Kind of makes me think about a video of a geologist showing some strata that had all sorts of fossils in it of a lush environment until all of sudden the strata turned barren. No fossils, just dirt. A fast and quick change happened in the world. The geologist explained about this time a volcanic event happen on the other side of the earth that release about the same amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as being done now. He explained that the amount of CO² released would not seem to be of the amount to needed to cause the extreme heat increase needed for the change seen in the strada. He was thinking that the change in the environment was likely caused by the CO² warming the planet enough to cause events like ocean frozen methane hydrates to off gas and other green house gasses to be released causing a run away green house event. What he was talking about is the idea of a tipping point of no return. Yeah, oil and other fossil fuels are cheap. But at what cost?
For each oil source, how many barrels of oil can be extracted, moved to the refinery, refined and transported to the end user using the energy from a single barrel of oil? If the process becomes so energy hungry that the answer approaches one, then there will be little thermodynamic reason to extract it, though I'm sure someone will still make money from it!
No ads!!! I fucking LOVE YOU!!! I just subscribed, will like every video I watch AND will tell EVERYONE I talk to about your channel. I VERY much appreciate your intellectual responsibility, obvious pursuit of truth and choice to forego ad revenue....True CLASS ACT! You're a refreshing departure from your COMMON Canadian brethren. I will be supporting you EVERY way I can. THANK YOU!!
There is no need for humans to eliminate carbon emissions, but if you personally are concerned about carbon emissions you can stop actively emitting carbon immediately.
There is no need to "eliminate" carbon emissions. Even the IPCC says that. If you read their charts properly The recent hockey stick is not the only time there has been a sharp increase at the same level without a vastly different climate, flora or fauna.
You realize we literally get bombarded by free energy every single day. And we are on top of a boiling cauldron of molten rock heating everything under our feet...
@@celdur4635 Every energy resource is free, it's the cost to convert that raw resource into reliable/dispatchable energy that counts. That's why free wind and sun end up being so expensive.
Wark Mills really helps ground the conversation and keep it real. I really like the part about the efficiency of EV vs ICE vehicles, I've not heard it explained that well before. I've heard the claims that ICE vehicles are more efficient but never explained properly.
@@chapter4travels I guess you're among those scientifically illiterate I mentioned earlier then. I did actually watch the whole video despite the cringe. Just because the unrelated facts stated are physics, doesn't make the argument any more compelling, if you try to merge them into some kind of pseudo relation. I'm sure Mills' financial involvement in fossil fuels and nuclear has nothing to do with his misleading the public about the viability of renewables, though.
Btw, if you specifically refer to the 'efficiency' of the combustion engine he mentioned though: Sure, if you compare the energy storage, his 80 pounds tank with a 50% efficiency engine (wherever he sees THOSE ICEs in real life) beats the 500 pounds battery. And then you realize that the ICE involved is probably heavier than the electric motors in the BEV. But then you realize that there's more than an additional ton of car attached to the whole thing, so those 90% (real) vs. 50% (theoretical?) make a lot more sense now. And when I'm listing a few 'then's here, let's be realistic, the whole thought process takes about a second and then you realise the guy is basically a fraud.
An excellent interview once again thank you, but more than that: I am so impressed by, not only the quality of your guests and their depth of knowledge and understanding, but by the path that you're leading the narrative as a continuum with not-so-diverse inputs. Awaiting your next, cheers.
45:34 It's not just about the capital costs. When you keep the fossil fuel system on standby for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, you also have operating costs, including personnel (the workers have to be there in the gas-fired plant for when it's needed), maintenance, taxes etc. All you save is some percentage of the fuel costs; all the other costs remain.
All of those costs are ignored when you see the advertised cost of intermittent energy sources. Only nuclear actually replaces fossil fuel electricity generation and only "advanced" high-temperature nukes can replace industrial process heat from fossil fuels.
One can look at the energy from a corporate view or a personal view. If one organizes themselves while noticing a disorganized environment, one can make significant improvements in personal financial and organizational overhead. Being your own customer, providing your own job, being your own general manager, providing your own repairs. Money is a necessity and is stored energy. Frugality was popular in the great depression.
I find the ideas and logic of mark Mills to be contradictory. He recognises laws of thermodynamics but claims there's infinite energy on earth. Sure all matter contains energy but definitely not infinite plus without the furnace of the sun unable to convert into radiant thermal energy. Accessing or converting what energy sources are available is the real issue ie. Energy to do useful work. Tom Murphy explores how infinite growth and thus infinite energy use would boil the oceans in a few centuries. Mark Mills at least recognises he holds cornucopian views which really reflects belief in human exceptionalism. I wonder how much he understands about ecology and the interconnectedness of earth system sciences. He acknowledges the concept of limits to growth but dismisses it by some of the concepts he advocates. A fascinating and perplexing guy. Very smart but also appears delusional and ignorant of the underlying energy inputs and nature services propping up our global system. The inherent assumption being it is sustainable ie it will continue indefinitely
There are two issues, total energy and usable energy. Usable energy is one that costs less than about 5% of the usable energy to produce. By the time the energy cost of the usable energy is 10% it is close to unafordable.
Wow mark mills, that was great. I felt like this was the non-anon Doomberg. For people that mistrust the anon identity, send them to Mark P Mills I think? Agreed on a surprising amount of points. Ah, that's decouple for you!
Protection of the national electrical grid must have absolute priority. 100years to build and massive national wealth. The grid will work backwards to gather electrical energy and transmit to heavy industrial customers.
It is endless which is not bottomless... there is a finite supply of work, shared within the geoecosphere, driven by the sunlight. Some of it fossilized hydrocarbons/sunlight.
Yeah this framing seems really dumb (or calculated for provocation). Did this guy really just tell me that technically everything is energy... that's an eye-roller in the context of debates about limits to growth, like worse than a joke.
Production of crude oil and condensates peaked in November 2018. Maybe it's risen again but conventional oil peaked around 2005, with fracking saving the day. What saves the day if total crude production can't be increased?
That's generally what prices were for. In 2006 when I graduated Highschool the price of Oil was over $100 a barrel. That high price meant it was worthwhile to look for new sources of energy, including Oil and Natural gas. That was the beginning of the large adoption of Solar. Many people bought a Prius and the Tesla came along. High prices mean investments in alternatives become worthwhile.
On Oct 2, 2024 Decouple Podcast interviewed Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science and technology, who unravels the myth of energy transitions, revealing the symbiotic relationships between coal, wood, and oil that have shaped our world in unexpected ways revealing there are indeed geophysical limits to human extraction of energy i.e. Mark P. Mills is deluded.
There is a nice channel here, “Thies the Atomic Jedi“. A lot of common topics, but he makes “classic” videos where drawings and graphs fit in easier. And many thanks for your thorough decoupling, too, of course!
It seems to me that the growth that comes from efficiency gains always leads to higher order problems in the future, and the highest order problems must ultimately impose a loss of efficiency on the system. We can continue to improve our technology, but if we need to expend increasing energy rebuilding and repairing the damage to our systems, then cornucopism runs out of road eventually.
@@TheMildperil Those are attributable to use of any machine, not to the efficiency of a machine. Better efficiency reduces all of those impacts. You are arguing the better efficiency effect in reverse. Lets rais the efficiency. What happens? Pollution becomes less and less. If they achieve 100% efficiency, both polution and your argument totally disappear.
