More on EROI, Letting the Greens know the Score. Evidence not rhetoric towards an Energy Based Economics.

This lonely blue planet is the nearest thing we have to paradise. We are hunting through the universe for similar life supporting zones, so far nothing even slightly resembling this blue dot has been found. We are sending out messages in the hope that somewhere, somehow, they will be picked up by other life forms. Maybe they should have been Mayday messages, for knowing, as we do, that this blue paradise is all we have, we cannot bring ourselves to respect it, enhance it, protect it.

As I write, hurricane Harvey is preparing for another onslaught on Houston and the surrounding areas. There has never before been a storm…
COEXISTER.BLOGSPOT.COM

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Marion Billington
Marion Billington Beautiful ideas expressed here! Thank you for sharing this with me!

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Pippa Bartolotti
Pippa Bartolotti Thank you Marion, very much. I am now in a position to start writing again for Coexist, and it would be really good if you could help to get us a few more followers xx

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Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis Hi Pippa, ALien Species would probably look upon us if they found us as something like the Osbournes at home and we are probably already reality TV stars there without even knowing it. WOuld you pop round for a bowl of sugar if you were them, bear in mind to get to us from wherever they come from they would be far in advance of anything we have dreamt of in science fiction let alone achieved.
That Aside there are lots of reasons to be optimistic that consciousness will in time emerge ahead of egotism, and tolerance emerges ahead of prejudice.
The tendency of we humans to see ourselves as rather more significant than we are and to believe we know rather more than we do by filling in the gaps with imaginings justified by arguments to authority is nothing short of Staggering, we do a pretty fancy line in a peculiar sort of stupid and all the while it is difficult not to admire the resourcefulness and beauty of our fellow human beings, the best of humanity is really rather spiffing.
I have spent a good year now delving deeply into the World of Pelagius and the political development of the dogmas of the early Christian Church.
Pelagius and Augustine had quite a dust up. Pelagius said this and I must say I am rather apt to agree with him.

“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 and Augustine had a beef over the notion of free will or determinism, the details turn out to be really quite important, I agree with David Graeber that this question which goes back to Parmenides and Heriletus and lies at the heart of pretty much all the politics and philosophy that flows from then and still divides certainly Western Philosophical Thought, including quite clearly Science and Mathematics.

Anyway long story short. The Ability of our Human Family to thrive rests in the most efficient use of Energy available to apply to our well being this sort of appraisal of how to manage our Energy resources can only be achieved with an objective measure of what is a good use of Energy , profitable in the sense that more comes out from what is put in. The measure which has had some work done of in is Energy Returned on Energy invested EROI, 
Looked at this way one sees that if we wish to take care of our whole human family we need to understand that all our energy resources including the Conventional Oil and Gas and Coal are essential to transferring to a renewable energy World once the Conventional Fossil Fuels run out, The more extreme policies advocated against nuclear and Fossil fuels will guarantee some pretty harsh and fatal conditions for several Billions of our brothers and sisters already here on Earth: 

http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/…/renewabl…

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Pippa Bartolotti
Pippa Bartolotti Heretics are always so seductive. “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” – Pelagius might have something to say about Brexit! I agree your EREI assessment. History might like to define the nature of our current society in terms of energy, though society itself probably thinks it is defined in terms of money. There is no essential reason to link them. And although the fossil fuel is a stepping stone to renewable energy, we are getting better (due to massive investment, subsidies etc) at getting the black stuff to market than than the renewables ( because of lack of investment, political will…). That is the problem. Burning more seems to be folly in view of the warming. I don’t think apportioning blame to humans for the warming is appropriate in this debate, but blame there is if we don’t stop it. We have the power, the technology, the information. The price to pay is likely to be a great deal more than embarrassment.

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Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis Pippa, I think you are missing the point.
Without all our resources including coal, oil and natural gas also Nuclear ( in form of MSWR Thorium) then renewable will not be able to sustain the human family at current levels. EROI is a qualitative objecti
ve measurement of Well being as related to energy resources.
To maintain a level of resources necessary to sustain 9 billions´ in 20 years all sources of energy need to be employed to develop to a level where a portfolio of Hydro, Wind, SOlar, Geo Thermal, and Thorium / Nuclear can take us forward. Notice that I leave out Tar sands and Shale Gas7Fracking, these have a less than cut off point EROI and leaving them in the ground makes perfect sense.
The Warming/Cooling cycles in climate are not something Man can control to any significant extent (safely)or (Practically) what humanity does effect is the ability of Bread to be placed on the table for our kinsfolk, this will not be possible for 9 Billions of people if Optimum use is not made of all resources in a transition period.
The wider question about EROI in society is well set out in this paper.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/…/energy-policy_Lambert_et.al…
“There is evidence too that once payments
for energy rise above a certain threshold at the national level (e.g.
approximately 10 percent in the United States) that economic
recessions follow (Hamilton, 2009; Hall et al., 2009; Murphy et al.,
2011). Despite the best intentions of improving net energy balances
for a developing nation, the large-scale introduction of renewable
energy generation may have too low an EROI and may prove too
expensive to facilitate continued growth in developing economies”.

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Roger Lewis

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Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis energy invested at stages of Oil production

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Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis Depending on how refurbishment, EROI is calculated both solar and wind are impacted by assumptions regarding refurbishment/re purposing at end of useful life and also energy storage capacity installed with generation, the present state of the art debate relates to the Intermittency and grid balancing questions which some argue as a false subsidy to WInd and solar if not acknowledged?
That’s a bit clumsy but the full blog goes into it and points to articles that explain it. 
To Talk about Global Warming and CO2 as an index signifier of something must be done is to trivialize the whole question of energy policy and how totally fundamental energy is to our level of “Civilisation” /Development. 
Much Green energy policy is in fact prejudiced against developing countries and centered really around metropolitan elite concepts of how the world “is “and “ought” to be.
On Heretics, I do not believe in it as a category of thought, it is a political category of censorship. Pelagius made his arguments and Augustine made his, they are both worth reading in my opinion, and as with Parmenides and Heraclitus, I personally fall with Free Will, a church of the gospels and not the political hierarchical church of a vengeful smiting God. It is the church of determinism and authority that has the Smiting stuff Pippa, and of course, the misanthropy which attends to that brand of politics sits well with much of the Green Party´s Rhetoric, I am thinking of this performance of Johnathan Bartley which I must say is pathetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooq_ZCmSIcY

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Roger Lewis

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Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis Hi Pippa I am doing a lot of work on this at the moment, which will take several months more this 2012 document is a very good summary well worth reading 
http://www.roboticscaucus.org/…/DFID_Report1_2012_11_04…

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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.

Author: rogerglewis

https://about.me/rogerlewis Looking for a Job either in Sweden or UK. Freelance, startups, will turń my hand to anything.

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