If we can't drill for more oil and gas[0], build more (or keep open) nuke plants[1][2], and can't build solar and wind farms fast enough, what other options are there? People aren't willing let their quality of life deteriorate because of a mostly invisible catastrophe.
That's not going to happen in the short run. It's even skeptical it ever happened in any real significance on the large scale. Every improvement in efficiency just meant a dramatic increase in use of that technology.
Let's go over some things in many people's lives that need energy:
We're using electronic devices with a world-spanning communications network. That requires a lot of electricity to keep running, not to mention the materials in the devices themselves (not just the endpoints, but the routers, servers, etc in between) need lots of resources and energy to produce. Each part mentioned in this paragraph requires its own manufacturing and delivery supply chains and energy intensive industrial processes.
People and things need to get around. That usually involves some vehicle made of metal, which needs ore extracted from the ground, processed, forged, and delivered. Metal can be recycled, but it probably won't be in vehicle form, so someone will need to transform it, which is more energy. That's not counting the energy needed to operate the vehicles, usually involving oil extraction or electricity generation. Each part mentioned in this paragraph requires its own manufacturing and delivery supply chains and energy intensive industrial processes.
Let's delve into more corporeal needs:
Humans need food to continue living. Most don't produce their own food, and rely on some form of industrial food production. In order to increase production efficiency, ever more food is produced in ever smaller spaces, requiring lots of fertilizer and pesticides. When harvested, some is processed (depending on the intended final product), then put on a truck and delivered to a warehouse (or moved through a series of warehouses), and finally to a store. Each part mentioned in this paragraph, particularly fertilizer, requires its own manufacturing and delivery supply chains and energy intensive industrial processes.
Humans want to be clothed. Some clothing is made of natural fiber, which follows a similar path to the food production mentioned above. (Cotton is particularly energy intensive.) Other clothing is made of synthetic fiber, fed from any variety of materials. Due to cost, most clothing is manufactured in poorer areas of the world and shipped to wealthier ones, resulting in a long (and by definition, energy intensive) supply chain.
Humans seek comfort from the weather in shelter, often in structures made of wood, concrete, brick, and/or metal. Those materials can be sourced locally, but concrete manufacturing is a particularly intensive process. Assembly involves a negligible amount of energy to be done. Humans also want to control the temperature inside the shelter, which also involves energy. Let's not forget the electrical and plumbing systems, with their requisite material requirements.
And that's only what I can think of in 30 minutes. There are more things that I haven't thought of. With all that said, some areas can be optimized for energy. However, most things are optimized for cost, so moving away from that will cause poverty and massive overhauls to the way everything is done for billions of people, i.e. quality of life deterioration. Because of physics, some things can't be optimized, like metallurgy and the Haber process. The easiest way to use less energy is to go without some things (i.e. no computers or internet), but that means quality of life deterioration.
Let's not forget there's over a billion people on earth that don't have many of these things, but want them. Good luck in dissuading them.
So please, enlighten me about where my assumptions about less energy means less quality of life are wrong.
You are assuming that keeping up with the Jones' is a high quality of life. That excess consumerism is a high quality of life. That eating food from far away all year round is a high quality of life. Leasing a new car every 3 years is a high quality of life. Maybe you are right. We don't have to agree.
Agreed, that's an extremely high quality of life! I was thinking of a working class lifestyle in the USA, whose lives would include all of the points I mentioned (driving a barely running clunker, eating cheap food from a discount grocery store, etc).
Residents of the global south live much less energy intensive lives, but that comes at a cost: they don't have lifestyles of the developed world. When masses of working class people in developed countries hear 'we need to reduce energy consumption', they fear that third world poverty will be forced on them because of the points I mentioned. Increasing costs justify their fears. That might be why climate proposals haven't gotten as much traction that many would have hoped.
When we use/burn non-renewable fuels (crude, wood, coal, etc) it will reduce the mass of earth over the period of time. At which point (if at all) it will affect gravitational force between earth & sun as per the formula [1]
If by 'mass of the earth', you only count the solid parts, yes. But in the astronomical/gravitational sense, it includes the atmosphere. When things are burned, carbon is combined with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is plant food: photosynthesis converts it into sugar, and plants transform that into other forms of solid carbon. Given enough time, it forms wood, oil, coal, etc.[0]
When will it affect gravitational forces? Almost never. Earth's mass is only truly lost when rockets, satellites, and other ejecta leave the gravity well, and the slow stripping away of the atmosphere.[1]
Yes, due to quantum physics, the end products of comubstion weigh slightly less than the starting products. But this change is so minisqule that you can basically ignore it.
