The Modern World Can't Exist Without Fossil Fuels
time.com
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Maybe the real root of our problems is not in the fuels we use or the way we consume, but in the fact that society is just too busy and does too much, and this uses too much energy. This is what drives us to burn so many fossil fuels and destroy our planet. Maybe a slower society is a more sustainable one.
I sort of agree on your premise, but it’s not a clear cut path.
I think it's a case of setting the goal, evaluating individual policies that move towards it, assessing the risks and then trialling them - rolling out the ones that seem to work and discarding those that have unacceptable issues. You can't necessarily do everything that satisfies an aim but you can make big moves in that direction and still get most of the benefit.
Plastic feed stock is basically free, recycling requires a lot of labor (directly or indirectly) so the system favors disposable plastic.
Using energy for automation also lets companies avoid income taxation so there is this constant push to automate more and more.
Problems appear twofold:
- This would probably create a very large, and very motivated, black market.
- The same dynamics that make these efforts so profitable also make them politically powerful. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Adam Smith, 1776.
Isn't this the area that it made the most sense to have kept the existing easy available hydrocarbons for? As opposed to burning them for fuel, I mean. Is the usage of fossil hydrocarbons resources for raw material in producing plastic still counted as having a carbon footprint? (For the record, I think that in the long term, a solution for producing plastics without relying on fossil resources is necessary, but it doesn't make sense to limit ourselves to that just yet.)
So even if we left these critical industries untouched, we could still reduce fossil fuel consumption by 83% and potentially achieve a fourfold reduction in C02 emissions.
I think these industries are not the most challenging ones about finding carbon-free alternative solutions. One of the most important thing is transportation, and as far as I know, there isn't anything immediately available that can replace the current shipping of goods around the planet. In the future, we may try switch to ships burning iron powder instead, or build massive continent-connecting rail infrastructure (like in Snowpiercer), but for now we'll just have to settle for less than 83% reduction.
There are alternative ways to make plastics (https://hempplastic.com/), and hemp is just one example. It's not to say that all kinds of plastics are easily or quickly replaced with alternatives, but it is to say that it's possible to find alternatives. And probably the greater effort and urgency to find alternatives, without interference from oil companies, the greater variety of replacements there will be, and sooner.
Maybe there is some minimum point where we just can't replace fossil fuels for a particular product or industry, but much better to get to that point, where we minimally rely on fossil fuels. Let's first make every effort to find alternatives, before saying that's the case. I have a strong suspicion, we could probably reduce reliance far more that many think or want us to discover.
Another sneaky part of the pro fossil fuel argument, is since replacing them is hard, let's be really lazy about it and allow them to pollute the air and water at will or for many generations more. As if we or our Earth can afford such. If anything, the correct answer is that greater effort should be made to replace fossil fuels as much as and as soon as possible, because of the great harm they are causing. We should not be lazy, because doing so might be our undoing.
Hmm... Thanks for sharing! Regarding bio-plastic, (from my once attended school chemistry class) I only knew about polyethylene, that can be obtained from sugar-producing plants (via alcohol/ethylene), but that being costly may not scale well.
Nuclear power does not directly contribute to the manufacture of steel, plastics, concrete, or ammonia. There are conceivalble processes by which at least some of these might be addressed, and in the case of steel, electric arc furnaces for recycling existing steel are widely used.
But direct application is limited.
Smil is otherwise generally favourable toward nuclear, though he notes the political obstacles, based on risk perceptions (or miscperceptions) are quite high.
If the engineers actually did their job correctly there wouldn't be any problems. After all, every new generation of nuclear power plant got safer than the previous ones. If gen 1 and 2 reactors were as safe as gen 3 reactors there wouldn't be any safety problems to necessitate "political obstacles".
It's not as safe as people think. It's spewing much more radioactivity around than actual nuclear power plants.
