Simon Michaux - Will There Be Enough Food and Energy For Everyone?

[K-Dog]

Finally the dependency of society on oil and the issue of being past peak becomes part of the global heating discussion.

[RE]

Finally the dependency of society on oil and the issue of being past peak becomes part of the global heating discussion.

Well, I sat through the entire 50 minutes listening to Simon's halting delivery of partially formed thoughts which when taken all together said absolutely...nothing.  Besides the idea that lots of small container size nuke reactors is better than trying to build big conventional reactors that take a lot of lead time,there was nothing else concrete at all here.  He has aal the right degrees and pedigree to be taken seriously in a meeting with politicians, but besides the fact they generally can't take suggestions that might work, he doesn't actually have any suggestions, other than we are going to be forced to do something different.

So, I don't really see any progress coming from this being part of the global heating discussion.  We've been talking about the depleting resources for years.  The money problems are nothing new.  He postulates that people who work together and cooperate will do better than those who go to war.  Maybe, but they go to war anyhow because they are running out of stuff.  If the Houthis had plenty to eat and jobs making stuff to sell to other people and energy to run their cars and air conditioners, I doubt they would be firing missiles at ships passing their coastline.  But they don't have those things and nobody will cooperate to just give it to them.

Going over to his Utube channel, he's doing better than me with almost 4000 subscribers and 2200 views for this vid, but frankly I think I have a better delivery than him.  At least I usually complete my sentences and finish a thought before I jump to something else.  In any event, as we discussed 4K subscribers is meaningless.  With all those degrees and experience, why doesn't he have 1M subscribers?  He's not sparking a global movement, nor will he with that delivery.  We are in desperate need of more charismatic spokespersons.

RE

[K-Dog]

We are in desperate need of more charismatic spokespersons.

Picky Picky.  Well I won't disagree, and being from Finland (even if not born there) does not help. 

There is an old movie,  Flight of the Phoenix.  In it an aeronautical engineer is putting together pieces of a crashed plane to get something that will fly.  The survivors, a WWII bombing crew is helping.  Their leader finds out this engineer has only designed model airplanes.  That from a factual point of view does not matter.  The physics of flight are the same for model airplanes.  But the commander wisely keeps the knowledge about the engineer to himself.  Facts don't matter.  It was important that the flight crew kept their hopes up.  Lack of faith would be fatal.  They needed to fly to safety or they would die in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Is Finland a real country?

I don't much care about the mini-nukes and Simon's hopium about it.  I do care that Simon is not crazy as a loon like Guy McFearson is.  Simon seems more able to know the difference between bullshit and actual facts better than most.  But at the same time spending more than passing time on 'adiabatic oil' is something he should not have not done.  'I am open to the idea'.

Well I am NOT open to the idea.  More than a few miles down the earth is hot.  Oil gets cooked to gas if it is more than a few miles down.  Basic physics.  Simon should know basic physics.  I am sure he does.  He will do better if he learns a bit about elite psychology and the tools of intentional deception.

That question to me would get a hot response.  I would explain the idea was generated as a thought-stopper by the rich and sneaky.  Created for no other reason than to confuse and misdirect the half curious from asking 'questions' that would disrupt the fossil-fuel bean feed of rich useless eaters.
 
Simon had the knee-jerk reaction of taking the question seriously.  But the question is as serious as asking:  If men grow wings will we still need airplanes?  Questions like this one, and questions about adiabatic oil, do not deserve answers. 

I do understand the presenter wanted the question answered and do not have a problem with that.  But it was a lost opportunity.

the entire 50 minutes listening to Simon's halting delivery of partially formed thoughts

There is not much about peak oil or global heating that is going to be new info for you and I.  But for most people, Simon's presentation is new information.  For them the thoughts are not so half-formed. 

For years we have heard others say things like 'I don't have anything to say anymore that has not been said.' While that is true most, people still have not heard the info Simon puts out.  Mis-info cancels out the information that leaks through every day. 

If you think you are 'done' preaching the tune, it is time to start over from the beginning.

I confess I posted the video because Simon was interviewed at the Environmental Coffeehouse this week.  I'd like some of the members to know about us.