If the energy is used to move something, then by special relativity the object increase the mass [1], and the difference disappears. If the energy is used to heat something, the object increase the mass, and the difference disappears. If the energy is stored elsewhere, also the difference disappears.
The only way to reduce the mass of the Earth (including the atmosphere) is to beam the energy to space, for example using the energy using a giant laser pointed to the sky. A simple solution is to wait until the heat of the atmosphere makes some radiation that escape to space.
Anyway, even if all the energy we produce escapes, it's extremely small, so you can ignore it for all practical purposes.
But it's worse, because the Sun send heat to the Earth. So you have energy going out that decreases the mass of the Earth, and you have energy going in that increases the mass of the Earth. The average temperature of Earth is increasing, so inbound energy/mass is wining.
But it's more complicated because hydrogen and helium in the top of the atmosphere is blow away by solar wind, and solar wind brings some new hydrogen. My guess is that the mass of this exchange is much bigger than the mass of the exchange of energy, but I'm not sure.
[1] Modern books of special relativity don't like to say that the mass increase, because there are some technical problems. If there is no physicist nearby, it's a good approximation.
> In 2019 TES was 606 EJ and final consumption was 418 EJ, 69% of TES.
It looks like 75% of it is from fossil fuels. In a power plant that produces electricity, the output is less than a half of the heat produced by the oil/coal/gas. So 606 * .75 * 2 that is like 1000 EJ. In a simplified world, all that energy becomes heat that escape to space after a while.
To get the mass, you must divide it by c^2 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1000+ExaJoule%2Fc%5E2 and the result is 1200kg (24000 pounds) per year. That's like launching to deep space an elephant per year or a small car per month.
The total mass of the Earth is approximately 6×10^24 kg. So per year we are "launching" 2×10^-21 of the mass of the Earth, that is impossible to notice.
Fake Edit: I just noticed that I forgot to include the heat produced by natural radioactivity that is higher than the energy we use. It's probably also a small number compared to the mass of the Earth, but it's left as an exercise for the reader.
Google says energy of combustion for hard coal is 25 MJ/Kg. E = mc^2 gives 278 picograms of mass lost per kilogram burned in ideal combustion. Consider the amount of earth's mass that is coal and reduce it again by 278e-12 / 1000 to find Earth's mass loss if you did complete combustion of all coal on earth.
Fun napkin math but probably wouldn't make my list of top 10 concerns for humanity.
This is a consequence of the Ukraine conflict - less natural gas means Europe needs to burn more coal instead. This situation is likely going to continue - relations with Russia are very unlikely to be restored any time soon.
Reducing CO2 by switching from coal to gas was never a durable solution (there's only a percent reduction) and now it's dead. The only way forward for Europe is much more wind and solar, now also as a security imperative.
no this is a consequence of environmentalists fearmongering over nuclear energy and the german politicians who used it as cover to sell out their country
18 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 53.1 ms ] thread[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/biden-suspends-oil-and-gas-d...
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-04-29/califor...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/france-braces-uncertain-winter...
Use less energy?
The assumption that using less energy means a deteriorated quality of life needs to stop.
We're using electronic devices with a world-spanning communications network. That requires a lot of electricity to keep running, not to mention the materials in the devices themselves (not just the endpoints, but the routers, servers, etc in between) need lots of resources and energy to produce. Each part mentioned in this paragraph requires its own manufacturing and delivery supply chains and energy intensive industrial processes.
People and things need to get around. That usually involves some vehicle made of metal, which needs ore extracted from the ground, processed, forged, and delivered. Metal can be recycled, but it probably won't be in vehicle form, so someone will need to transform it, which is more energy. That's not counting the energy needed to operate the vehicles, usually involving oil extraction or electricity generation. Each part mentioned in this paragraph requires its own manufacturing and delivery supply chains and energy intensive industrial processes.
Let's delve into more corporeal needs:
Humans need food to continue living. Most don't produce their own food, and rely on some form of industrial food production. In order to increase production efficiency, ever more food is produced in ever smaller spaces, requiring lots of fertilizer and pesticides. When harvested, some is processed (depending on the intended final product), then put on a truck and delivered to a warehouse (or moved through a series of warehouses), and finally to a store. Each part mentioned in this paragraph, particularly fertilizer, requires its own manufacturing and delivery supply chains and energy intensive industrial processes.
