarding my out of hand dismissal of Smil’s article. His credentials merit your support, but the fact is that his article is a piece of crap. If you’ve read my posts you know that I respect a properly made appeal to authority; it is just that in this case, Smil isn’t exercising the academic rigor required to make your appeal legitimate. Energy technology isn’t his specialty but I don’t hold that against him. He is a well educated geographer and has the basic skill sets to properly analyze the issue (essentially he’s attempting a rebuttal of Gore’s proposal) if he were willing to invest the required time to gather accurate information. What I think you are seeing is someone with expertise that has become outdated. Instead of delving into the current state of economic conditions, policy initiatives and technology, Smil is lazily relying on out of date information and extremely sloppy thinking. That happens even in academics.
The article is a piece of shit.

[kristopher]

21. Critique of Smil’s “Moore’s Curse and the Great Energy Delusion”

Critique of Smil’s “Moore’s Curse and the Great Energy Delusion”

Smil’s credentials lend weight to his writing, but the fact is that Smil isn’t exercising the academic rigor required to make an appeal to his authority legitimate. Energy technology isn’t his specialty but I don’t hold that against him. He is a well educated geographer and has the basic skill sets to properly analyze the issue (essentially he’s attempting a rebuttal of Gore’s proposal) if he were willing to invest the required time to gather accurate information. What I think you are seeing is someone with expertise that has become outdated. Instead of delving into the current state of economic conditions, policy initiatives and technology, Smil is lazily relying on out of date information and extremely sloppy thinking. That happens even in academics.


During the early 1970s we were told by the promoters of nuclear energy that by the year 2000 America’s coal-based electricity generation plants would be relics of the past and that all electricity would come from nuclear fission. What’s more, we were told that the first generation fission reactors would by then be on their way out, replaced by super-efficient breeder reactors that would produce more fuel than they were initially charged with.
During the early 1980s some aficionados of small-scale, distributed, “soft” (today’s “green”) energies saw America of the first decade of the 21st century drawing 30 percent to 50 percent of its energy use from renewables (solar,wind, biofuels).

For the past three decades we have been told how natural gas will become the most important source of modern energy: widely cited forecasts of the early 1980s had the world deriving half of its energy from natural gas by 2000. And a decade ago the promoters of fuel cell cars were telling us that such vehicles would by now be on the road in large numbers, well on their way to displacing ancient and inefficient internal combustion engines.

These are the realities of 2008: coal-fired power plants produce half of all U.S. electricity, nuclear stations 20 percent, and there is not a single commercial breeder reactor operating anywhere in the world; in 2007 the United States derives about 1.7 percent of its energy from new renewable conversions (corn-based ethanol, wind, photovoltaic solar, geothermal); natural gas supplies about 24 percent of the world’s commercial energy—less than half the share predicted in the early 1980s and still less than coal with nearly 29 percent; and there are no fuel-cell cars.

This list of contrasts could be greatly extended, but the point is made: all of these forecasts and anticipations failed miserably because their authors and promoters ignored one of the most important realities ruling the behavior of complex energy systems—the inherently slow pace of energy transitions.


Note the abundant use of nonspecific words like “some”, “they” and “we have been told”. Such nonspecific references are a bright red flag to establishing a phony, self-serving premise and it is a favorite ploy (esp. of right wing nut-jobs) when setting up a bullshit argument. These “claims” he is pointing to are tailored to support his contentions, not to provide a factual basis for analysis of what historical events tell us about current events. It is also important to note that the timeframe specified (“During the early 1980s”) was the beginning of the Reagan administration. What this tells us is that the issue is one of politics and public policy, not technology nor really even public will since public will was largely shaped by 12 years of policy providing unwavering support for a fossil industry that used propaganda to encourage the use of fossil fuels and discouraged the use of renewables.
Two examples will suffice to demonstrate what I mean. First, who made the claims he points to, how accurately are those claims being reproduced in his writing, and how representative are those claims? Were the “some” people academics and energy experts or where they journalists and industry advocates who lacked actual understanding of the technologies and political challenges involved? Such “predictions” are seldom if ever expressed by knowledgeable people in the absolutes that Smil presents as his baseline prognostication.
The second example is the idea that our present circumstances are parallel to the historical events related to other energy transitions. We know they aren’t as we are facing the unique challenges of climate change, growing global energy demand and a global economic downturn that provide windows for policy action that have not previously existed. On the basis of these two examples alone, the assertion that the referenced past events are predictive is shown to lack credibility and therefore do not support the conclusion that there is a special reality that is “ruling the behavior of complex energy systems—the inherently slow pace of energy transitions.”
Such realities and rules simply do not exist independent of the specific circumstances prevailing on the events being analyzed.
That brings another significant criticism to the front: Smil’s act of conflating global change with his arguments against Gores proposals – which is the real purpose of the article.

