Debating the Energy Transition | Simon Michaux & Nafeez Ahmed

So do we have enough materials for a renewable economy or not?
A few months ago, the energy-Twittersphere exploded into debate over Simon Michaux’s report detailing how we lack enough materials and minerals for a renewable economy. I interviewed Simon, a researcher at GTK Finland, about this report, in which he laid out the lack of raw materials and the ecological cost of mining which will impede a renewable energy future.
The report was divisive, with anyone and everyone weighing in on the debate, and more than some name-calling online. Nafeez Ahmed, a systems researcher and investigative journalist who has been reporting on the environment for 20 years, published a detailed piece “debunking” Simon’s report. It caused another stir online, with calls for a debate between the two tweeted from around the world.
Watching this unfold, I was concerned by how those on the same side of the fight can end up at odds, and bemused by the vitriol I witnessed on Twitter in both Simon and Nafeez’s name. Simply, if we can’t learn to speak with one another, what’s the point?
They were both quick to agree to a debate, and had already been engaging over email on the topic. We go into the technical details of the report but also discuss the polarisation of science, the processing of information, the politics and tribalism driving conversation, before exploring the benefits of how an energy transformation can truly transform society.
00:00 Intro
03:35 The importance of dialogue
08:28 The polarisation of science
19:24 Simon: We don't have enough materials for a renewable economy
28:24 Nafeez: Technology disrupts
38:24 Nafeez: Building our the energy grid
39:47 Should we stop mining?
49:04 The future will have to be different
54:39 Can we transition?
01:10:55 How to transition?
01:23:10 How big should the buffer be?
01:32:06 Possible solutions
01:37:30 Debating the numbers
🔴 Simon's report: tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/...
🔴 Nafeez's analysis: ageoftransformation.org/energ...
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#climatecris #energycrisis #energytransition #simonmichaux

[@mkysml]

This isn't much of a debate. After the intro, Simon makes an argument (we don't have enough materials for X aggregate human activity) based on evidence and then for the rest of the conversation the host asks for clarifications and Nafeez describes the way the world will be if the laws of physics turn out to bend themselves to the desired outcomes in his mind.

[@duncanskertchly7365]

Yeah, it's pretty frustrating. I thought Nafeez might actually engage with Simon's numbers, but nah, straight off into magical techno-fixes.

[@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220]

Good summary..

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

Ecology or Geophysics of the biosphere is more important then EROI. As long as "policy makers" ignore the actual science - even the IPCC has dismissed the world's largest ocean shelf having 1200 gigatons of pressurized methane that is already accelerating into the atmosphere. Julia Steinbach PNAS 2021 reports an "abrupt eruption" is highly probable and yet even the IPCC dismisses it - as Jim Massa, Ph.D. oceanographer says, the IPCC is a joke. Daniel Rosenfeld's research group proved the Aerosol Masking Effect is twice as bad as previously thought. James E. Hansen also emphasizes all the increase in atmosphere temperature now is mainly due to reduction of Aerosol Masking Effect. So the switch to renewables will just increase the temperature - with a 40% decrease in coal burning then heating up Earth another 1 degree Celsius global average. The IPCC is claiming that decreasing methane pollution will offset aerosol masking effect but if the IPCC dismisses the ESAS "abrupt eruption" of methane obviously this is a joke. There's already over 400 Zettajoules of extra heat in the oceans accumulating since 1995 - that heat will accelerate out into the atmosphere, as the El Nino is showing. Droughts and famines will keep spreading - renewable energy is not going to fix this.

[@justcollapse5343]

As suspected. Thanks for saving us from nearly 2 hours of viewing. :)

[@Withnail1969]

@@duncanskertchly7365 he doesnt realise that the shiny world of technology he lives in goes away as soon as the power goes off, which it will.

[@j85grim4]

Normally I love this channel but Ahmed's argument is literally "Simon is wrong because he's not factoring in non-existent technology that might be invented and might work sometime in the maybe possible future....."

[@ZaZen___]

I don't like how Nafeez emphasized his points. Nafeez best points are overbuilding renewable energy production since it's cheaper than storage, as well as Vehicle 2 grid and getting EVs to stabilize the grid since they are batteries on wheels. An average EV has the storage capacity of 4 Tesla powerwalls. Global energy efficiency is now projected to increase 4% per year and then also we may only need 1/3rd of the energy since electricity is so much more systemically efficient. Re using active and old EV batteries for storage. Lastly better grid interconnection across separate grids in places like U.S and Europe can reduce so much material needs for more production.

[@tonywilson4713]

​@@ZaZen___ Its simply BULLSHlT because he's not factoring in anything practical which is exactly what people like Nafeez do to engineers all the time with "we can just do......" arguments. Problem is he is NOT AND ENGINEER and ha nod idea what he's saying. I am an engineer and I see this all the time from people like Nafeez. What Simon has done is what engineers call a FEED study (Front End Engineering & Design) its the first step in any proposal and basically asks - _"What do we need to do to do XYZ?"_ I am an engineer and I stopped about 39minutes in out of the shear frustration of YET ANOTHER NON-ENGINEER speaking complete garbage about things he has NO IDEA of. Thinking he can state what engineers are going to be doing and what technologies do and don't exist and what we can and cannot do *IS SO INFURIATING.* I did my degree in aerospace and my simple slap down regarding terraforming Mars is to ask how much air does it take to wrap Mars in a 1km layer of Earth Standard Air? Yes I know Mars does not have the gravity to hold it at Earth Standard Pressure but its a STARTING POINT. The answer is 178 TRILLION (with a T) tons of air and that's why nobody is terrraforming Mars anytime soon. Simon has done something similar. There's 1.5 Billion registered cars and probably another 100million or so other cars on the planet Simple question - How much iron, aluminum, copper, plastic, rubber, glass and other stuff does it take to replace 1.5 Billion cars with ICE engines with EV Cars??? Simons answer is like air for Mars. It basically says we need this much of these things and NOBODY has asked where that much stuff is coming from.

[@Withnail1969]

@@ZaZen___ we can't afford to overbuild it. hardly anyone would be able to afford electricity.

[@blugreen99]

Nafeez doesn't use arithmetic so hasn't much credibility..

[@blugreen99]

​@Withnail1969 Surely overbuild requires more storage not less?

[@burneraccount1218]

Simon is straight to the point, ultra specific, and talks about actual physical reality. This other guy meanders around, is highly nonspecific, and does not talk about actual physical reality. He does the same thing every techno narcissist does: he goes "oh because there where horse carriages and then there where cars we will live in a magic star trek future with infinite materials & infinite energy by next Thursday." That's basically boomer logic, they respond to absolutely everything by going "oh someone said x thing in the past or x thing happened within some arbitrary time-frame in the past so somehow that's now an argument no matter how much actual specific information you're providing about this subject.

[@mr.makeit4037]

I'm a boomer. I don't think that way. I'm very grounded and think that we should move forward with the resources available. What really needs to happen is to stop this tribal fighting in all forms, come together as a cohesive force, and reign in the corporate elites. It is they who helped put us in the predicament that we are in.

[@JohnnyBelgium]

​@mr.makeit4037 Millennial here. 40 y/o. I decided we are a pest, so I didn't make children. Between 1970 and 2018, humans eradicated 70% of wildlife. What does "move forward" mean? We will kill the entire planet. It's what we do.