@@bipl8989 This is the classic mistake of the mainstream environmental movement (and why humanity has totally failed to curb its emissions). Efficiency is the engine of growth, but growth always comes with greater resource use and pollution. Efficiency increases will only ever reduce environmental impacts if resource inputs are restricted first, then efficiency increases help adapt to a new lower level of consumption. Without those restrictions, higher efficiency increases the level of surplus, and a surplus can only ever be used for growth or wasted. I recommend the work of Tim Garrett on Jevon's Paradox - th-cam.com/video/SM8pQmA7wos/w-d-xo.html
They will still be running when the likes of you have fallen along the wayside. Unless you support the kind of autocratic fascism of a World Government..
*The issue has **_never_** been about the existence of energy* . The issue is whether we can get _useful work_ done within our limitations. So making claims about an unlimited amount of energy available is misleading. For us, our societies, the problems lay in economics and politics, not just physics.
Mark isn't saying that though. He speaks extensively about the energy efficiency of processes and conversions and what that means. And he talks about the importance of hydrocarbons in the energy mix. But what he's saying fundamentally (at least as I read it) is that humans are gonna human - and you can see that in a positive light or a negative light.
Limitations? First... Define useful work, child. Warmth in the bitter cold winter that would kill you is very useful. Pump water from an aquafere in the harsh desert is also useful. Losers complain about limitations. Winners go home and f*@? the prom queen.
Jet engines are being used to generate grid energy and the thermal heat exhaust is recycled for still more. Also, that these jet engines can run on LNG and are efficient being operated at idle power. Makes sense as the turbines turn and magnetos convert that motion to electricity. Also, recent news has tethered kites generating electricity as a more efficient method over windmills. Interesting discussion on the quality, time, price mini-max considerations that engineers and others daily endeavor. Conclusion? The politicos are not engineers, though economists are, sort of.
❤Yes & No! We can't run out of energy! When we are out of able things to help us! We are disable! Then the Government donut care! We are in deep SH!T.❤ /Mikael PS. Fossilfuel can't work in long run but to do something to make it work are coruppt system put away! And only 5 degrees over normal temperatur in Mexico Golf can't work in long run for USA!❤ DS.
I need to think about Marks point..... way deeply as am tempted to dismiss his point as simple trolling stawmen, but am withholding conclusion till ive fully read his material - as am hopefully wrong. Thanks for having diverse & counter opinions on you channel, to conventional wisdom & counter to unconventional wisdom too. Isaac Arthur has similar well rationaled techno optimist views. I'll ask Steve Keen about this approach, as his too seems to be rigorous realisim about laws of thermo dynamics on economics & useing ecological tropic levels etc as inspiration for applying data driven systems dynamics to economics not the culturally institutionalised ideolgies governing policy for 30yrs - 200yrs
Hi Chris. An excellent podcast, thumbs up for your work. For your guest, well... After due considerations I have come to believe that he is not all he pretends to be. When you introduce yourself as the pope of right physics you should be able to apply what you preach. However, his central example, tank to mechanic power in a combustion engine Vs photons to electric power in solar panels is a complete failure. This is a real apple and peer comparison, to start with, and he makes a huge boundary mistake. After laughing all this time with other - what did he call them? - idiots, you must make sure you show the good example. Well, FAILED! If you compare solar to combustion engines starting with photons, you have to start with photons in the 2 cases. Contrary to the photon for the solar panel, the refined fuel in the gas tank IS NOT the base or external energy source, in the case of oil it is also the solar photon. Then plants grow, decay, nature starts a high pressure/high temperature refining process, and after a couple of million years you get your oil. Go fIgure out the efficiency of that process! Behind the facade of know-it-all true scientist there simply is hiding a techno-optimist. And that is fine. Me too I love oil, I have 1 (hybrid) ICE car and 2 ICE motorbikes in my garage! I'm just wondering how long I can continue enjoying them, and I'm not trying to ridicule other people that have very good arguments why the party might be over soon. It is unfortunate, because there is a lot of truth in what he tells otherwise. Current green policies have been mostly a waste of money. But that is a problem of subsidies and correct management of public finances, not of thermodynamics and new energy production processes. Keep up your work, it's good to have diverse voices!
The efficiency discussion is purely to point out the folly of obsessing about efficiency, nothing more. The lack of fuel for your vehicles (and mine!) will be a political decision, one which we have some control over.
What about the costs of crop failure because of depletion of nutrients in the soil? What about the costs of increased natural disasters as we approach 2 degrees of global warming? Or species loss because of human agriculture?
Loss of IQ in white majority countries due to influx of low iq third world illegal migration - is something that seriously needs to be considered. Secondly, a low nutrient diet comprised of mainly seed oils and sugar, also lowers iq. What does the world look like in 100 years time if we continue down our current path of flooding white nations with browns, blacks and processed foods. That’s the biggest threat to the globe. If IQ’s lower too far, who will manage and understand how to avoid devastation from nuclear and chemical waste management?
I'm 42 minutes into this video and have yet to see or hear any evidence or data that disproves peak oil. Other than his smug laugh when he said they're just wrong. Oh, and we should buy his books. I guess all the data is in there. People who work for the oil industry are so cocky it's sickening. I've known lots of them in southern Louisiana.
The optimism of technology lacks the factor that extracting the energy gets more expensive every new discovery. Shale and Oil sands is much more expensive then the middle east oil fields and the fact we wash all this energy together is to hide that and spread the cost to the world when presenting the data. If Canada just used the oil sands for our fuel prices would triple. EROEI was a 100:1 a 100 years ago now it is 20:1 with the combining of fossil fuels together. On this podcast I think it was mentioned by someone who works on the Oil sands that the EROEI was 5:1. We have offshore wind helping extract oil today. Oil shale is not created equal and it may not be profitable or politically feasible to extract world wide. Factor the time it takes for new technology to spread as well. The new tech needs to exist today if it is going to stave off the crunch which is why people cling to solar, wind and nuclear.
Be wary when you hear an "expert" on thermodynamics who never once mentions entropy in an hour long video (search the transcript). Mark P. Mills' banal and toxic "bottomless well" theory disregards entropy, a fundamental limit on energy transformations that makes increased efficiency harder to sustain over time. It also overlooks the impacts of carbon production, ignoring the obvious and proven environmental costs tied to fossil fuel reliance. Relying heavily on technological optimism, Mills assumes that innovation will continually overcome these physical constraints without accounting for rising extraction costs and externalized environmental damage. He's basically the Milton Friedman of energy studies -- arrogantly and dangerously wrong.
12:35 “just as wrong,” how? He is right about efficiency. About the light weighting of vehicles. Blanket statement about a person is usually erroneous.
@@richardscathouseI'd buy a BYD in a moment if two things were true. 1) I could pay cash... 2) Gavin Newsom ( or the federal DOT) would allow them to be sold where I live.
So .. there's no limits to same old .. same old, drill baby drill .. hello +5 degrees. For a thermal dynamics guy he doesn't say anything about the thermal dynamics limits of the earth and human survival in a warming world. He seems to have a lot of blind spots
If we burned all the fossil fuel reserves we think might be there, we couldnt generate 5° warming. Do you know how warm the world was when Stonehenge was built? Check it out.
At the risk of being perceived of one particular faction, which I'm not... Isn't it ironic that the people that promote a much more active lifestyle - use your bicycle instead of your car - are labelled "Lethargists"? Does this tell us something about Mr. Mills' opinion or about that group he labels as such? This issue is about our life, not about economy. In principle economy is there to serve our improvement of life. Therefor factions should be labelled according to the lifestyle they promote, not what impact such or such lifestyle has on the economy. In principle we decide what we want to do with our life, and economics should adapt to it. Maybe we have the apprentice wizard problem, economic and industrial tools that we called upon for our purpose, but that spun out of control.
