Energy Blind
October 27, 2022 8:08 AM Subscribe
Nate Hagens' interviews experts who bring a "systems perspective" on energy, ecology, climate change, the environment, and related aspects of economics, technology, human behavior, and geopolitics, but these animations give the overall theme.
Among Hagens more interesting interviewees:
Joe Tainter: “Surplus, Complexity, and Simplification”.
“[We have no] examples in history of human societies coming across a large energy [source but who] did not access it completely.”
Also, Collapse of Complex Societies, Energy Gain and Future Energy: Collapse of Sustainability, Sustainability: the fundamental question, What is Transformation? , and short ones 1, 2
Dennis Meadows: “Limits to Growth turns 50 - Checking In”
“If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” — The Limits to Growth (1972)
See recent confirmation work (previously).
Simon Michaux: “Minerals Blindness”
“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.” — Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?
Kris De Decker: “Low Tech: What, Why and How”
Editor of Low-Tech Magazine and No Tech Magazine
Martin Scheringer: “The Growing Threat from Chemical Pollution” (yt)
Douglas Rushkoff: “The Ultimate Exit Strategy”
Peter Ward: “Oceans - What’s the Worst that Can Happen?”
At least one of the four Daniel Schmachtenberger interviews came highly recommended too, but I've not yet listened to them myself. I've also enjoyed some of Nate Hagens monologes, including his older Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality (2h20m)
Among Hagens more interesting interviewees:
Joe Tainter: “Surplus, Complexity, and Simplification”.
“[We have no] examples in history of human societies coming across a large energy [source but who] did not access it completely.”
Also, Collapse of Complex Societies, Energy Gain and Future Energy: Collapse of Sustainability, Sustainability: the fundamental question, What is Transformation? , and short ones 1, 2
Dennis Meadows: “Limits to Growth turns 50 - Checking In”
“If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” — The Limits to Growth (1972)
See recent confirmation work (previously).
Simon Michaux: “Minerals Blindness”
“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.” — Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?
Kris De Decker: “Low Tech: What, Why and How”
Editor of Low-Tech Magazine and No Tech Magazine
Martin Scheringer: “The Growing Threat from Chemical Pollution” (yt)
Douglas Rushkoff: “The Ultimate Exit Strategy”
Peter Ward: “Oceans - What’s the Worst that Can Happen?”
At least one of the four Daniel Schmachtenberger interviews came highly recommended too, but I've not yet listened to them myself. I've also enjoyed some of Nate Hagens monologes, including his older Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality (2h20m)
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We're going to have to with tar sands.
Another one that's going wilfully unused is wind power. Here in Ontario, last year we curtailed (= threw away) 1,289 GWh of renewable energy because there wasn't enough baseload to keep the nuclear power plants running. That's a huge amount of power that we just let piss away.
posted by scruss at 6:35 PM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
“[We have no] examples in history of human societies coming across a large energy [source but who] did not access it completely.”
We're going to have to with tar sands.
Another one that's going wilfully unused is wind power. Here in Ontario, last year we curtailed (= threw away) 1,289 GWh of renewable energy because there wasn't enough baseload to keep the nuclear power plants running. That's a huge amount of power that we just let piss away.
posted by scruss at 6:35 PM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
One of the arguments that Graeber and Wengrow made was that there were a whole bunch of societies who knew about agriculture and could've implemented it in a maximizing way but chose not to for thousands of years, either rejecting it completely or implementing it as a minor energy source among many that they could drop as it pleased them, instead going with patterns of exploitation that were sustainable in the long term while allowing for higher living standards.
Those societies did get overrun eventually, of course.
All that said, though, this looks like an interesting bunch of links to dig into, thanks for posting it!
posted by clawsoon at 7:01 PM on October 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Those societies did get overrun eventually, of course.
All that said, though, this looks like an interesting bunch of links to dig into, thanks for posting it!
posted by clawsoon at 7:01 PM on October 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
We need to give up all oil almost overnight now, scruss, including much higher EROI oik than tar sands. If we fail, then yes we might keep awful tech like airplanes working longer using low EROI tar sands.
We'll never run out of coal so I'd expect coal poses much larger risks than tar sands. We've 8500 coal plants world wide, but we build solar and wind only to have more energy, not really to actually replace these coal plants.
I also thought about agriculture comments by Graeber and Wengrow, clawsoon, but I think Joe Tainter's comment cannot describe any "law" per se.
Joe Tainter acknowledges that conflict between societies reduces energy consumption sometimes. We'd clearly reduce our energy consumption today if the US and China have a war in which each nukes the oil refineries supplying the other or the other's allies. If we've no refineries then we'd still burn crude in ships, but airplanes, trucks, cars, etc. stop I think.
It's plausible agriculture often produced more monotonous food than foraging, especially if used by small communities, so even if it eventually led to more children surviving, larger populations, and eventually conquest, maybe only crazed genocidal religious fanatics could fully transition to agriculture, due to the immediate reduction in the quality of life, and societies could easily readopt foraging for more varied luxury foods.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:27 AM on October 28, 2022
We'll never run out of coal so I'd expect coal poses much larger risks than tar sands. We've 8500 coal plants world wide, but we build solar and wind only to have more energy, not really to actually replace these coal plants.
