An Oft Foretold Winter of Scarcity (Part IIb: Energy choices, do we really have a choice?)

A future we enter regardless of whether our eyes are open or closed

In Part IIa, we discussed some of the main types of energy sources. We looked at the intimate relationship between energy and modern food production. We looked at productivity of the world and how energy consumption is highly correlated to it, If I were to be so bold, I would say energy consumption is one of the main drivers of real production growth. We looked at the role played by energy in geopolitics. We specifically looked the the politics of control.

We will now take a closer look some sources of energy. Though it could be argued that in some small ways, wind, solar and hydro energy was used since antiquity, since, the existence of windmills, solar furnaces and water wheels were inevitable from people getting burned on hot rocks, being blown off those hot rocks or washed away by a flood. Odd, that in those days learning from crisis tended to benefit many, while today, crisis are not really teachers anymore, they are events to bamboozle the masses to the advantage of “the elite”. I guess, times change. However, it was a minor amount of energy tapped by our ancient ancestors. I would place chronologically energy sources that were efficiently exploited due either to abundance or ease of exploiting them or the technology needed to mature enough to make the source significant.

1. Traditional biomass

2. Coal

3. Oil

4. Gas

5. Hydro-electricity

6. Nuclear

7. Wind

8. Solar

9. Other modern renewable fuels

Of course this list is very generalized, since, each of these have been evolving with time and each has their own footprint, ease of use depending on the situation, size of supporting infrastructure to exploit the source, portability and many other considerations. Needless to say, choice of a supply of energy is not a simple one. In my opinion, it is an error to put all our energy needs into limited sources. I say this because, from Part IIa, we saw the need of many sources was always with us, if the growth of our productivity is important, and, no magical technology boosts one source (maybe a sanctioned green one) to astronomical prominence, any significant cut to the sources listed above will cause significant hardship and a reversal in production growth. We have a real life example going on right now.

Let’s take look at what is happening to Germany. Germany, based on political expediency and conformance to “the elite” green agenda, rather than making decisions based on real world data, decided to embrace the whole green agenda, cutting nuclear and even more disastrously sanctioning their only other major source of energy from Russia. The odd thing in the German/Russian games, is that Russia was supplying them with energy, even when they are at war, I know many would not call what is happening as war, but I see this as war. They are sending arms to Ukraine to kill Russians, while Russia was still supplying Germany with energy to do just this. Paul Graig Roberts has commented extensively about this odd energy story. To wrap this up, production and Germany as a whole is in the midst of a significant collapse, underpinning this collapse is energy. By now the reader must be tired of hearing the phrase, “no energy = no growth and in time collapse”. The fanciful green agendas imposed on much of the world without truly considering the real-world dynamics that these agendas would effect is truly amazing to watch. This controlled demolition of the imperial world, by manipulation of energy sources and food sources, is not by accident. However, I don’t believe the perpetrators knows the eventual fallout of this massive perturbation of the current human experience. Demolition seems to be the tool of choice for “the elite”.

Now we head back to the fundamentals of energy as I see it. We have already touch on the sources. There are many other concepts we will delve into such as energy density, infrastructure needed for each source, availability or abundance. All of these gives us a chance to evaluate the source as it impacts us. The topics will not be exhaustive as there is a limit to my familiarity and some are just beyond the scope of a short article.

I will say that there is one topic I will ignore for the time being, which has been so distorted, that, an independent view is necessarily a lengthy discussion on its own. That topic, you guessed it, is the choice of fuel and its impact on the environment. To this day, there are many scientists on both sides of the argument, here is a recent article against man made climate change, and, you have to go no further than, my lest favourite sources, Wikipedia for the consensus opinion. You will note, I use the word opinion a lot with regards to this subject as I see merit on both sides of the man made problem argument. This is because the warming trend is, from my viewpoint, a very obvious trend for quite awhile now, however, there is a lot of opinion about man’s contribution, none of these opinions are conclusive, as I see it.

It is my opinion, that all the fuel choices above has impact on certain aspects of the biosphere, in which we inhabit. I am also aware, regardless of anyone who might claim they are “the science” or captured consensus is the only approach to science, that, the interrelated systems of this biosphere are not well understood, in my limited view. What can be said about the systems, whether we understand them or not, is that they are far from linear and are fundamentally chaotic.

Chaotic systems can be very sensitive to initial conditions, so any error in our initial understanding will make future model based predictions prone to uncertainty. I am not going to dive into chaos theory. I have studied the field in the past, but, I am not an expert. I think that there is a nice description in the spirit of these notes, that aims to illuminate certain aspects of chaos theory without miring the reader in the mathematical complexities.

What is Chaos Theory?

Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, weather, the stock market, our brain states, and so on. These phenomena are often described by fractal mathematics, which captures the infinite complexity of nature. Many natural objects exhibit fractal properties, including landscapes, clouds, trees, organs, rivers etc, and many of the systems in which we live exhibit complex, chaotic behaviour. Recognizing the chaotic, fractal nature of our world can give us new insight, power, and wisdom. For example, by understanding the complex, chaotic dynamics of the atmosphere, a balloon pilot can “steer” a balloon to a desired location. By understanding that our ecosystems, our social systems, and our economic systems are interconnected, we can hope to avoid actions which may end up being detrimental to our long-term well-being.

