[spot5050]

Has anyone read this book?..

The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
Peter Huber, Mark P. Mills

ISBN: 0465031161

Amazon Synopsis: "A myth-shattering book that explains why energy is not scarce, why the quality of energy is more important than quantity, and why "waste" of energy is both necessary and desirable. The sheer volume of talk about energy, energy prices, and energy policy on both sides of the political aisle suggests that we must know something about energy. But according to Peter Huber and Mark Mills, the things we "know" are mostly myths. In The Bottomless Well, Huber and Mills debunk the myths and show how a better understanding of energy will radically change our views and policies on a number of very controversial issues. They explain why demand will never go down, why most of what we think of as "energy waste" actually benefits us; why greater efficiency will never lead to energy conservation; and why the energy supply is infinite-it's quality of energy that's scarce and expensive. The Bottomless Well will also revolutionize our thinking about the automotive industry (gas prices don't matter and the hybrid engine is irrelevant), coal and uranium, the much-maligned power grid (it's the worst system we could have except for all the others), what energy supplies mean for jobs and GDP, and many other hotly debated subjects. "

[ThinkGeek]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('spot5050', '
')
why the energy supply is infinite-it's quality of energy that's scarce and expensive. "

[khebab]

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic5820.html

[spot5050]

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[spot5050]

"The twilight of fuel, the virtue of waste, and why we will never run out of energy."
ISBN: 0-465-03116-1

I'm determined to give this book a fair hearing. I think some of it is interesting, however some of it is just bizarre.

Here are a few extracts. What do you think...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Bottomless Well', 'A') quads worth of wood is a huge forest... bulky and heavy. Pound for pound, coal stores about twice as much heat. Oil beats coal by about twice as much again. And a gram of U-235 is worth about four tons of coal. The proponents of solar, wind, biomass are pushing against a powerfull historical trend. Left to its own devices the market has not persued thin, low-energy-density fuels, however cheap - it has paid steep premiums for fuels that pack more energy into less weight and space.

[khebab]

Hmm... these statements are good examples of how flat-earth economists "think". They live in a world free of physical constraints where the market alone is the driving force of our future.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Bottomless Well', 'A') quads worth of wood is a huge forest... bulky and heavy. Pound for pound, coal stores about twice as much heat. Oil beats coal by about twice as much again. And a gram of U-235 is worth about four tons of coal. The proponents of solar, wind, biomass are pushing against a powerfull historical trend. Left to its own devices the market has not persued thin, low-energy-density fuels, however cheap - it has paid steep premiums for fuels that pack more energy into less weight and space.

[0mar]

If he's not a scientist or an oil industry person, I will summarily ignore all his claims about future fuel sources. Economics does not make predictions, it makes post-dictions.

[MicroHydro]

Human stupidity will always be a bottomless well.

[Geology_Guy]

It's in our nature to live in the present. I have seen studies linking major amounts of greenhouse gas emissions to flooded vegetation in reservoirs.

Also as just pointed out reservoirs silt up. There are major reservoirs in the Midwest almost 50% filled with silt. The engineers 40 years ago figured 40 years was a good design span for the new lakes. Surely in 40 years we would be using fusion they thought and hydro-electric would not matter.

All of these lakes provide drinking water to cities and were built with cheap oil. Building new lakes won't be so cheap or easy.

[halfin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ThinkGeek', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('spot5050', '
')
why the energy supply is infinite-it's quality of energy that's scarce and expensive. "

[MD]

They make some interesting arguments, with definite strength when looking at efficiency growth from technology and economy of scale. Also the idea of an efficient engine naturally running faster thus consuming the gains and more is an appealing argument.

From the other side, how about a comparison to product lifecycle from development through commodity? Computers for example (or automobiles if you like) started out as highly specialized, troublesome, and profoundly expensive items. Demand was driven by sales, marketing, and application specialists until the product caught on. Rapid advances ensued, affecting price and quality, until the product reached where it is today, nearly a commodity requiring much less technical expertise and where price is the major driver for most of the market. (retail and small busines markets, not specialized markets)Advances are still being made, but market maturation has also occured.

How does this compare to the oil market? Have we reached technological maturation? Have we reached "quantum speeds?" Can we accomplish a few more orders of magnitude of improvents thus extracting greater percentages of oil in place at marketable costs? The debate rages on, but it certainly looks like the answers will be evident soon enough

[aahala]

What I am getting from the discussion and the quotes from the book, is
that the book was mistitled.

Instead of being "The Bottomless Well" it should have been called
"The Well may be a lot deeper than others believe".

It's a completely different thing to claim something is in much greater
supply than previously believed as opposed to "there is no limit".

If the authors are really claiming unlimited energy, they ought to
test their local buffet bar with unlimited trips. The owner of the cafe
will undoubtedly have a different opinion of the meaning of unlimited.

[Kingcoal]

During the first energy crisis in the seventies, someone said that we were suffering from an intelligence crisis, not an energy crisis. That's the point argued here. We have a crisis, but it's a more of a failure to progress than anything else. Imagine if our ancestors had an unlimited amount of firewood. Would they then have even bothered with coal?

Real power is the level of organization of energy usage. My laptop consumes less than 14 watts, yet is orders of magnitude more powerful than the ENIAC, which consumed as much as a city block. This increase in efficiency is huge in the electronics business, however much slower in other disciplines.

I think that Peak Oil will spell the end of the internal combustion engine. What is needed is a breakthrough in electric battery technology. That is the only thing holding back electric cars. We have been very slow to progress past the ICE and Peak Oil will light a fire under that effort.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', 'D')uring the first energy crisis in the seventies, someone said that we were suffering from an intelligence crisis, not an energy crisis. That's the point argued here. We have a crisis, but it's a more of a failure to progress than anything else. Imagine if our ancestors had an unlimited amount of firewood. Would they then have even bothered with coal?

Real power is the level of organization of energy usage. My laptop consumes less than 14 watts, yet is orders of magnitude more powerful than the ENIAC, which consumed as much as a city block. This increase in efficiency is huge in the electronics business, however much slower in other disciplines.

I think that Peak Oil will spell the end of the internal combustion engine. What is needed is a breakthrough in electric battery technology. That is the only thing holding back electric cars. We have been very slow to progress past the ICE and Peak Oil will light a fire under that effort.