I also thought about agriculture comments by Graeber and Wengrow, clawsoon, but I think Joe Tainter's comment cannot describe any "law" per se.
Joe Tainter acknowledges that conflict between societies reduces energy consumption sometimes. We'd clearly reduce our energy consumption today if the US and China have a war in which each nukes the oil refineries supplying the other or the other's allies. If we've no refineries then we'd still burn crude in ships, but airplanes, trucks, cars, etc. stop I think.
It's plausible agriculture often produced more monotonous food than foraging, especially if used by small communities, so even if it eventually led to more children surviving, larger populations, and eventually conquest, maybe only crazed genocidal religious fanatics could fully transition to agriculture, due to the immediate reduction in the quality of life, and societies could easily readopt foraging for more varied luxury foods.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:27 AM on October 28, 2022
Hagans has gotten some signal boosting lately. After listening to him be interviewed 12 times and the first 30 of his "great simplification podcast" I urge a grain of caution.
90%ish of what he is saying is interesting, truthful and worth thinking about. 10% is meant to steer environment-minded or collapse concerned people toward positions more ameanable to: status quo corporate interests, including the fossil fuel industry, and he is coy on the issues with Russia but often platforms folks who are less coy about that elsewhere.
For instance, while he often mentions climate change and is not a denier, he praises fossil fuels, and dismisses efforts to get off them: fossil fuels are too useful to voluntarily abandon, politics is a mess don't get involved, we will run out of fuel before climate becomes catestrophic anyway, renewables aren't suitable replacements and are a niche, nat. gas is good etc.
He wants to raise awareness and have people build community to survive a debt crisis (he has fiscal conservative apporach to debt) and a coming energy crisis. But is an inactivist.
He is chamoflauged as being much more environmentally oriented and progressive and proscience in his values, but his recomendations and policy positions and suggestions to students are centrist and BAU+prepper.
The Ghepart interview is excellent, and I do think Hagens is worth listening to and pondering. Like Adam Curtis, Chompsky, Taibbi, Greenwald, it can be worth hearing them out and reflecting on their work even if they are acting as agents of an agenda at cross purposes to their professed politics.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:14 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
90%ish of what he is saying is interesting, truthful and worth thinking about. 10% is meant to steer environment-minded or collapse concerned people toward positions more ameanable to: status quo corporate interests, including the fossil fuel industry, and he is coy on the issues with Russia but often platforms folks who are less coy about that elsewhere.
For instance, while he often mentions climate change and is not a denier, he praises fossil fuels, and dismisses efforts to get off them: fossil fuels are too useful to voluntarily abandon, politics is a mess don't get involved, we will run out of fuel before climate becomes catestrophic anyway, renewables aren't suitable replacements and are a niche, nat. gas is good etc.
He wants to raise awareness and have people build community to survive a debt crisis (he has fiscal conservative apporach to debt) and a coming energy crisis. But is an inactivist.
He is chamoflauged as being much more environmentally oriented and progressive and proscience in his values, but his recomendations and policy positions and suggestions to students are centrist and BAU+prepper.
The Ghepart interview is excellent, and I do think Hagens is worth listening to and pondering. Like Adam Curtis, Chompsky, Taibbi, Greenwald, it can be worth hearing them out and reflecting on their work even if they are acting as agents of an agenda at cross purposes to their professed politics.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:14 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Ain't too worried about Hagans there. At least so far only Chuck Watson gave me pause, by which I mean nuclear war fears are clearly a distraction from the vastly more dangerous effects of climate change.
Any thoughts on Simon Michaux? At least some of what he says contradicts stuff implied but not said by more optimistic folks pumped by Mann. I'd expect the optimists count existing minerals, while once you evaluate accessibility then you'll reach Simon Michaux' conclusions.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:05 AM on October 28, 2022
Any thoughts on Simon Michaux? At least some of what he says contradicts stuff implied but not said by more optimistic folks pumped by Mann. I'd expect the optimists count existing minerals, while once you evaluate accessibility then you'll reach Simon Michaux' conclusions.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:05 AM on October 28, 2022
anecdotal_grand_theory, I'm new to Nate Hagans with this post, but after watching the animations link (35 minutes) I didn't get a whiff of any of the positions you caution about. My takeaway was "wow this is 100% correct, but way too radically environmentalist for 95% of people to accept. We'll never get there. *sigh*" The whole thesis was based around the carbon pulse and that the ability to live the capitalist, growth-oriented, energy-rich lifestyles of today is ending and we need to rethink what it means to be fulfilled as a human. Do you have some examples of him being somehow on the pro-corporate/fossil fuel side? I mean he says money is a fiction.
posted by caviar2d2 at 6:57 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by caviar2d2 at 6:57 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yes exactly. Hagens says "renewables cannot power this civilization", but the subtext is to change civilization, not that "gas is good". I've definitely never heard Hagens imply "we will run out of fuel before climate becomes catastrophic anyway".