2. There are far more concerning threats from coal. Which is to say, the radiation concern is an absolute red herring.
3. A nuclear plant behaving badly is at the absolute high end of Munroe's chart. Ten minutes next to the Chernobyl core is over five times the lethal does even with treatment. Not only has every nuclear accident I'm aware of come about principally through management failures, personnel misconduct, or both, but the consequences of those events persist for centuries to millennia. Well beyond the lifetimes of any institutions we have to address them. Russia added direct military attack and occupation to that list earlier this year, and there's little reason to expect that this will go away.
There's often some confusion that the argument is about nuclear vs. some other terrible energy choice, or that to be anti-nuclear is to be pro-some other specific option, or that those who raise these points are unaware of disasters with much larger immediate impacts. Say, Banqiao Dam, also a combination of errors: design, engineering, operation, weather, disaster preparedness, disaster response. The Banqiao region is now home once again to millions of Chinese, the event is entirely closed, and there is no lingering centuries- or millennia-long threat to deal with. The accident itself is an extreme outlier even amongst dam failures.
The book has not yet been closed on Sellafield, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and numerous other smaller mishaps.
That said, I'm not dead set against nuclear.
But I'm also going to flatly reject that the problems it faces are strictly of engineering, and that they can be papered over with promises and misrepresentations. That is simply not true.
What does it solve?
How does it source or separate minerals at fractions of a percent concentration in overburden or ore?
— Herbert Stein
The article is an exerpt from Vaclav Smil's latest book (he has many[2]), How the World Really Works, excerpts, reviews, and interviews of which are appearing in multiple publications.
In a world often divided into technological optimists and pessimists, Smil is someone I consider a technological realist. He focuses on what technology has wrought, here focusing on four specific material contributions, steel, concrete, ammonia fertiliser, and plastics. And a clear message is that if these are solely dependent on fossil fuels then we cannot continue in the same path as we have been without them.
And in a world where we're unable to continue exploiting fossil fuels, whether due to the environmental impacts of their waste, or the lack of future supplies, the present mode of operation will end.
What that means in terms of the set of factors affecting human impacts on the planet --- per-capita wealth and total population --- one or both factors must move.
I've been looking at this question reasonably intensely for about a decade, and in a more general sense since the 1970s, when I first became aware of concerns over energy, pollution, and population in the Zeitgeist of that era. One fact I've become uncomfortably familiar with is that there's a great deal about the issue which has not changed appreciably, most especially as concerns the set of options for energy and resources, though there's been some specific progress in areas: computing and communications capacity, solar PV and LED costs, battery technology, and easing of food/population concerns have been among the largest.
A chief concern though is that political barriers to effectively addressing the problematique in a manner that avoids catastrophic outcomes seem extraordinarily stubborn. I strongly recommend the works of William Ophusl, notably Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977, 1994) and Plato's Revenge (2011).[2] Thomas Homer-Dixon is a political science scholar who seems to be continuing the work: https://homerdixon.com/
Global responses over the past two years and counting to a known threat for which well-established response plans existed have made me increasingly pessimistic over how well-prepared we are for the future obligations of a post-carbon age, or its alternatve, a greatly-warmed world.
My own background is a mix of physics, environmental studies, urban economics and planning, and economics. That's given me an awareness of capabilities and constraints, but also of what how economics operates. In particular, economic interactions are largely driven by the relative apparent costs between inputs and options. As fuel-based energy has become vastly less expensive than in previous phases of human development, most especially over the past 200 years, energy has replaced other inputs, and made possible and viable practices, applications, and knowledge, that were previously unattainable. As those energy sources increase in costs, including both sourcing and consequence costs, those economics will change in an absolutely dramatic fashion.
One of Smil's earlier works, Energy and World History, is among a handful of books which looks at history through the lens of energy sources. Smil (and other authors) divide human time into four periods: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, fossil fuels, and post-fossil fuels. Each is a strongly distinct period, with what are effectively singularity-transitions between them. Changes in energy regimes have effects greater than all but the most cataclysmic astronomical events --- both on the way up and down.