@@zacharyb2723 I'm not likely to see him soon, as TH-cam algorithms reinforce our bubbles. That's why Chris Decouple podcasts are good, he goes wide, and I honour him for that. We need opposition in thoughts discussed in an open way, that's important for proper decision making. I am partial, so I wouldn't be able to remain calm. That being said, Mr Mills has a point about the cost issue, so I do not totally discount him. The policies we adopt must be affordable, otherwise we're going nowhere. And that is a problem with current attempts at the issue of climate change and resources use. Our society and western politics are guided by economic principles, therefor the lever or key to be successful in alternative policies is a new economic theory that includes energy and material resources, just as capital and labour are included now. I bet my money on Steve Keen. Have a nice weekend, thanks for your reaction.
I think you have it backwards. The economy leads to our improved life, not react to it. Human existence was largely static for millennia until we moved the needle. We didn’t grow economically because we suddenly realised life could be better or some politician had a good idea. And economic growth is central to the human condition, not incidental.
Sunlight, wind, water, for as long as the Sun shines. Maybe geothermal and tidal. But that absolutely will not allow our level of energy use with cars, planes, and a global food chain. We're going back to horses and local existence in the long term.
@@8BitNaptime I agree ; once we will have extracted all the ressources, we will go back to a very low energetically way of life. The fear we can have is that the path toward this new way of living on Earth could be a dangerous travel !
Bro acknowledges Jevon's paradox, but DOESN'T want to regulate energy use, the only obvious solution to Jevon's Paradox. kind of a paradox. (funny is he's absolutely right that the 'energy transition' is unrealistic - but he's not very creative about where to go from that observation.)
What is the progress going in the negative direction of efficiency - SUV? Making less damage to humans? Stay longer alive? Requiring medicine because of body do like to be moved by SUVs. What is the social value of an SUV. By the way bicycle is far better in any metric which he refer. And there are countries like the netherland which doing better. He is picking examples where his story works. Sell books. I do not buy into this.
Comparing solar cell efficiency to combustion engine efficiency must be the worst dick move I've ever heard of. To the scientific literate it doesn't make any sense at all, but for the illiterate majority it probably sounds quite convincing.
This type of guest is by far my least favourite on decouple. They have their own tropes of talking about how amazing fossil fuels are while never acknowledging the ongoing reality of worsening climate change. The fossil fuel industry and their political allies love to trot these guys out and claim that physics dictates they continue to make their billions and not acknowledge the implicit politics of their studies. The world burns as these guys distract us into quarrelling over energy conversion rates.
@@kenvrinten3450 Doomers absolutely love a climate "CRISIS" and the last thing they are interested in is math, thermodynamics, engineering, and economic reasoning. They are also not interested in a "solution" that allows for growth and prosperity. This is why wind and solar are so popular.
The simple fact that you aren't standing in a pool of oil right now is definitive proof that oil has an endpoint, and if a resource has an endpoint, then by reasoning, it must have a midpoint, not to mention what is economically unrecoverable.
Are you funded by the Manhattan Institute? You seem to have a thing for people that are in that circle. The Manhattan Institute has long been active in obfuscation over climate change and also in promoting fossil fuels.
The Manhattan Institute also funds dissident voices. Many Climate Change scientists are funded by people who benefit from the replacement of current infrastructure by New technologies. Everyone has a bias. This is one of the few podcasts that doesn't begin with the dogmatic "Climate Change is causing massive destruction unless we take drastic change." I don't believe anyone who says spend tons of money or else everyone will die. The "Climate Emergency" is basically for Leftists what the War on Terror is for Neocons, justification for overreacting and taking money from the government coffers.
The point that matters is , where is your criticism of the actual points raised where this author is incorrect ? Perhaps they are talking down the green revolution because they don't agree with the direction based on engineering facts
Couldn't you say that the myriad of activist climate change organizations have been active in overplaying the effects of climate change in a mirror image of the Manhattan Institute?
There are a number of facts that few understand. From 1980 in no year has a greater volume of oil been discovered than extracted. The rate of volume of discoveries has declined since 1980 and now about 10% of yearly consumption. Coal and natural gas are close behind. Energy has limits to its cost. Energy is valued for the work it will do. Due to the infrastructure and machinery necessary to put energy to work energy cannot exceed about 10% of the value of the work it will do. In short before the end of this century there will not be enough energy to feed more than a few million people.
@@richardscathouse This is all variable data and just extrapolation the trends. New data and technologies may change those trends but they are not here yet. To think it is coolaid displays a clasic Dunning Kruger effect.
@@chapter4travels As fossil fuels are depleted and the cost increases the cost of commodities goes up even faster than cost of fossil fuels, mining the commodities, transport, refining the commodities and transport again, so nuclear heavily dependent on commodities (metals, concrete etc) will increase in cost faster then the cost of fossil fuels. The only solution is depopulation which will happen in a managed humane way or by the forces of nature before the end of this century.
Little too pessimistic Solar is already cheap Batteries are almost there Which is why the world is going to install ~600GW of solar @ 15% CF = ~800TWh of electricity So in one year, the world is installing the equivalent of 70 years of US nuclear If batteries break the $100/KWh (fully installed and good for 10,000 cycles) barrier, we will have solar + battery in sunny locations become very economic Probably not cheaper than coal and gas because coal and gas will have to sell at lower and lower prices to stay in the game but perfectly cheap enough to take more and more market share Also while fossil fuels are great and useful many nations dont have any so importing them is more costly and more of a security risk than deploying long life solar wind nuclear batteries
The ratio of fossil fuels to other energy has not changed essentially in 50 years essentially 80% fossil and 20% "green" but even if it does change it does not matter if we maintain our current consumption of said fuels. Our population means we burn more wood today then was burned in the 1800s, burn more coal then when it was the main source in the early 1900s. When oil underwrites the whole system we can not cost what a solar civilization can actually do when it tries to power industry off said energy. China may give us an idea because they actually have a lot of solar and industry so they could start to experiment. We have wind turbines hooked up to oil rigs in Europe today to extract oil more efficiently because we have a 100 years of equipment and industry constructed to run off of it.
I am an aerospace engineer. This man is just a propagandist for the energy sector. Do not listen to him. His conclusions about fossil fuel availability is flawed. His conclusion about innovation is over optimistic and arrogantly blind. He blathers about thermodynamics, heat transfer and physics to give his theories street credibility, but it is just word salad spin to make him sound intelligent. This was a waste of my time. I am more stupid as a result of listening to him.
Orbital solar would go a long way towards unlimited energy; Tesla patients exist that don't require laser or microwave transmission orbit to ground. 😂 The sky is raining soup, and you show up with a teacup. Thank God for the Chinese! The only ones working on Orbital solar collection,
If oil is abundant why are governments hell bent on lowering its consumption?. Why all aiming for dates of 2030/50?. A window of time when peak oil should be in full bloom for all to see. Climate change is the official explanation, but I suspect the other much more profound explanation is a world of steadily falling oil production. We already have new buzzwords like peak demand, well thats what we're going to see, peak demand falling every year till theres no demand at all.
Because we are in the grips of a millenniarian, apocalyptic religious fervor. Once voters begin feeling the full effects of anti-energy policies, this fervor will end. With nuclear energy probably being the peg on which politicians hang their hats.