The scale of transition needed for electricity generation is perhaps best illustrated by deconstructing Al Gore’s July 2008 proposal to “re-power” America: “Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable, and transformative.”
Let’s see. In 2007 the country had about 870 gigawatts (GW) of electricity-generating capacity in fossil-fueled and nuclear stations, the two nonrenewable forms of generation that Gore wants to replace in their entirety.
On average, these thermal power stations are at work about 50 percent of the time and hence they generated about 3.8 PWh (that is, 3.8 x 1015 watt-hours) of electricity in 2007.

This claim is simply false. Gore is not advocating replacing nuclear energy within the ten year window. He specifically calls for continuing the present level of generation from nuclear. That invalidates the 3.8PWh claim.

In contrast, wind turbines work on average only about 23 percent of the time, which means that even with all the requisite new high-voltage interconnections, slightly more than two units of wind-generating capacity would be needed to replace a unit in coal, gas, oil, and nuclear plants.

This is also false. While technically true that the average capacity factor of all wind turbines in the US might be 23%, that doesn’t mean that 23% is the proper capacity factor to use as a predictor of what is planned; and in fact, it isn’t correct. The actual number will probably be an average of an approximate 33% CF for the land based turbines and 44% for offshore turbines.

And even if such an enormous capacity addition—in excess of 1,000 GW—could be accomplished in a single decade (since the year 2000, actual additions in all plants have averaged less than 30 GW/year!), the financial cost would be enormous: it would mean writing off the entire fossil-fuel and nuclear generation industry, an enterprise whose power plants alone have a replacement value of at least $1.5 trillion (assuming at least $1,700/installed kW), and spending at least $2.5 trillion to build the new capacity.
To think that the United States can install in 10 years wind and solar generating capacity equivalent to that of thermal power plants that took nearly 60 years to construct is delusional.

I’m going to ignore the first part of this since we’ve already established that 1) nuclear continues to be part of the mix and 2) all of his numbers presented so far are wrong. There are several analyses out that use correct information on the plan and the technologies involved. The ability of a faltering economy to rise to such a manufacturing challenge was shown to be possible both in the US during WWII, and also in Japan and Germany during the 1930s. The present economic and climate change pressures certainly provide a motive force for such drastic industrial action that is similar in nature to the efforts related to WWII.

The one point Smil makes that is most relevant is the one about the lost value of petroleum for transportation; and coal and natural gas generating plants. The economic forces standing to lose are potent and powerful. However, offsetting that are the economic interests that stand to gain (the entire economy and labor force) if the switch to renewables takes place. Since a major component of this past election pitted Republicans as representing the entrenched fossil interests and the Dems as representing the switch to renewables, it seems likely that the delusional party is Smil.

[GliderGuider]

24. Other factors to consider

I agree that Smil has assumed his conclusions in many regards. I also agree that his inclusion of nuclear power in the “must be replaced” calculation was a boner.

For me the salient facts of the situation are:

According the BP Statistical Review, the USA currently gets 90% of its primary energy from fossil fuels. At $3K per nameplate kW the cost of replacing 90% of primary energy (according to the energy equivalency conversion used by BP, assuming a 33% capacity factor for wind and a capital cost of $2.5 million per MW nameplate) would be $22.5 trillion. Spread over 10 years that’s around 2.5 trillion per year. That’s about 20% of the US GDP, just for the capital cost of the generating gear. There will be other costs, of course –- infrastructure upgrades, accelerated depreciation of fossil fuel infrastructure, additional costs for the fleet changeover, and contingencies of all kinds (unknown unknowns...) As a SWAG let’s say those extra costs add 50% to the above estimate. So the US would end up spending 30% of its GDP every year for the next 10 years to switch energy sources from fossil fuels to wind.

Of course, there will be other factors that will make the conversion less expensive –- mainly economies of scale, efficiency increases and conservation (aka activity reduction). That could reduce the energy requirement by 50% over those ten years (SWAG2). That reduction cancels out the additional costs outlined above (SWAG2 cancels SWAG1), so we’re back to spending 20% of US GDP per annum on windmills.

Now, keep in mind that the financial crisis has reduced the value of the stock market by over 50% in the last year and it's not over yet, that the US total debt is now over $53 trillion (4x GDP -- http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat-a.htm) and that US GDP is probably going to be contracting for some of those ten years.

