Mentimeter session

NBIS

About the questions

At times the questions are deliberately vague and background information has been left out. You have to make your own assumptions about what things are relevant to the question at hand.

Energy

Energy narratives

Metea Pv Magazine USA, 2025

Press CNN, 2025

Energy narratives

What Is the Clean Energy Transition? National Grid Group n.d.

Nations United Nations, n.d.

Energy menti

Goal of menti: show

no transition has taken place
the size of our energy use
how quick the growth is
point out that it takes energy to get energy

Discussion slides

Human labor contained in one barrel of oil:
- Human work: 0.6 kWh/dayOne barrel of oil: 1700 kWh
- 1700/0.6 ~ 2800 days ~ 11 years (working ~260 days per year)
Shovel vs machine comparison
- Assuming a human uses 300 kcal/hour and moves 0.34 m3
- A John Deere uses 273,312 kcal/hour and moves 101.93 m3
- Bagger 293 uses 16.5 MW/hour and moves 14,158 m3
- The human wins at 0.271 m3 / MJ, Bagger 293 is second with 0.238 m3 / MJ and John Deere last at 0.089 m3 / MJ
stacked graph of historical energy use by type (oil/coal/…)
point out that the peak question has two answers, one for relative use, one for absolute. The point is to highlight that we keep adding energy to the mix, we’re not replacing; there is no energy transition
on the future of increased use:
- graph of global total energy use, point out that we’re at 19TW now, and extend it 2-300 years into the future - this could be a good point to introduce the rule of 70; first the graph is until today, ask what they think it will be in year 2100, introduce rule of 70, extend the x axis
  - this s Tom Murphy’s planetary energy plot
- non-renewables: point out the maybe not so obvious fact that they generate heat => 19TW negligible, 500TW => 1W/m2, equivalent to today’s radiative forcing (at XXXW we would - literally - boil the water of the planet). Asimov makes this point in some book, find ref.
- yes, the energy flow from the sun is 10000 times higher than our current use => energy is abundant?
  - show Smil’s graph of energy flows (sankey diagram of sun -> earth) -> much of the primary energy is lost, only 87000 TW reaches Earth’ssurface
  - however, biosphere energy use is 100 TW - why not higher?
  - much of the energy is used by Earth to do stuff; make winds, currents, (see Antonio Turiel): if we tamper with this will have unintended downstream consequences (find article on solar panels on Arabic peninsula that have affeceted precipitation)
  - renewables require much space
Marion King Hubbert’s figure 30? utopian future vision of energy - also hints at the carbon pulse
on EROI - it takes energy to get energy? Drake well vs Deep water horizon? Could fit better under economy and efficiency and the segue to technological advances

Global primary energy consumption by source

Our energy history

Murphy et al. Energy Research & Social Science, 81, 102239, 2021

Our energy future(?)

Power demand assuming 2.3% growth on a logarithmic plot. In 275, 345, and 400 years, we demand all the sunlight hitting land and then the earth, assuming 20%, 100%, and 100% conversion efficiencies, respectively. In 1350 years, we use as all power of the sun. In 2450 years, we use all stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Vertical notes provide historical perspective on how distant these benchmarks are in the context of civilization.

Murphy, Tom 2011

Our energy budget

Alestig Dagens Nyheter, 2025

Economy

Economy narratives

Mason & editor The Guardian, 2022

Sveriges Radio 2024

Economy menti

How does an economist bake bread?

British investor Jeremy Grantham on eternal growth Grantham, n.d.

… to allow economics 20 more years to get the point that to make bread you need wheat and heat, in addition to labor and capital. Mainstream economics decided back in the 1950s to basically ignore the limits imposed by natural resources and environmental services, including the downsides of waste products. …

Economist response; Paul Krugman Krugman, The New York Times, 2014

And you sometimes see hard scientists making arguments along the same lines, largely (I think) because they don’t understand what economic growth means. They think of it as a crude, physical thing, a matter simply of producing more stuff, and don’t take into account the many choices — about what to consume, about which technologies to use — that go into producing a dollar’s worth of G.D.P.