Because that's an extremely expensive way to make reliable, dispatchable grid-level electricity. Solar is completely dependent on the time of day, the weather, location, season, massive amounts of raw materials and land. Land for the solar farms and the thousands of miles of transmission corridors.
@chapter4travels crap. Rooftop PV is dirt cheap, and no new grid is needed. BV batteries are evolving massively fast, nuclear is a dead economic duck when the sunshines.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 What% of world population owns their own house, 2%? Of that 2%, how many can afford a solar system that can meet all to their own needs, 10%. Then of those how many can afford a system that has excess for the grid, 5%. Can you see where this is going?
@chapter4travels Yes, good point, but the ones I'm talking about are the most polluting and the most capable of changing. New technology is getting cheaper, so hopefully, this will help.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 In their 2024 report Lazard assigns an LCOE to rooftop solar between 122 and 284 USD/MWh; it's literally one of the most expensive forms of electricity production there is, and if you don't see it reflected in your bills it's because someone else is paying for your externalities. Specifically, those ratepayers who can't afford a single family home.
Most vehicles drive 10,000 miles per year. Most years are less than 10,000 hrs One hour drive everyday 23hrs parked everyday day. BVs oversized battery topped up everyday, ezi pezi. Half ideas on top of half ideas is not exciting. Millions and millions and millions of sunshine powered vehicles or huge CO2 emissions from ICE vehicles.
@richardscathouse same here. That was when it was obvious that my street of 30 homes had at least 60 vehicles, and many used public transport to work. Nuclear promoters talk about UTILIZATION of resources. With V2G and V2Home, then expensive grid electricity will be ancient history. UTILIZATION of private electricity home infrastructure will be a top priority.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 When we had only coal, hydro, and nuclear, electricity was cheap. It's Variable renewables that have destroyed electricity markets and caused costs to explode.
@gregorymalchuk272 that is the bs vested interests talk about. As customers stop paying the grid supply electricity kWh price increases. This is baby easy economics. The old is scared sh...tless. 😱 😨 😐 😔 😕 😢
23 minutes in and he has yet to say anything concrete. He has made audacious claims, made reference to contrasting philosophical positions and tittered condescendingly at those who disagree with him but so far no explanation of how reality manifestly expresses even a single example of this functionally limitless energy paradigm he refers to. I wait with bated breath.
Regarding Amory Lovins being wrong. Actually, he is right and you are wrong. You dress up what you said twenty years ago with fancy words, but the issue is still learning to live within limits.
@@VarieTea729 So, you have been reading Robert Bryce. True some of Levin's prediction's have turned out wrong. Over fifty years that is to be expected. Many of his predictions have developed far beyond his estimates. As Mr. Mills is a minerals man a lot of his predictions are also wrong. There are shortages because the technologies are successful. Short term or long term, hydrocarbons will eventually become commercially unavailable. The soft energy path will prevail.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Interesting choices for comparison. Yes, Amory Lovins has concerns about nuclear and I would say that he advocates for other options. I would also say that he would prefer the use of renewable energy sources.
20:24 my peak oil, solar panels, batteries, and an electric car. My oil use not only peaked, it went to almost zero. Amazing how much more efficient 8 minute old energy is compared to millions of year old energy. 😂 I’m 20 minutes into this thing and still waiting for him to say something of substance.
You use oil every single day, that hat on your head is not possible without oil, and your breakfast is the same way. Oil is embedded into every single aspect of your live and will be till you die and beyond.
@benchapple1583 Rooftop PV is dirt cheap, and no new grid is needed. BV batteries are evolving massively fast, nuclear is a dead economic duck when the sunshines.
Kind of makes me think about a video of a geologist showing some strata that had all sorts of fossils in it of a lush environment until all of sudden the strata turned barren. No fossils, just dirt. A fast and quick change happened in the world. The geologist explained about this time a volcanic event happen on the other side of the earth that release about the same amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as being done now. He explained that the amount of CO² released would not seem to be of the amount to needed to cause the extreme heat increase needed for the change seen in the strada. He was thinking that the change in the environment was likely caused by the CO² warming the planet enough to cause events like ocean frozen methane hydrates to off gas and other green house gasses to be released causing a run away green house event. What he was talking about is the idea of a tipping point of no return. Yeah, oil and other fossil fuels are cheap. But at what cost?
Yep presumably you mean the PETM 56 million years ago
For each oil source, how many barrels of oil can be extracted, moved to the refinery, refined and transported to the end user using the energy from a single barrel of oil? If the process becomes so energy hungry that the answer approaches one, then there will be little thermodynamic reason to extract it, though I'm sure someone will still make money from it!
I gave up after 12 minutes with no information provided, wasted 12 minutes. It''s fine, I'm retired and eating my big dinner.
No ads!!! I fucking LOVE YOU!!! I just subscribed, will like every video I watch AND will tell EVERYONE I talk to about your channel.
I VERY much appreciate your intellectual responsibility, obvious pursuit of truth and choice to forego ad revenue....True CLASS ACT! You're a refreshing departure from your COMMON Canadian brethren. I will be supporting you EVERY way I can. THANK YOU!!
I'm 47mins in... When are they going to talk about the need to eliminate carbon emissions? 💚
There is no need for humans to eliminate carbon emissions, but if you personally are concerned about carbon emissions you can stop actively emitting carbon immediately.
There is no need to "eliminate" carbon emissions. Even the IPCC says that. If you read their charts properly
The recent hockey stick is not the only time there has been a sharp increase at the same level without a vastly different climate, flora or fauna.
Indeed. We have unlimited energy. We are limited only by our imagination... And physics.
Don't forget about reality.
And with unlimited energy, there is very little that can't be recycled.
You realize we literally get bombarded by free energy every single day. And we are on top of a boiling cauldron of molten rock heating everything under our feet...
@@celdur4635 Every energy resource is free, it's the cost to convert that raw resource into reliable/dispatchable energy that counts. That's why free wind and sun end up being so expensive.
@@chapter4travels They are not expensive, solar panels are a commodity.
Wark Mills really helps ground the conversation and keep it real. I really like the part about the efficiency of EV vs ICE vehicles, I've not heard it explained that well before. I've heard the claims that ICE vehicles are more efficient but never explained properly.
That's probably because it's complete BS.
@@sascharambeaud1609 You might want to watch or rewatch the video. It's physics, not opinion.
@@chapter4travels I guess you're among those scientifically illiterate I mentioned earlier then. I did actually watch the whole video despite the cringe.
Just because the unrelated facts stated are physics, doesn't make the argument any more compelling, if you try to merge them into some kind of pseudo relation.
I'm sure Mills' financial involvement in fossil fuels and nuclear has nothing to do with his misleading the public about the viability of renewables, though.
Btw, if you specifically refer to the 'efficiency' of the combustion engine he mentioned though: Sure, if you compare the energy storage, his 80 pounds tank with a 50% efficiency engine (wherever he sees THOSE ICEs in real life) beats the 500 pounds battery. And then you realize that the ICE involved is probably heavier than the electric motors in the BEV. But then you realize that there's more than an additional ton of car attached to the whole thing, so those 90% (real) vs. 50% (theoretical?) make a lot more sense now.
And when I'm listing a few 'then's here, let's be realistic, the whole thought process takes about a second and then you realise the guy is basically a fraud.
@@sascharambeaud1609 Again, you should watch the video again, but this time listen more carefully.
An excellent interview once again thank you, but more than that:
I am so impressed by, not only the quality of your guests and their depth of knowledge and understanding, but by the path that you're leading the narrative as a continuum with not-so-diverse inputs. Awaiting your next, cheers.
