Valuable know-how to unlock real wealth
- xav031
- Feb 9, 2015
- 4 min read
The extreme solar paradox shows in a striking way that beside energy as the sole tangible, primary source of wealth, the other fundamental source, an intangible one, is know-how.
On this brighter side, among a small international community of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, decisive moves towards the much needed paradigm shift have been progressively taking place over the last forty years. These moves can be tracked through the following signpost works:
Meadows, Donella H., Meadows, Dennis L., Randers, Jørgen, and Behrens, William W. III, 1972, The Limits to Growth, Universe Books. Data on global dynamics over the last 40 years has abundantly corroborated the analyses presented in this much maligned book that, notwithstanding its mythical thinking detractors, provides the basics concerning the present global situation.
Foster, John, 2008, The Sustainability Mirage, Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change, Earthscan, London, UK. We referred to John’s work earlier. Thirsty travellers across the desert see a distant lake; as they walk towards it the lake keeps receding towards the horizon; by the time they realise that it was just a mirage they have lost their way and die of thirst – Foster uses this image to demonstrate how is a dangerous myth; as a socio-political-economic-financial process is what caused the present EROI and consequential ecological failures, it is incompatible with any form of sustainability. An allied myth is that of the ; means what is around, there has never been anything humankind for a long while, instead humankind is everywhere and into everything on Earth; from the Marianna Trench to the cloud of satellites and satellite fragments now in Earth’s orbit, there is no longer a single cubic centimetre of the biosphere that is not permeated with the massive effects of human activity – ecology pertains to the scientific realm, pertains to that of myth, a myth that is no longer effective nor efficient.
Lovelock, James, 2009, The Vanishing Face of Gaia - a final warning, Basic Books; and Kleidon, Axel, 2012, How does the earth system generate and maintain thermodynamic disequilibrium and what does it imply for the future of the planet?, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry published in Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A, 370, doi: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0316 – These two works present the basics about Earth-Life and sustainability and the consequences of over 100 years of unsustainable development. In 1974, Lovelock and Lyn Margulis presented as that life on Earth functions as a self-regulating system that maintains the ecological and specifically climatic conditions for its perpetuation. Over the ensuing 39 years and notwithstanding its like label, Lovelock’s and Margulis’ theorising has been amply corroborated and has given rise to the new field of Earth System research – with a number of researchers, including ourselves, substituting to . [1] Earth-Life eliminates any life form that does not fit. More recently Lovelock has stressed that, within Earth-Life, there is no ecological niche for humankind in its present form and, anticipating the more recent findings that we analysed in earlier postings, warned that current climate change trends lead to some 90% of the planet becoming uninhabitable and to mass extinction of up to 95% of all life. Kleidon’s work further corroborates Lovelock’s Earth-Life analyses. It also highlights that large-scale wind is not sustainable and that only direct solar energy (through photosynthesis, photovoltaics and direct thermal technologies) can provide a sustainable basis for a global civilisation.
Heinberg, Richard, 2011, The End of Growth, adapting to our new reality, New Society; and Hall, Charles A. S. and Klitgaard, Kent A., 2012, Energy and the Wealth of Nations, Springer – These two works that we have referred to earlier herald the end of mythical thinking about “growth” and wealth creation. Instead they provide robust bases to begin thinking rationally and critically in terms of thermodynamics and EROI.
Spratt, David and Sutton, Philip, 2008, Climate Code Red – The case for emergency action, Scribe, Melbourne, Australia. Spratt’s and Sutton’s work and Spratt’s more recent publications referred to in earlier postings show that from now on only emergency actions can address the challenges; they militate for governmental emergency action, show that the expertise to do so is available and that such actions are feasible; yet we have noted that in the foreseeable future such coordinated government action, especially at the global level, is highly unlikely – it is only after substantial entrepreneurial initiative would have taken place that effective governmental action may emerge. The latter probably requires substantial transformation (perhaps even revolution) of what is presently meant by "government" – i.e. emergency action is now a matter for entreprenuership.
Frank Klose, Michael Kofluk, Stephan Lehrke, Harald Rubner, June 2010, Toward a Distributed-Power World: Renewables and Smart Grids Will Reshape the Energy Sector, Boston Consulting Group and Rifkin, Jeremy, 2011, The Third Industrial Revolution, How lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world, Palgrave Macmillan, N.Y., USA. These two works present basic pointers to the kind of transformations that are prerequisite to the emergence of a sustainable "world after" 2007 able to deal successfully with the Four Challenges. Their major weaknesses, however, are that they remain largely mute or mistaken concerning the technological and socio-political obstacles that for over 20 years have prevented moving in the direction that they advocate. [1] These obstacles concern essentially: (1) achieving new technology costs lower than those of most competing technologies, (2) ability to deploy very large scale, intelligent energy and communications networks with very high node densities and high bandwidth, and (3) reaching very high overall EROIs, above 30:1. The know-how to remove those obstacles is available among very few specialists. It is the focal point of our SynGeni Team. However, it remains largely ignored by key players.
Overall, although aspects of the above works can be said to be sometimes “rough at the edges”, each provide key pointers to the radical and critical changes in modes of thinking and doing that are urgently required.
[1] See, for example, Cockell, Charles, 2008, An introduction to the Earth-Life System, Cambridge University Press. From an anthropological perspective Gaia was one of the many name of the Great Goddess to whom countless human sacrifices have been made over millennia; hardly a suitable name for a non-anthropomorphic concept.
[2] Cassoret, Bertrand, 2012, “Jeremy Rifkin plaît beaucoup, mais il maîtrise mal ce dont il parle” [Jeremy Rifkin is very pleasing but he does not know well enough what he is talking about], Rue 89 – Nouvel Observateur, 16 October, http://www.rue89.com/
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