Is western civilisation in terminal decline?

[vtsnowedin]

Actually The GW carries I-95 through New York and the city on it's way from Maine to Florida which is arguably one of the busiest highways in the world with many sections carrying over 200,000 VPD. Before the interstate was built rail roads paralleled the entire route so the demand for the service was already there and the highway freed people from the high fares the railroads enjoyed while they held a monopoly.

So if we are talking purely in the terms of efficiency and not bringing money and profit into the equation the original statement could be expanded to , road bridge v ferry , rail bridge v ferry and maybe even rail bridge v road bridge.

Well you have to bring money into it to measure efficiency. It is the only way to compare one design to another and can be used to compare different materials and sources of energy.

[Blue Peter]

Well you have to bring money into it to measure efficiency. It is the only way to compare one design to another and can be used to compare different materials and sources of energy.

I'm not sure that is true. I think it is efficiency with regard to X (hat tip the archdruid), e.g. in terms of energy modern farming is very inefficient (more energy out than in); in terms of human labour, it is very efficient (many people fed by very few people).

Even then, I think you have to be careful. Say you compared the efficiency of energy systems in money terms, how would you deal with subsidies? If A produced more energy than B per pound, but only because A received subsidies which B didn't, then is A really more efficient.

(And lots of other examples),


Peter.

[kenneal - lagger]

This argument is now approaching the true complications that the original statement missed out on!! It's like the arguments over EROEI: where do you impose the limits of the extent of the parameters to include?

GW/CC arguments, Carbon use and atmospheric pollution, must be included in view of their seriousness. So should there be that number of people travelling anyway? If that route is that heavily trafficked there is a good argument that they should be using rail rather than cars and that if their full pollution costs were included in the fuel cost it would be cheaper for them to travel by rail.

[vtsnowedin]

Well you have to bring money into it to measure efficiency. It is the only way to compare one design to another and can be used to compare different materials and sources of energy.

I'm not sure that is true. I think it is efficiency with regard to X (hat tip the archdruid), e.g. in terms of energy modern farming is very inefficient (more energy out than in); in terms of human labour, it is very efficient (many people fed by very few people).

Even then, I think you have to be careful. Say you compared the efficiency of energy systems in money terms, how would you deal with subsidies? If A produced more energy than B per pound, but only because A received subsidies which B didn't, then is A really more efficient.

(And lots of other examples),


Peter.

You can't have more energy out then you put in.
Wheat grown by horse drawn equipment would cost about $100/ bushel Diesel Ag it is about $4.00
Subsidies are paid in money so you can account for them when considering efficiency.

[clv101]

You can't have more energy out then you put in.
Wheat grown by horse drawn equipment would cost about $100/ bushel Diesel Ag it is about $4.00...

Wow! I never realised our ancestors were so wealthy.

[Little John]

You can't have more energy out then you put in.
Wheat grown by horse drawn equipment would cost about $100/ bushel Diesel Ag it is about $4.00
Subsidies are paid in money so you can account for them when considering efficiency.

Money, in principle, abstractly represents resources. In particular, the most important resource of all; energy. However, this is only a part of the story. Debt based money represent resources not yet obtained. Further, some resources are sustainable and some are not.

So, debt based money representing hydrocarbon energy that has not yet been obtained is not an automatically valid measure of energy efficiency or sustainability.

What you have written amounts to saying that a business is running more efficiently because it has papered over its economic unsustainability with debt. Now, of course, this may have a short term and localised sustainability to it if every other business around you is doing the same. But, that does not make it systemically logical or sustainable.

So, by all means, make the argument that using hydrocarbon powered tractors is the only economically logical means of farming when faced with competition that uses tractors. But, don't try and suggest this is systemically more energy efficient or sustainable.

[vtsnowedin]

You can't have more energy out then you put in.
Wheat grown by horse drawn equipment would cost about $100/ bushel Diesel Ag it is about $4.00...

Wow! I never realised our ancestors were so wealthy.

Your forgetting the inflation that has eroded the value of a dollar.
My father worked on farms before WW1 for a dollar a day plus board and room. If the farmers wife was a good cook it was considered a good deal. You could also buy an once of gold for $32 so using that yard stick it would come to $50 per day or $5.00/ hour.

[clv101]

My point wasn't about inflation, just that we with all our 'wealth' can't afford wheat produced by horse drawn equipment anymore. How come something that used to be affordable, no longer is?

[vtsnowedin]

So, by all means, make the argument that using hydrocarbon powered tractors is the only economically logical means of farming when faced with competition that uses tractors. But, don't try and suggest this is systemically more energy efficient or sustainable.