We love you Chris, and the great work you do
45:34 It's not just about the capital costs. When you keep the fossil fuel system on standby for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, you also have operating costs, including personnel (the workers have to be there in the gas-fired plant for when it's needed), maintenance, taxes etc. All you save is some percentage of the fuel costs; all the other costs remain.
All of those costs are ignored when you see the advertised cost of intermittent energy sources. Only nuclear actually replaces fossil fuel electricity generation and only "advanced" high-temperature nukes can replace industrial process heat from fossil fuels.
One can look at the energy from a corporate view or a personal view. If one organizes themselves while noticing a disorganized environment, one can make significant improvements in personal financial and organizational overhead. Being your own customer, providing your own job, being your own general manager, providing your own repairs. Money is a necessity and is stored energy. Frugality was popular in the great depression.
Theories that fly in the face of the laws of physics have always had a certain appeal for certain people.
I find the ideas and logic of mark Mills to be contradictory. He recognises laws of thermodynamics but claims there's infinite energy on earth. Sure all matter contains energy but definitely not infinite plus without the furnace of the sun unable to convert into radiant thermal energy. Accessing or converting what energy sources are available is the real issue ie. Energy to do useful work. Tom Murphy explores how infinite growth and thus infinite energy use would boil the oceans in a few centuries. Mark Mills at least recognises he holds cornucopian views which really reflects belief in human exceptionalism. I wonder how much he understands about ecology and the interconnectedness of earth system sciences. He acknowledges the concept of limits to growth but dismisses it by some of the concepts he advocates. A fascinating and perplexing guy. Very smart but also appears delusional and ignorant of the underlying energy inputs and nature services propping up our global system. The inherent assumption being it is sustainable ie it will continue indefinitely
Mills doesn’t claim there’s infinite energy on earth. He claims there’s infinite energy ‘for all practical purposes’.
The sun will burn up before we run out of uranium and thorium.
I could listen to Mark 24 hours a day. Wow 👏👏👏
A lot of commenters partually or completely misconstrue Mark's words, fill in their own desired outcome because of their ignorance.
Bingo!
The whole EU do like UK! Dress for cool life in our homes!
There are two issues, total energy and usable energy. Usable energy is one that costs less than about 5% of the usable energy to produce. By the time the energy cost of the usable energy is 10% it is close to unafordable.
Wow mark mills, that was great. I felt like this was the non-anon Doomberg.
For people that mistrust the anon identity, send them to Mark P Mills I think?
Agreed on a surprising amount of points. Ah, that's decouple for you!
Protection of the national electrical grid must have absolute priority.
100years to build and massive national wealth.
The grid will work backwards to gather electrical energy and transmit to heavy industrial customers.
I guess return on energy invested (ROEI) hasn’t been in the literature for the past 50 years?
It is endless which is not bottomless... there is a finite supply of work, shared within the geoecosphere, driven by the sunlight. Some of it fossilized hydrocarbons/sunlight.
Yeah this framing seems really dumb (or calculated for provocation). Did this guy really just tell me that technically everything is energy... that's an eye-roller in the context of debates about limits to growth, like worse than a joke.
@@_in_the_third_grade2101the “limits to growth” ideas are a joke and demonstrably 100% wrong!!
Had to order the book. Beautiful, and so sorry for the loss of your fellow luminary.
Chris, thank you for bringing one of my heroes to your program.
Production of crude oil and condensates peaked in November 2018. Maybe it's risen again but conventional oil peaked around 2005, with fracking saving the day. What saves the day if total crude production can't be increased?
That's generally what prices were for.
In 2006 when I graduated Highschool the price of Oil was over $100 a barrel. That high price meant it was worthwhile to look for new sources of energy, including Oil and Natural gas. That was the beginning of the large adoption of Solar. Many people bought a Prius and the Tesla came along.
High prices mean investments in alternatives become worthwhile.
@@philipvecchio3292and solar and electric cars are coming down in price yearly
Still rising. 2024 = 13 MM BBLS/DAY 2019= 11.7 MM BBLS/DAY
@@bipl8989 I was referring to global production as this is a global issue.
@@philipvecchio3292 Yes, but the alternatives all need crude oil.
On Oct 2, 2024 Decouple Podcast interviewed Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science and technology, who unravels the myth of energy transitions, revealing the symbiotic relationships between coal, wood, and oil that have shaped our world in unexpected ways revealing there are indeed geophysical limits to human extraction of energy i.e. Mark P. Mills is deluded.
There is a nice channel here, “Thies the Atomic Jedi“. A lot of common topics, but he makes “classic” videos where drawings and graphs fit in easier.
And many thanks for your thorough decoupling, too, of course!
Who pays his salary?.. . What is the real goal of the discussion, to argue that, spending energy is good?.... because "..it's not waste".
It seems to me that the growth that comes from efficiency gains always leads to higher order problems in the future, and the highest order problems must ultimately impose a loss of efficiency on the system. We can continue to improve our technology, but if we need to expend increasing energy rebuilding and repairing the damage to our systems, then cornucopism runs out of road eventually.
Interesting. Can you give us an example of a higher order problem that resulted from higher efficiency?
@@bipl8989All of the problems associated with ecological overshoot - Pollution, resource depletion, climate change, damage to natural systems...
@@TheMildperil Those are attributable to use of any machine, not to the efficiency of a machine. Better efficiency reduces all of those impacts. You are arguing the better efficiency effect in reverse. Lets rais the efficiency. What happens? Pollution becomes less and less. If they achieve 100% efficiency, both polution and your argument totally disappear.
@@bipl8989 This is the classic mistake of the mainstream environmental movement (and why humanity has totally failed to curb its emissions). Efficiency is the engine of growth, but growth always comes with greater resource use and pollution. Efficiency increases will only ever reduce environmental impacts if resource inputs are restricted first, then efficiency increases help adapt to a new lower level of consumption. Without those restrictions, higher efficiency increases the level of surplus, and a surplus can only ever be used for growth or wasted. I recommend the work of Tim Garrett on Jevon's Paradox - th-cam.com/video/SM8pQmA7wos/w-d-xo.html
They will still be running when the likes of you have fallen along the wayside. Unless you support the kind of autocratic fascism of a World Government..
That was fun thanks 😊
*The issue has **_never_** been about the existence of energy* . The issue is whether we can get _useful work_ done within our limitations. So making claims about an unlimited amount of energy available is misleading. For us, our societies, the problems lay in economics and politics, not just physics.
Mark isn't saying that though. He speaks extensively about the energy efficiency of processes and conversions and what that means. And he talks about the importance of hydrocarbons in the energy mix. But what he's saying fundamentally (at least as I read it) is that humans are gonna human - and you can see that in a positive light or a negative light.
Basically do the resources and energy available in production level equal the requirements of human inputs .without a spike in cost.
@@das250250Well, I guess we’re going to find out, and if not, then it won’t be pretty.
The arguments were about actual physical limits not social organization. Of course those are somewhat linked butnot according to the erhlics.
Limitations? First... Define useful work, child. Warmth in the bitter cold winter that would kill you is very useful. Pump water from an aquafere in the harsh desert is also useful.
Losers complain about limitations. Winners go home and f*@? the prom queen.
Jet engines are being used to generate grid energy and the thermal heat exhaust is recycled for still more. Also, that these jet engines can run on LNG and are efficient being operated at idle power. Makes sense as the turbines turn and magnetos convert that motion to electricity. Also, recent news has tethered kites generating electricity as a more efficient method over windmills. Interesting discussion on the quality, time, price mini-max considerations that engineers and others daily endeavor. Conclusion? The politicos are not engineers, though economists are, sort of.
