ENERGY 102 -
Our early Homo sapien ancestors were foragers - hunter gatherers - seeking plant and animals for food. Muscle power was their only available energy used to obtain any food while hunting, scavenging, gathering, and fishing. His annual energy consumption is estimated to be approximately 850 kWh. It was only about 10,000 years ago, based on the domestication of plants and animals, that our species moved beyond its own muscle power (with hand-made tools and fire) to benefit from a less nomadic lifestyle. Animal power now contributed to their per capita energy consumption,
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Vaclav Smil tells us how we now consume energy at rates far above that of our ancestors. Ancestral man, with a slighter stature and population insignificant in comparison to ours today, had little impact on energy available to him at the time. Per capita, it's more than 30 times greater today globally. The hunting man didn't have TV, internet and smart phones. Yet these "can't do without" wonders come at an energy cost.
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Smil writes, "Energy consumption of the hunting man found in Europe about 100,000 years ago (pop. approx. 1 million) was about 2.5 times that of the primitive man (up to 2MWh) because he had better methods of acquiring food (approx. 2,000 Kcal/day) and also burned wood for both heating and cooking (approx. 3,000 Kcal/day). Energy consumption increased again by almost 2.5 times as man evolved into the primitive agricultural man of about 5,000 years ago who harnessed draft animals to aid in growing crops. In northwestern Europe, the advanced agricultural man of 1400 A.D. (approx. pop. 480 million) again doubled the amount of energy consumption as he began inventing devices to tap the power of wind and water, began to utilize small amounts of coal for heating, and harnessed animals to provide transportation. The dawn of the age of industrialization, ushered in by the invention of the coal powered steam engine with ensuing revolutions in transportation and powered mills (circa 1780), caused a 3-fold increase in energy consumption by 1875 (approx. pop. 1 billion)." [En2-1]
Today, with a world population in 2024 of over 8 billion, the per capita consumption is about 71.4 GJoules.
Smil continues, "Given the smaller prehistoric statures, I assume an average adult weight of about 50kg. This weight would have required a basal metabolic rate of about 5.3 megajoules per day (MJ/d) and a minimum food intake of about 8 MJ/d, or roughly 330 KJ/h. Plant collecting required mostly light labour, while hunting and fishing tasks ranged from light to heavy.'
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'Typical foraging activities of prehistoric humanoids needed about 4 times the basal metabolic rate for men and 5 times the rate for women, or 1 and 1.35 MJ/h (FAO 2004)[En2-3], or about 900 KJ/h. Subtracting the basic existential need puts the net energy input of foraging at nearly 600KJ/h. Energy output is simply the value of edible portions of collected plants or killed animals." [En2-2]
[Note: 900 KJ/h x 24x365 = 7,884,000 KJ/y or 7.884 gigajoules per capita per year]
Human per capita energy consumption, coupled with our current population on Earth are critically important when we consider what energy resources are available to us. In fact, these energy resources are quite limited as the only significant and perpetual energy source for Earth is solar.
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"The contrast is clear. Preindustrial societies tapped virtually instantaneous solar energy flows, converting only a negligible fraction of practically inexhaustible radiation income. Modern civilization depends on extracting prodigious energy stores, depleting finite fossil fuel deposits that cannot be replenished even on time scales orders of magnitude longer than the existence of our species. Reliance on nuclear fission and the harnessing of renewable energies (adding wind- and photovoltaic-generated electricity to more than 130-year-old hydro-generation and turning to new ways of converting phytomass to fuels) have been increasing, but by 2020 fossil fuels still accounted for 83.4% of the world’s primary energy, just 6.6% less than a generation ago, in 1990 (BP 2021)." These rich stores, have enabled unprecedented amounts of energy, which in transformation, advanced agricultural productivity and crop yields; rapid industrialization; accelerated transportation; urbanization; and incredible growth of our information and communication capabilities -- developments which enabled affluence, raised the
average quality of life for most of the world’s population, and led to high-energy service economies.
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Oil and natural gas are the forerunners to chemicals used to make numerous products, such as plastics, textiles, medications, and fertilizers. Petroleum sources are needed to manufacture most industrial products.
