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From DFID Doc Conclusions.
“Conclusions In conclusion, the world’s most important fuels, oil, and gas, have declining EROI values. As oil and gas provide roughly 60- 65 percent of the world’s energy this will likely have enormous economic consequences for many national economies. Coal, although abundant, is very unevenly distributed, has large environmental impacts and has an EROI that depends greatly on the region mined. While EROI analyses generate numerical assessments using quantitative data that include many production factors, they do not include other important data such as climate change, air quality, health benefits, and other environmental qualities that are considered “externalities” to these analyses. These could, with difficulty, be worked into more comprehensive EROIs in the future. Most alternative renewable energy sources appear, at this time, to have a considerably lower EROI values than any of the nonrenewable fossil fuels. But Wind and Photovoltaic energy are touted as having environmental benefits which may be substantial. These benefits may, in fact, have larger initial carbon footprints than originally suggested. Factors such as the oil, natural gas, and coal employed in the creation, transport and implementation of wind turbine and PV panels may not be adequately represented in some cost-benefit analysis nor have the energy costs pertaining to intermittency. On the positive side, the fact that their output is high-quality electricity needs to be considered as well. Perhaps most importantly, resource quality, as measured by high EROI, provided the fuel required for economic growth and activity. Our future prosperity will almost certainly depend on our ability to adjust to lower or negative growth of our principle fuels even while EROI values are likely to decline. This will require a more biophysically-based approach to our understanding of economics. A future of declining energy availability need not be an undesirable future for many reasons including the enormous inefficiency with which we use energy in our economy. This will require engineers, politicians and economists to think very differently about what is important. We believe that very high on this new list needs to be a much greater emphasis on thinking about growth, including both economic and population, climate change, and tools and policies that lead to genuine sustainability. “
EROI of Global Energy Resources Preliminary Status and Trends Jessica Lambert, Charles Hall, Steve Balogh, Alex Poisson, and Ajay Gupta State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
A Comment left on the original COEXIST article.
This article is the basis of a discussion I was invited to by Pippa Bartolotti, former leader of the Green Party of Wales. Pippa is an inspirational person who I admire very much.
In common with the Green Party ( as political Entity) and the Inevitable spin that all Politics retreats into, particularly the Green Party of England and Wales manifesto of 2017, as opposed to the 2015 effort which was head and shoulders above 2017´s risible effort, shows.
Whilst I agree with many of the sentiments in this article I do find it long on rhetoric and very short on Evidence. A tragic event prevented as a self evident truth is not Evidence it is a Faith Based appeal to the faithful, that way lies a lot of pitfalls particularly in items where evidence can with patience be presented.
Jeremy Bentham had this to say on Self-evident truths.
“They are about “to assume,” as they tell us, “among the powers of the earth, that equal and separate ( 120 ) station to which” — they have lately discovered — “the laws of Nature, and of Nature’s God entitle them.” What difference these acute legislators suppose between the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, is more than I can take upon me to determine, or even to guess. If to what they now demand they were entitled by any law of God, they had only to produce that law, and all controversy was at an end. Instead of this, what do they produce? What they call sell-evident truths. “All men,” they tell us, “are created equal.” This rarity is a new discovery; now, for the first time, we learn, that a child, at the moment of his birth, has the same quantity of natural power as the parent, the same quantity of political power as the magistrate”.
https://persistentenlightenment.com/…/details/cihm_20519
To wit, some evidence and debate no less, always bearing in mind that in Settled Seance 97% of Mediums agree that communication with the dead exists.
https://twitter.com/RogerGLewis/status/902786478371196928
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/08/more-on-eroi-letting-greens-know-score.html
That Humans are both God and Satan, we can leave for another day,
“We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. … If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man’s status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived.” Pelagius.