Humans want to be clothed. Some clothing is made of natural fiber, which follows a similar path to the food production mentioned above. (Cotton is particularly energy intensive.) Other clothing is made of synthetic fiber, fed from any variety of materials. Due to cost, most clothing is manufactured in poorer areas of the world and shipped to wealthier ones, resulting in a long (and by definition, energy intensive) supply chain.
Humans seek comfort from the weather in shelter, often in structures made of wood, concrete, brick, and/or metal. Those materials can be sourced locally, but concrete manufacturing is a particularly intensive process. Assembly involves a negligible amount of energy to be done. Humans also want to control the temperature inside the shelter, which also involves energy. Let's not forget the electrical and plumbing systems, with their requisite material requirements.
And that's only what I can think of in 30 minutes. There are more things that I haven't thought of. With all that said, some areas can be optimized for energy. However, most things are optimized for cost, so moving away from that will cause poverty and massive overhauls to the way everything is done for billions of people, i.e. quality of life deterioration. Because of physics, some things can't be optimized, like metallurgy and the Haber process. The easiest way to use less energy is to go without some things (i.e. no computers or internet), but that means quality of life deterioration.
Let's not forget there's over a billion people on earth that don't have many of these things, but want them. Good luck in dissuading them.
So please, enlighten me about where my assumptions about less energy means less quality of life are wrong.
Residents of the global south live much less energy intensive lives, but that comes at a cost: they don't have lifestyles of the developed world. When masses of working class people in developed countries hear 'we need to reduce energy consumption', they fear that third world poverty will be forced on them because of the points I mentioned. Increasing costs justify their fears. That might be why climate proposals haven't gotten as much traction that many would have hoped.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=gravitational+force+formula
When will it affect gravitational forces? Almost never. Earth's mass is only truly lost when rockets, satellites, and other ejecta leave the gravity well, and the slow stripping away of the atmosphere.[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
[1] https://phys.org/news/2016-07-curious-case-earth-leaking-atm...
Isn't that some mass will be get converted to energy while burning? So the weight of the resultant CO2 will be less than the fuel burnt.
The only way to reduce the mass of the Earth (including the atmosphere) is to beam the energy to space, for example using the energy using a giant laser pointed to the sky. A simple solution is to wait until the heat of the atmosphere makes some radiation that escape to space.
Anyway, even if all the energy we produce escapes, it's extremely small, so you can ignore it for all practical purposes.
But it's worse, because the Sun send heat to the Earth. So you have energy going out that decreases the mass of the Earth, and you have energy going in that increases the mass of the Earth. The average temperature of Earth is increasing, so inbound energy/mass is wining.
But it's more complicated because hydrogen and helium in the top of the atmosphere is blow away by solar wind, and solar wind brings some new hydrogen. My guess is that the mass of this exchange is much bigger than the mass of the exchange of energy, but I'm not sure.
[1] Modern books of special relativity don't like to say that the mass increase, because there are some technical problems. If there is no physicist nearby, it's a good approximation.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
> In 2019 TES was 606 EJ and final consumption was 418 EJ, 69% of TES.
It looks like 75% of it is from fossil fuels. In a power plant that produces electricity, the output is less than a half of the heat produced by the oil/coal/gas. So 606 * .75 * 2 that is like 1000 EJ. In a simplified world, all that energy becomes heat that escape to space after a while.
To get the mass, you must divide it by c^2 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1000+ExaJoule%2Fc%5E2 and the result is 1200kg (24000 pounds) per year. That's like launching to deep space an elephant per year or a small car per month.
The total mass of the Earth is approximately 6×10^24 kg. So per year we are "launching" 2×10^-21 of the mass of the Earth, that is impossible to notice.
Fake Edit: I just noticed that I forgot to include the heat produced by natural radioactivity that is higher than the energy we use. It's probably also a small number compared to the mass of the Earth, but it's left as an exercise for the reader.
Fun napkin math but probably wouldn't make my list of top 10 concerns for humanity.
Reducing CO2 by switching from coal to gas was never a durable solution (there's only a percent reduction) and now it's dead. The only way forward for Europe is much more wind and solar, now also as a security imperative.