Quote on the unimportance of energy, materials: https://growthecon.com/StudyGuide/solow/production.html

Notice that I didn’t include anything explicit about natural resources or raw materials here. We could, but they tend to not be as important for growth in real GDP as we think. For the time being we’ll leave them out, and later on can incorporate information about them into the production function.

Krugman quote Krugman, The New York Times, 2014:

And you sometimes see hard scientists making arguments along the same lines, largely (I think) because they don’t understand what economic growth means. They think of it as a crude, physical thing, a matter simply of producing more stuff, and don’t take into account the many choices — about what to consume, about which technologies to use — that go into producing a dollar’s worth of G.D.P.

Good comment:

I beg to differ. I have a dual degree in engineering and economics. I used to believe the free-market dogma. I did very well in my economics classes. However, it was studying real science that opened my eyes. This has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with science. You can’t decouple economic growth from growth in the consumption of natural resources and not a single economist has been able to prove that you can. It defies common sense (not to mention the basic laws of physics) to expect that something can grow infinitely within finite, constrained system. Many of our key resources, like metals, exist in fixed supply. How in the world do you reconcile that with a system that requires endless growth?

Grantham Grantham, n.d.

I say 90 years to allow economics 20 more years to get the point that to make bread you need wheat and heat, in addition to labor and capital. Mainstream economics decided back in the 1950s to basically ignore the limits imposed by natural resources and environmental services, including the downsides of waste products. In their methodology, capital, labor (and innovation, if you insist) were always going to be enough. Externalities were ignored and considered outside their equilibriums. ‘It’s only a question of price,’ although quite soon, that may mean that only the very rich can pay the necessary price while the rest starve. Steady productivity gains do not buy you much time mathematically either, and are in any case mostly offset quickly by the Jevons effect: the cheaper the product, the more you use.

Comment on Krugman’s growthism by Herman Daly:

https://steadystate.org/krugmans-growthism/

Economy and energy

World economic growth for the previous century, expressed in constant 1990 dollars. For the first half of the century, the economy tracked the 2.9% energy growth rate very well, but has since increased to a 5% growth rate, outstripping the energy growth rate.

Murphy 2011

Decoupling the economy

Den ofta framförda tanken att användningen av energi och specifikt fossila bränslen måste växa (eller krympa) i samma takt som konsumtion och produktion är helt enkelt felaktig.

John Hassler, Hassler, Regeringskansliet, 2023, p. 22

Model scenarios for economic growth in the face of stalled or steady physical resources.

Murphy Nature Physics, 18(8), 844–847, 2022

On infinite growth

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding, in United States. Congress. House, 1973, p. 248

[…] pre-Industrial era up to Point A, humankind migrated around the planet accessing solar flows […] dawn of the industrial revolution, Point B, humanity added the condensed stocks of hydrocarbons […] Between B and C we hit an energy crisis in the 1970s, which we ‘solved’ by both 1) using debt to pull consumption forward in time and 2) globalization and outsourcing to the cheapest areas of production […] Since 2007 we have grown our global debt 3.5x faster than we’ve grown our economies bringing global debt/GDP ratio to over 300% […]

Hagens Ecological Economics, 169, 106520, 2020

In the pre-Industrial era up to Point A, humankind migrated around the planet accessing solar flows using relatively simple technology such as agriculture, sails, slaves and animal labor. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, Point B, humanity added the condensed stocks of hydrocarbons to previously flow-based human economies. A valid description of the Solow residual (i.e. the economic growth not explained by labor or capital) was absent during this time because the black line and red line were tracking together.