[@eclipsenow5431]

What are you TALKING ABOUT? Simon Michaux DISTORTS reality with unbelievable straw-men he's constructed for the credulous doomer. Simon Michaux claims that to get through winter all cities need at least 4 weeks of grid storage from ‘rare’ metals batteries. The strawman attack he makes on renewables is that - in his hypothetical rare-battery scenario - these batteries would use up all known lithium and copper and many rare earths and other metals, leaving noting for the actual solar farms and wind turbines and EV’s and upgrading the electricity grid how we need to. He overwhelms listeners with irrelevant data points, and does such an info dump the listener is awed into silence and submission. Except it’s all a ridiculous straw-man! There are 3 main ways of dealing with winter WITHOUT using his 'rare' batteries. Indeed, his own paper shows we have MORE than enough resources if we can just eliminate them ! eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux-sans-batteries/ Each of the 3 points alone replaces the 'rare' metal batteries with other strategies. Seen together, they make his case absurd. DEFEATING WINTER 1- SODIUM BATTERIES. These batteries do NOT use rare-earths, rare metals, copper or lithium. They use sea-salt! Sodium is safer - it's less fire prone and less toxic. It is also 30% cheaper than lithium - making it perfect for both home and city scaled storage. The ocean stores 38.5 Quadrillion tons. That is so much, if we built enormous batteries to store the WORLD's power for a YEAR - it would only use 0.0006% of the salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and pretended sodium batteries were still experimental. But the first commercial orders had already been placed over a year before! faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/ When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right. So - that’s it! Sodium can replace the 'rare' batteries. All those metals are freed for wind and solar and HVDC and about 2 hours worth of battery storage for the grid. (A few hours is all we need - keep reading.) This eliminates his "Batteries that ate the world" from the energy transition. We have MORE than enough metal that can be produced in time. Check my maths. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux-sans-batteries/ But wait - there's more! DEFEATING WINTER 2 - OVERBUILD: Michaux’s references are 10 years old, back when renewables cost 10 TIMES as much as they do today. It may as well be a report from the stone age! Wind and solar are now 4 times cheaper than nuclear power (Lazard). They are so cheap you can overbuild them for winter. Does winter halve your output? Then double your wind and solar farms! It’s not rocket science - just a little statistical weather data. Build for winter as your baseline, and the rest of the year you’ll have ‘super-power’ to do other work with. Weather data is so easy to access engineers can model renewable grids. EG: Engineer David Osmond modelled Australia’s terrible 2022 La Nina rains. He found an overbuild of just 70% defeated our awful La Nina winter. So a 170% renewable grid would clean up today's electricity sector! eclipsenow.wordpress.com/overbuild/ Overbuild also assumes some geographic spread to draw on a wider geographic area. But HVDC transmission is cheap enough and only loses 3% electricity per 1000 km. Now get this. MOST of the human race lives close to the equator where WINTER ISN'T REALLY A THING! So for most of us, these 4 weeks of batteries are just irrelevant in the first place! Why extrapolate a northern European problem to the rest of the world? But that's Michaux for you. With HVDC lines we can economically top up colder Northern grids from reliable equatorial power. EG: Spanish solar can help run Finland, and then at night, Finnish wind can return the favour. The EU are already planning these upgrades to a true super-grid. Does Michaux explain all this? No. He pushes a now ancient paper on us to spin his peak energy yarn. DEFEATING WINTER 3 - MICHAUX REJECTS PUMPED HYDRO SITES AS TOO LIMITED. But he has completely messed this one up! Before I reveal Michaux's sources, let’s talk about Professor Andrew Blakers. Andrew Blaker's has street cred. He's won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (think Nobel Peace Prize - but for Engineering). Blakers has satellite mapped the earth and found that there are abundant sites for OFF-river pumped hydro, which is a closed loop recycling system that has minimal impact on fragile river ecosystems. You build the reservoirs and pipes and turbine room all at once, faster and cheaper than on-river, and then pump the water in from a river within 10's of km's. Cover it with floating solar panels to reduce evaporation, and pump in a bit more water every few months and you have a mostly closed-loop system. What did the satellite maps show? There are PLENTY of good sites around 400 to 800 metres. As in, a HUNDRED TIMES more than we need. Literally pick your best 1% and you're done. They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ So where did Michaux get the idea that potential sites are limited? His 1000 page PDF doesn't give a source, but he explains here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gnPaY4KMjMmKf7M He cherry-picked a viability study about pumped hydro in SINGAPORE! Their highest hill is only 15 metres! Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? (Facepalm!) I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Why apply a small flat island's topographical problem to the rest of the world? But that's Michaux for you. Give up on him and instead watch Blakers do his global tour of PHES. (Pumped Hydro Electricity Storage.) kzbin.info/www/bejne/lX3OZJiiqpitnJY 2 MORE POINTS TO CONSIDER POINT 1: RENEWABLES and EV’S and BATTERIES can be made from super-abundant materials. It’s a myth they MUST have expensive rare-earths and minerals. Some brands DO use them for a certain boost, but they don’t HAVE TO have them. EG: 95% of Solar panel brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5% of the earths’ crust), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). There are new turbines that do not use ANY rare earths in the magnets. Now to batteries. Half of Tesla’s batteries are Lithium Iron Phosphate. The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have 89 million tons of lithium which at 6 kg of lithium per EV would build 14 BILLION EV's - we only need a tenth of that. China’s “Seagull” EV even has a cheaper (low range) model that uses SODIUM batteries! Sodium makes a great grid-scale battery. HVDC power lines are made from aluminium. They are working on doping aluminium with graphene to make it as good a conductor as copper. And we still have all the copper and rare earth’s and lithium we've ever mined - it just needs to be recycled. POINT 2: MICHAUX IS NOT READY FOR HOW FAST THE WORLD IS GOING TO CHANGE OVER THE NEXT 10 YEARS. Solar is doubling every 4 years - faster than oil’s growth in the 20th Century. Exponential growth seems slow and then suddenly everything happens at the end. Now that wind and solar with pumped-hydro are the cheapest power, people are going to be SHOCKED at how fast it is deployed. Australia will be 90% renewables by 2030. Globally, 10% of all cars sold are EV’s, right now. It will be closer to 40% by 2030. Electric Semi's are now a thing. Tesla have their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia are doing big Aussie MONSTER trucks that carry 100 tons and then pull up for a 1 minute-battery swap! These trucks will save vast sums of money. Under IRA tax breaks, America is starting to build their own solar panel factories that can produce 3 GW per year. Globally, so many solar factories under construction now will be completed by 2025 that we'll be producing 940 GW per yea. (Close to a terawatt!) That's 5.8% of 2022's world electricity demand being built every year - done in 17 years. And that's not counting any MORE solar factories built after 2025, let alone enormous wind power acceleration or new nuclear. The Energy Transition is accelerating.

[@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220]

Gish galloping a bit and the usual parade of could beez..

[@eclipsenow5431]

@@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220 OK, if all that is a bit much - try just these few sentences which go to the character of the man. So where did Michaux get the idea that potential pumped hydro sites are limited? His 1000 page PDF doesn't give a source, but he explains here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gnPaY4KMjMmKf7M It's his own words. It's not AI. It's him. Tell us what he said!

[@oooouuuuuyyy]

This guys "rebuttal" of Simon's arguments are the classic ecomodernist green growth propaganda. In other words, someday, somehow, some quasi mythical technology solution will present itself and save us from all of this, essentially a soft form of denial. Not rlly much of a debate

[@noizydan]

It seemed to me, both were in agreement on the end of growth. The question mark is how we get there. Can we get there by design, or will it be an accident? If by design, what will the design look like? If the design fails, what does plan B look like? Good to iron out the wrinkles.

[@jthadcast]

@@noizydan true now how do we exponentially grow all industrial production in consumption degrowth. oy vey

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@noizydan Kansas is barely getting a wheat harvest this year. Famine and drought will keep spreading no matter how much green energy is developed as a Techno-Fix. As long as ecology and geophysics is ignored then we're just debating how many angels on a pinhead. hahaha.

[@Withnail1969]

there is no more time or money to develop any such technology assuming it is even possible (it isn't). collapse has already started.

[@Apjooz]

Humanity has been growing for some 10,000 years. It's up to you to prove that now it's going to be different.

[@j85grim4]

Ahmed brought zero empirical evidence to this entire discussion on why Simon is wrong and just kept asking to change the discussion away from technical issues into "why can't we all just get along" platitudes. This guy is beyond a joke Rachel. It's clear as day he only thinks Simon is wrong because of his fanatic secular faith in technology.

[@noizydan]

Thanks to both for taking part in a great conversation. If I have learned anything from the channel, it is that this embodies the empathy and collaboration we will need to navigate the path ahead. I do feel that Simon's initial work is too narrow to capture the full suite of solutions that will have to emerge; there are significant ommissions and it is a fair challenge to question its limitations. However, at the same time, it is also reasonable to start small from a baseline of now and build upon it over time. The important bit is to keep it evolving as new solutions emerge and their viability is realised. It is great to see that Simon is developing his work further in this area, and he is bravely subjecting the work to lots of peer review to improve it. It seems the best way to reach the most robust answer. Both present good cases and reasonable challenges on the technical elements and acknowledge the uncertainties faced. And both share much in common with their vision of broader change. The common ground provides a strong foundation upon which to work through the differences. I'd like to see what happens to Simon's calculations when he incorporates the dissolution of the fossil fuel infrastructure once its materials and energy invested begin to be integrated into the transition. Presumably, once the fuels become too inefficient to access any more, we'll want to repurpose what we can from the existing infrastructure. There are miles of pipelines, rigs and refineries to repurpose and to feed into material stock for district heating systems, turbines, etc. If it is to become largely unviable by 2050, that will surely be in time to include in the renewable material inputs (where there is material overlap) and help accelerate the transition process towards the end? Hopefully something Art Berman can help with! Keep up the good work Rachel. I really appreciate the network building effort that is taking place through your platform. We must break through the fundamentalism and polarisation all around us one conversation at a time. You go sister!

