The Cognitive Blind Spot of Social Primates

[kmo]

I mentioned recently that it's hard to hang tough with the Peak Oil narrative when the mainstream media narrative is that oil has never been more plentiful and that the real problem is low prices. Add to that the techno-utopian narratives of electric cars and power walls and super batteries, and the idea that industrial civilization is crucially

Comments

[nojay]

Doom-sayers have been talking about Energy Return Over Energy Investment (EROEI) for a long time in regards to extraction of energy reserves and other energy projects. The old days of Pennsylvania crude bubbling up from the ground and forming lakes are long gone, fracked gas is harder to get to the customer than regular gas/oil drilling operations etc.

The demand and pricetag for extracted energy in the form of oil, gas and coal has led to processes to make the extraction as cheap as possible and that usually means more energy-efficient processes since energy costs money. A lot of marginal oil wells that require pumps to get the oil to the surface are shut down for the moment since it costs more to run the pumps than the oil recovered will sell for in the current market. If the oil price goes up though those nodding-donkey pumps will start nodding again.

Hmmm, I wonder if it would be more cost-effective to run those pumps off solar panels?

Social evolution versus socio-biology

[ext_4021213]

Have you ever heard of Joseph Heath's book ***Englightenment 2.0