In his introduction, Smil writes:
This book is an attempt to reduce the comprehension deficit, to explain some of the most fundamental ruling realities governing our survival and our prosperity. My goal is not to forecast, not to outline either stunning or depressing scenarios of what is to come. There is no need to extend this popular --- but consistently failing --- genre: in the long run, there are too many unexpected developments and too many complex interactions that no individual or collective effort can anticipate. Nor will I advocate any specific (biased) interpretations of reality, either as a source of despair or of boundless expectations. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist; I am a scientist trying to explain how the world really workds, and I will use that understanding in order to make us better realize our future limits an opportunities.
If you can handle the truth, or don't have access to its alternatives, read this book.
________________________________
Notes:
1. https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3As...
2. https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s... https://www.worldcat.org/title/platos-revenge-politics-in-th... Also available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=william%20ophuls
But he's clearly making political points and making predictions. Presumably adding his disclaimer lets him get away with it for a few more years.
> LET ME BEGIN WITH A DISCLAIMER: I am neither promoting electric vehicles nor denigrating them. I simply observe that the rational case for accepting EVs has been undermined by unrealis- tic market forecasts and a disregard for the environmental effects involved in producing and operating these vehicles
That was obvious BS 5 years ago when he wrote it and it's even more so now when he repeats the same point in his new book and article. So how does he get to claim the "rational" high ground?
Smil is one of my favorite authors. His writing writing makes me think of Mr. Spock.
There are options, polymer concrete, carbon fiber as opposed to steel. But yeah, overall there are gonna be some changes one way or another.
One hopeful side-effect of the waste in our systems is that it provides easy wins for reducing energy usage without sacrificing quality of life. For example, I've heard estimates of as high as 50% for waste in the USA's food systems.
And yes, materials science seems to be an area of potential gains.
I've done some poking around, and it seems especially that various fibre-composite materials might afford useful characteristics. Much of what we already use is to a large extent based on this --- wood is a lignan-resin composite, reinforced concrete a steel-cement composite.
Whether this means ceramics, organic, or some other mix of methods and materials I'm not sure. Fabrics are also pretty fascinating when you think about them.
For ammonia, enzymatic production, if that could be synthesized at scale ... at which point, surface-area exposure and capture becomes the question.
That might get us 2, 3, or even 4 of Smil's materials set right there.
And yes, Smil is pretty coldly logical. Though the dry humour does show every so often.
Some merits in construction. The more so if the location isn't earthquake-prone. But not so much for, say, rail systems, bridges, or long-distance pipelines and the like.
I feel like we have all the solutions we need already, we just have to realize it and "get 'er done". That's part of why I like what you do so much. Cheers!
In practice, the economics of recycled material resale are poor (IMO a market dysfunction), and the effort is often not cost-effective. That's highly unfortunate.
Tip scavenging is also a well-established informal labour niche in low-wage societies. Again, with high negative externalities and societal costs. Again, unfortunate.
True, and sorting capability is getting better every day. I was looking into building my own sorting robots a few years ago and found that they're already pretty much off-the-shelf now, eh?
I do like the idea of people paying me to give me raw materials.
> In practice, the economics of recycled material resale are poor (IMO a market dysfunction), and the effort is often not cost-effective. That's highly unfortunate.
I agree. Maybe carbon costs will make recycled materials more acceptable.
> Tip scavenging is also a well-established informal labour niche in low-wage societies. Again, with high negative externalities and societal costs. Again, unfortunate.
I've been there. I was homeless for a few years. It's insane what people throw away. And then they lock the dumpsters so you can't salvage it. Madness.
But I think you're talking more about the folks who basically live in the waste streams, like the families living in the Mexico City dump, or parts of rural China until they stopped importing waste?
You wrote:
> And in a world where we're unable to continue exploiting fossil fuels, whether due to the environmental impacts of their waste, or the lack of future supplies, the present mode of operation will end.
> What that means in terms of the set of factors affecting human impacts on the planet --- per-capita wealth and total population --- one or both factors must move.
Imagine vegetarianism becomes much more popular. How does that fit into your analysis? Are you concerned about putting people out of work due to increased efficiency in the food system? I'm not sure that's worth worrying about except as a political difficulty. If all murders stopped then we'd put some police and prison guards out of work too but most people would say that's worth it.