[@dalewolver8739]

Except there are no solutions since it's a predicament not a problem. Collapse is inevitable not matter what kind of crap we throw at it

[@PlanetCritical]

Thank you so much!

[@justcollapse5343]

Even IF the #LimitsToEnergy crisis could be solved (it can't) this would in no way solve our #Overshoot predicament. #Collapse is inevitable. Don't just collapse #JustCollapse.

[@littlejohn8100]

Nice job getting these two together. In my opinion Simon has a much stronger argument. He defined a baseline. I think his analysis of the available data makes the clear conclusion that we can't swap "green" energy for what we have now. He opens the door for analyzing how much we have to change to accommodate the remaining resources. This is useful work. Nafeez doesn't have an argument. He just points out things will have to change so much there may be a technological solution. He doesn't have data or a reasonable counter argument with what Simon has done except to nit pick some of Simon's methodology. You shouldn't get to argue with facts and seem reasonable. Simon's data is an excellent starting point. It isn't perfect but it's good enough. I think even if you switch batteries with capacitors and pretend the technology is ready, you still reach Simon's conclusion with a less accurate baseline. Simon isn't even including exponential growth which is a requirement for business as usual. So, even with batteries, this is all worse than what Simon is suggesting. He was very conservative like a good scientist trying to make an obvious point. I think it's more constructive to agree somewhere between where we are now and Simon's calculations is the way forward. Given what we have learned from Simon, what is the most reasonable way forward?

[@tonywilson4713]

I am an engineer and I stopped about 39minutes in out of the shear frustration of YET ANOTHER NON-ENGINEER speaking complete garbage about things he has NO IDEA of. Thinking he can state what engineers are going to be doing and what technologies do and don't exist and what we can and cannot do *IS SO INFURIATING.* Congrats to Simon because I would have interjected and started screaming at Nafeez for being so STUPlD. When he started talking about tripling the installed Wind & Solar and then just quintupling it (x5) I almost lost it. He has no idea what that means its another case of "why don't you just do....." that clowns throw at engineers all the time. I can tell form those statements he has no idea what he's talking about and has NEVER bothered to take the time to talk to engineers about what its like to do a project. What Simon has done is exactly what SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE 20 or 30 years ago when people began to realise we needed to make dramatic changes in energy use. One of the first steps in any major project is called a FEED study. FEED stands for Front End Engineering & Design. All a FEED study is listing the basic tasks and estimating what those tasks need in terms of resources (money, people, machinery,...etc). Its never meant to be exacting its meant to START THE PROCESS. I actually did my degree in aerospace and there's an interesting exercise in terraforming Mars. *If you want to wrap Mars in a 1km thick layer of earth standard air how much air is that?* Yes I know Mars gravity wont hold it at Earth standard pressure and that you'd need a lot more atmosphere than 1km BUT its a STARTING POINT. The answer is 178 TRILLION (with a T) tons of air. That's why nobody seriously thinks we can terraform Mars. What Simon has done is the same sort of thing. There's 1.5 Billion registered cars and probably another 100million or so other cars on the planet Simple question - How much iron, aluminum, copper, plastic, rubber, glass and other stuff does it take to replace 1.5 Billion cars with ICE engines with EV Cars??? Simons answer is like air for Mars. It basically says we need this much and we only have that much.

[@SMac86]

It’s good to have a picture of where we currently are, but that should only be used as a tool to encourage further ingenuity and development. I’m getting a little tired of people that only spread doom and gloom, as if they want disaster to succeed so on the way down they can say ‘told you so…!”

[@tonywilson4713]

@@SMac86 I absolutely agree with the first part of what you said but am conditional on the2nd part. YES the doom and gloom brigade need to take a break from doom and gloom OTHER than to press the need for action. I'm an engineer and I find it so damn frustrating when non-engineers and even some engineers HOG the microphone a DON'T present and viable or practical solutions. Like - I absolutely agree that Simon is right that we just don't have enough stuff to do what people think we can do and he's right that we need a better plan, *BUT* and this aggravates me, he DOESN'T put up ANY solutions to discuss and tends to crap on things that he doesn't like. He does a bot too much cherry picking at times and that does NOT help.

[@SMac86]

@@tonywilson4713 I think I would like to see these platforms have actual innovators on as well to ballance the perspective. There are some things so close to greatness, and if we give in to hoplessness we may miss these opportunity to act on real solutions. Yes its good to face hard facts of reality, and to probably prepare for loss and hardship to follow. But we cant give up the struggle.

[@Orvulum]

Nafeez is an excellent writer and journalist, but in regards to the topic at hand, he is clearly out of his element... So is the moderator, for that matter. As such, the "debate" is a wearisome listening experience. Nafeez appears lacking of some really basic knowledge, to the extent that it serves to invalidate some of the positions he takes. More fundamentally, I get the impression that Simon is the only participant in this dialog who truly understands what science is and how the process actually works. This dialog is a good example of the challenges facing technical people in trying to convey science based facts to lay-persons, and why policies formulated by politicians and elites are so ineffective toward achieving any kind of tenable, sustainable future for the human project.

[@kjr2868]

I listened to a presentation on the energy challenges to the green energy solution by Prof Michael Kelly. He argues on three fronts 1. Impact on the developing world and the more than 6.5b people who are not energy stable 2. The environmental impact of switching completely to wind and solar as a replacement to fossil fuels. 3. The amount of heavy metals required to produce the batteries, and the carbon foot print to mine it all out of the ground!. The US alone will need on of the current known global supply of Heavy metals.

[@michaelgreen74]

Simon is the realist in this discussion, Nafeez the dreamer. And if history teaches anything, it is that change is usually accompanied by violence. Our leaders are neither the bright lights in the room, nor working for the good of the people but rather defending their own positions of power. Not a very hopeful outlook.

[@katiegreene3960]

Agreed

[@yt75009]

The difference is that Simon has been putting numbers down, whereas Nafeez is just talking (it's his job), or chosing the numbers that pleases him without ever closing the loop

[@katiegreene3960]

Yes

[@edsteadham4085]

The wind and sun are renewables. Not so the technologies, materials, construction, etc. that turns them into useful energy. They have to be built (digging up minerals) and then rebuilt when they wear out. At scale.

[@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220]

Nafeez..on mining, theres no magik..clear the forest, dig..dig..dig.. chemical extraction..massive waste... it needs to be limited, and yes we need to seriously consider enviro impact.. but there isnt a binign way to mine...

[@jamesbelcher9588]

Distributed & off-grid electricity generation *should* reduce the amount of renewables & energy storage needed to replace fossil fuels and hub & spoke generation / transmission & distribution. That said, I worry that all energy savings are being overtaken by increased energy & resource use.

[@noizydan]

Jevon's paradox is a factor here. Looking at the slope of energy growth, it does look like it is starting to peak. When it does, our paradigm will shift out of necessity and the paradox will likely change with it. Watch this space!

[@edsteadham4085]

We have to make sure those pesky and numerous people in the under developed world want no part of cars, air conditioning, trips to Europe, cell phones, etc. I suggest we brush up on 19th century imperialism strategies else left to their own devices they may start burning coal....like Germany and other Green paradises.

[@eclipsenow5431]

When we meet everyone's needs, the first world Demographic Transition kicks in and the population will go decline due to first world economic pressures. That is the way we get a 'sustainable economy'. Also, most renewables are moving away from the rare earths Simon goes on about.

[@edsteadham4085]

Please tell me the company that will bring this about. We will both bet our entire network on the outcome. Deal?

[@edsteadham4085]

I'm worried about other people....billions of them in Asia and Africa...that are energy starved will seek the quick fixes and burn oil and gas. No. We get to burn fossil fuels while we hunt for the holy Grail of cheap green renewables and tout our moral superiority. And for those people. .sucks to be them. They've put up with blazing temperatures in Africa for thousands of years. They can wait.