I left a post on the Environmental Coffeehouse Discord page about Simon.  I mentioned the Diner.  I made the post here at the same time for any people that came to visit.  Discord is very hard to use and log into.  Big Brother heavily censors it.  Professional trolls disrupt discussion.  And that is all you have to do to disrupt an armchair activist!  My comment was deleted.  No surprise there.  Homeland security wins again.

One form of troll is the Guy McFearson disciple who will post a dozen posts on Discord over anyone who claims the end is NOT tomorrow.  There are a few on the Environmental Discord channel.  It is appropriate that oil companies pay these people a salary.  Their thought-stopping is effective.  They make everyone think Doomers are crazy.

Simon is a bit of a lightweight from our point of view.  But we are not running the Diner just to talk to each other.  We actually want discussion, new members, and some growth would be nice.

[RE]

Picky Picky.  Well I won't disagree, and being from Finland (even if not born there) does not help.

Simon has a thick Ausssie accent.  English is his first language.  His inability to speak coherently has nothing to do with living in Finland. 

There is an old movie,  Flight of the Phoenix.  In it an aeronautical engineer is putting together pieces of a crashed plane to get something that will fly.  The survivors, a WWII bombing crew is helping.  Their leader finds out this engineer has only designed model airplanes.  That from a factual point of view does not matter.  The physics of flight are the same for model airplanes.  But the commander wisely keeps the knowledge about the engineer to himself.  Facts don't matter.  It was important that the flight crew kept their hopes up.  Lack of faith would be fatal.  They needed to fly to safety or they would die in the middle of the Sahara desert.

A great old movie.  I saw it 11 times sailing back from Brasil on a Freighter/Passenger ship that used to do the route.   It was the only movie they had on board and showed it every night.  Jimmy Stewart played the Pilot, Hardy Kruger played the Kraut model plane designer.  Factoid:  The plane they were flying on was a charter flight for Saudi ARAMCO.

I don't much care about the mini-nukes and Simon's hopium about it.  I do care that Simon is not crazy as a loon like Guy McFearson is.  Simon seems more able to know the difference between bullshit and actual facts better than most.  But at the same time spending more than passing time on 'adiabatic oil' is something he should not have not done.  'I am open to the idea'.

Abiotic, not Adiabatic.  This was one of the bad science/engineering moments.  He also talked about routinely digging 10Km deep wells for geothermal power and abiotic oil.  Even if you could drill that deep easily (which we can't), the energy cost of pumping anything up from that depth would be more than you got from it.  Negative EROEI.

Another stupid one was the idea of burning iron powder instead of coal.  Where is he gonna get iron powder?  You don't find iron by itself in minerals, it comes combined with something else, like a sulfate.  To get iron by itself, you have to smelt it in a furnace. So what does he burn to get the iron powder?  Dumb.

Simon is a bit of a lightweight from our point of view.  But we are not running the Diner just to talk to each other.  We actually want discussion, new members, and some growth would be nice.

The thing is, with his bona fides, he should NOT be a lightweight.  He should be able to frame the problem correctly and in a 50 minute presentation with a sympathetic interviewer he should be able to cover a whole lot more ground than he did.  Talks about micronukes, but did he mention anything about the grid or how to wire them together?  He mentioned storage issues with renewables, but he didn't talk at all about what they are.  It was all pablum, even for newbies.  Energy Collapse for Dummies.

Finally, his future with the Venus Project sounds like greenwashing hopium to me.  Perfect energy efficient livable cities for everyone.  mmm-hmmmm.

RE

[K-Dog]

Simon has a thick Ausssie accent.  English is his first language.  His inability to speak coherently has nothing to do with living in Finland. 

I know, just having fun.  People from Finland are just easy to ignore because there are so few.

Abiotic yes, somehow I don't feel bad about getting it wrong.

You probably could get Simon on a video if you asked.

[RE]

You probably could get Simon on a video if you asked.