- Smil's studied material usage in depth for years.
- This article is a very brief introduction to the topic. His book goes into more detail than this exerpt, and the chapter from which this article is based does break down plastics use in somewhat more detail.
- He especially emphasized healthcare applications, though I don't find a detailed quantification or exploration of why this is. (I'm still reading through his book, though guided in part by questions such as yours.)
- Use-reduction has been advocated for something on the order of five decades, since the early environmental movement. To date it's not been particularly effective, best I can tell.
That said:
- No, Smil doesn't discuss use reduction in depth. To the extent he's focusing on describing the problem rather than addressing solutions, that's consistent with the general theme of the book.
- Recycling does net 45 mentions in the book. Much of that is addressed at animal and human waste as alternatives to artificial fertiliser.
In general, materials are adopted based on a set of factors, incuding cost, characteristics, flexibility, and convenience. Plastics have substituted for other materials including organics (plant and animal) of limited quantities, ceramics, paper (with its own sets of issues), and more. Much as fossil fuels substituted for mostly biomass-based fuel sources as those were exhausted, plastics have substituted for earlier alternatives (ceramics, wood, glass, metal, paper) as those proved insufficient, inadequate, expesive, or otherwise problematic.
There is a huge extent to which these practices are dependent on other factors. The self-serve supermarket, a creation of the 1920s--1940s, introduced whole new levels and layers (metaphorically and literally) to consumer packaging. The recent shift toward online ordering / home delivery has shifted these somewhat, though not necessarily in the direction of less packaging.
My view: if you want people to use fewer plastics, raise the costs. Most probably through taxes or other fees. Beware second-order effects, however.
Claiming Smil is dishonest seems to me itself ... dishonest.
I don't doubt Smil is an expert. It's possible the article's framing wasn't entirely his fault. However if his books follow the approach of the article -- "Fossil fuels are necessary for plastics and plastics keep newborns alive" and then leaves readers to connect the dots for themselves -- then I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish. I'm sure he intends more than just dry scientific explanation. Maybe dishonest isn't the right word, I agree.
But, again, his principle audience, as I take it are those who like the modern world, and would like it to continue as it is, with minimal change.
And to them he's pointing out the underlying costs and necessary conditions (including, as you'd likely characterise it, vast overconsumption of plastics), and their implications. A visceral knowledge of which is lacking in far too many people.
Smil addresses this in his book's introduction: the unprecedented, if uneven, wealth of the post-WWII era, the expansion of human understanding and fact that it's escaped the grasp of any one person --- the Renaissance Man --- centuries ago, and both a fracturing and failure of knowledge even amongst elites (political, commercial, cultural, scientific, ...) to the extent that at best even amongst the elites knowlege tends strongly to the superficial. (There's an excellent interview by Edward Murrow of Robert Oppenheimer in which the physicist notes that everyone, even scientists, are amateurs outside their own very narrow fields.)
Your principle complaint with Smil seems to be that he didn't write the book you wish he had. And to that extent I'd say you're right, he did not.
But he did write the book he felt the world needed, and which he set out to write. And I think he's correct in his first assessment and largely successful in the task. Whether either of those are sufficient is of course another matter.
The message you seem to be taking away is that Smil is arguing fossil fuels are necessary and will continue to be necessary. There, I think you're wrong.
One tactic critics of environmentalists and sustainability proponants have long used is to point out all the wonderful things fossil fuels have done for humanity, with the obvious conclusion that therefor we must continue to use them. I could point to specific examples from Milton Friedman, Julian Simon, and numerous speakers and writers from the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Foundation, Cato Institution, Adam Smith Institute, Fraser Institute, and others (most part of the Libertarian, and heavily oil-industry funded, Atlas Network).
But that's not Smil.
At the conclusion of his chapter on energy, and discussing decarbonisation, Smil writes:
What we need is to pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world. We still do not mnow most of the particulars of this coming transition, but one thing remains certain: it will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise --- but rather its gradual decline.