[@Withnail1969]

Build out wind and solar to be 5 times demand? Who would pay for that, we can't afford it.

[@VladBunea]

8:50 Why is science polarized at all? Well, it's because of the implications of its conclusions. When the implications attack the status quo of capitalism, with all its privilege, science becomes political.

[@VladBunea]

I am patiently waiting for degrowth to enter public discourse. Clearly, we cannot avoid degrowth. We will have it by design, disaster, or collapse of markets (both demand and supply side). Nafeez seems to be a supply-side solutionist, while Simon looks at both supply and demand.

[@VladBunea]

Ahmed begins his report with these words: "But the report [Michaux's] is deeply flawed, based on indefensible unscientific assumptions, and totally ignores key scientific findings. " This is not nice and friendly. It invites conflict and polarization. Not discussion like he claims in this interview that we need. Michaux's report is neither of those things Ahmed claimed.

[@factnotfiction5915]

@@VladBunea Degrowth isn't the solution. It could only be imposed by force, and the 'rest' of the world won't accept that. There is no historical record of 'degrowth' working out nicely, and all examples were involuntary - plague, famine, war. Degrowth isn't happening eventually - you predict something that has never occurred before, on the biggest of global scales.

[@ko6el]

If our opening gambit isn't to Power Down and we're just looking to replace how we power the same amount ofenergy use, which is constantly going up, then we're like prize greyhounds expecting to win sat on a bus rather than at the starting point at the dog track 😶

[@DeathToMockingBirds]

For Simon's platforming suggestion of The Venus Project, I would recommend Peter Joseph, who popularized it in documentaries, though he is involved in other projects as well. He has amazing books and I deeply enjoy his podcast "Revolution Now!". He'd be a great guest on this show. As for this current episode, I am unfortunately left on my hunger as to know "do we have enough minerals or not?" Of course, we do not, for an electrified version of our industrial economy, but I'd have loved the same kind of material analysis and impact analysis of different scenarios, for example, the one the channel "Just Have a Think" did to counter Simon's model (a circular economy, with good recycling). I personally think that since many of the required changes are against our economic incentives, we need to wrench back control of production away from the hands of Capitalist Owners, and plan production much more democratically and in harmony with the capacity of our shared environment. Same as what you've been saying for a while, and what Nafeez and Simon were saying at the end.

[@Withnail1969]

There is no such thing as a circular economy. Most things we use take more energy to be recycled than it does to throw them away and manufacture new ones. We would have no energy left to live on if we tried to recycle everything.

[@raskolnikov1873]

The solution is degrowth, which is happening eventually whether we like it or not. Question is how we get there.

[@chapter4travels]

The solution is nuclear, which is happening eventually whether we like it or not. Question is how long will we fumble with so-called "Renewables"?

[@factnotfiction5915]

Degrowth isn't the solution. It could only be imposed by force, and the 'rest' of the world won't accept that. There is no historical record of 'degrowth' working out nicely, and all examples were involuntary - plague, famine, war. Degrowth isn't happening eventually - you predict something that has never occurred before, on the biggest of global scales.

[@Caitanyadasa108]

A small fraction of the population will see what's coming and embrace voluntary simplicity (some have already), while the vast majority (the cornucopians and technotopians) will only simplify when forced to by scarcity. Degrowth is coming indeed; my guess on how we get there-- given the general inability to even acknowledge the reality of overshoot and its implications-- it will be haphazard, unplanned, and ugly. I hope I'm wrong.

[@chapter4travels]

@@Caitanyadasa108 As long as embracing simplicity is voluntary, I'm all for it. But as we can see the UN, IPCC, WEF, and virtually all Western governments, don't want it to be voluntary, they want to force and control. It's what they live for. We have unlimited clean, reliable energy. Combine that with unlimited human ingenuity and there are no problems that can not be solved.

[@Caitanyadasa108]

@@chapter4travels Yes, that's why the term is "voluntary simplicity" not "simplicity forced by the government." I disagree, however, that we have unlimited clean & reliable energy, at least at anywhere near the scale we have now. I also believe that the idea that human ingenuity can solve any problem is delusional. Too many people + dwindling resources = degrowth, voluntary or otherwise.

[@mikewho9964]

@Nafeez For example you say new technologies will disrupt 1. What exactly are they ? 2. How did you measure that disruption ? 3. What percentage to the actual energy mix do they represent ? 4. And how do you actually derive at that data The car did not disrupt the horse - it was the fuel to supply for the car and that was not developed simply found 5. where exactly do you get the materials to manufacture the renewables ? 6. where do you get the energy to get and process the materials for those renewables ? 7. where do you get the energy to transport and build the renewable systems ? 8. what is the life cycle ? 9. what are costs associated with recycling those systems ? 10. where will you get the energy to recycle those systems ? 11. Reference the studies of intermittency you cite The total cost to produce hydrogen from renewables produces very little benefit I suspect the cruel realities of life suggest we will simply have to continue optimizing the systems we have and so far in reality very little actual demonstrated advance from disruption has been made - we drill for oil - we dig holes for materials and burn something to produce electricity

[@linmal2242]

You are omitting Nature's response, the increasing population growth of the planet will imperil certain countries and cause huge human and ecological change/disasters. 'Gaia' will seek its revenge, on us and all the other lifeforms, which sustain us.

[@felipearbustopotd]

Intro.... The planet is totally safe, we on the other hand, are not.

[@Withnail1969]

of course it is. it wont take long for the planet to recover once the human collapse and die off occurs.

[@felipearbustopotd]

@@Withnail1969 Our visual impact give and take a few hundred years will hardly be noticeable, at least the pyramids will show that a civilization once thrived.... Scary thought!

[@cameronveale7768]

The discussion illustrates the transition is a road to future we haven't determined the destination. The destination will be different in many parts of the world. And we will not likely have an intelligent conversation as to what we want and what we need as a species on a small planet that requires a functioning ecology to keep it all working. Would be great if we accepted Kate Raworth's economic model and did all this under that umbrella. Keep up the good work Rachel

[@douglashurd4356]

Yeah! Thorium nano-reactors! Sodium batteries, intercontinental transmission lines, maybe asteroid mining,... But no matter what, we have to nudge ourselves towards understanding that excessive consumerism is suicide.

[@chapter4travels]

"How do we make renewables sustainable"? We don't, we can't, why bother when we have nuclear, the cleanest, safest, most reliable energy source possible.

[@emceegreen8864]

Interesting. We have Simon on the side of perhaps not enough. And Tony Seba, Elon Musk. And “Just have a think” on the side of plenty. Looking forward it seems that enough will be found and those that do the work (material substitution, innovation) ensure that enough is inevitable. The other option is “degrowth” or collapse. There’s many ethically on that side. The best result may be careful efficiency in all our activities while meeting the needs of humans and the biosphere. Kim Stanley Robinson in his The Ministry for the Future has the fossil fuel industry lead the change in energy transition and carbon mitigation. That change is funded by monetary policy. Essentially not capitalism nor socialism but a parallel restoration economy.

[@noizydan]

It seems to me that Dave Borlace at JHAT does acknowledge planetary limits all the time. His primary focus is on potential technological solutions, taking his cue from Bucky Fuller - the best way to replace anything is to find a way to build it better. It does tend to lead him towards techno-optimism. But as a philosophy, it isn't necessarily wrong. It is part of the ecology of solutions we need.

[@emceegreen8864]

@@noizydan “Protopia is a term used by Kevin Kelly to describe a futuristic society that improves itself through slow but continuous progress.Wikipedia” Protopian Solarpunk 👍🤠🌍🤞

[@factnotfiction5915]

@@noizydan Borlace has a very prejudiced optimism - here it is all 'possible' and there it is all 'doom'. It is neither consistently optimistic or pessimistic, and worse, his optimism/pessimism is not based on anything objective, but purely his subjective feelings.

