The "anti-Cassandra" effect: believing the unbelievable

 Nobody ever said that Cassandra was dumb, but when she said that she didn't think that the wooden horse that the Greeks had left on the beach was exactly a "gift", nobody believed her. This is something that we could call the "Cassandra Effect". Sometimes, however, there happens the opposite effect. That is, people believe in improbable stories without the smallest attempt of applying a bit of critical analysis. This is something that could be called the "Anti-Cassandra" effect. As an example, let me analyze a recent report that has appeared on newspapers all over the world. It is the story of how the window of a Ryanair plane was repaired with sticky tape and that because of that, the plane needed to return to the airport soon after take-off. Above: photo from "The Sun". (2018 note: the article and the pictures have been removed from the site of "The Sun")

On Oct 24 2011, "The Sun" published on their web site an article titled "Passengers watch Ryanair crew mend window with tape". It describes how the passengers of a plane leaving from Stansted were horrified at the sight and how the plane had to go back to the airport after take-off because of "damage to the windscreen". The article of The Sun has been reproduced in various forms in innumerable newspapers and web sites, for instance on the "Daily Mail.

Now, let's analyze this report. Can it be true that a major airline such as Ryanair (by the way, with an excellent safety record) can think of repairing a broken plane window with what the "Daily Mail" describes as "sticky tape"? Unlikely, to say the least; just as it is unlikely that the pilot of the plane would have accepted to take off with a window pane precariously held in place with scotch tape bought at the nearest hardware store.

Looking at the story a bit more in depth, we discover that there exists something called "speed tape" commonly used in aviation to repair minor damage and to stick parts together. It is not the common kind of tape, but a metal tape specifically developed for aviation. If that is what was being used to repair the cockpit window, then there is no scandal and there was no attempt on the part Ryanair of "penny pinching" (as stated in the Daily Mail). Indeed, the Irish Aviation Authority investigated on the question and both The Sun and The Daily Mail report that nothing wrong was found in the repair procedure.

But there is more in this story that may show that it was not just a mistake, but a true hoax. Let's go even more in depth in the report. Here is the image that appears on the Daily Mail; it is somewhat different from the one that appears on "The Sun" (shown above)

It is clear that this is the original photo; it has a better resolution than the one that appears on "The Sun," which has been retouched and reframed. Note how in the image on The Sun the left lower corner has been blanked out - we'll see later on that it was done for a reason.

Now, first of all, let's think in terms of perspective. From what I know, the nose of a Boeing 737 stands almost 3 meters high from the ground. Look at this image of a 737 and note how high the nose is with respect to the people standing.

Now, to take a picture like the one shown in "The Sun" or in the "Daily Mail", the photographer must be either at some distance from the plane or at a height comparable to that of the nose. Both conditions are highly improbable in the reported circumstances. When you board a plane they don't let you wander around to take pictures. And they don't let you climb on the roof of the passenger bus, either. Taken from where, then? Maybe from the inside of the passenger terminal? But that is just as unlikely; the level of the terminal floor is normally higher than the plane.

Besides, note another detail: the "arms" of the technician who is supposed to be repairing the window. These arms have been heavily retouched. But why? Possibly, because this is a photo montage where the technicians have been added to the photo of the plane.

But that's not all. Let's now read what they say in "The Sun,"  the original report.

"Passengers watched in horror as ground crew put the tape around the edge of the windscreen shortly before take-off from Stansted, Essex, to Riga, Latvia. "

But from where did they watch? It is weird, because we read that,

"We were kept in the dark, and were terrified. I could see guys taping in the windscreen with what looked like duct tape or gaffer tape. "

In the dark? What do they mean with that? If they mean actual darkness, it is impossible. The picture is taken in daylight and the passenger cabin of a plane is never "in the dark" when there is light outside. Besides, if the passengers were inside the cabin, how could they see the technicians taping the cockpit window from outside? Maybe they were looking from the passenger terminal, but again the story doesn't make sense. If they were really "terrified" would they have accepted to board the plane?