That paragraph cites his own earlier writings on energy transitions.
Again: Smil is addressing both denial (that the transition doesn't need to occur, that climate change isn't real), and wishful thinking about the ease of such transitions. This is a field I've watched for nearly fifty years, and even worked in to some extent (not deeply, though putting me in touch with some key people and organisations). And ... there's been a lot less progress than I'd have hoped to see. It would have been much easier to get started earlier, and it's going to be much more painful.
If I've one disagreement with Smil, it's that the transition might be rapid. But the cost of that would be that it would also be highly traumatic. To the tune of billions of deaths and centuries of hardship. Possibly worse.
It looks like Smil's new book is available at my local library so I'll read it and judge for myself. Thanks again.
I'm a bit over 3/4 through MotF, which is quite a read. Francis Fukuyama reviews that and Neal Stevenson's Termination Shock (which I've not yet read. And his principle criticism of Robinson is that the book is far too optimistic:
While there are some dramatic responses in the book, like the kidnapping of the Davos crowd and assassinations of oil executives, the book imagines what is in a way the best possible future outcomes. The eco-terrorist campaign and attacks on airliners do not trigger massive repression (people, it appears, don’t mind giving up air travel); five million people march spontaneously on Beijing and compel the CCP to speed up the energy transition; the crisis becomes the occasion to implement universal basic income around the world with no adverse consequences for the economy apart from a six-month recession; and the various attempts at geo-engineering all work as planned and produce no unanticipated effects.
https://www.americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/two-futures/
I'd make a similar response to Fukuyama as to you: KSR wrote a specific book with a specific point in mind: if you want a survivable outcome, then events would need to play out largely as he suggests. KSR isn't arguing that this is the probable or plausible path, but that it's the necessary one.
(It's also very much a vehicle for advancing KSR's political views, which is another discussion. That said, as a minority opinion, I think the airing is well-deserved.)
Fukuyama's criticism about characterization is unfair because I don't think KSR was trying and failing to make amazing characters. They were just vehicles for the larger story. Being disappointed that a main character didn't have sex at the end is really missing the point.
An aside: while reading MotF I felt the same sort of relentless sense of passing time that you get in Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar. Interestingly both the book and movie are about climate change and time and, also, about centering the story and setting at the expense of characterization.
I'm ambivalent about the advantages of arguing for political change as a necessary part of environmental change. But as you said in an earlier comment, rapid transition (which I think is likely, as we go right to the cliff and then fall off) will itself be horribly traumatic. It will require massive government intervention to prevent total societal collapse. After hurricanes and earthquakes, you don't adjust tax rates, you send in the military.
My own major criticism of MotF is that, as the COVID crisis makes clear, people live by motivated reasoning, and as climate change gets worse that motivation will be fear, and frightened people will act badly. Most of the opposition in MotF are rich people trying to hold onto what they have or technocratic rulers too timid to act. In the actual world the real problem will be billions of terrified people whose past has been or is about to be destroyed and with no clear future. However that story told honestly would look like a Cormac McCarthy novel and maybe KSR just doesn't want to go there yet.
Thanks for the book recommendation. Over time digging through history books and trying to wrap my head around how supply chains and agriculture work I've come to more or less the same conclusion. I feel so alone a lot of the time in understanding this stuff and it's refreshing to know that I'm not the only one who takes a look at things and goes... wait a minute...
Literally all the buzz in renewables (now that solar being the cheapest energy source in the whole of human history is boring, old news and there's no doubt that EVs and battery production is going to drive prices down to incredible levels) is about Green Hydrogen, Green Steel and Green Ammonia. And that was before gas prices went through the roof. Then the headlines were that it was already cheaper to make Green Hydrogen in Europe due to high gas prices.
How out of touch with the energy market do you need to be to lead your "Fossil fuels are irreplaceable" diatribe with Ammonia?
If you really want renewable fuels I think growing and refining algae is probably our best bet right now.
Dismissing his writing as "totally pointless" seems rather hasty.
What evidence would you have to support that assessment? Other than wishful thinking and appeal to consequences.