[@5353Jumper]

Anyone but the petroleum industry should be leading the energy transition. They are petroleum companies, they produce petroleum products, they are incorporated as petroleum companies, they are insured as petroleum companies, their investors put money into petroleum companies, the stock exchange has them listed as petroleum companies. They are not really allowed (and do not want to) do anything other than focus on producing petroleum products. All of the "energy transition" BS blurted out by petroleum companies is just ways to capture government subsidies, avoid carbon taxes, and greenwashing the production of petroleum products. They want to keep making as much fuel as possible, and they love it when we burn that fuel. Sure it would be great if they could transition to focusing on chemical and material production that would be awesome because they make some amazing products. But the cheapest way for them to make chemicals and materials is to collect by-products of producing fuels. If they can no longer produce fuels it will be more expensive for them to produce all their chemicals and materials. When a petroleum company builds a wind or solar facility, it is not connected to the communal power grid. It is most often used to power the petroleum refineries or stupid carbon capture facilities on their petroleum refineries. Or the worst "solution" ever - using solar/wind to power the carbon capture on dirty hydrogen production to grow hydrogen production to use in transportation. Just f'ing criminally stupid for anyone who is not a petroleum executive. All this does is give the petroleum companies the cheap low maintenance electricity source, and steal materials from the rest of us, steal skilled labor from the rest of us, and steal government funding away from other non petroleum projects that would actually make a difference. If we and the government just invest in our own green generation facilities, and electrified transportation and heating - we could actually just reduce fuel demand and actually reduce carbon emissions. Put those exact same resources into the hands of any industry other than petroleum, and we have at least double the positive effect. Letting petroleum companies lead the "green" revolution, is just us burning more money AND fuel into the atmosphere.

[@JessieLydia]

Love the concern with the enormous risks and immovability of the present system. Surely this would be the time to begin learning to talk about the system as a whole. That's what I've shaped my whole life's work around, making it understandable at this point in the long foreseen crisis.

[@katherinelangford8174]

One of the big challenges to agreeing to a solution which rethinks our relationship with the Earth seems to be the fact that many of our governments are already committed to a vision based on an expertly green-washed old paradigm of growth, coming directly from the largest global corporations and their recent contractual partnership with the UN. It will take global collaboration to challenge it so that governments are (publicly) presented with compelling alternatives. I love what you are doing Rachel. If only the money were available to hold an alternative to Davos each year, including the great minds you engage with, farmers, civil organisations etc.

[@eclipsenow5431]

We don't need more growth - but can accommodate it until everyone's needs are met. With abundant renewable power made from ABUNDANT common minerals (as reality is they're moving away from rare earths but doomers like Michaux just can't admit that!) - we can provide everyone with everything we need. And we haven't even mentioned the fact that Precision Fermentation is about to provide most of our food so that we can regrow 3 trillion trees and solve climate change.

[@rapauli]

One of the better discussions I have heard anywhere. Thank you so much

[@kiwifromnz1953]

This chap is full of verbal bu§§§§§§t while Simon is talking about actual facts

[@jthadcast]

great to see this. lost it at 42:01 where the answer is we're just going to start mining differently on top of a radical change to everything else. knowing the berkeley pit disaster didn't change how we mine still mine there today ... what will it take to motivate, how much would it cost, and exactly when are we going to change all that mess while needing exponential resource extraction. long live the gen Z supermen cause apparently they are going to go all goat on us.

[@stevenmitchell7830]

Why does super sizing wind and solar get away from the need for energy storage?

[@zohazehra8697]

I have the same question

[@PimpinNinja2U]

Don't Simon's critics read or listen to any of his work before looking like an idiot? He (Simon) has said multiple times that he did all this work to show it can't be done, not that it can. All of this work was done to show the PTB (parasites that be) that BAU can't continue.

[@noizydan]

Have you read the paper?

[@scottegner306]

As long as politicians are too scared to shift the Overton window, little of substance will happen. Sadly the Overton window is defined for them by the corporates.

[@davidcanatella4279]

Rachel said it all when she said, It’s not about clean or dirty energy it’s about living in harmony with the ecology and with each other”. People can use clean energy to grind the earth into money whether there is or isn’t an energy level replacement for fossil fuels which i must say there is not, not even close no matter what the combination or multiple use strategy used. Simplicity is inevitable the hard way or the harder way. Unless of course unicorns accommodate the two gentlemen in the video by passing out gold toilets and magic candy.

[@anopinionatedlaymanappears9052]

I think you're missing a key player in these debates. A political/social scientist. That and Nafeez is in denial. His thoughts on AI and media are bullshit not to mention his reasoning against Simon is "it's gonna happen"

[@Withnail1969]

Pumped hydro storage is cheap? Building dams costs billions.

[@AGAllies]

Good job Rachel; more like this, please. More chance of shifting from continually redefining problems to finding implementable solutions.

[@scotia-drewshields1067]

This show is amazing! thx. I typically listen to Sam Mitchell for my Critical Planetary news and he is very hopeless bur for some reason his attitude seems more realistic than say this Nafeez gentleman's, not that anyone needs to be negative or doom and gloom all the time. KZbin jumped to this episode when I left it unattended. I only listened to one other of the episodes: Bob Jensen and that one was touching. Thanks so much for your channel!

[@blugreen99]

To power all homes in Uk would require windfarm the size of WALES and we havent even mentioned indutrial electricity demand or non electrical energy demand such as for trsnsport and heating. Land is ascarce resource.

[@SeventhCircleID]

...strictly speaking... just to clarify (coming from an Architect), it depends on where we get to with installing insulation and heat-pumps. Leave UK housing stock where it is now, roughly 2.5x Wales area. Get homes all to C standard (around 14 million homes to upgrade), about Wales area. Get all homes up to modern new build regs (high B, around 22 million homes), about quarter/half of Wales depending on how much hot water we allow per household (note: bigger turbines can be put out at sea to offset land area). The bigger problem is energy storage and peak domestic heating loads in winter).

[@cabrilloastro6262]

Physics and energy expert Geoffrey West ("Scale") makes a strong case that whether innovation instances help or not, we're still in a fatal dance... Each innovation, as an innovation, will run through its golden era faster, leaving civilization at an even faster pace at the end, where a new innovation even better must race us even faster. Each has its own finite time singularity. So that the singularity we're heading to (this is now me, an astronomer, talking), is not like the wonderful Rapture imagined by some, but a true astronomical singularity (think - black hole). Degrowth must and will happen, gracefully or not.

[@philmillieret1899]

Collapse is inevitable. its too late. the missing point in your discussion is the human shortfalls from leaders, individuals addicted to consumption and selfish and so on. and getting worst and worst. The best of this Talk is this young lady smile. you are so beautiful.

[@JessieLydia]

This very high-level discussion is missing the main symptom that everyone is struggling with, the nonlinear acceleration of exponential growth, radically changing the subject faster than anyone can keep up with, that created the siloed world. and absolutely makes communication impossible. So... since "life is happening" ready or not, as Nafeez pointed out, where will the blind giant turn next, and why don't we study nature's normal good and bad responses to that ??????

[@SpaceKadet]

Thank you for producing this critical discussion. I tend to agree with @mkysml....Simon bases his argument on the facts and statistics of mining and material production whereas Nafeez seems to be basing his argument on philosophical answers as to what new developments 'might' occcur with regard to carbon capture, hydrogen and 'overbuilding' the power grid. Question to Nafeez...where is the data and research evidence to support your solutions to the crisis?

[@erwin643]

LOL. "Hydrogen." As an American, I LOVE my 1990 Cummins 12-valve diesel (1st Gen.). I use it as my work truck. In the past I've re-utilized used motor oil, used ATF, used vegetable oil (filtered) as fuel. I've been researching events in the state of Oregon regarding what's now called "Renewable Diesel," or "R99" fuel. Oregon has been making all these laws, requiring all diesels to run Biodiesel (B99) by 2025, blah blah blah, assuming that Oregon was going to be self-sufficient in Biodiesel, derived from waste vegetable oil. The problem is that Neste, a Finnish "renewable" fuels company comes in and buys out Sequential's (the biggest biofuel company in Oregon) waste oil collection operation, in order to ship all that waste oil to a refinery in Martinez, California, where it THEN GETS SHIPPED BACK to Oregon as R99. R99 is better than biodiesel, because the Finns have come up with a process of injecting hydrogen into the molecule chain. However, we all know where the industrial hydrogen comes from: It gets extracted from natural gas. I don''t have a problem with any of this (other than Oregon turning into a waste oil colony for California), but unless it becomes price competitive with regular diesel, I won't be buying any (I like adding a little over one gallon of B99 to a 30-gal. tank of regular pump diesel, as that plant-based lubricity adds as much as 100 miles to each tankful of fuel. Also, the solvent properties of B99 actually cleans out the fuel system.). BTW, nice seeing you again, Nafeez. Loved your Crisis of Civilization documentary from a few years ago.