Some can live on less, at sixty in Sacramento, CA. 😢
"Give me HVAC or give me 💀
36:50 factual argument, one example smog.
Wow! Another guy who believes in cradle to grave accounting! This guy is a truly no BS guy. Politicians and “renewable” salesman must hate him!
4:53 Peak conventional oil, which worked out to be true. Then shale oil happened along with tar sand oil.
And we have not yet managed to get back to our level of crude oil production we had in 2019...
Wake up.
2024= 13 MM BBL/DAY 2019= 11.7 MM BBL/DAY.
Natural Gas is setting new records almost every day.
yeah, tar and shale are really bad, low yield sources. we have issues.
@@bluegreenbugs This is an error. USA production in 2019 was 11.7 MBBLS/Day
Now it is 13 MBBLS/Day. Gas has hit much higher records.
@@bipl8989 they changed the measurement criteria
Wiwowow. So fascinating ❤
Is oil actually a fossil fuel?
It's possibly abiotic. But no one is certain of that.
❤Yes & No! We can't run out of energy! When we are out of able things to help us! We are disable! Then the Government donut care! We are in deep SH!T.❤ /Mikael PS. Fossilfuel can't work in long run but to do something to make it work are coruppt system put away! And only 5 degrees over normal temperatur in Mexico Golf can't work in long run for USA!❤ DS.
I need to think about Marks point..... way deeply as am tempted to dismiss his point as simple trolling stawmen, but am withholding conclusion till ive fully read his material - as am hopefully wrong. Thanks for having diverse & counter opinions on you channel, to conventional wisdom & counter to unconventional wisdom too. Isaac Arthur has similar well rationaled techno optimist views.
I'll ask Steve Keen about this approach, as his too seems to be rigorous realisim about laws of thermo dynamics on economics & useing ecological tropic levels etc as inspiration for applying data driven systems dynamics to economics not the culturally institutionalised ideolgies governing policy for 30yrs - 200yrs
Hi Chris. An excellent podcast, thumbs up for your work.
For your guest, well... After due considerations I have come to believe that he is not all he pretends to be. When you introduce yourself as the pope of right physics you should be able to apply what you preach. However, his central example, tank to mechanic power in a combustion engine Vs photons to electric power in solar panels is a complete failure. This is a real apple and peer comparison, to start with, and he makes a huge boundary mistake. After laughing all this time with other - what did he call them? - idiots, you must make sure you show the good example. Well, FAILED!
If you compare solar to combustion engines starting with photons, you have to start with photons in the 2 cases. Contrary to the photon for the solar panel, the refined fuel in the gas tank IS NOT the base or external energy source, in the case of oil it is also the solar photon. Then plants grow, decay, nature starts a high pressure/high temperature refining process, and after a couple of million years you get your oil. Go fIgure out the efficiency of that process!
Behind the facade of know-it-all true scientist there simply is hiding a techno-optimist. And that is fine. Me too I love oil, I have 1 (hybrid) ICE car and 2 ICE motorbikes in my garage!
I'm just wondering how long I can continue enjoying them, and I'm not trying to ridicule other people that have very good arguments why the party might be over soon.
It is unfortunate, because there is a lot of truth in what he tells otherwise. Current green policies have been mostly a waste of money. But that is a problem of subsidies and correct management of public finances, not of thermodynamics and new energy production processes.
Keep up your work, it's good to have diverse voices!
A good comment
The efficiency discussion is purely to point out the folly of obsessing about efficiency, nothing more.
The lack of fuel for your vehicles (and mine!) will be a political decision, one which we have some control over.
@jiminycricket9877 if by hook or crook kamala is the next president, then we look like Venezuela....
What about the costs of crop failure because of depletion of nutrients in the soil? What about the costs of increased natural disasters as we approach 2 degrees of global warming? Or species loss because of human agriculture?
Crop rotation
What increased natural disasters?
Show us where in the IPCC AR6 WGI Technical Report it presents evidence for increased natural disasters.
2 degrees!!!! Aaaarrrggghhh! We’re all doomed….
Hang on, wasn’t it 1.5°?
Loss of IQ in white majority countries due to influx of low iq third world illegal migration - is something that seriously needs to be considered. Secondly, a low nutrient diet comprised of mainly seed oils and sugar, also lowers iq. What does the world look like in 100 years time if we continue down our current path of flooding white nations with browns, blacks and processed foods. That’s the biggest threat to the globe. If IQ’s lower too far, who will manage and understand how to avoid devastation from nuclear and chemical waste management?
I'm 42 minutes into this video and have yet to see or hear any evidence or data that disproves peak oil.
Other than his smug laugh when he said they're just wrong. Oh, and we should buy his books. I guess all the data is in there. People who work for the oil industry are so cocky it's sickening. I've known lots of them in southern Louisiana.
Oil has gone down in price in real terms over the past 2 decades. That would seem to indicate there is more of it.
Exactly.
@@edsteadham4085 yeah the earth creates more oil every time thr price drops
People have been talking peak oil for almost 70 years LOL. Google " Hubbert Peak Oil"
Exponential use of resources and the accompanying externalities don’t concern him.
I dont believe in a "green" future and don't believe in this guys one either.
The optimism of technology lacks the factor that extracting the energy gets more expensive every new discovery. Shale and Oil sands is much more expensive then the middle east oil fields and the fact we wash all this energy together is to hide that and spread the cost to the world when presenting the data. If Canada just used the oil sands for our fuel prices would triple. EROEI was a 100:1 a 100 years ago now it is 20:1 with the combining of fossil fuels together. On this podcast I think it was mentioned by someone who works on the Oil sands that the EROEI was 5:1. We have offshore wind helping extract oil today. Oil shale is not created equal and it may not be profitable or politically feasible to extract world wide. Factor the time it takes for new technology to spread as well. The new tech needs to exist today if it is going to stave off the crunch which is why people cling to solar, wind and nuclear.
Mills is very pro-nuclear, but he recognizes that we will need and use fossil fuels for a very long time until nuclear can replace them.
Be wary when you hear an "expert" on thermodynamics who never once mentions entropy in an hour long video (search the transcript).
Mark P. Mills' banal and toxic "bottomless well" theory disregards entropy, a fundamental limit on energy transformations that makes increased efficiency harder to sustain over time. It also overlooks the impacts of carbon production, ignoring the obvious and proven environmental costs tied to fossil fuel reliance. Relying heavily on technological optimism, Mills assumes that innovation will continually overcome these physical constraints without accounting for rising extraction costs and externalized environmental damage. He's basically the Milton Friedman of energy studies -- arrogantly and dangerously wrong.
12:35 “just as wrong,” how? He is right about efficiency. About the light weighting of vehicles.
Blanket statement about a person is usually erroneous.
I could easily give up my power windows and 150w Sirius Stereo, but my government won't let me buy Chinese 😢 BYD❤
@@richardscathouseI'd buy a BYD in a moment if two things were true.
1) I could pay cash...
2) Gavin Newsom ( or the federal DOT) would allow them to be sold where I live.
So .. there's no limits to same old .. same old, drill baby drill .. hello +5 degrees. For a thermal dynamics guy he doesn't say anything about the thermal dynamics limits of the earth and human survival in a warming world. He seems to have a lot of blind spots
indeed
If we burned all the fossil fuel reserves we think might be there, we couldnt generate 5° warming.