We got here largely by moving off a sustainable track. Humanity used to live lagely sustainably.
Unfortunately for those who'd like to return to that state, we've also increased total numbers, and per-capita wealth, far beyond the levels the sustainable track sufficed for. Reversion would proabably be traumatic.
That said: most of the transformation is less than a century old, and substantial portions of the world (China, India, Africa) have joined the industrialised world largely in the past 50--75 years. So time-wise we're not so far from it. In terms of carrying capacity and the requirements for maintaining present state without catastrophic collapse, the distance seems much greater. To that extent I somewhat disagree with Smil's relative confidence, though I'll note he's far more informed than I am on the overall state of the situation.
While I am optimistic about getting us off fossil fuels, if it turns out they are actually necessary for even one thing, then that thing, whatever it is, logically cannot be in the long-term future of humanity.
Though on something being obligately dependent on some input or process: if that is one of a very small number of uses and both supply and consequence effects can be managed (e.g., we won't run out of supply in any conceivably meaningful timeframe and we can manage consequences), that usage might persist.
Limiting petroleum usage to material feedstocks could be tolerable if:
- That occurs at rates such that exhaustion isn't a meaningful risk.
- Any environmental impacts, including but not limited to CO2 emissions, are compensated for.
Those are themselves both steep requirements, but not utterly inconceivable.
The pre-industrial utilisation of natural oil and tar seeps for uses such as lamp oil, sealing ships hulls, and the like, seem to me to have been at least reasonable. It wasn't until we started shipping the material in bulk within and between countries that major problems started emerging.
That said: ice-core studies have detected atmospheric CO2 shifts and heavy metal contamination (mostly mercury and lead) dating to paeleolithic times (presumably from deforestation) and Roman mining activities during the Republic and Empire periods. Activities we think of as de minimus may in fact not be.
How did he get this reputation for being smart when he's had so many dumb takes on energy?
Has he accepted that EVs are viable yet? (edit: having now read the article, no he's still arguing that EVs are bad) Does he really not know that fossil fuels are not required for any of these things. Did he just intentionally lie about it? For what purpose?
edit: He contradicts himself at the end of the article, so he knows the headline is false. Is this basically an ad for fossil fuels?
And just in case someone points out that the headline may have been written by an editor:
> Fossil fuels remain indispensable for producing all of these materials.
But if you keep reading past the advertising copy about how great fossil fuels are.
> Synthesis of ammonia and smelting of steel could both be based on hydrogen rather than on natural gas and coke. We know how to do that
Well, that's not what your headline says.
He does of course continue to try to sandbag this
> —but it will take some time before we could produce hundreds of million tons of green hydrogen derived from the electrolysis of water by using wind or solar electricity (virtually all of today’s hydrogen is derived from natural gas and coal). The best forecast is that green hydrogen would supply 2% of the world’s energy consumption by 2030, far below the hundreds of million tons that will eventually be needed to decarbonize ammonia and steel production
I can't tell if he's just writing poorly or being intentionally deceptive but the green hydrogen for ammonia and steel wouldn't be part of the global energy consumption, we'd use renewables to provide the electric power for the creation of it and use the green hydrogen as a chemical feedstock.
We might also use some of it to generate electricity, but those are two separate things that he's probably intentionally trying to muddy.
The corresponding chapter title from Smil's book is "Understanding Our Material World: The Four Pillars of Modern Civilization".
Smil highlights their significance, irreplaceability, and that "the mass-scale production of all of them depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels, and that some of these fuels also supply feedstocks..."
The title as submitted seems to me to be fair: "The modern world can't exist without fossil fuels". Not that civilisation cannot, or that there isn't a possibility for replacing either the materials to a substantial degree, or the role of fossil fuels in their production, but that the result of doing so would leave us with something much at odds with the present parameters of the indistrialised, technological, high-energy, fossil-fuel dependent world we take as a given.