These contradictions would be enough to say that this story is a hoax, but there is more. Who took that picture? We cannot say that from the version of "The Sun" but we can from the one that appears on the "Daily Mail". It is written right there, on the left lower corner - just the region blanked out in the other photo. The author is one "Lee Thompson" who placed a copyright notice near his name.

Isn't it weird that a "passenger" would put a signature and a copyright sign on a picture taken while on a trip that is described as for a "stag party" as we read in the "Daily Mail"? But there is no doubt that "Lee Thompson" is the name of the passenger - we are told that explicitly in the article on "The Sun." Not just that, we have a picture of Mr. Thompson in the article. Here it is (note the disgusted expression - is that the face you make when your plane is forced to an emergency landing?)

Image from "The Sun"

So, let's see..... we have someone named "Lee Thompson", it is quite a common name, but he must be a professional photographer (because he puts a copyright mark on his images) and he must be connected with "The Sun". A little search on the web and you find him. He is, indeed, a professional photographer and he works for The Sun. Here he is as he appears on his site.

I don't know what's your opinion, but to me he looks damn like the same Lee Thompson of the article on the Ryanair "accident". Nice coincidence, right? The same person was both a passenger of the flight and a correspondent from The Sun! That explains, by the way, why they had blanked out the name of the photographer and the copyright notice. But someone, most likely by mistake, has placed on line the original.

The curious thing is that this curious story has been reproduced everywhere in the press and on the web without any attempt of criticism on the part of those who reproduced it. So, we have here a good example of the "Anti-Cassandra" effect, that is of people believing something unbelievable without making the slightest attempt to apply a bit of critical analysis. Sometimes people refuse to believe in reality and sometimes they fall easy prey of legends. So, in this case, everyone - or almost everyone -  loved the chance of a little "Ryanair-bashing" given the fame of penny pinching of the company. It is the same effect that led so many people to believe in the "Climategate" story as a chance to do a little science-bashing against those nasty scientists.

It is part of the way we reason; we believe in what we want to believe and we don't believe in what we don't want to believe. It has always been like that from the times of the prophetess Cassandra of Troy and, apparently, things haven't changed so much today.

Cassandra in the 21st century: ASPO-Italy 5 in Florence on Oct 28

Luca Pardi, vice-president of ASPO-Italy, is the organizer for this year the fifth annual meeting of the organization in Florence on Oct 28. The title of the meeting is "Cassandra in the 21st century: Climate Energy and Food" and it is organized jointly with the "Climalteranti" association, a group of Italian climate scientists.

A brief period that I spent outside Italy this month has convinced me that our country, nowadays, is known for a few things; none of them very good. One, of course, is about the sexual exploits of our prime minister. Then, we have our Minister of Science and Education who thought that neutrinos travel in a tunnel from Geneva, in Switzerland to a place in central Italy. And, finally, an Italian guy who has built an electric boiler and who claims it is a nuclear reactor. Bad times, indeed.

So, maybe ASPO-Italy can try to do what is possible to uphold the honor of the country. Hence, we are doing our best to organize an interesting international meeting this year. Our vice-president, Luca Pardi, has taken this burden upon himself and he has succeeded beautifully in the task of assembling a great program. With the sponsorship of the Tuscan Regional government, we are glad to report that we'll have  speakers from international institutions as:

1. Ian Johnson - Secretary General of the Club of Rome
2. Nicole M. Foss - Known as "Stoneleigh", co-editor at The Automatic Earth
3. Toufic El Asmar - Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)

And we'll have many well known speakers from Italy: Luca Mercalli, Stefano Caserini, Sergio Castellari, Sylvie Coyaud and others - we'll also have musical entertainment in the afternoon!

The first two talks are in English (translation to Italian provided), all the others will be in Italian (sorry, no translation available). The location is in Florence, at the Sala delle Feste - Palazzo Bastogi, Consiglio Regionale della Toscana, via Cavour, 18. We start at 9:00 a.m. (more or less), entrance is free and no registration is necessary.

Full program of the meeting at the ASPOITALIA site.

The BEST results: the scientific method works.

Recently released results by an independent research team ("BEST") confirm something that had been obvious for a long time: the Earth is warming.

