Science Snippets: Hopium for the Masses, “Renewable” Energy Version

 

AVID Audio Course Description (Conservation Biology)

 

 

Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Article:

McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction events. Results in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.

 

Draft script:

I continue to be surprised at the number of people who believe we can experience infinite growth on a finite planet. I continue to be amazed at the number of people who believe a politician—any politician—cares about them, and that their favorite politician will act in their best interests. I continue to be surprised at the number of people who actually have positive feelings about the political process.

I continue to be amazed at the number of people who support the never-ending growth of Industrial Civilization, knowing it is killing us all. I’m even more surprised, though, at the number of people who claim ignorance about the costs and consequences of industrial civilization.

It’s worse than all that, though. There are a significant number of people who believe we can continue the omnicide, and that doing so is a good idea. Consider, for example, proponents of the Third Industrial Revolution.

The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure are described in this short video. After describing each of these five pillars, I address each of them.

First, there is the idea of shifting to so-called “renewable energy.”

So-called renewable forms of energy—solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, ocean waves, and biomass—make up the first of the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution. While these energies still account for a small percentage of the global energy mix, they are growing rapidly as governments mandate targets and benchmarks for their widespread introduction into the market and their falling costs make them increasingly competitive.

These so-called “renewable” sources of energy are derived from oil. Oil is the master material. The availability and price of oil control every other so-called source of energy. I have pointed out the absurdity and hopelessness of switching to sources beyond oil frequently at guymcpherson.com. And, of course, as I’ve pointed out a few hundred times based on several peer-reviewed papers by professor Tim Garrett at the University of Utah, civilization is a heat engine. To be clear, again, civilization is a heat engine regardless how it is powered. All the solar panels in the world, created from mined rare-Earth minerals and manufactured using oil and coal, contribute to the heat engine underlain by civilization.

Second, we hear about buildings as power plants.

New technological breakthroughs make it possible to design and construct buildings that create all of their own energy from locally available renewable energy sources, allowing us to reconceptualize the future of buildings as “power plants.” The commercial and economic implications are vast and far-reaching for the real estate industry and, for that matter, the world.

According to most promoters of the idea of buildings as power plants, in only two decades, millions of buildings—homes, offices, shopping malls, industrial and technology parks—will be constructed to serve as both as functional buildings and “power plants.” These buildings will collect and generate energy locally from the sun, wind, garbage, agricultural and forestry waste, ocean waves and tides, hydro and geothermal—enough energy to provide for their own power needs as well as surplus energy that will be widely shared.
Of course, these so-called “renewable” sources of energy are a myth. In addition, consider the reality of our collective situation two decades from now. If human beings persist on this planet, which seems highly unlikely based on the various paths by which we are vigorously pursuing human extinction, then it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that includes an industrial economy. We can have an industrial economy or we can have a living planet, but we cannot have both over another decade, much less two decades.

Third, what about hydrogen and battery storage?

Deploying hydrogen and other means of storing energy in every building and throughout the infrastructure is one of the legs of the five-legged idiocy known as the Third Industrial Revolution. But, of course, people who incorrectly believe the Third Industrial Revolution is a good idea have no idea that hydrogen is a means of storing energy, not a means of creating energy. In addition, maximizing the production of so-called renewable energy at a reasonable cost appears to be a daunting challenge. The one storage medium that is widely available and relatively efficient is hydrogen. Hydrogen can be used to store all forms of energy. However, as a carrier of energy—but definitely not a source—hydrogen is neither stable nor very reliable. The notion of stability is dismissed with a single word: Hindenburg. The hype about hydrogen is extreme and extremely ridiculous.

Transporting hydrogen is prohibitively expensive and requires distillates of crude oil. In addition, automakers will not make hydrogen fuel-cell cars until the hydrogen infrastructure is in place, and the infrastructure will not appear until there are a sufficient number of fuel-cell cars on the road. Can you say chicken-and-egg?

Fourth is the idea of Internet-connected smart grids.

Using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy sharing grid that acts like the Internet. The reconfiguration of the world’s power grid, along the lines of the Internet, allowing businesses and homeowners to produce their own energy and share it with each other, has been recently tested by power companies in Europe. The hype is that these new smart grids will revolutionize the way electricity is produced and delivered. Millions of existing and new buildings—homes, offices, factories—will be converted or built to serve as “positive power plants” that can capture local renewable energy—solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydro, and ocean waves—to create electricity to power the buildings, while sharing the surplus power with others, like we now produce our own information and share it with each other across the Internet.

Never mind the endless hopium associated with producing “renewable” energy for more than eight billion people. Never mind the war-based industrial economy of the world’s sole remaining superpower. If we’re counting on technology currently under testing in Europe, we’re also assuming Europe will exist as a political entity for a long time, even as we contribute to the disintegration of the European Union. We’re also assuming Europeans will continue to play nice with each other as well as with people in other countries. Finally, the very idea of surplus power is being revealed as a horrifically bad joke as the Middle East and northern Africa come under daily attack from several more-industrialized nations.

Fifth and finally, we have the notion of electric and fuel-cell cars.

The notion here is that we can transition the transport fleet to electric, plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a continental, interactive power grid. According to this idea, the electricity we produce in our buildings will be used to power electric plug-in cars or to create hydrogen to power fuel-cell vehicles. The electric plug-in vehicles, in turn, will also serve as portable power plants that can sell electricity back to the main grid.

Never mind that car culture is a huge source of many of our worst problems. Cheering for the never-ending continuation of car culture is a death sentence for the living planet. In addition, as indicated above, transporting hydrogen is unsafe, expensive, and dependent upon distillates of crude oil. And then there’s that chicken-and-egg issue associated with construction of infrastructure to support hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

According to its proponents, when these five pillars come together, they make up an indivisible technological platform—an emergent system whose properties and functions are qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the synergies between the pillars create a new economic paradigm that can transform the world.

According to reality, when these five pillars of sand come together, they make up an undistinguished pile of dysfunctional hopium—a pile of sand whose properties and functions are qualitatively and quantitatively irrelevant to the industrial economy. In other words, the synergies between the meaningless pillars create a new pile of false hope for those who wish to continue destroying the living world.

Far too late, I realized that the battle between rationalism and insanity has been lost. Ralph Waldo Emerson was correct when he said, “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”