Do you know how warm the world was when Stonehenge was built? Check it out.
At the risk of being perceived of one particular faction, which I'm not...
Isn't it ironic that the people that promote a much more active lifestyle - use your bicycle instead of your car - are labelled "Lethargists"? Does this tell us something about Mr. Mills' opinion or about that group he labels as such?
This issue is about our life, not about economy. In principle economy is there to serve our improvement of life. Therefor factions should be labelled according to the lifestyle they promote, not what impact such or such lifestyle has on the economy. In principle we decide what we want to do with our life, and economics should adapt to it.
Maybe we have the apprentice wizard problem, economic and industrial tools that we called upon for our purpose, but that spun out of control.
Yeah, it tells you a lot about this guy. He's not just controversial (and wrong) about energy he's against any changes in lifestyle that might help.
@@zacharyb2723 I'm not likely to see him soon, as TH-cam algorithms reinforce our bubbles. That's why Chris Decouple podcasts are good, he goes wide, and I honour him for that. We need opposition in thoughts discussed in an open way, that's important for proper decision making. I am partial, so I wouldn't be able to remain calm.
That being said, Mr Mills has a point about the cost issue, so I do not totally discount him. The policies we adopt must be affordable, otherwise we're going nowhere. And that is a problem with current attempts at the issue of climate change and resources use. Our society and western politics are guided by economic principles, therefor the lever or key to be successful in alternative policies is a new economic theory that includes energy and material resources, just as capital and labour are included now. I bet my money on Steve Keen. Have a nice weekend, thanks for your reaction.
I think you have it backwards. The economy leads to our improved life, not react to it.
Human existence was largely static for millennia until we moved the needle. We didn’t grow economically because we suddenly realised life could be better or some politician had a good idea. And economic growth is central to the human condition, not incidental.
Being able to believe that, in a finite world, we will dispose of an eternal source of free and cheap ressources is a non sense !!!
Sunlight, wind, water, for as long as the Sun shines. Maybe geothermal and tidal. But that absolutely will not allow our level of energy use with cars, planes, and a global food chain. We're going back to horses and local existence in the long term.
@@8BitNaptime I agree ; once we will have extracted all the ressources, we will go back to a very low energetically way of life.
The fear we can have is that the path toward this new way of living on Earth could be a dangerous travel !
@@alfredmacleod8951 unfortunately I think the "going back" part is going to make 2024 look like a summer picnic by comparison
Bro acknowledges Jevon's paradox, but DOESN'T want to regulate energy use, the only obvious solution to Jevon's Paradox. kind of a paradox.
(funny is he's absolutely right that the 'energy transition' is unrealistic - but he's not very creative about where to go from that observation.)
Really, he laid it out perfectly. Fossil fuels to nuclear, pretty simple really.
What is the progress going in the negative direction of efficiency - SUV? Making less damage to humans? Stay longer alive? Requiring medicine because of body do like to be moved by SUVs. What is the social value of an SUV. By the way bicycle is far better in any metric which he refer. And there are countries like the netherland which doing better. He is picking examples where his story works. Sell books. I do not buy into this.
I remember taking my 3 kids to soccer practice on our bikes. Iay night. In winter.In New England.
Comparing solar cell efficiency to combustion engine efficiency must be the worst dick move I've ever heard of. To the scientific literate it doesn't make any sense at all, but for the illiterate majority it probably sounds quite convincing.
Take the solar panels to geosynchronous orbit where the sun never sets 😅
@richardscathouse and how will we transmit the 'captured' energy to where we can use it?
Wow. You People are harsh. If you already know everything it's hard to hear anything of substance I guess.
This type of guest is by far my least favourite on decouple. They have their own tropes of talking about how amazing fossil fuels are while never acknowledging the ongoing reality of worsening climate change. The fossil fuel industry and their political allies love to trot these guys out and claim that physics dictates they continue to make their billions and not acknowledge the implicit politics of their studies.
The world burns as these guys distract us into quarrelling over energy conversion rates.
Lots of rhetorical hominem there in your comment but no logical counter arguments using math , thermodynamics , engineering and economic reasoning
@@kenvrinten3450 Doomers absolutely love a climate "CRISIS" and the last thing they are interested in is math, thermodynamics, engineering, and economic reasoning. They are also not interested in a "solution" that allows for growth and prosperity. This is why wind and solar are so popular.
The simple fact that you aren't standing in a pool of oil right now is definitive proof that oil has an endpoint, and if a resource has an endpoint, then by reasoning, it must have a midpoint, not to mention what is economically unrecoverable.
Are you funded by the Manhattan Institute? You seem to have a thing for people that are in that circle. The Manhattan Institute has long been active in obfuscation over climate change and also in promoting fossil fuels.
Yeah, this is the kind of moronic nonsense that Manhattan Institute is all about. Same for Heartland.
The Manhattan Institute also funds dissident voices.
Many Climate Change scientists are funded by people who benefit from the replacement of current infrastructure by New technologies.
Everyone has a bias. This is one of the few podcasts that doesn't begin with the dogmatic "Climate Change is causing massive destruction unless we take drastic change."
I don't believe anyone who says spend tons of money or else everyone will die.
The "Climate Emergency" is basically for Leftists what the War on Terror is for Neocons, justification for overreacting and taking money from the government coffers.
The point that matters is , where is your criticism of the actual points raised where this author is incorrect ? Perhaps they are talking down the green revolution because they don't agree with the direction based on engineering facts
@@das250250I’m 14 minutes into the video and he hasn’t provided anything of substance.
Couldn't you say that the myriad of activist climate change organizations have been active in overplaying the effects of climate change in a mirror image of the Manhattan Institute?
There are a number of facts that few understand. From 1980 in no year has a greater volume of oil been discovered than extracted. The rate of volume of discoveries has declined since 1980 and now about 10% of yearly consumption. Coal and natural gas are close behind. Energy has limits to its cost. Energy is valued for the work it will do. Due to the infrastructure and machinery necessary to put energy to work energy cannot exceed about 10% of the value of the work it will do. In short before the end of this century there will not be enough energy to feed more than a few million people.
Back away from the kool-aid 😢
@@richardscathouse This is all variable data and just extrapolation the trends. New data and technologies may change those trends but they are not here yet. To think it is coolaid displays a clasic Dunning Kruger effect.
Erlich was wrong about everything. Absolutely 100% wrong.
Fossil fuels replaced by nuclear as the cost of FFs goes up and nuclear goes down. Where is the flaw in this?
@@chapter4travels As fossil fuels are depleted and the cost increases the cost of commodities goes up even faster than cost of fossil fuels, mining the commodities, transport, refining the commodities and transport again, so nuclear heavily dependent on commodities (metals, concrete etc) will increase in cost faster then the cost of fossil fuels. The only solution is depopulation which will happen in a managed humane way or by the forces of nature before the end of this century.
Useless pontificating for an hour straight
Yup - incessant false equivalences (apples to oranges) to ensure a self created dogma is unquestionably proven - and very smug to boot !
@@FrankHamersleynope. Just realistic. If on the optimistic side.