But the use of this unprecedented power has had many worrisome consequences and has resulted in changes whose continuation might imperil the very foundations of modern civilization. Urbanization has been a leading source of inventiveness, technical advances, gains in the standard of living, expanded information, and instantaneous communication, but
it has also been a key factor behind deteriorating environmental quality and worrisome income inequality." [En2-2]
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Less than 0.05% of the incoming radiant energy from the sun is transformed by photosynthesis into new stores of chemical energy in plants, providing the irreplaceable foundation for all higher life. Mankind, with its huge environmental footprint, must be extremely careful not to disrupt the balance of energy on which nature, including humans depend for life. With the dominant global population on the edge of pushing the planet into being completely inhospitable to mankind, we must act to reverse some of the damage we've done and mitigate further damage. With our dependency on fossil fuels, our addiction to over-consumption, and the swift increase in CO2 over recent decades, this is well beyond a simple and urgent task.
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FUSION
Livermore, California, USA - Dec. 13, 2022 - saw the announcement of the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that may pave the way for advancements in the future of clean power. On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it.
Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei combine to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy. In the 1960s, a group of pioneering scientists at LLNL hypothesized that lasers could be used to induce fusion in a laboratory setting. Led by physicist John Nuckolls, who later served as LLNL director from 1988 to 1994, this revolutionary idea became inertial confinement fusion, kicking off more than 60 years of research and development in lasers, optics, diagnostics, target fabrication, computer modeling and simulation and experimental design.
LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and businesses.
In coming decades, this amazing technology may reach the status of replacing a significant portion of fossil fuel burning. If so, this will be an immense contribution to the reduction to GHG emissions.
A big caution here -- most worrisome is that the world might falsely believe that fusion is our salvation and that the world would carry on with business as usual, over-consuming and wrecklessly acting as if climate change will be solved by fusion. It won't be. Fusion can only be a means to aid in the process of climate change mitigation, while we simultaneously apply every other means to lessen our inappropriately destructive activities and excesses.
For example, we might say to ourselves, the energy that went into making this dress is really cheap, so I can afford 2 dresses. If you only need 1, just buy 1. That extra dress uses and may waste many other resources. That's the difficult thing preventing the mediation of climate change -- changing ourselves -- to rethink how we live and act. Maybe we'll have less dressmakers and more change therapists to enable rethinking effectively.
Quite simply, it took 60 years of dedicated research to come to the wonderful result of fusion ingnition. It will take many years, perhaps decades, or possibly never to achieve affordable IFE. If, with great hope for affordable IFE, we turn our backs on reducing GHG emissions, we've lost or hope for salvaging Earth as a hospitable home for human life.
Climate Change
Let's face it, most of us aren't scientists. We don't have the training and expertise to confirm or deny climate change on our own. Yet, if what is now being referred to as "Climate Change" is real, we owe ourselves the chance to act in self-defense, the supposed odds of mankind surviving are being portrayed by some as pretty low within short decades. We're talking a lifetime. It could be longer, but some scientists tell us that human life is near extinction without our concerted effort to tackle climate change now. We're not talking saving the planet, we're talking saving life on Earth. Yet, other climate scientists have less dire predictions, like Judith Curry who argues that the climate science "consensus" is based on unrealistic assumptions about the Earth’s climate and the ability of human societies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Science has enabled us to get people to the moon and back, to land a vehicle on Mars and send marvelous information back to us to explore, and to stop the depletion of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere. Ozone layer depletion causes increased UV radiation levels at the Earth's surface, which is damaging to human health. There's historical reason to listen to the science.
If we trust science to lead us to actions to diminish the negative effects of climate change, we'll have abundant renewable energy sources, sustainable products, and lifestyle changes that can globally improve our quality of life. Most of all, it may just save human life from extinction. There may be some rough going, but the end result will likely be better. On the other hand, if we ignore the climate science, our greed may give us a few years of easy living, yet create a dismal future for those who live after us, all the while harming some millions of unfortunate people now living in areas most significantly affected negatively by climate change. Yet, other scientists are not to sure that Climate Change is the crisis described above. Herein, we try to explore both sides of the story.
A History of Climate Change
The Keeling curve is one of the first significant indicators of climate changing in response to human activity. Charles David Keeling was an American scientist whose recordings of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory, started in 1958, raised the possibility of anthropogenic (significant human) contribution to the "greenhouse effect" and global warming. Many scientists have since studied CO2 as it relates to climate change and in 1988, the United Nations (UN) was afraid that, cumulatively, human activities on a global scale were introducing CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate that was changing earth's climate with harmful implications.
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The UN then endorsed the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). Its initial task, was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change. The 2019 report, United in Science, includes details on the state of the climate and presents trends in the emissions and atmospheric concentrations of the main greenhouse gases (GHG). It highlights the urgency of fundamental socio-economic transformation in key sectors such as land use and energy in order to avert dangerous global temperature increase with potentially irreversible impacts. It also examines tools to support both mitigation and adaptation.