To determine what is more efficient you have to have an alternative to compare the tractor Ag to. Tractor AG could be run on 100 percent bio diesel but the acreage used to produce the bio diesel would reduce the output available for market just as pasture and hay land needed to support horses used to use up one third of the available land.

[vtsnowedin]

My point wasn't about inflation, just that we with all our 'wealth' can't afford wheat produced by horse drawn equipment anymore. How come something that used to be affordable, no longer is?

Why do you think $100 per bushel wheat is un affordable? That would make the raw ingredient cost of a loaf of bread about $1.00
Back then they didn't have car payments , a cable TV bill or a cell phone bill or a lot of other things we now consider essential but really aren't.

[clv101]

Yes, that's a good point. I guess we used to spend a far higher proportion of our income on food than we do now. 'Expensive' food was affordable then in a way it's not for many these days.

[kenneal - lagger]

You can't have more energy out then you put in.

Any animal has to have more energy out than it puts in. If it didn't it wouldn't have the energy to catch or find its next meal! It wouldn't have the energy to reproduce. Life would have died out on earth just as quickly as it started!

It's only humans, by using fossil fuels, that can put more energy into getting food than they get out of it but that is a recent development. For hundreds of thousands of years man got more energy out of food than we put in. It is only with the advent of farming and the use of other animals and their fodder crops and now fossil fuelled machinery that we have been able to get our food by putting more energy into the process than we get out.

Using our own labour a person can produce enough food to feed one and a half people by farming/gardening so if we lose the ability to use fossil fuels without regaining the ability to employ animals the human race is in trouble, or at least those who live in cities are.

In winning our food we are in fact harvesting the power of the sun which has accumulated over a growing season in the plants that we eat or that the animals that we eat have eaten. We are eating stored sunshine. In the days before fossil fuels the rich people of the world were the ones who controlled the land because land was the source of all energy beit firewood, charcoal, horse power or food. The more land you controlled the more solar power you could accumulate.

[vtsnowedin]

You can't have more energy out then you put in.

Any animal has to have more energy out than it puts in. If it didn't it wouldn't have the energy to catch or find its next meal! It wouldn't have the energy to reproduce. Life would have died out on earth just as quickly as it started!

It's only humans, by using fossil fuels, that can put more energy into getting food than they get out of it but that is a recent development. For hundreds of thousands of years man got more energy out of food than we put in. It is only with the advent of farming and the use of other animals and their fodder crops and now fossil fuelled machinery that we have been able to get our food by putting more energy into the process than we get out.

Using our own labour a person can produce enough food to feed one and a half people by farming/gardening so if we lose the ability to use fossil fuels without regaining the ability to employ animals the human race is in trouble, or at least those who live in cities are.

In winning our food we are in fact harvesting the power of the sun which has accumulated over a growing season in the plants that we eat or that the animals that we eat have eaten. We are eating stored sunshine. In the days before fossil fuels the rich people of the world were the ones who controlled the land because land was the source of all energy beit firewood, charcoal, horse power or food. The more land you controlled the more solar power you could accumulate.

You are confusing energy expended with energy input.
A cow expends X amount of energy to walk to a clump of grass, eat and digest it. It inputs Y amount of energy which is stored solar energy contained in the grass. Y does indeed exceed X but if you follow it all out all of the Y is accounted for somewhere. (Sometimes under the cows tail) and the cow never has more energy then the Y it has consumed.

[kenneal - lagger]

While it's growing it does. If it puts on weight it does. If it has a calf it does.

If hunter gatherer man is to support a shaman as well as his family he has to produce much more energy than he consumes.

If farming man is to support a civilisation he must produce much, much more energy than he consumes.

[vtsnowedin]

While it's growing it does. If it puts on weight it does. If it has a calf it does.

If hunter gatherer man is to support a shaman as well as his family he has to produce much more energy than he consumes.

If farming man is to support a civilisation he must produce much, much more energy than he consumes.

No it consumes food and converts a portion of it to increased body mass but the food (ie. energy) comes in before the growth occurs. The cow gestating a calf takes in more energy through food then is needed for its maintenance plus that being devoted to the calf. Once born the cow will take in even more food and convert a lot of it to milk to feed the calf.
A hunter collects energy he does not produce it and of course he needs to collect more then he expends to turn a profit. But neither he or the cow will ever contain more energy then they have consumed. The hunter might have some excess hanging on a pole but not inside his body.