Little too pessimistic
Solar is already cheap
Batteries are almost there
Which is why the world is going to install ~600GW of solar @ 15% CF = ~800TWh of electricity
So in one year, the world is installing the equivalent of 70 years of US nuclear
If batteries break the $100/KWh (fully installed and good for 10,000 cycles) barrier, we will have solar + battery in sunny locations become very economic
Probably not cheaper than coal and gas because coal and gas will have to sell at lower and lower prices to stay in the game but perfectly cheap enough to take more and more market share
Also while fossil fuels are great and useful many nations dont have any so importing them is more costly and more of a security risk than deploying long life solar wind nuclear batteries
Orbital solar could be free😢
You understand nothing
The ratio of fossil fuels to other energy has not changed essentially in 50 years essentially 80% fossil and 20% "green" but even if it does change it does not matter if we maintain our current consumption of said fuels. Our population means we burn more wood today then was burned in the 1800s, burn more coal then when it was the main source in the early 1900s. When oil underwrites the whole system we can not cost what a solar civilization can actually do when it tries to power industry off said energy. China may give us an idea because they actually have a lot of solar and industry so they could start to experiment. We have wind turbines hooked up to oil rigs in Europe today to extract oil more efficiently because we have a 100 years of equipment and industry constructed to run off of it.
Cold latitudes solutions in a warming world and for warm latitudes is wrong.
I am an aerospace engineer. This man is just a propagandist for the energy sector. Do not listen to him. His conclusions about fossil fuel availability is flawed. His conclusion about innovation is over optimistic and arrogantly blind. He blathers about thermodynamics, heat transfer and physics to give his theories street credibility, but it is just word salad spin to make him sound intelligent. This was a waste of my time. I am more stupid as a result of listening to him.
Orbital solar would go a long way towards unlimited energy; Tesla patients exist that don't require laser or microwave transmission orbit to ground. 😂
The sky is raining soup, and you show up with a teacup.
Thank God for the Chinese! The only ones working on Orbital solar collection,
Don’t work for Boeing, do you?
I have a frind who.was an engineer for NASA and he knows sh1t about the energy industry. You sound like your in the same boat.
Fossil fuels to nuclear, what is flawed about that?
@@chapter4travelsIt flies in the face of the Malthusian religion of Marxism....
If oil is abundant why are governments hell bent on lowering its consumption?. Why all aiming for dates of 2030/50?.
A window of time when peak oil should be in full bloom for all to see.
Climate change is the official explanation, but I suspect the other much more profound explanation is a world of steadily falling oil production.
We already have new buzzwords like peak demand, well thats what we're going to see, peak demand falling every year till theres no demand at all.
Because frightening people increases the power of the government.
Because it's the CONSUMPTION of the stuff that's slowly turning our planet into an uninhabitable wasteland.
Because we are in the grips of a millenniarian, apocalyptic religious fervor. Once voters begin feeling the full effects of anti-energy policies, this fervor will end. With nuclear energy probably being the peg on which politicians hang their hats.
Aiming for 2050 because end of oil is 2060.
@@bipl8989 nonsense
24:52 why isn’t he using solar panels, batteries, and their useful energy conversion?
Because that's an extremely expensive way to make reliable, dispatchable grid-level electricity. Solar is completely dependent on the time of day, the weather, location, season, massive amounts of raw materials and land. Land for the solar farms and the thousands of miles of transmission corridors.
@chapter4travels crap.
Rooftop PV is dirt cheap, and no new grid is needed.
BV batteries are evolving massively fast, nuclear is a dead economic duck when the sunshines.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 What% of world population owns their own house, 2%? Of that 2%, how many can afford a solar system that can meet all to their own needs, 10%. Then of those how many can afford a system that has excess for the grid, 5%. Can you see where this is going?
@chapter4travels Yes, good point, but the ones I'm talking about are the most polluting and the most capable of changing.
New technology is getting cheaper, so hopefully, this will help.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 In their 2024 report Lazard assigns an LCOE to rooftop solar between 122 and 284 USD/MWh; it's literally one of the most expensive forms of electricity production there is, and if you don't see it reflected in your bills it's because someone else is paying for your externalities. Specifically, those ratepayers who can't afford a single family home.
If you want to learn about Mark Mills read The Parrot and the Igloo by David Lipsky.
You are kidding right. Would you really trust a novelist-journalist over a physicist in matters of science?
Most vehicles drive 10,000 miles per year.
Most years are less than 10,000 hrs
One hour drive everyday
23hrs parked everyday day.
BVs oversized battery topped up everyday, ezi pezi.
Half ideas on top of half ideas is not exciting.
Millions and millions and millions of sunshine powered vehicles or huge CO2 emissions from ICE vehicles.
One cargo cult vs. something that actually works.
I haven't drive 10000 miles in the last three years (retired) EV is perfect for me 😂
@richardscathouse same here.
That was when it was obvious that my street of 30 homes had at least 60 vehicles, and many used public transport to work.
Nuclear promoters talk about UTILIZATION of resources.
With V2G and V2Home, then expensive grid electricity will be ancient history.
UTILIZATION of private electricity home infrastructure will be a top priority.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 When we had only coal, hydro, and nuclear, electricity was cheap. It's Variable renewables that have destroyed electricity markets and caused costs to explode.
@gregorymalchuk272 that is the bs vested interests talk about.
As customers stop paying the grid supply electricity kWh price increases.
This is baby easy economics.
The old is scared sh...tless. 😱 😨 😐 😔 😕 😢
32:56 he is living out the fact that there is a limit of how much one actually will consume in energy use after pent up demand is resolved.
23 minutes in and he has yet to say anything concrete. He has made audacious claims, made reference to contrasting philosophical positions and tittered condescendingly at those who disagree with him but so far no explanation of how reality manifestly expresses even a single example of this functionally limitless energy paradigm he refers to. I wait with bated breath.
Regarding Amory Lovins being wrong. Actually, he is right and you are wrong. You dress up what you said twenty years ago with fancy words, but the issue is still learning to live within limits.
Amory Lovins manages to be fractally wrong, which is admittedly an impressive feat
@@VarieTea729
So, you have been reading Robert Bryce. True some of Levin's prediction's have turned out wrong. Over fifty years that is to be expected. Many of his predictions have developed far beyond his estimates. As Mr. Mills is a minerals man a lot of his predictions are also wrong. There are shortages because the technologies are successful. Short term or long term, hydrocarbons will eventually become commercially unavailable. The soft energy path will prevail.
Doesn't Amory Lovins prefer on-site oil burning over nuclear power? Isn't that a mistake?
@@gregorymalchuk272
Interesting choices for comparison. Yes, Amory Lovins has concerns about nuclear and I would say that he advocates for other options. I would also say that he would prefer the use of renewable energy sources.
Hype
20:24 my peak oil, solar panels, batteries, and an electric car. My oil use not only peaked, it went to almost zero. Amazing how much more efficient 8 minute old energy is compared to millions of year old energy. 😂
I’m 20 minutes into this thing and still waiting for him to say something of substance.
You use oil every single day, that hat on your head is not possible without oil, and your breakfast is the same way. Oil is embedded into every single aspect of your live and will be till you die and beyond.
Plenty of oil and coal was used to dig out the minerals and make the tyres for your car and solar panels. You seem a bit fooled by the climate lobby.
36:14 not impossible not stunning expensive.
27:37 max efficiency is in the 30 % range.
Or one could use an electric car that is 90% efficient.
Gasoline cars are more efficient than electric cars when you figure in all the embedded energy from the start. He explains it very well.
Excellent comment 😊
Only if you have 'magic' electricity to charge them.
@benchapple1583 Rooftop PV is dirt cheap, and no new grid is needed.
BV batteries are evolving massively fast, nuclear is a dead economic duck when the sunshines.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 Good luck with that. A roof can't charge a car in the day never mind when needed which would be at night.