It's true he stresses how we'll run out of "nice" fossil fuels, but this proves highly effective for opening minds, especially after you first destroy a growthist's asymptotic illusions, say via Tom Murphy. We won't afaik run out of coal before making ourselves extinct, which he surely understands.
It's clear Hagens wants a post-growth civilization, but only really believes alternating growth and collapse to be politically possible. I'm hopeful growth and collapse cycles stabilize into real post-growth, or something analogous to whatever happens with island bound animals, but yeah real degrowth does smack of flawed model of human nature (see Timothée Parrique for example).
posted by jeffburdges at 1:12 AM on October 29, 2022
It's true he stresses how we'll run out of "nice" fossil fuels, but this proves highly effective for opening minds, especially after you first destroy a growthist's asymptotic illusions, say via Tom Murphy. We won't afaik run out of coal before making ourselves extinct, which he surely understands.
It's clear Hagens wants a post-growth civilization, but only really believes alternating growth and collapse to be politically possible. I'm hopeful growth and collapse cycles stabilize into real post-growth, or something analogous to whatever happens with island bound animals, but yeah real degrowth does smack of flawed model of human nature (see Timothée Parrique for example).
posted by jeffburdges at 1:12 AM on October 29, 2022
As another thread here, there are several arguments now that innovation is slowing down, many of which I find unsatisfactory, like Joe Tainter counts meaningful patents, which really says little imho, but..
At some level, these arguments are likely correct in that some larger inventions benefit from, or depends upon, an energy surplus, while afaik maybe some important optimization work becomes economically easier with energy restrictions. We'd expect space anything stalls without a surplus, including materials work relevant for space elevators, but maybe all "big" fields like quantum computing, fusion, and machine learning stall too.
It's kinda plausible solar power with minimal grid scale storage actually benefits our technological development though, by giving an energy surplus during the day, while imposing a nighttime shortage. We'll spend some daytime solar making steal, glass, fertilizer, etc., or storing as hydrogen, but if we've collapsed trade to tackle climate, then maybe we do not export these now extremely expensive products, and instead spend the solar power on newer technologies.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:55 AM on October 29, 2022
At some level, these arguments are likely correct in that some larger inventions benefit from, or depends upon, an energy surplus, while afaik maybe some important optimization work becomes economically easier with energy restrictions. We'd expect space anything stalls without a surplus, including materials work relevant for space elevators, but maybe all "big" fields like quantum computing, fusion, and machine learning stall too.
It's kinda plausible solar power with minimal grid scale storage actually benefits our technological development though, by giving an energy surplus during the day, while imposing a nighttime shortage. We'll spend some daytime solar making steal, glass, fertilizer, etc., or storing as hydrogen, but if we've collapsed trade to tackle climate, then maybe we do not export these now extremely expensive products, and instead spend the solar power on newer technologies.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:55 AM on October 29, 2022
I replayed the Simon Michaux interview after noticing one comment linking a climate denier/minimizer in the geopolitics of stuff podcast. It's excellent..
It really clarified the vast distinction between these guys and climate minimizers, like the tragedy of wasting fossil fuels so quickly, reliability in supply chains, nuclear power obstacles, facts like LNG losing 30% of its energy, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:48 AM on November 6, 2022
It really clarified the vast distinction between these guys and climate minimizers, like the tragedy of wasting fossil fuels so quickly, reliability in supply chains, nuclear power obstacles, facts like LNG losing 30% of its energy, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:48 AM on November 6, 2022
"60% of the nitrogen in our bodies has a signature coming form natural gas"
"For most of our history out agricultural systems was a net energy producer, but now our food system is a massive energy sync. We spend 10-14 calories for every calorie of food we produce"
posted by jeffburdges at 1:07 PM on November 11, 2022
"For most of our history out agricultural systems was a net energy producer, but now our food system is a massive energy sync. We spend 10-14 calories for every calorie of food we produce"
posted by jeffburdges at 1:07 PM on November 11, 2022
AdBlue shortage threatens EU supply chains
It'd rock if Europe were forced to restart shipping good by train, and stop using trucks so much. :)
posted by jeffburdges at 5:53 AM on November 12, 2022
It'd rock if Europe were forced to restart shipping good by train, and stop using trucks so much. :)
posted by jeffburdges at 5:53 AM on November 12, 2022
'In just a short period, I have seen plenty of "left-wing" positions that are basically absent from the US mainstream media, for example:
-- Climate change is real and urgent and the market won't save us automatically
-- Austerity not only doesn't work but is actively destructive'
posted by jeffburdges at 8:52 AM on November 24, 2022
-- Climate change is real and urgent and the market won't save us automatically
-- Austerity not only doesn't work but is actively destructive'
posted by jeffburdges at 8:52 AM on November 24, 2022
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posted by jeffburdges at 8:15 AM on October 27, 2022 [2 favorites]