The recent results by the Berkeley team (BEST) confirm that the Earth is warming. That's no surprise; we had known that for decades. So, what's so special in these results?

One point is, of course, the evident disarray of the skeptical tribe, as they had clearly put great hopes in this study. But that is a short term phenomenon as they are rapidly closing ranks and restarting the doubt-creating machine. Rather, what is interesting in the BEST study, I think, is a further demonstration of how well the scientific method works (*).

Think about that: the BEST study had started with great fanfare as a new study performed by people who defined themselves as "skeptics". It was supposed to be the final world on whether the earth is warming or not and clear hints were sent by the performers that they had strong suspicions that decades of work by climate scientists had been badly affected by an overlooked phenomenon known as "Urban Heat Island" (UHI). Considering some previous statements by the BEST team leader, Richard Muller, and some of the financing sources of the study, it was not an auspicious start.

But, instead, the team was staffed by professionals and worked professionally; applying the scientific method. At least three different teams had worked before BEST in examining the data provided by the temperature measuring stations. They all had used the scientific method; just as the BEST team did. In the end, all four teams arrived to the same results. The "UHI" bias does not exist (or, better said, it is correctly accounted for in the treatment of the data). See? The method works.

But then, why so much discussion? What made the BEST team think that previous studies were wrong? And what made critics of the BEST effort think that it would be biased in favour of anti-science theses? Well, it is a fact that scientists are human beings and they have their personal biases.

There are two kinds of typical scientific biases: one is when an aged scientist mistrusts everything new; it is the "not measured here" syndrome. Within some limits, that is a syndrome shown by Richard Muller in several of his public statements - but, in the end, it didn't affect the work of the team.

The other kind of bias occurs when scientists turn out to be easily gullible on matters they are not experts on. This is shown, among many examples, by the recent case of the "E-Cat," the device that was claimed to be able to produce energy by nuclear fusion reactions. This kind of bias is specular to the one described before; here, a scientist may take position on the basis of incomplete data, but "measured here." Eventually, however, also this bias can be corrected by the scientific method.

So, we have a good method that we can use to understand what's happening around us and what problems we will be facing in the future. We can use the scientific method to take action in order to avoid the negative effects of climate change and resource depletion. The problem? We are not using it.






(*) But what is exactly the scientific method? It is not so easy to say as it could seem, since different fields of science require different approaches and the complete description of the method needs a rather long article in Wikipedia - to say nothing of the many books and studies that have been dedicated to the subject. But I think there is a single fundamental point in the method: experimental results always take precedence over theory. In other words, reality always trumps hopes. It is this approach that defends us from the ideological bias that is part of our way of thinking.

The Club of Rome is back

This picture was taken at the initial session of the meeting of the Club of Rome in Basel. Switzerland, held on Oct 17-18 2011 and titled "International conference on the future of energy."  From left to right, sitting at the tables, Guy Marin, mayor of Basel, Ian Johnson, secretary general of the Club  of Rome and Leena Srivastava of TERI (India). On the left, a glimpse of Martin Lees, former secretary general of the Club of Rome.

Yes, the Club of Rome is back. Actually, it had never gone away, but the demonization campaign that had been unleashed against its 1972 report, "The Limits to Growth," had largely convinced the public that the Club's approach to the world's problems had been based on a "wrong" model.

Instead, it turned out that the model was not wrong. The recent turmoil, the economic recession, the worries about "peak oil", and the rapid rise in the price of all mineral commodities have brought back the interest on "The Limits to Growth". That brings the sponsor of the report, the Club of Rome, again under the spotlight.

I am just back from a meeting on energy that the Club of Rome organized in Basel. When I have some time, I'll see to report on it in detail. For the time being, I can just note that I was surprised (but not so much) in finding at the meeting the kind of atmosphere that I had always imagined the Club's reunions would have. Of course, many things have changed from the time of the foundation of the Club, almost half a century ago. It may be that, today, the Club's activity is more focalized on practical solutions to the world's problems, whereas at the beginning it was more in understanding what the future had in store for humankind. But some elements of the Club's approach remain the same: the international vision, the "system approach", the attention to the interdependency of the ecosystem and the industrial system, the focus on the social problems and on the welfare of the poor.