Yea, I probably could, but I would be too tempted to crush every solution he might generate up.  That is kind of counterproductive to the cause and too Guy McStinksion.  Particularly in economics, because as dumb as some of the science he brought up was, he doesn't seem to have clue 1 on what to do about the money problem, although he does at least realize the Volcker trick of cranking up interest rates isn't feasible this time round.  I'd appear on a panel though with him.

RE

[K-Dog]

I know Sandy at the Environmental Coffeehouse.  All we have to do is ask her to make an intro.

[RE]

I know Sandy at the Environmental Coffeehouse.  All we have to do is ask her to make an intro.

If she is doing a show just let me know the focus topic and who else will be chatting and if it's something I feel I can make a worthwhile contribution to, I'm available most any time.  Just let me know.

RE

[monsta666]

I am going to talk from a position of ignorance as I have not seen the video. To be a good premier for newbies the video should attempt to make a clear connection between our debt based monetary system, energy production and the accumulation of resources. If the cost of energy goes up, then this filters through into all products/services and is a good explanation for our cost-of-living crisis.

Growth based economies lead to overconsumption which leads to resource depletion but before real depletion you get high costs and a population that slowly gets poorer in real terms. The other product of overconsumption is excess pollution which is most clearly seen in how our climate is changing. At least that is the thing that grabs the most headlines. For a 50-minute video I would expect some coverage of these things. You don't need to get into the nitty gritty, but you do need to paint a general picture and provide a framework for newbies do further digging.

He should have highlighted that the cost of living is a global issue which is a clear indication we have a systemic issue and is not something that can be fully explained by merely having incompetent politicians (a common reframe of a lot of people).

I can see why he may opt to leave things on a high note as often that is what people want to hear and gets you more views, clicks and more money if he is thinking of monetising on some level. The reality is there are no solutions but then no one wants to hear that. Saying the best thing is a managed decline that keeps suffering to a minimum is not something people want to hear or see. The fact that we are already talking about niche topic will spell doom for his channel.

[RE]

Don't bother watching.  He doesn't get anywhere near what you mention as important for a primer on the situation.  The interviewer also did not do a very good job of asking pertinent questions.

RE

[K-Dog]

Simon has been busy, he knows a lot and has seen things from the inside out.

His point in this video twenty minutes in is that the green revolution as predicted by cornucopian wishful thinking is a job that can't get done fast enough even if the world had the stuff to do it.

Simon understands the physics.  He is able to say overshoot without saying the 'O' word.

Thorium reactors are covered halfway through.  Could Thorium reactors be the next turn of the * vicious circle?

* The vicious circle principle, according to which humankind's development has consisted in an accelerating movement from situations of scarcity, to technological innovation, to resultant surplus, to population growth, and then back to scarcity.

Here is the man who developed the VC theory.

Craig Dilworth

At the end of Simon's video he mentions solutions.  I say to adopt any solution means nothing without a change of ways.

[RE]

Simon wants to find a solution to the energy problem which most people recognize is real: that the supply of fossil fuels is not infinite and if we want to continue with a society and systems that consume a lot of energy, fossil fuels have to be replaced.  How much time we have left with fossil fuels remains a matter of some dispute and is an important factor, since more time left means more time to develop an alternative solution.

The solution Simon hangs his hat on are small thorium salt based nuclear reactors, which we will refer to as micro-nukes or MNs as shorthand.  The questions that need to be answered are how fast can MNs be built and distributed out in sufficient numbers to fill the gap left as fossil fuels become increasinly short in supply, and whether the power can be applied to the tasks that the FFs provide power for.  You need to answer also the questions about the supply of the thorium salts, how and where they will be mined and refied and then transported to the reactors and how and where the spent fuel will be disposed of.   Just about none of these questions are answerable at the moment.

In the video, Simon paints a picture of a really simple container size box that all you need to do to keep it running and generating power for your small town is for an easily trained technician to scoop fresh thorium into the top of the box, then scoop out the spent thorium from the bottom.  Sort of like shoveling coal into a boiler and shoveling out the ash at the end.  In his description, all the radioactive processes happen inside the sealed container and it's all very safe.  I doubt it's quite as simple and turn-key as he makes it out to be.