And to that extent, Smil's argument seems quite sound. You'll find similar viewpoints expressed both by strong critics of the fossil-fuel world, say, Richard Heinberg, or by apologists for the fossil fuel industry, such as Daniel Yergin. To the extent that they all agree that where we are now is a direct consequence of human utilisation of fossil fuels, I find no basis for disagreement.
The question is what the future implications and prospects are. Fossil-fuel defenders see an unlimited future for that resource. Critics think we need to eliminate all possible use immediately. Smil, as he himself notes, tends to cut a middle path in his arguments, though that's really not the most valuable aspect he brings to the discussion. It's an absolutely unsparing assessment and quantification of fossil fuels' role and where that leaves us in considering future options.
It's a philosophy which earns him strange bedfellows and frequent criticism from across the growth-sustainability spectrum.
And I think you'll find that the more you rely on Smil's actual text, rather than third-party headline summaries, the more his argument and facts cohere.
Using mass produced PV power, which is the cheapest energy ever produced in history, and uses Quantum Physics effects to turn sunlight into electricity is in your opinion not 'industrialised, technological, high-energy'? How can you type that with a straight face in 2022?
Oh, what's this one you slipped in at the end as if it belonged amongst those other words, "fossil-fuel dependant". Yeah, it's not that, because, it turns out, CO2 pollution is bad, even worse than all the other pollution they've caused.
> And until all energies used to extract and process these materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No artificial intelligence designs, no apps, no claims of coming “dematerialization” will change that.
What was he trying to convey with this paragraph that closes the article?
I mean he's literally saying that until we get to net zero, then we will still be burning fossils fuels. Okay that's true I guess. But he sounds weirdly happy about it, like he's proved someone wrong about something. Maybe some person he's argued with that held the incredibly esoteric opinion that not renewable power, efficiency, insulation, and pricing in externalites was going to replace fossil fuels but 'artificial intelligence and apps'???
I mean that's an absurdly strawman position to attack, and I'm still not sure that Smil is even right about that. Technology is kind of a big deal in a lot of fields. AI gets used to enhance oil recovery for example. Is his closing argument literally "Old man yells at the cloud."?
What was he trying to convey with this paragraph that closes the article?
My read is that Smil is addressing a lot of hand-wavy assertions, again from across the BAU to halt-fossil-fuels-now spectrum, that there are easy ways out. A hard analysis based on quantities, properties, and available viable options says that no, there aren't easy ways out. AI alone won't save us, aps won't save us, unsubstantiated claims of dematerialisation won't save us. You could look to sources such as David MacKay, Sustainable Energy --- Without the Hot Air, who made a similarly hardboiled analysis for the UK. Given rates of energy consumption, touted measures like "unplug your electronics" are not enough. This isn't a problem that's solved by a bunch of small measures, but by a bunch of big measures.
And the specific big measure here is get fossil fuels out of materials production. Most espeically of ammonia, plastics, steel, and concrete, though that itself is still just a start.
You've expressed yourself largely, if not entirely coherently, in what you're against.
What do you happen to be for? What goals and methods are you advocating, addressing what problems, specifically?
You admitted above to not even reading the article. If you're going to discuss it at length, I'd hope you might fix that. And read closely, because his arguments really are nuanced.
Expertise is not authority. It does rely on trust. And it isn't a blanket certification --- just because someone is an expert does not mean that they are never wrong (and I've indicated elsewhere in this thread some areas in which I disagree). However it does suggest that a casual dismissal based on lack of qualification, as was the case in this specific thread, wants for evidence itself.
That is, the value of expertise (root word, experience) is a deep familiarity, knowledge, understanding, and trustworthiness in a specific field. One trusts an expert computer programmer, an expert doctor, an expert engineer, an expert pilot, an expert lawyer.
Or, in this, case, an expert environmental scientist.
I'd mentioned his credentials not as a blanket dismissal of some specific argument against the piece, or an element of it, but that the piece as a whole is "pointless". Smil's experience, knowledge, understanding, and track record strongly suggest otherwise.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
If you follow lordkrandel's other comments to this thread, you may find their own experiential basis, beginning from a clear reading of the article and articulation of their own argument, is lacking.