This IPCC report was updated in 2022 with Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.
The Keeling curve: an early indicator of climate changing under human influence through increasing atmospheric CO2 - keelingcurve.ucsd.edu
2019 IPPC Report United in Science stresses urgency of climate action
Simply put, this 2019 IPCC report stresses the need for immediate actions across the globe to save humanity from worsening climatic effects, and sometimes disastrous and likely irreparable harms. Global warming is one of the effects of climate change likely to cause harm to much of Earth's human population, yet some areas may experience benefits not emphasized in the IPPC reports. Global warming is caused when GHGs trap heat in the atmosphere. IPCC reports focus on the harmful effects were the global temperature to rise 1.5 or 2 degrees Celcius, or more, above pre-industrial levels.
Projected change in average annual temperature over the period 2071-2099 (compared to the period 1971-2000) under a low scenario that assumes rapid reductions in emissions and concentrations of heat-trapping gases (RCP 2.6), and a higher scenario that assumes continued increases in emissions (RCP 8.5).
Source: Quanrud, David & Vafai, H. & Parivar, P. & Sehatkashani, Saviz. (2015). Resilience Thinking for Adaptation of Cities to Climate Change.
Climate on Earth is much more than global average temperature or annual rainfall. Solar radiation, precipitation, wind patterns, sea levels, temperature, and moisture content all relate to climate and are significant for human life.
Many interactions influence climate. For example, radiation from the Sun, the ability of the ground surface to reflect sunlight, ocean temperatures, and the ability of the atmosphere to retain heat, all play a part in these interactions. Seemingly insignificant changes in any one of these influences can cause a domino effect to shift the Earth’s climate. The extent to which it shifts or changes, depends on whether the various individual influences contribute to, or reduce, the effect over many seasons -- say 30 years.
The study of Climate Change is a very complex study. The complex interactions and feedbacks on such a large scale make this study very challenging. Much data needs to be collected and analyzed in an ever changing puzzle.
We all know that weather changes. Sunny days, rainy days, cold and hot days and for some of us, snowy days are indicative of weather. Weather patterns over much longer periods of time than a day, week or year will cumulatively define a particular climate. And yes, climate does change, even without human assistance. However, the big question suggested by the current idiom ‘climate change’ is, “Have greenhouse gases been created and are they now being created as a result of human industrialization, causing a global warming with short term disastrous effects? Or, are current changes in climate part of the natural processes and cycles of earth in its cosmic environment?”
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No matter what the answers are, being green today is still very important. If humans have had little influence on climate change (best case), being green will still contribute towards sustainable human life on Earth by helping to preserve our needed and precious resources. If we are contributing to a hazardous climate change (a very contentious issue), then acting green is decidedly more important. In any case, there is no downside to behaving green. Simply stated, “Waste not, want not.” Or, what have you got to lose. Were the effects of climate change to turn out to be negligible, acting green would help you prioritize the important things in your life and avoid the waste associated with pursuing, in the long term, unrewarding aspirations, whatever they be. That being said, as current science suggests that man is causing seriously harmful Climate Change -- we'll lean toward the precautionary stance; however, we'll still be open to science that suggests Climate Change is not immanently dangerous -- with the caution that overuse of Earth's resources is dangerous itself.
Climate is related to weather in the sense that it uses historical weather data to suggest typical temperature and precipitation conditions for a geographical region over a period of time. In the words of Andrew Weaver, “… climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.”
Climate Change signifies a change in the average pattern of weather that can be identified by changes in its properties (e.g., temperature, precipitation, humidity, sunshine) over a period of decades. The World Meteorological Organization uses a 30 year period for averaging these variables. Climate change may be due to natural processes, external forcings, or more recently, attributed to anthropogenic modification of the atmosphere or land use.
Over the period 1880 to 2012, the globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C. Berkeley Earth analysis shows that the rise in average world land surface temperature is approximately 1.5 degrees C in the past 250 years, and about 0.9 degrees C in the past 50 years. [cc-1]
At this point in the conversation, rather than dig deeper into understanding Climate Change, we'll talk solutions. Acting swiftly to mitigate the imminent severity of the impacts of CO2 on Climate Change seems imperative. We should act now! Can we weather the storms?
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A recent book, The Case for Climate Capitalism, sheds some light on Climate Change and helps us think about our response to it. As the author, Tom Rand, suggests, "We can't solve climate change, but we can still head off the worst." [cc-2]
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On one hand, Rand suggests, we cannot possibly transition off fossil fuels and other major contributors to a warming planet without the financial might and
entrepreneurial talent market forces unleash. On the other hand, we need to reign in the market forces that have led to our climate conundrum/challenge.
