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Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy



Don Dale (dale@princeton.edu) wrote:
: As you observe in the second paragraph above, oil only became the
: "front-line" energy source in the industrialized world in the middle of
: this century.  Before that, it was coal.  And before that, charcoal, peat,
: wood, waterpower, wind, animal power, and human labor.  And each change was
: the result of advances in technology allowing humans to harness energy
: which hitherto had been useless.

: Even today, we are able to harness only a tiny fraction of the energy that
: surrounds us.  With current technology, our most efficient source of useful
: energy is the bonds that hold molecules of petroleum to one another.  But
: there is no reason to assume that this will always be the case. 

Actually, yes there is.

All the previous energy sources you mentioned (except wind) are essentially
chemical sources. 

With known chemistry (and we know a whole bunch about it now) oxidizing
carbon and hydrogen bonds is close to the best that it gets, except nuclear
reactions.   If the oxygen is free, gasoline is a damn good highly dense
concentrated package of energy.   It is quite hard to beat it.  We're
really really lucky we found geological quantities of petroleum.  

There remains only nuclear energy.  Nuclear physics is now quite a mature
subject and every gazzilionth reaction has been explored.  The bottom
line is that there are a few fissionable isotopes of uranium, thorium and
plutonium which may serve as energy sources.  That's it.  Maybe D/D or D/T
fusion if we get really clever (but it will cost a shitload).

The discoveries of late-19 and 20th science are qualitatively different
and more final than what has ever gone before.  We can explain, at least
at the fundamental level, an enormous variety of phenomena observed on
Earth.

: There is
: energy everywhere; indeed, as Einstein's famous equation shows, matter
: itself is but a form of energy (and vice versa).  (Hey, look, I can cite
: physicists, too!)

This is quite meaningless, entropy considerations dominate the extractability
of energy sources.

: The qualities of "extractablility [sic], transpotability [sic], versatility
: and cost" are not intrinsic to oil and exogenous to human activity, but are
: functions of human technology and therefore endogenous.

Yes and no, there are fundamental scientific limitations, and we now know
that we are hitting up upon them. 

Unless you think the aliens are gonna come and deliver Warp Drive, it's going
to get tougher from here on out. 

--
Matthew B. Kennel/mbk@caffeine.engr.utk.edu/I do not speak for ORNL, DOE or UT
Oak Ridge National Laboratory/University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN USA/ 
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