Now, if everything is operating as designed and there are no problems, perhaps it is this easy.  But no technology is immune from malfunctions and failures, and if you have hundreds or thousands of these small reactors sprinkled all over the country and also aboard container ships powering them, where are the maintenance personnel who can come fix a problem when it crops up?  I doubt this is something you could call the local plumber to fix like you would when the boiler in your house goes out.  Home heating systems are simple by comparison, and even these things break all the time.

The thing about working with radioactive fuel is that over time all the piping and containment tanks are exposed to constant bombardment by radiation.  Metals, ceramics and plastics will become brittle and develop cracks.  They also will become radioactive themselves from contamination and bombardment by high energy neutrons.  Replacing worn out or broken parts isn't necessarily going to be an easy job.

Then there is the problem of natural disasters.  Many small reactors distributed out over many locations increases the chances any one of them will be struck by a flood, tornado, hurricane, wildfire, earthquake or volcanic eruption.  Who and how will the damaged reactors be fixed up, and what risk is there if some of the thorium leaks out of the container box?  What happens if there is an overload from an electrical storm?  I'm sure there are built in fail-safes, but those can fail too.

Now, according to Simon, the Chinese have at least 1 thorium reactor ready to go online, and the company that developed the MN is ready to go into production of them.  How quickly can they turn out say 100 of them and get them distributed out and running in some Chinese province?  I've been hearing since about 2014 that thorium was ready to go as a technology instead of conventional, but a decade later we still don't have any track record for this to go on, only the promises from enthusiasts that it is the safe magic bullet we all have been hoping for.  I don't think you can even begin to address any of the questions about the feasibility until you have at least say 20 of them running for maybe 5 years or so.  Is that even going to happen in China in the next 5 years?  It seems doubtful, particularly taking account of their current economic woes.

Given that time problem, it has to be at least a decade before we could have even a handful of these reactors running in the FSoA, and do we HAVE a decade left to keep running on FFs?  Perhaps we won't be running short yet in 2025, but I find it hard to believe we will make it to 2034 with gas still flowing freely from the FSoA convenience store pumps.

Because of the time lag between when a solution like thorium MNs could be implemented and the amount of time we likely have left with enough FFs to keep BAU running, even IF they are the magic bullet Simon hopes they are, I don't think it will come in time to rescue us from a severe dislocation and major problemss with important systems of food production and delivery and heating or cooling in some areas.

The question I have for Simon is what do we do if there isn't enough time to put the MNs into the mix, and/or they aren't quite the magic bullet he makes them out to be?

RE

[K-Dog]

The question I have for Simon is what do we do if there isn't enough time to put the MNs into the mix, and/or they aren't quite the magic bullet he makes them out to be?

Even if there were time, if it is not presented in the right context there is no point.  Give the mini nuke to the 'market' and all is lost.  Another dumfuck turn of the vicious circle.  If the right people got behind the project, and they were not silenced, it could make a difference, time or not.  But they would be silenced.  An Elon Musk type character would emerge to capitalize the nuke and extinctify us as value becomes decoupled from need.  That is what commodification does.

[RE]

The question I have for Simon is what do we do if there isn't enough time to put the MNs into the mix, and/or they aren't quite the magic bullet he makes them out to be?

Even if there were time, if it is not presented in the right context there is no point.  Give the mini nuke to the 'market' and all is lost.  Another dumfuck turn of the vicious circle.  If the right people got behind the project, and they were not silenced, it could make a difference, time or not.  But they would be silenced.  An Elon Musk type character would emerge to capitalize the nuke and extinctify us as value becomes decoupled from need.  That is what commodification does.

OK, guess it's time to Party like it's 1999!  Get out your Electrical Banana.  It's going to be the very next phase.

Just call me Mellow Yellow.


RE

[K-Dog]

Party like it is 1999?  No that was not a good party for me.  I want to party like it is 1899



Simon and all his calculations are based on maintaining current lifestyles.  If there is a global shift in consciousness we need less stuff.  There has to be a complete change in living arrangements.

Low carbon fun.  I am sure you can come up with a few ideas.

And being as I have seen no big brains step up and say what has to be done, I am not going to hold back what I think needs to be done. I have been moving in that direction and now it is time.