Between B and C we hit an energy crisis in the 1970s, which we ‘solved’ by both 1) using debt to pull consumption forward in time and 2) globalization and outsourcing to the cheapest areas of production. These changes allowed economic growth to continue until it hit a wall with conventional finance in 2008 (Point C)– at which point central banks and global governments were forced to essentially redesign the entire financial system. This new (ongoing) paradigm involved measures such as too-big-to-fail guarantees, artificially low interest rates (even negative!) (Salmon, 2019), quantitative easing, central bank balance sheet expansion and various GDP-friendly rule changes (Alderman, 2014). The continued increase in global credit allowed: access to costlier tranches of resources, more social programs, cheap financing for renewable energy, and a sustained – if tepid – return to economic growth since 2009. We are now heading towards Point D, where our global monetary representations of reality continue to decouple from the underlying biophysical reality (red curve).

Since 2007 we have grown our global debt 3.5x faster than we’ve grown our economies bringing global debt/GDP ratio to over 300% (Tiftik et al., 2019). Most institutional experts and pundits are aware of Point D, but because of cultural energy blindness, are generally not aware of this point in relation to the red line, or even that there is a red line. Eventually we will discover that the black line (money and credit) also has limits, which ultimately are tethered to the growth enabled by energy and resource availability and cost.

Technology

Technology narratives

För jorden har i alla fall en obegränsad resurs: den mänskliga kreativiteten. Varför skulle inte en växande och alltmer välutbildad befolkning – som dessutom har hjälp av AI – kunna använda begränsade råvaror exempelvis en procent smartare varje år?

“Elias Rosell” DN.se, 2024

Alternativ finns ju som tur är. Med ”smartare miljöteknik, mer energieffektiva metoder och smartare sätt att transportera oss” kan vi få ökat välstånd utan ökade utsläpp […]

“Max Hjelm” DN.se, 2024

Tech menti

are there limits to technological progress?
is technological progress rate increasing or declining?
Tom Murphy’s example of time travel 1870->1950 vs 1950-> today, who sees most transformative progress

Segue:

so if getting more energy is difficult and we are so coupled to energy/materia is a potential route efficiency?

Goal:

discuss limits of technology (often from a thermodynamic lens)
objection: what if you limit

Resources:

DN ledare about using AI to improve material use 1% per year

Graphs:

from Marc Andreesen tech-optimism to more gloomy prediction; fill in betweens
our world in data graph on tech dev
Tom Murphy’s graph of light and S-curve of tech development
S-curve of the ensembl of technologies; we have in fact picked the low hanging fruit; could it be the slowdown in progress is because of this (here, point to articles in Nature, Ulf Danielsson, hell even Peter Thiel, on the slowdown of discoveries); also point out that the rate must be normalized by population size and GDP spent on research

The techno-optimism scale

The techno-optimist manifesto Andreessen Andreessen Horowitz, 2023

Our Ugly Magnificence Murphy 2023

Ray Kurzweil: “We are going to to expand intelligence by a millionfold by 2045” Corbyn The Observer, 2024

Why the Singularity Cannot Happen Modis Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment, 311–346, 2012

By Terzopoulou - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94774361>

Limits to growth Meadows & Club of Rome 1972

Technology over the Long Run Roser Our World in Data, 2023

How to make a soda can

McAfee 2019, “Andrew McAfee on More from Less” Econlib, n.d.

Four horsemen of the optimist:

technological progress
capitalism
public awareness
responsive government

Missing observation:

limit to efficiency
aggregate material use the interesting quantity

Exponential growth

Exponential menti

Cumulative growth

Every doubling consumes as much resources as the entire previous history!

Rule of 70

Given a growth rate \(r\) (annual, generational, …) in percent, the doubling time is roughly equivalent to \(70 / r\).

So an annual growth rate of 1% means 70 doubling time, 2% 35 years, etc.

A 2.1% growth rate has a doubling time of 30 years, or 3.3 per century -> a factor 10!

Planetary boundary futures

Bibliography

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Andreessen, M. (2023). The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. In Andreessen Horowitz. https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

Andrew McAfee on More from Less. (n.d.). In Econlib. Retrieved February 22, 2025, from https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/

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