[@markschuette3770]

well we cannot use as much energy as we do now- even it its clean (since there is no energy that is clean). extreme energy efficiency has to be the starting point and this can only start via a pollution tax. and much of that tax will need to be invested in the cleaner alternatives for the masses to use. and a wealth tax will be needed since that is where the money is.

[@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220]

And Simon was just focusing on EVs and hydrogen fuel cell lorries..thats 12% approx of global emmissions sources ? Seems we need to reduce, reduce, reduce, who's gonna break the bad news ?😱

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

when Europe is bathing in nuclear radiation maybe the debate will be better. The Arctic controls our energy economy - not power plants.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@leonsappl There's an archaeological site in Germany from 1800 BCE of a "double wall" Wattle and Daub house that has better insulation standards not met until the mid-1990s for Western construction R-values. I know this because I built my own "double wall" wattle and daub hut based on that 1800 BCE archaeological dig site. As for water - the Roman Empire had shallow street sewers that contaminated the drinking water hence the need for the long-distance "aqueducts" that are marveled over as a work of genius. Meanwhile I visited the most traditional Berber village in Morocco in 1997 and they still practiced humanure composting - requiring NO water and transforming their desert land into fertile soil for thousands of years of self-reliant growing of food!! So Western development is just messed up from the get go. There's a new company called Sanergy based on the "ecological sanitation" principles of humanure composting - started with the help of MIT engineers and now spreading across Africa. Of course the abrupt global warming drought is much worse in Africa - so it's basically too little too late.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@leonsappl excellent point! there is a coalition called "50 years is enough!" that I was part of - attending the launching protest at the World Bank in 1994 in DC - this led to the 1990 shutdown of the WTO in Seattle (where i was running around in circles to dodge the rubber bullets)! Part of this coalition includes a critique of the mega-dam projects of the World Bank... can't recall the specific name of that NGO - but they focused on this problem of evaporation. Also sedimentation filling in the dams. I have a distant relative who was part of the World Bank privatization of water schemes - I asked him about what happened in Bolivia and he said, "corporate mismanagement" - so blaming Bechtel was quite the World Bank Dodge! haha. Seriously though - in 2000 I had a University op-ed published called "Water Crisis sucks us into global revolution" - and all the science said by 2025 we'd have a global crisis of freshwater shortage.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@leonsappl another great point - I have a Shiitake farm in a swamp forest - so the methane is quite noticeable from the water. Yes Professor Jeremy Walker's book on economics relying on the entropy of steam power - this shows how our classical physics has now destroyed ecology. Sir Roger Penrose points out that gravitational entropy is the opposite of the entropy of matter but also that gravitational entropy originates from quantum frequency as negentropy or negative frequency noncommutativity. Basically as Albert Bartlett repeated in over 1000 lectures as his career - people don't understand the exponential function math is wrong and destroys ecology. All of classical physics is based on the claim of an objective rest frame defined by the irrational magnitude spacetime real number continuum from Platonic philosophy - so democracy is defined by logarithms with the hidden exponential growth of wealth for the elite based on exponential power of technology. Meanwhile the truth of energy is from photons as negative entropy - there is a secret gravitational mass of photons that is actually the gravitational potential as dark energy protoconsciousness (as Penrose calls it from Bernard d' Espagnat). So this is nonlocality in quantum physics and most physicists are brainwashed by classical physics first learned in high school along with the wrong commutative geometry math. The truth of reality is a noncommutative quantum algebra from the Clifford algebra with the matrices - essentially the imaginary number is a cubic time that has a 4th dimension asymmetric time shift. To make an external measurement requires time and so it is inherently asymmetric as noncommutative, going against ALL of classical physics math! Yet growth happens from within as quantum biology has proven - due to noncommutativity. This is why meditation remains the highest technology of all technologies. We face a steep learning curve from Mother Nature on this one. haha.

[@Caitanyadasa108]

People like William Catton (who wrote "Overshoot" in 1980) have been trying to tell us for quite a while, but very few want to hear it.

[@joehelland1635]

Grid interconnection has the issue currently that scaling up much past where we are now is infeasible without a high temperature super conductor. The amount of lost power is tremendous.

[@matt_b5551]

Great episode! Thank you, Rachel, for bringing Simon and Nafeez together, and for bringing them both back to the bigger questions, around ecological footprints and wider ethical issues.

[@user-tw4un8tt6d]

How in the hell do you get around the vast differences in energy density between fossil fuels and solar, wind, and batteries? The level of complexity of the supply chain for current renewables is much greater than fossil fuels. We need to live more simply first.

[@yvonraoul2198]

I'm glad the thorium issue was brought up...sadly only towards the end. May be too much time spent on hydrogen as a buffer? Really interesting exchange. Super work by the moderator, Rachel Donald

[@mikkert-zh2cf]

Hoping that efficiency will save us is like jumping the whole day and hope that you will eventually start flying. There are limits to efficiency because of the natural laws. Efficiency is possible, but we shouldn't rely on it. Degrowth is the only measure that we know can work reliably.

[@eclipsenow5431]

So EROEI is Energy Returned on Energy Invested - and basically tells you how much ENERGY profit you make from a certain power plant. The problem with measuring it is many fossil fuel types cheat. They measure the heat energy value in calories of the barrels of oil produced, NOT the kilometres travelled or work done as a result. As wind and solar are the most abundant energy sources in the renewables portfolio, it makes sense to try and Electrify Everything. That’s the catchphrase. While oil is this incredibly dense energy source that at the start had a very high EROEI - it HAD TO BE. Why? Because the Internal Combustion Engine is so awfully inefficient. Diesel wastes 50% of the energy as it burns, and petroleum is worse and throws out 80% of the energy. It’s all thrown away as heat and noise, and only 20% of the gasoline becomes forward motion! That's 1/5th the energy doing what we want. rentar.com/efficient-engines-thermodynamics-combustion-efficiency/ But in EV’s it’s almost the opposite - they only LOSE about 1/5th the energy. 77% goes into forward motion! www.carsguide.com.au/ev/advice/are-electric-cars-more-efficient-than-combustion-or-hybrid-cars-85981 Only 1/2 of diesel does work, only 1/5th of gasoline, but with EV's only 4/5ths of it go into forward motion. So to measure like with like, we should be dividing oil’s EROEI by how much more wasteful the ICE is at the point of use. An ICE WASTES 3.4 times more energy than an EV. We should divide oil’s EROEI by that. Then there’s the oil delivery SYSTEM to consider. So much energy is wasted mining oil, shipping it to a refinery in another country, only to then ship it around the world to market to be trucked down some long highways. Compare that to some off-grid rural EV station where solar panels are installed every 30 years! Once we Electrify Everything - 40% of global shipping stops! That’s 40% of maybe 55,000 ships - or 22,000 SHIPS that no longer have to be built. When we've "Electrified Everything" especially transport, so many more options become viable. Australia has some of the biggest trucks in the world. Janus Australia have a battery-swap system for our “Road Trains” that carry 100 tons. They go 400km or 500km, then just swap the huge batteries. A guy on a forklift does it. This also means the batteries don't have to fast charge - which is less stress on the local grid and less stress on the batteries. They estimate they can run 10 trucks just from the warehouse roof! Need more power? In rural areas where the land is cheap, they might even consider installing solar panels on a local paddock. www.januselectric.com.au/

[@Caitanyadasa108]

Yes, and add to that the Jevons Paradox and it becomes clear that increases in efficiency only make the problem worse.

