permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

In a message dated 6/17/2003 12:17:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, rmwj@soonernet.com writes:

You are setting up a very big "IF" with your final paragraph. 

What IF your vision isn't technologically and thermodynamically
possible?

It seems to me that a major point is missing, which is that with
hydrogen, and the thermal depolymerization fuel processes, you always
end up with LESS energy than it took to make them. 

According to the laws of conservation of energy, no process is 100% efficient. Every process costs more energy to create than you can get out of it. A lump of coal, for instance, has more energy inside than you can use. Wood in the form of fireplace logs is particularly inefficient-- it's better in a Franklin stove but still falls short of perpetual motion, i.e. continuing to recycle 100$ of your energy.

So you look over all the available options and see what works best for your purposes in an imperfect world. The good thing about the current situation is that we have more choices than we've ever had to date. Some won't pan out. Some will. Coal could be a lot cleaner if we use coal gasification processes, in terms of air pollution, but you still have the environmental havoc of taking it out of the ground.

This could be ameliorated by permaculturally sound restoration practises, and it would be a satisfying challenge to create a protocol for coal removal, from breaking the ground up to the finished biologically viable restoration area. But the problem that compounds this simple thinking is politics. The powers that be will resist such thinking for so long as they think the people promoting it are just out to run them out of business. It's a war out there-- no less than there is war in the Middle East. The various sides are engaged in a death struggle that inhibits sound thinking. In the meantime, a federal appeals court has just set aside an injunction that has been in place for the past year or two to resume mountaintop removal. If you don't know what those words mean, put them into your search engine and read some of the material that comes out. It's not a pretty process.

So energy decisions are going to continue to be taken for all the wrong reasons. The smart people will be working toward designing processes that make money. Because until sound practises make more money for the big dogs than the current practises they engage in, they're not going to do much. And they can afford to bribe government into not regulating them to force them to play nice. So science is best engaged in making good energy processes more efficient and thus more profitable than the way things are done right now. This is real-world thinking.

So where does the

energy profit come from to make these processes possible?  Complexity is
fine, but at some point there has to be something yielding a huge energy
profit to make that complexity possible.  If in the absence of fossil
fuels, all of our fuel systems are net energy losers, then over time
they wind down to nothing.

Other than fossil fuels we have the wind, the ocean (tidal forces), the sun-- we have some very big inputs that cost us nothing in terms of raw materials. Solar will probably never amount to much only because they're having trouble bringing the cost down. Tidal forces are potentially a monster if we design some proper works to utilize their lift and pull.

Another point missing from thermal depolymerization/biofuel is that
world agriculture production is pretty much at peak capacity right now,
and it is entirely based on fossil fuels.  There are estimates that
depending on the product, every calorie of agricultural product contains
7 to 12 calories of fossil fuels. 

A lot of agricultural outputs are under-utilized right now. Much of it is plowed under as a soil amendment, much of it is landfilled (a stupid crime and waste of resource). Think about all the mowed grass from the lawns of America. I wonder how much ends up being put to good use and not just landfilled. If this biomass can be converted into long-chain carbon molecules, so much the better.

You can't declare defeat just because you start out replacing only five or ten percent of fuel needs. You have to start somewhere and make some degree of difference. Later on, you try to invent other efficiencies.

There is also manure. It's high-powered stuff, and can be put to much better use than it is now, since the current paradigm is still pretty much that this is bad stuff we need to just get rid of. That is changing, big time.

So we start out with a program to more effectively utilize hog poop. We don't start with a program to make everyone on earth into a Vegan, because that just ain't going to happen.

You and I know that ranching operations are an efficient use of grain by a factor of 10:1. Sit on it. We're not going to convince people steak is environmentally insensitive. So I'd rather concentrate on learning how to provide more permaculturally sound steak for the American plate.

And if someone comes up with an efficiency that boosts ranching income by turning an expensive disposal problem into a new profit center, ther is a bonus in it for them. They get to license their process and retire very rich. This is sort of the upside of the American Way.

My spreadsheet says that to replace the world's oil production with
biodiesel made from soybean oil would require 33 billion acres of
soybeans. If we use palm oil, it would take 3 billion acres of palm
trees. If we use pecan oil, it would take 5 billion acres of pecan
trees.  The land surface of the world is about 36 billion acres. So if
we devote all our cropland to making fuel and plastics, where do we grow
our food?  Not to mention, where do we live, and where are the wild
places for the rest of creation? 

Two options-- (a) let a couple of billion people die so there's enough to go around-- (b) grow spirulina (a really nutrient-rich algae) in hydroponic tanks floating in the ocean. We have to be inventive-- some really thorny issues are coming down the pike straight at us.

I don't think we need to learn to do more with less, in fact we need to
learn to live with less.  I know that's unpopular, especially for people
who live high energy lifestyles.  If we don't learn how to live with
much less than we are presently accustomed to, it is likely that your
grand children will end up in the neolithic or worse, if indeed they
live at all.

Plan to or not, the reality is that in the new century people will be living with less. There will be more people and less virgin stuff to use up. The curve of progress will mostly be driven by stark, unmet needs.

The lives of billions of people are literally at stake.  False hope is
false hope, and it causes people to make bad decisions, and that's what
people are betting on when they think that some combination of hydrogen,
solar, wind, hydro, and biofuel will make some approximation of our
present lifestyle possible for the entire world.

Robert Waldrop, OKC

Robert--

These are some really good points. And the bottom two fifths of the human race is already living with less-- much less! I don't think we'll be able to convince the rich nations to join them at the bottom. The current dialog is pretty much how to raise them up to our level. It will take an inventive approach to chart a realistic course that fixes the problem and still allows the rich to make money off it.

If I thought any hope at all was false hope I'd just sit back and take my strychnine pill right now. But I feel pretty good about the challenge. If everyone doing research just goes where the evidence leads, I suggest there's no way we're not going to be doing everything much, much better in another thirty years. At least I'll put my own fifty bucks on that supposition.

Thanks for the input.

Mike Elvin