Dangers of quoting energy consumption at current usage rates

[TXlib]

A free Discover article, talks about mining methane clathrates.

One very important caveat is that the Discover article claims that harvesting 1% of the methane locked in clathrates could potentially supply America's needs for 170,000 years at current rates of consumption. If you factor in the historical exponential growth rate in energy demand of 3.5% per year, then the timespan shrinks to a mere 248 years!

(3.5% annual growth in energy demand comes from data that shows that, since 1900, energy demand has doubled every 20 years.)

Ultimately, however, we will need to shift to an economic model that relies on a steady rate of energy consumption, rather than exponential growth; there simply isn't enough energy around to continue to sustain exponential growth indefinitely: in about 888 years, if we continue at the current growth rate, our civilization would consume as much power as the sun itself radiates!

(I'll be happy to supply my reasoning to get my numbers if anybody is interested...)

[BlueEyedSon]

1. This is absolute BS... what's the ERoEI, and ecological implications?

[TXlib]

2. What is absolute BS?

The article? Or my reasoning?

What is "ERoEI"?

Ecological implications of what? Burning all that methane?

[BlueEyedSon]

3. That article, if it "optimistic" about that source being a solution.

So I am agreeing with you, but there are even more egregious problems.

ERoEI = Energy Returned on Energy Invested. You cannot evaluate an energy source without this calculation. What if it takes 1500 calories of work/processing/pumping/melting to get 1000 calories worth of methane? Oops!

How do you get the "ore".... strip mine? What's the waste?

And you are dead on re: burning more hydrocarbons (CO2 ==> global climate change).

[lapfog_1]

4. Yours numbers

if correct, only point out the dangers of extrapolation.

Trends, no matter what the time line used to establish them, never
continue indefinitely into the future.

Budget planners (both repub and democrat) are notoriously bad at
this (5 years ago we were on a path to pay of the national debt
in 20 years, remember... and it's not just that GWB is in office).
In fact, it was those very same analysis that caused the repugs
to go ape shit over "giving Americans their money back" before the
government spent it like a drunken sailor. And before the surpluses
had actually materialized.

http://www.dallasfed.org/eyi/usecon/9908surplus.html

Natural gas (no matter where it is found) is only slightly better
than coal or oil in terms of ecological impact. Drilling for it
in the Arctic (and I suppose the Antarctic) is probably not good
to the environment, and burning it, while "cleaner" than other
fossil fuels, is still going to produce greenhouse gasses... and
global warming is the largest problem that mankind has ever faced.

http://www.iclei.org/EFACTS/NATGAS.HTM