[@eclipsenow5431]

@@Caitanyadasa108 Not at all! This is where Jevons works FOR us for once! Have you heard of SUPER-POWER? It’s a side effect of Overbuilding for winter. We can solve winter by either trying to store a month or 2 of extra power (which would be CRAZY expensive in excess batteries or pumped hydro!), or avoid all that and simply Overbuild our renewables for winter. This reduces storage down to 2 days. But the side effect is the other seasons might have 2 or 3 times as much power as they need! But because renewables are 1/4 the cost of nuclear (Lazard) we can afford this much more easily than trying to build 2 months of pumped hydro storage. In fact, the whole thing comes in cheaper than a coal fired grid - let alone nuclear. So what are we going to do with all the EXCESS power the other 10 months of the year? This is where the old “Jevon’s Paradox” might work in our favour for once. That is, the famous economist stated that the more efficient we made a process of getting a thing, the cheaper the thing and the more demand for the thing. Efficiency therefore meaning we’ll use MORE of a thing, not less. But if it is super-abundant super-clean power for say the 10 months of the year, are there seasonal jobs we could put that excessive power to? Remember - this is essentially free power. We have ALREADY met all society’s need for electricity during winter. What’s next? What EXTRA jobs can we do? What about making vast amounts of jet fuel? Split water for hydrogen, grab excess CO2 out of seawater, and mix up some synthetic fuels for airlines. We can also use hydrogen to replace coking coal to make steel. We can use that power to run desal to fill fresh water reservoirs in dry regions. Or - we can run a Gasifier. These things rip municipal waste into molecules - with synthetic gas that shoots off the top to go to the petro-chemical and plastics industry - and lava like slag that can be turned into pavers, bricks, or rock-wool for insulation or fibreglass. The punchline? Gasifiers can turn household rubbish into half the building materials for the next house! eclipsenow.wordpress.com/gasification/ No wonder Tony Seba calls it ‘Super-Power’. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKTRnIOCoMtkl9E

[@dgraja22]

Sorry to say, this "debate" was a disappointment. simon has a very specific and reasonable thesis - that the mineral requirements of a solar, wind, battery conversion are ridiculous and infeasible, enough so that the EV conversion as well as the renewable grid are basically still born. This is a powerful point , and Hafez has no counter, just some blathering about re-imagining the grid with non existent tech and then more blather about re-imagining the entire mining industry. This is piss poor and Simon should have nailed him to the wall for it, but he didnt. Dont know if he is being polite or what, but very disappointing.

[@titobandito69]

You are absolutely brilliant Rachel. Tx so much for your work.

[@avibortnick]

Nafeez treated us to word salad, vagueness and meandering futurist thoughts without concrete data or viable plans. I got almost nothing out of what he said. Simon on the other hand is grounded in realities and basis his opinions on data. The previous interview with him alone was illuminating.

[@katiegreene3960]

Agreed lots of blah blah blah

[@StashmoCharlie]

The point of division amongst everyone on this issue isn't the reality of the limits to growth, because deep down everyone knows there's only so much of anything. The thing that divides everyone is the question " do you think a sustainable future will be better?"

[@krautergarten4529]

"Wind and Solar is coming. No way around" ... we not even building enough W&S to cover the energy demand increase per year. As an engineer it's really frustrating every time Ahmed is talking.

[@JessieLydia]

Sorry to overshare... but the obvious consequence of the lack of a variability buffer is budgeting; both budgeting the amount of fossil backup and the total usage. Either one or both in shares could balance the equations. So, businesses will solve that to minimize costs and maximize returns, and the government will step in to resolve the engineering and design gaps. Leaving those out and other real-world practicalities, we're mostly talking about ideological theory, not practice.

[@blugreen99]

Every car is parked 23 hours s day We need to reduce the fleet by 60,% thru car sharing and info tech saving alot of materials?

[@h.e.hazelhorst9838]

One very important change we have to make: adjust the price of wind and solar electricity in such a way, that the cost of storage is included. That said, the price of fossil fuels should be be higher than current levels because it does not reflect the climate and biodiversity destruction in any way. A carbon tax would be the perfect solution, with a steady increment over time so people can get used toit.

[@katiegreene3960]

At 33 min , the reason a one to one sap for energy might actually be not enough is because the huge amount of things we use ff for that are not precisely energy related and we will need energy to be able to make synthisize etc thier non fosil fuel replacements ie plastics asphault chemicals pharma textiles and more.

[@jarrodstrobelight1782]

Let's say we are traveling in a vehicle in the hottest desert ever. If you get out of the ac you will die within minutes or be trapped under the vehicle there and never walk out. You found out you don't have enough fuel to drive out. why aren't the other passengers coming up with real solutions? Such a great discussion of other discussions about chasing one's tail. We need a complex integrated infrastructure expert that remembers research and planning from middle school.

[@arcusmc]

Nafeez finally called out the weakness in Simon's arguments. He frames his stance as you can only pick one solution and calculate that scale up. Of course it isn't feasible. We need to do all of the new ideas in order to see where scalability can be directed.

[@paullafreniere3393]

Time for some hard questions. Enough with the hand waving & emotional appeals. At the end of the day, social licence only gets you so far. It takes hard engineerig, material resources & treasure to implement major changes. The interviewer should be commended for doing her part in getting the debate back on a solid footing

[@tracyowen8484]

Simon says here’s the problem after years of hard work and we need to address this behemoth challenge with a whole new approach. Nafeez responds with yeah I don’t entirely disagree but with a new approach I think we will find a solution. This is a debate between a learned member of society and a student

[@mikkert-zh2cf]

Green growth is a neoliberal co-optation of the sustainability debate that disregards the limits to growth.

[@katiegreene3960]

Bingo

[@adrianmacfhearraigh4677]

A debate that could have been a lot better. Simon's work was done within a particular scope to respond to energy replacement beliefs in policy circles. The article from Nafeez didn't critique within the same boundary but the points raised are certainly valid and indicates the complexity of the trap the 'developed world' has developed itself into! The concerning part of the debate is the continued technologist/engineering/reductionist mindset to offer a solution by attempting to maintain the current paradigm of existence using scientific and engineering thinking that is the servant of the western double-entry bookkeeping 'profit' demanding system, the real core of the capitalist mode of production system. All I could imagine or envisage throughout the debate was a re-colonizing, a 'Green Colonialism', another wave of exploitative extractive piracy performed on the lands of indigenous peoples and biodiversity around the world simply to soothe the failure and fear of those in the 'developed countries' to accept humility and re-learn and re-imgaine modes of living that are not enslaved to gadgets. A return to an authentic mode of living is so badly needed in so called 'developed societies'(this comment of course applies to those who benefitted mostly from such 'development', not those crushed and discarded by it). We cannot continue as we are but there is scope for wisdom if we rise to it and use the knowledge we've acquired over the last 2-3 centuries in a truly intelligent way for the benefit of all.

[@gman_flgman_fl2700]

what about nuclear. and you dont have to strip mine the entire planet.

[@roblangsdorf8758]

When it comes to pumping hydro, what are the issues with pumping salt water? There may be places in desert areas where salt water could be used.

[@longdang2681]

Turbine corrosion due to the salt water might be a problem.

[@cs3818919]

Nafeez bloviates so much. Rainbows and unicorns. I like Simon's realistic view.

[@chadreilly]

"Simon, stop with these facts, end on a high note." lol

[@singular9]

Energy transition discussion devolved into climate hysteria.

[@kenpentel3396]

Thanks

[@ralphtoivonen2071]

I think you are going to have conflict because optimal solutions will depend on location specific considerations. No one yet has talked about reduction in animal agriculture. Societal changes will be needed such that profit isn't the primary consideration. This discussion is so worthwhile because it is so much more detailed than the drivel we get from political leaders.

[@edgeman148]

We need to look very deeply into energy wastage which has many possible efficiencies.

[@OzzyTragic]

Wow this is fire

[@dodiewallace41]

Green should mean meeting our needs while minimizing environmental impact. Unfortunately, many, including governments, believe green means renewable energy. Thinking that RE or not matters at all is a mistake. Sometimes, methods labeled as RE are the best option. Often, this is not the case. Dilute intermittents like wind and solar are far too resource intensive and chaotic to do the heavy lifting of meeting our energy needs. Biogas and biofuel have very low energy return for energy invested, can use a lot of resources to produce and can be quite dirty as well. Hydro and geothermal are dense and dispatchable, however they are pretty much maxed out with current technology. Hydro has significant local environmental impact as well. Thats pretty much it thats labeled as RE and won't come close to meeting our needs, nor are the least environmentally disruptive. So whats the point of making our energy goals RE anyway?

[@aliendroneservices6621]

I guess that leaves uranium.

[@user-tw4un8tt6d]

Will a transformation to a renewable economy push our planetary boundaries into an unrecoverable position? It has all the markings of a super wicked problem where you have one shot to get it right within a very small timescale. Has anyone tried to make those calculations?