Rand states that Climate change defies the traditional divisions of left and right. The far left, led by Naomi Klein, targets market forces, economic growth, and capitalism itself as the enemy. Yet climate solutions need all three. The far right, dominated by market fundamentalists like FOX News and the Koch brothers, view unfettered markets, unlimited growth, and unregulated capitalism as established foundations of the twenty-first century. But a livable planet won't live well under those practices. The simple ideologies of left and right don't enable a cooperative solution to the problem. Somewhere in the middle, a fairly quiet group, the Centrists — including many business leaders, economists, and editorial page contributors — finally have begun to assert themselves, as the climate crisis looms in our faces. Yet this group remains reluctant to endorse the kind of severe change in direction required to temper the coming storms. The centrist position can't hold. Today's emission levels make climate risk simply too untenable. If you're a moderate on action, you get extreme climate disruption. To quote Rand, "Common sense provides a better basis for climate solutions than political or ideological preference." Yet, common sense may not always reflect the truth. It can be problematic as a source of information because there's no guarantee about its original source, and people may mistakenly trust it due to hindsight bias, overconfidence, or a tendency to see order in random events. Perhaps we should trust science.
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Commerce is the tool, human values the force, to retool our laws and institutions to reflect our collective long-term security. Rewiring existing economic systems to lower climate risk could not be a more centrist notion. Yet it's increasingly seen as radical, by the new left because it fails to reject capitalism outright, and by the new right because it implies massive market interventions. Our respective dogmas prevent the consensus needed to build a new economy that will get us safely through the century. These entrenched positions preclude finding workable solutions.
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Climate Capitalism is a set of pragmatic solutions to mitigate what could be the greatest risk we face this century. Climate Capitalism urges us to find common ground to tackle this problem now for good, our good - and well-being.
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Many Canadians who were born in the mid to late twentieth century practically won the lottery — it was one of the greatest times and places to come into being in human history. The massive economic expansion of the late twentieth century delivered remarkable employment and wealth opportunities. New technology brought better health care, cleaner air, and an endless array of new toys. Globalization brought down their cost. Food security seemed guaranteed. Cracks occasionally appeared as energy demand soared and the geopolitics of oil got nasty, but resource scarcity was something that we thought of as happening elsewhere, to others. The promise of unfettered growth is that one day, everyone might share this optimism that the future would be even better with this growth. However, growth powered by burning fossil fuels is a deal with the devil. "We face a paradox: the very market forces that created so much wealth now brings levels of climate risk that threaten economic security, even our civic structures." Business as usual takes us well past the nominally safe level of 2°C of warming [cc-3] and into very hostile territory. It's not a stretch to say climate disruption is the endgame of industrial civilization. Yet complacency can make us oblivious to the urgency.
Technology is unstoppable once it gets going. Its sweeping changes are clear in hindsight, the engines of the industrial revolution; the microchips of the data revolution; the genetic and stem cell manipulations that herald a new era of human health. Similarly, clean energy technology, or cleantech, is igniting an energy revolution. Instead of digging up and burning stuff buried in the ground, technology will harness and store endless supplies of renewable energy. Cars will not use internal combustion engines for much longer. The economic dynamism at the dawn of the twenty-first century feels unstoppable. The potential of the creative class seems unbounded. The human spirit runs hot. But so does the planet!
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Climate risk is qualitatively different from other threats. A climate crisis could be effectively permanent. The ongoing instability of an overheated planet could last longer than we've had an industrial civilization. As a threat multiplier, it aggravates all other crises: food security, economic, social, warfare, even pandemic. The only risks comparable in outcome are those of a nuclear winter or an aberrant asteroid. Rand uses "climate disruption" in lieu of "climate change" to emphasize this permanence.
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In principle, this is a technical problem: our task is to rebuild global energy systems and transition to a low-carbon economy. It's perfectly doable. Sufficient capital sits in pension funds and money-market accounts. The engineering and entrepreneurial talent is fired up and ready to go. Will you take supportive action? It will take our individual ethics, support and actions to get it done.
See the Economics page on this site.
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Footnotes
[En2-1] Smil, Vaclav. (1994). Energy in World History. New York, NY: Routledge (2018)
[En2-2] Smil, Vaclav. (2017). Energy and Civilization: A History. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (p. 307)
[En2-3] FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2004. Human Energy Requirements. Report of a Joint FAO/WHO/UNU Consultation. Rome: FAO