Renewable Revolution

Quote from: agelbert on July 13, 2012, 03:11:56 am

RE,
I'm having a hell of a time getting anything but 3 and 4 year old numbers for  renewable cost benefit analysis (if I can get them at all!) Oh but there is an absolute avalanche of pro fossil fuel and nuclear EROI number bullshit out there that The Automatic Enema site can use to falsely claim that an incrementalist attitude must be taken and a gradual "mother may I?" approach is warranted to phasing out fossil fuels because that's the way the "world works" and renewables are "uncompetitive", don'tcha know? That's real fu cking convenient while the "poison the planet for fun and profit" lobbies from these f u c k s are doing everything they can to sabotage any hope of decent government backing for the renewables AND simultaneously pushing legislation to guarantee continued fossil fuel subsidies and enormous sums for new nuclear reactors.

These are great points, seldom or never mentioned by the Peak Oil and doom crowd. The situation as it is unfolding and the (extremely screwed-up) world as we find it is assumed to be the only situation/world that could exist.  Hence, gigantic subsidies (often hidden or at least not readily apparent) for existing corporate interests are ignored and effectively considered inevitable, as though they were the outworking of immutable physical laws. Meanwhile, viable alternatives coming from non-mainstream or non-established sources -- completely starved for said subsidies -- are dismissed (as you say) as "uncompetitive" or "impractical". Amazing that a supposedly intelligent and astute crowd can eat up the corporate bullshit/propaganda as readily as they do. And I speak as one who was, for a period of years, among them. Peak oil (and "inevitable" collapse resulting therefrom) was, for me, a compelling matter for several years, starting in about 1999 -- shortly after discovering Hanson's dieoff.com. It took me about 5 years to begin seeing the cracks in it, and another 3-4 years before they became really serious.  It has only been the last couple or three years that I began seeing that the whole thing is a big fraud, based almost entirely on corporate/capitalist propaganda, and that our problems have little (though admittedly not nothing) to do with resource limits.  In retrospect I am ashamed that it took me so long. I should have made the round trip in under 3 years. Oh well. Just dumb I guess.   

Regarding EROI:  I recall for many years that Jay Hanson derided solar PV technology, scoffing at the possibility of it ever amounting to anything. He turned it into a joke, like (paraphrased): "Only an IDIOT could imagine that modern industrial civilization could be run on solar panels".  He also claimed for years that solar panels were net energy losers, basing that on data from the late 80s or early 90s, I believe. Well, surely it WAS true for some time that PVs were net energy losers; how could it be otherwise, in the early phases?  But those days are loooonnnng gone, and it was foreseeable for many years before the crossover point that things were heading in that direction and would certainly get there. I wonder what Jay is saying these days about China's prodigious PV production, at fantastically low prices, and offering power at near grid parity.  No doubt the codger has quietly dropped that point and moved on to other things.  Oh yes, you can't store PV generated power. Right. SO WHAT?  We have plenty of other ways to generate power at night, and we have many decades of work yet to do to transition to PV (to the extent that PV is useful) and other renewables. The whole "argument" against solar PV has simply disintegrated and been rendered totally irrelevant, by reality. And so it is on other fronts.

Speaking of China: they are doing the big, forward-looking infrastructural things that we used to do, and should now be doing. They subsidize key industries and undertake projects of breathtaking ambition and scope. For example, the Great Green Wall (biggest environmental restoration project of all time, spanning a CENTURY),  and their high-speed-rail land bridge across Eurasia, probably to be completed over several decades, perhaps a half-century:
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article34366.html
China's Land Bridge to Turkey Creates New Eurasian
Geopolitical Potentials   Apr 28, 2012  -  F William Engdahl

Meanwhile, the West has been reduced to obsession with ever-smaller time slices (and worldly efforts/initiatives to match), the ultimate expression of which seems to be high-speed program trading, wherein trades are executed by computer in tiny fractions of a second, and the physical distance of the executing computer from the exchange actually makes for a significant difference in trading results (because of the extra milli-seconds it takes for the impulses to travel over the wires)!  And all of this merely for the purpose of further enriching some already-filthy-rich bastards who have never in their lives actually created anything of value.  What a stark contrast with the grand visions being developed in the East! How sadly emblematic of our spiritual sickness!

Well, I can say that the doomers are at least half-right. Something IS collapsing, and further collapse is (now) inevitable. But it is not industrial civilization. It is the West in general, and America in particular.  And, because Americans are strongly inclined to think that America is everything, the collapse of America is perceived as a collapse of everything, or as the collapse of industrial civilization, or as the End of the World -- TEOTWAWKI.  (And yes, I was guilty of this very thing myself -- until I woke up.)

Invaluable commentary and analysis on America’s failure and collapse, by Morris Berman:
http://morrisberman.blogspot.com
http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-American-Culture-Morris-Berman/dp/039332169X
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Ages-America-Final-Empire/dp/0393329771
http://www.amazon.com/Why-America-Failed-Imperial-Decline/dp/1118061810
http://www.amazon.com/A-Question-Values-Morris-Berman/dp/1453722882

By the way, did you know that the true cost of gasoline, when all externalities are figured in, has been estimated to be as high as $15/gallon?  And that was 10 years ago!  It is probably much higher, now.