[@MicHelle-fl5ri]

Michaux @1:10:35: "we've got to actually sort of sit down and have a proper conversation what about true limitations and what are our true capabilities in getting to right and that dialogue at the moment is very difficult to get going, very difficult" Perfectly demonstrated through this "debate" during which the polemicist Ahmed dominated with a deux ex machina daydream that unfortunately hypnotised the moderator who ababdoned the debate form entire and thus Michaux and his extremely important, real world findings were sidelined. Disappointing but also informative from a more sociological perspective ie who is a serious person and who is not. One of my solutions is to begin breeding mules for farm labour and transport. I expect to have a very successful enterprise. I suggest others follow suit.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

Mules consume more fossil-fuel than combines and tractor-trailers do. The reason is: they have to be fed (in addition to vet and foot services), and fossil-fuel is the "food of food".

[@TennesseeJed]

This will be good!

[@TennesseeJed]

Nafeez's thesis seems to hinge on tech that may not happen.

[@annibjrkmann8464]

Are you on r/collapse?

[@NancyBruning]

Thanks so much, Rachel, for lending organization to their important yet frustratingly poorly communicated thoughts.

[@fregwich]

I'm really waiting for virtual farming and food processing and delivery to take off/s

[@craigbartlett9233]

"no not yet" - ha ha - I'm in love with this reporter

[@greggsenne1268]

The crux is whether or not we want to or can eliminate externalities.

[@Namari12]

This didn't end up being that much of a debate, but to the extent that it was, when one party starts saying that "we shouldn't quibble about details," and bringing in completely unrelated topics (AI, social media), it's basically a concession that you can't refute your opponent's points directly. I think this would have been better framed as a discussion than a debate. Simon clearly came prepared for a debate, but Nafeez didn't want to have one. Which is fine in a general sense, but actually incredibly annoying in the context of this being framed as a debate.

[@katiegreene3960]

Agreed

[@ralphtoivonen2071]

No one has discussed nuclear or liquid metal batteries like Ambri.

[@joehelland1635]

To date there has never been a wind farm built that has been able to recoup its energy construction deficit with its produced energy over its lifetime. Wind is so impractical and to think its useful as a resource is absurd. Baseline power the only solution is nuclear. Solar has a mining problem that it requires vast amounts of very difficult to mine metals and produces vast fields of extremely toxic tailings. Solar also destroys the lands where its built usually. (several different vectors from removal of woods to build them to killing birds that fly over them.) Hydro and Nuclear are the only viable current technologies.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

And hydro has scaling and land-use problems, and is weather dependent insofar as it rains more in some years, and less in other years. (Myriad other problems as well, but it is still a vastly-better option than wind or solar.)

[@joehelland1635]

@@aliendroneservices6621 Correct, but many "green" solutions demand a removal of hydro dams. Which is only creating more problems than its solving.

[@kibidabitv9435]

To make renewables sustainable we must first make sustainables renewable. After that it's simple.

[@Peace-Voter]

This conversation is about much that can be spoken to, but it’s about the paradigm tectonic plates rubbing up against each other. Science isn’t a monolithic structure, it’s a system of knowledge so it’s not the knowledge alone, it’s what you decide to do with it. There’s a government’s industrial policy - that’s a paradigm dependent system on the big industries and science that used in that approach; and, the public mindsets which doesn’t have the power of the big industries/governments industrial policy side of things. The public isn’t able to come to a cogent de facto consensus because of the way media propagandizes issues to manipulate the public. It’s the too much information in the wrong way that keep the public from coming together. Also, the public is spoiled by big business (with media reinforcing a mindset of pampered consumers). This keeps really innovative, novel approaches at bey.

[@user-tw4un8tt6d]

We are immersed, scientists included, within the biases of continual growth, ignoring the limits of the planetary boundaries. Unless we can meet the collaborative challenges of limiting our growth and thus energy demand, we will never have enough renewable energy for sustaining the future. Speaking for the U.S., asking people to make any kind of sacrifices to a comfortable lifestyle will be met with great resistance.

[@Caitanyadasa108]

"Speaking for the U.S., asking people to make any kind of sacrifices to a comfortable lifestyle will be met with great resistance." That's putting it mildly, I'm afraid. Observing the chaos of a Black Friday morning when people are willing to trample others for a video game I can easily see large scale riots at any attempt to curb the consumer dragon's appetite.

[@ForbiddTV]

If you want a real debate, have either one of these gentlemen face off with a Greenie or politician.

[@j85grim4]

Just rewatched this. I also think Ahmed is wrong in his assumption that the mining industries expansion will cover the mineral costs over time. What he doesn't understand is during that time global population will also increase and thus energy demands will increase and thus even more minerals will be needed. So if anything, Simon is underestimating how many minerals the mining industry will be short of not overestimating.

[@righttoleft7936]

I agree more with Simon and I believe Nafeez's points are mostly ......pointless. One point Simon deals with somewhat that Nafeez totally ignores is how big will this imagined future renewable economy be? That will mostly determine what does and does not work to maintain a habitable, liveable earth in the future. So, for starters, let's ban private automobiles and build mass transit systems for the cities (bikes, horse and buggies perhaps for rural populations again.) So, that puts me firmly in the degrowth camp. Mined metals and other NON-renewables cannot be put back once they're dug up and removed. And what do future populations do with all of the wastes from NR exploitation? I don't see any way around scaling back, and instead of developing the "under-developed world" we should be scaling back our own energy, resource use and industrial production. And obviously, capitalist systems...as they exist today, will also have to become a thing of the past..... a strange time when societies allowed themselves to be ruled and governed by the most greedy, irresponsible sociopaths among us!

[@life42theuniverse]

Humanity needs a smaller population to have a sustainable future...

[@katiegreene3960]

At 43 min ooof that was nieve on nafeez part to just say we need to change mining .... its not a matter of mining its a matter of simply how much of an element is eroi available. What could help change this is to reduce need

[@katiegreene3960]

In addition at 44 he says the capitalist effort for profit has made mining bad, that's ignorantly false... it's the opposite. Mining companies want as much tonnage of material and et amount of waste possible...that's the whole point.

[@linmal2242]

Don't store the Hydrogen, store the power in a Redfow !

[@JessieLydia]

and.... there's NO MENTION AT ALL OF DOUBLING ENERGY DEMAND EVERY 30 YEARS, AS ""THE NORMAL TOTALLY ABNORMAL""

[@katiegreene3960]

We just need to plan for the next 25 or so years since a lot of infrastructure takes time to build .... in 5 years Ai will be figuring out many answers for us if it doesnt kill us that is.... but even if it has some gokd answers things still take time to build.

[@HeyU308]

How do we change physics? Create manipulation of data in renewable performance. Physics always wins in the end.

[@NamekGregory]

Great conversation from all the three, however the energy reporter looks is far from understanding the energy transition and mining as well as time needed and actual challenges like many politician. Energy transition policies based on wind and solar plus energy storing and distribution are well understood and well related with mining reserves from Prof Assistant Simon Michaux, but politicians do not have courage to admit their policies are not working. Unfortunately if politicians will continue their disclosed agenda on energy, the world consequences will head to undisclosed agenda, mentioned indirectly with de-growth and targeting population reduction.

[@JohnnyBelgium]

If it's undisclosed, where did you read about it? Politicians are 99% pro growth.

[@NamekGregory]

@@JohnnyBelgium with respect for your question, I honestly can say that undisclosed or classified materials can not read, they are not public, but I heard on this podcast with attention, and you can hear it from moderator somewhere on the middle of podcast and from Simon who at the end of podcast speak for 7 billion people.

[@stefanbernardknauf467]

Hm, is Mr Ahmed suggesting current mining industry is wasting energy and creating waste kind of for fun?? I doubt very much that they don't do research to improve.

[@kiedranFan2035]

Also we all don't need Nokia phones when the screens on current phones as much more useful for their size and less complex then a million buttons and circuit boards. Screens are just a few materials sandwiched with a life span that never was even appeoached yet. But even if I'm misguided on that the truth us all current e waste laying in our drawers have multiple functional parts like screens. So right to repair is a very important topic to be discussed here and is mandatory. ALL these functional e waste components should be used again until they can't be.

[@JohnnyBelgium]

Simon Michaux has calculated that we don't have the minerals for one 25 year generation of renewables. If we don't have the minerals for one generation, then we can't recycle our way into a renewable future.

[@kiedranFan2035]

@@JohnnyBelgium becuase there isn't enough recycling we can do based on how our products were made. To develop the techniques would be too late by now. So if we were to have made the same items were possible using less complex materials then we might have. So in short whats he's saying is that many people will just have to die off by shortages while a new group of people is employed to make sure we transition and not collapse from the shock of it all I think