Also, consumer net savings are negative, and the deficit is increasing. That means that to find room for anything new in the overall budget something has to be jettisoned. So either you cut 20% of the activity in from some other sector to reallocate the industrial capacity to the conversion project or you go into debt for that $22.5 trillion, boosting the national debt from $10 trillion to $32.5 trillion in ten years -- during a depression. That's not Keynsian pump-priming, it's more like s pumping a dry hole.

How likely to you think any of this is?

I've got nothing against having goals -- as the saying goes, "A man's reach must exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?" But any parent or therapist can tell you that setting unachievable goals for your kids or yourself is the road to ruin.

Pointing out that the idea of completely changing your country's energy system in 10 years is absurd isn't spreading RW propaganda, it's just asking for a little realism.

[kristopher]

25. Instead of such horrible guessing, why don't you just do some research?

Or are you another who just wants to use guesses to deliberately distort the truth?

For example, I know it can't be the first time you've been exposed to the fact that the basic premise of your argument is false - I mean, you've heard if from me any number of times: We don't need to replace "primary energy"; we need to replace the energy that is actually doing work. So why do you do an analysis founded on that falsehood?!

In 2000 we used about 100quads of primary energy - of which about 65% was wasted as heat and 35% was actually used to do work. Since we are proposing to rebuild with technologies that directly generate electricity, right off the top we reap the benefit of an approximate 65% increase in efficiency. It will be a little less as line losses are still going to be part of the equation. However two factors make this hard to predict exactly; 1) the price of buried superconducting long distance transmission is now competitive with stringing the wires on towers, and 2) the degree to which distributed generation will reduce losses attributable to regional transmission and distribution.

Of that 35Quads doing the work, 20% was provided by nuclear, so that leaves 28Q. Renewables account for about 7% of the 35Q; that gets us down to about 25.5Q. So that is the amount that we need to replace: 25.5Q. I'd argue that we should aim a little lower, personally, and seek to eliminate both petroleum and coal; leaving natural gas as part of the mix for a little longer. I wouldn't want to predict how that would fit into the mix, but I think we could assume it would reduce the 25.2Q to some degree.

In addition to that we need to upgrade the grid. The sunk costs in existing fossil fuel infrastructure are not an appropriate part of this kind of analysis.

When it is all said and done, the estimate from Gore is around $4 trillion for his plan. Under normal conditions the portion provided by public funding would probably be about 20-25% of that $4T, with the rest coming from private investment funded by revenue streams that already exist in the retail and wholesale energy market.

Your actions are, to me, bizarre. I can't imagine being so invested in social failure that you are actually eager to distort the facts in the manner you routinely do.

[GliderGuider]

26. So, say we drop the amount of electricity we'll need to generate by half.

Is 10% of GDP any more palatable? Gore is dreaming in technicolor. I simply don't believe him.

Trying to forecast how much it might ultimately cost us to undertake this cockamamie scheme is impossible, the system is too dynamic and complex. The costs will remain unknowable until we try (and we very well might give it a go). My point is mostly that we shouldn't expect the transformation of 80% of our civilization's energy system to be simple, cheap or pain-free. Those who paint such an endeavour as reasonable are guilty of setting the world up for a major disappointment and perhaps even a major waste of crucial resources.

Regarding being invested in social failure, I would dispute that. Rather, I've come to understand that our industrial civilization contains within itself the seeds of its own inevitable demise -- our tragic flaw. These seeds are our Cartesian dualism, our belief in our separation from nature, and the scientific and technological programs of understanding, control and exploitation that the dualism and separation have birthed. We're seeing some of those seeds flowering now, much to the detriment of both human and non-human life.

I think trying to save this inherently doomed enterprise is a fool's errand. Efforts to tinker our Rube Goldberg civilization into sustainability are tragically and terminally short-sighted, given that they are constituted within the larger paradigm that created the problems in the first place. There are so many better, more hopeful, more progressive and more certain things we could be doing instead.

I'm not saying, "Abandon hope". I'm saying, "Choose a more hopeful approach."

[kristopher]

27. No, you aren't invested in failure...

You constantly produce a litany of total bullshit "analysis" that have absolutely no relationship to reality. Then, when called on it, you soar off into a rant about the evils of humankind and another bullshit claim based on a hodgepodge of incoherent supposed "philosophical" musings" where you see some sort of better world if we would all just become something other than the human animal we are. And the real kicker is that you've built your entire life around this (and no other word will do) self loathing.

I just carefully explained that, taking into account efficiency gains and infrastructure that we will continue to use, the challenge is actually that we need only build the equivalent of 25% of our existing generating infrastructure. Yet your post above reverts immediately to a baseless claim of 80%. You also make the totally false claim that costs to do this can't be calculated. What a f*%king crock of shit THAT is. We know the cost of wind and solar and we can predict with fairly reasonable accuracy price trends under different demand scenarios. So your claim is patently absurd and is nothing more than petulance.