-Fractal Foundation

I am not discouraging anyone from pursuing, in depth, this very interesting topic, however, this is one rabbit hole with a lot of depth. So, for the practical reason of brevity, I will not follow the white rabbit this time. Suffice it to say, I’m unconvinced by the numerical predictions of climate models of a poorly understood and highly non-linear environmental system. I am however fairly convinced of the warming trend that has been well described. So, I will take the easy and prudent way out and ignore this technical problem, for this article.

So, let us take some preliminary observations to help us see who are the main users of energy. It would be prudent to take a look at energy usage by sector, this first partitioning of energy use by sector should illuminate where the energy is going today. First, let us look at the end use sectors of energy in the US (Fig. 1), and how much of the total energy pie is taken up by each sector.

Figure 1: US energy consumption by sector...

It’s interesting to note, from figure 1, that any discussion of energy use must take into account the huge proportion of energy used is due to activity that is in control by big business and in turn “the elite”, yet the preponderance of rhetoric about energy conservation is directed towards we the people, who directly only contribute to a small wedge of the pie. This very unbalanced conversation is made even more apparent if we consider the fact that the US military is one of the largest single user of energy and emitter of carbon-dioxide in the world.

The fact that we do not hear anything about the military and its contribution to our energy related problems, yet, we are inundated with dialog about the culpability of we the people, certainly strikes me as odd. This odd skewing of narrative is by design. The narrative control makes people uncomfortable about their energy use, since we tend to want to do the right thing. In turn, the guilt, we are told to feel, conditions us into agreeing with “elite” driven agendas towards curtailing our energy use. This makes makes us less effective, more vulnerable to unwanted external control and it is this control that is precious to “the elite”. I would never say that we should use energy like there is no tomorrow, which is what the elite do. A plot of per capita usage of energy for a few countries makes this point (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: Per capita energy usage of a few countries

To me, It is obvious from this chart (Fig. 2), that the countries that shouts the loudest about energy conservation are also the ones that uses the most energy per capita in the world. If those countries really were curtailing there energy use to match the more physically productive nations, I would applauding their chest pounding. However, I have seen no such thing. I see a sea of cowed and guilt ridden people around me, while the true culprits are living high of the hog.

Of course, as would be expected from the discussion in part IIa, if we just look at total energy used we would expect China to rise to to top. This is exactly what we observe in (Fig. 3) below.

Figure 3: Total energy usage of chosen countries in 2020

Now we will return to the theme of who is really using most of the energy in these contries and to what purpose is the energy used, we see, that the two standouts in energy useage, China and The United States, are diametrically different in their approach. The Chinese is the worlds factory, thanks to the west’s very successful outsourcing of real production. The US, on the other hand, uses strong arm techniques to enrich “the elite” and the people of the US are a secondary nuisance that need to be forcefully controlled. While, the really important activity of propping up the empire by military intimidation for the benefit of “the elite” is never curtailed, no matter how much more significant their impact is. It is my view, that, if energy is curtailed in any significant way, it is the centralized big money entities that will suffer the most and we the people will be forced to shoulder the guilt and punished for the hare brained agendas of “the elite” as shown in this article. It is for this reason, I think it is unlikely to be implemented to any significant degree. The rhetoric will continue, since, it does such a good job in diverting our attention, and, provides a means for the elitists to slide in their agendas. Crisis after crisis is what is foreseeable, since, they are fertile ground for the mutant seeds of our destruction, planted by the elitists.

One might ask how does this relate to choice of energy sources? The answer is fully formed in the previous paragraph. We the people do not have a choice. If you think that your vote is a choice, take a look at this idiot German tyrant’s response and think again. It almost seems idiocy is a requirement of office. I guess useful idiots are more easily controlled. If you feel that it was only the Ukraine crisis that is bringing about this state of energy concern, you would be wrong, the works have been in place for a very long time. One very thoughtful analysis of this situation is provided here. I just wanted to indicate that choice of energy is just an illusion, there is only the control of energy and a means of promoting the current agenda of “the elite”.

Though, I am more on the side of there being more pressure on the biosphere than is sustainable, I am not on board with speaking points like, “anthropogenic global warming” or “the official analysis” or “trust ‘the science’” or “the science is settled” or “operation warp speed” or “its a natural virus” or “it must have leaked from the Wuhan lab” or “don’t try to understand ‘the current thing’ by yourself, it’ll just hurt your little head” or “it’s just failed intelligence”. I am not going to give up my choice to understand a situation unquestioningly to a bunch of proven failed bureaucrats that have consistently made it worse for both we the people and our world in general.

This segment is getting too long and rambling. I will end it here and will strive to make the next instalment more concise, if I have the discipline to do so. It is taking me so long, many of us, will all have frozen or starved in the dark before I get anything out.

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More stuff after this article was written.

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• The pain, due to energy insecurity, for the masses continue due to the beligerance of the failing hedgemon.

• Well, no-one should be surprised anymore, the energy situation in Europe is a function of externally driven, European politician enacted, fanciful thinking. Guess what, the people suffer.

• Now, for more of the same, this will be same song sung around the empire.

• A recent take on totalitarianism, war, propaganda, hunger and scarcity in general. A thought out and well delivered opinion.

• Though this article is not specifically about energy, I found the point made with regards to the control of information is relevant over so many areas of concern for everyone.

• Energy usage links to growth, growth links to wealth, wealth links to power, power links to dominance. The currently powerful and dominant does not want to share, which, leads to war.