Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Reasons for large numbers of wrong forecasts can be
found in the herdlike behavior of forecasters smitten
by prevailing moods (Leydon 1987; Smil 2003). In the
mid-1970s forecasts of global oil demand for the year
2000 suggested levels between 185-220 EJ; in the mid-
1980s they dropped to just 118-133 EJ, lower than the
actual 1980 consumption (actual total in 2000 was 152
EJ). The human propensity to conceive of the future as
an extension of the immediate past indicates a striking in-
capacity to learn from previous shifts and discontinuities.
Forecasters may keep ignoring incontrovertible evidence
of past trend shifts, but they share infatuation with new
energy sources and conversions.
Basalla (1982) illustrated this propensity by pointing
out the recurrent myth of new energy sources as ultimate
solutions. Coal's mystique was transferred first to hydro-
electricity (white coal), whose large-scale development
appealed as much to Lenin (''Communism is the Soviet
power plus electrification!'') as it did to Roosevelt. Nu-
clear delusions began during the 1950s with promises of
electricity too cheap to meter, and Seaborg (1972) fore-
saw not only electricity generation dominated by fission
(and increasingly by fast breeder reactors) by 2000 but
also commercial fusion and nuclear-propelled spaceships
ferrying people to Mars. Nuclear explosives were to be
used in mining and blasting new harbors and canals
(Kirsch 2005). The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's
1974 forecast had 260 GW installed in the United States
by 1985, and 1.2 TW in 2000. The actual 2000 total was
81.5 GW, and there were no clear prospects for fusion.
The same adjectives used to extol nuclear genera-
tion—inexhaustible, cheap, nonpolluting—reappeared
in glowing descriptions of renewable energetics pub-
lished during since the 1970s as the advocates of small-
scale, decentralized energy production promised a new,
morally superior millennium devoid of nuclear and fossil
fuel sins. The virtues of hydrogen-powered society have
been extolled for decades (Hoffmann 1981; Rifkin
2002; NRC 2004), but costs and complications of pro-
ducing this secondary energy carrier and setting up
the requisite distribution infrastructures keep pushing
the dates of a hydrogen economy farther into the future.
And then there are utterly unrealistic ideas, ranging from
Goela's (1979) wind harnessing with huge kites to the
tapping of meltwaters from the Eastern Greenland gla-
ciers (Partl 1977). On even grander scales is electricity
generation by letting the Mediterranean Sea waters to fall
into the 18,000-km 2 evaporative lake formed in Libya's
Qattara depression, extraterrestrial capture of solar radia-
tion by geostationary satellites (Glaser 1968), and Moon-
based photovoltaic plants beaming microwave energy to
the Earth (Criswell 2000).
In the real world we have to accept the limits of
our understanding. Thus far, fossil-fueled civilization has
enjoyed relatively easy access to resources recoverable
with high net energy returns. Indeed, the ease of discov-
ery, cheapness of extraction, and size of reserves of many
supergiant oil and gas fields provided extraordinary ener-
getic boons. Clearly, a civilization coping with falling net
energy returns will have to make many adjustments. But
this reality in itself may not be intolerably restrictive.
What we do with the available energy will matter more
than its net costs. And even a perfect prevision of partic-
ular energy techniques would be of limited help. The
challenge is much harder: to envisage what the whole so-
ciety will be like. Given our powers, this should mean
what we aspire it to look like and how much we are will-
ing to adapt (dare I say sacrifice?) in order to bring it
about. There are many possible futures within the con-
fines of resource availability and thermodynamic impera-
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