But no, you're not emotionally invested in social failure; you just distort the facts for amusement. Frankly I think you need professional help.

[GliderGuider]

29. It sounds like my beliefs make you angry.

Why do they affect you so much? My beliefs are my own. I do not ask you to share them, I simply put them out for others to think about. Any reaction others may have to them is their issue, not mine.

I seriously don't care if you share my beliefs or not, or share my way of thinking about the world or my way of analyzing it. I understand that compared to the mainstream my position regarding the nature of civilization, how we got here and where we're going is quite radical. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Plenty of other people here have opinions I don't share. I can't change them (the people or their opinions), all I can control is my own response. I choose not to get angry or upset about things that don't affect me personally -- like other peoples' opinions on the internet. I found that getting angry about stuff like that affected only me, so I stopped.

Why do you think I need professional help to change my perceptions and understandings? Do you think I should be medicated or reprogrammed so I conform to your worldview?

[kristopher]

31. Go back and reread my last two posts

You'll notice the focus is entirely on your presentation of false information.

*Dishonesty* makes me angry.

[GliderGuider]

32. I'm not being deliberately dishonest

I'm presenting the facts as I see them, in the way that I see them. Either the facts I present or my presentation doesn't match your internal template of reality, so you perceive dishonesty. That's no big deal on the internet.

Your worldview and mine are diametrically opposed, so we will tend to see each others' points of view as unreasonable. Again, that's not unusual on the internet. As I've said before, you getting angry over our disagreement is not a problem for me. I have nothing invested in either your agreement or your feelings.

[kristopher]

33. Sorry no.

There is such a thing as the reality based community and the crap you keep trotting out isn't part of it. Your attempts to deflect your dishonesty regarding factual material into a matter of personal perspective simply doesn't cut it.

[GliderGuider]

34. Do you think I'm lying to you?

[XemaSab]

37. .

[Nihil]

35. You are ranting again.

For one who tries to claim the high ground of moral superiority and
objective presentation, you are doing a poor job here.

Your view here is unbelievably optimistic (which is fine as a world-view)
and so clashes with GG's (which is just as fine or valid as a world-view).
The problem is that you try to claim "the ultimate truth" whilst putting
down your opposition as "deluded", "bullshit", "incoherent" and other such
petty terms while spouting equally unsupported (except by personal opinion)
sprays of output.

e.g.,
> the challenge is actually that we need only build the equivalent
> of 25% of our existing generating infrastructure.
(My italics)

> Frankly I think you need professional help.

Frankly, I think you were looking in a mirror when you wrote that.

[wtmusic]

30. Can YOU spot the straw man?

He's hiding, but his ass is sticking out:

Gore:

“Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years."

Smil:

"In 2007 the country had about 870 gigawatts (GW) of electricity-generating capacity in fossil-fueled and nuclear stations, the two nonrenewable forms of generation that Gore wants to replace in their entirety."

:shrug:

[lowclass]

36. The time is now

Pretty dismal forecast wouldn’t you say, seems like we need to too bring together the same army that elected old Berry and work just as hard as the banks, car company’s and financial corporations that are even now planning there next robbery. Our failings in the past were not to recognize after small victories in the battles with corporate America that the war still raged on, as the auto industry killed the electric car and the oil company’s bought and hid the battery technology that made them work.
Coal fired and nuclear electrical generation, were obsolete 50 years ago, coal can never be clean and nuclear energy has never made a profit. These systems are unsustainable for many other reasons also.
It is time to hold America’s government and corporation’s feet to the fire, but to do this will take the same effort it took to elect Berry, and to stop the nuclear industry the first time. This means first things first, in other words this needs to be first on the list of priorities.
A plan, including leaders like Helen Caldicott, organizing, and actions by concerned citizens to promote the funding by this government of solar energy paid for exactly the way they intend pay for the bailouts and infrastructure. The plan though would need to include every property owner with commercial or private residential buildings in the country. The time is now, when they least expect it, write email or call the congress. Stay informed stay on their backs. The world and everything on it is all we have to lose.

[joshcryer]

38. We use a hundred thousand times less energy than we get from the sun.

I don't even have to read the article to know it doesn't use real math, but rather "economic math." It is correct if constrainted by the market systems (particularly the continuing competitive nature of fossil fuels), but with a tiny itty bitty government action (carbon tax) it happens overnight. Renewables and nuclear would win the day.

People said going to the moon was delusional.

Those people were completely and utterly wrong.