Comment by 13415 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 13415 | Hacker News Reader

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I've read his book The Knowledge years ago and it was an eye-opener. I wasn't aware how complex our agricultural and technical societies are and how much they depend on shipping and crude oil. Without oil and shipping, no chemical industry, and without chemical industry no advanced technology and no mass food production. People in supply chain management know that too well but I was simply not aware of how fragile our society is before I read his book. The premise of the book that just the right number of people die but enough remain to kickstart society is arguably a bit contrived, though.

Unfortunately, my overall conclusion from this book was rather negative, which is definitely not part of the book itself. It seems to me that our current technological level with a focus on consumption and constant production of new goods for short-term use, without taking into account full energy and ecological lifecycle balances, is completely unsustainable. Even with recycling and under the assumption that energy could become easier to produce (e.g. fusion) our lifestyle seems to exploit too many finite natural resources like e.g. oil. This has been known by many people since the 70s and 80s of last century and it still amazes and depresses me how slow the overall rate of change is.

The worry is overblown. Oil is still used all over the place because it's cheaper than the alternative. When it's not, it'll be replaced.

You can straight up synthesize an oil analog from biological sources, and even if you couldn't the oil necessary for non-energy purposes is far far less than that used just to burn.

Solar is what is going to replace fossil fuels mostly, it's already cheaper than coal.

Like it or not, most of the motivation for change will be economic. With the price of energy in the current times of war and inflation, solar is looking quite good.

Industrial chemistry always has alternatives. Ammonia based fertilizers can always be produced with air and water instead of air and natural gas, it's just somewhat more expensive.

There are no viable replacements for fossil fuels for a tremendous number of uses. There is currently no plausible way that, for example, long-distance flights could run entirely off solar.

Your economic analysis of

> Oil is still used all over the place because it's cheaper than the alternative.

has no contradiction with prices skyrocketing. Fossil gasoline might get to $20/ or $50/gallon before it's more expensive than the alternative, and so on for everything else.

"Somewhat more expensive" fertilizer means more expensive food, which means starving people, which is horrible on its own, but which could also create a very dangerous political situation.

Also the risk isn't that we'll run out of fossil fuels, it's that continuing to use fossil fuels would cause so much environmental damage that restricting the supply, as horrible as that would be, would be better than the alternative.

Viable non-fossil replacement for jet fuel: synthetic kerosene made from various biological sources. Approved for 50% blend on commercial aircraft, some older things depend on fossil components but a very fixable problem if it came to it.

https://aviationbenefits.org/environmental-efficiency/climat...

These guys claim an estimate of $3-4 per gallon (pre-tax and pre-distribution) for synthetic gasoline. Not 20 or $50 per gallon. https://carbonengineering.com/air-to-fuels/

> "Somewhat more expensive" fertilizer means more expensive food, which means starving people, which is horrible on its own, but which could also create a very dangerous political situation.

It really is only somewhat more expensive. Because of natural gas nonsense, the price of nitrogen fertilizer tripled ( https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2022/... ) and is still getting used, we're talking about a moderate increase in price to switch from methane hydrogen in the amonia-from-air process to electrolyzed water sourced hydrogen.

Lots of nonsense based fearmongering goes around, the actual solutions are sure to exist and don't involve doomsday, but moderate price increases (and probably once they scale, price reductions)

A problem with biofuel is scaling it up, see: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7498153. According to that article the U.S. would need to devote "an area bigger than Texas and California and Pennsylvania combined" to crops specifically for its own jet biofuel needs. That's just for flying, not for food or fuel for ground transportation or anything else.

Your gasoline link talks about 2050. Gas is averaging $5/gallon in the U.S. Where's this $3-4/gallon gas? And that $5/gallon price is aggressively cheap, Biden couldn't even get a tiny carbon tax through a government his own party controlled. I made up $20 and $50 but what do you think a fair price is if we price in environmental externalities? What would that price be between now and 2050?

By "natural gas nonsense" I assume you mean supply issues related to the war in Ukraine. That disruption is exactly the sort of problem we can expect more of going forward, or do you think it's some kind of one-off aberration? Also from https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/fertilizer-prices-are-at-rec...: "The impact, Barclays suggested, will be 'extremely asymmetrical' with most emerging market economies disproportionately affected by food and fertilizer supply risks."

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