The Crash Course - Chris Martenson [96]
If you find the Second Law of Thermodynamics a bit esoteric and want to observe a more direct and observable law of nature that has also never been violated, consider the law of gravity. Not once has anything that has been dropped on Earth ever floated upward instead of accelerating downward. Despite our technological prowess, not once have we ever found a way to defeat gravity here on the surface of the earth with our technology. We can temporarily defeat gravity using the powerful forces found in rockets and magnets, but we’ve never permanently diminished it. Just as the Second Law of Thermodynamics has proven to be an immutable law of nature that is immune from our technological reach, so, too, has gravity. The latest high-tech gizmos may intrigue and impress us, but they are as firmly straitjacketed by the laws of energy and entropy as you are glued to the earth by gravity.
Our first step toward understanding the limits of technology is to fully appreciate that technology can find, produce, and transform energy, but it cannot create it. Once we really understand the fact that technology does not (has not, will not, cannot) create energy, we’re in a better position to appreciate its offerings and shortcomings.
Fact 2—Transforming Energy Is Expensive
Once energy has taken the trip all the way to the bottom of the frictionless slide, it’s lost to us as a form of energy that can do useful work. Technology will permit us to take less concentrated forms of energy and make them more concentrated, perhaps even push them back up the slide, but only at an energy cost. By now you know this cost is “diffuse heat.” Any time we decide to concentrate a form of energy, we lose some energy to heat. Put another way, if we want to create one unit of concentrated energy, we will have to start with more than one unit of less-concentrated (but still useful) energy, with the extra balance representing the portion that will be “donated” to the universe as heat. Pushing things back up the slide is possible, but only if we’re willing to pay.
This is why the much-advertised “hydrogen economy” is an energy bust waiting to happen. There are no existing deposits of hydrogen to mine or tap. Hydrogen is energy-expensive to make, and there’s simply no way to make it without losing energy along the way. We might make it from natural gas, or from electricity, but we lose heat with every step of the conversion process. The more hydrogen we make, the less energy we have. Hydrogen might make sense economically and/or politically, but it’s an energetic flop. I’m picking on hydrogen a bit here, but the principle applies to any and every energy transformation.
And there’s nothing that technology can do to circumvent this reality. Transforming energy is expensive; it costs energy. Heat is lost, the entropy tax is unavoidable. This isn’t techno-pessimism—it’s the law: the Second Law of Thermodynamics, to be exact. The universe always applies its tax; entropy constantly increases.
Fact 3—Energy Transitions Take Time
If Peak Oil arrives before 2020, as seems likely at the time of this writing, then very little time remains to effect a transition to alternative sources of energy, whatever they may be. Energy transitions take time. A lot of time. And that is not so much a function of technology, but of human behavior and the economics of already-deployed capital.
For example, note in Figure 18.1 how long it took for coal to equal the energy contribution of wood (“biofuels” in the chart), and for oil to then equal the energy from coal, and that natural gas has still not equaled either of those (although it could). Nuclear and hydro remain distant competitors in the energy game.
Figure 18.1 Energy Use by Source, 1800–2010
These transitions took decades, typically four or more, to happen. This is one more reason why we might not expect or hope for technology to fix the energy predicament we face: markets, economics, and behaviors operate on their own time