Disqus - Latest Comments for Roger Sweeny

Re: Questionable Tautologies?

Roger Sweeny — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:31:43 -0000

Megan McArdle enlists Mark Twain to mock Newberry (partly in response to this post):

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005865.html

Re: No Limits to Growth

Roger Sweeny — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:23:30 -0000

The problem is that a) is irrelevant. The question isn't whether energy is scarce; the question is whether usable energy is scarce. It is, and always will be.

The question then is, "how scarce?" The answer to that depends on the state of the world (how much oil is in big, easily reached pockets? how much does the sun shine?) and the state of technology.

The state of the world is changing as we pick the low hanging fruit, e.g., drain the big oil and natural gas reservoirs. Prices go up because it's more expensive to pick the fruit that's way up. That creates incentives to develop and implement new technologies that can undersell the remaining fruit. Agreed.

However ... New technology may make if possible to get usable energy at low costs--with costs defined broadly to include environmental costs. For example, it may be possible to genetically modify bacteria to make usable hydrocarbons from water, carbon dioxide, and sunshine. Or it may not.

Re: No Limits to Growth

Roger Sweeny — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:08:36 -0000

I don't think ethanol is a good example of abundant usable energy. Growing corn doesn't just require sunlight. It also requires land and water (and fertilizer and tractors and ...). Most of the energy of the sun goes to making roots and stems and leaves and cobs, and to keeping the plant alive for 4 months. Very little makes it into the kernels. Even the little bit of ethanol we have produced so far has taken a large chunk of land.