That the Club of Rome could maintain its vision for all those years is all the more remarkable considering that it has been always defined as a "non-organization" that explicitly chose to avoid rigid and formal rules. It may be because of the personality of the founders, Aurelio Peccei, Alexander King, and several others. Or maybe it is because there is something intrinsically good in the Club's way of facing the world's problems. In any case, the Club of Rome still has a lot to say on how to manage our future.

I believe it because it is absurd

Climate scientist Hans Schellnhuber is threatened with a noose while giving a lecture. (link to the video).  Are scientists our new enemies, the target of a new crusade? 

At the beginning of the third century A.D., Tertullianus, champion of Christianity against Paganism, gave us a startling revelation of the breakdown between the old and the new cultural vision. He wrote something that we remember today as, "Credo quia absurdum" that is, "I believe it because it is absurd." These are not exactly Tertullian's words, but this sentence nicely summarizes his thought. Tertullian was using absurdity as a weapon against the old paradigm. He was an apostate, a revolutionary, a subversive.

Rethinking about those ancient times, it is impressive to note how similar they are to the paradigm breakdown of our times which is often expressed in terms of what we call "conspiracy theories". Up to no long ago, the breakdown against the old cultural vision was expressed in complex and structured ideological forms: communism or socialism for instance. But what we are seeing now is nothing structured or complex. It is simply  the denial of everything that could give the impression of being "scientifically demonstrated". From chemtrails to climategate, we see the spreading of an attitude based on the concept that "if it is science, then it is a hoax." If Tertullian were alive today, his search for the creative absurdity would be expresses,  perhaps, maintaining that the planes flying above us are spreading terrible poisons over the atmosphere or that the idea of that human produced CO2 is warming the planet is an elaborate hoax designed to frighten us.

It is weird; sure. But for everything that exists, there is a reason for it to exist. That is true also for conspiracy theories, now and in old times. At the time of Tertullian, the material prosperity of Rome and of the Romans was often seen as the result of the favor of the Pagan Gods. When this prosperity disappeared, it was a shock: the old Gods didn't favor Rome any more. The result was a movement of ideas that saw the ancient gods as "evil," just as those people who kept worshiping them. We remember the story of the pagan philosopher, Hypatia, killed and dismembered by an angry mob. That happened a couple of centuries after Tertullian, when the break between the new and the old paradigm was not any more the domain of isolated subversives; it had become a wave of rage - a true tsunami.

Today, we find symptoms of exactly this kind of breakdown; of a tsunami of rage mounting in our society. Think of our prosperity: we tend to attribute it not to Pagan Gods but to our technological prowess. We worship the ability of scientists to create new and better machinery. We tell each other that any and every problem can be solved by scientists inventing a clever way out. Not enough oil? Let's drill deeper, invent better biofuels, create nuclear fusion in a bottle. Not enough food? Let's invent new fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, new pesticides. Pollution? Let's have new and better filters for car exhausts and incinerator smokestacks. Cancer? Soon we'll have the magic pill that cures it.

But now something different is happening, something unheard before. The scientists are telling us that there are no quick fixes for problems such as resource depletion and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That the more we grow, the more the problem gets serious. That we risk wiping out humankind from the planet by doing exactly the same things that we have been so proud of being able to do, so far. That we need to change our ways before it is too late.

It is the complete breakdown of the old paradigm. For most of us, it is totally disorienting to hear that we did everything wrong, and to hear it told by very people, the scientists, who had shown us how to do what we have been doing. That can only be seen as a betrayal and there is no wonder that the rage mounts against those treacherous, unfaithful, evil scientists. Such stories as the "Climategate" are signs of this rage. It is a terrible rage, something that cannot be explained except by the loss of a common frame of thought. It is a society that is losing the master-pupil relation. That is, losing wisdom, sapience, auctoritas.

When people lose wisdom, the easiest way out appears to them to find an enemy, Our new enemies seem to be the scientists. We haven't seen yet climatologists being lynched by angry mobs, as it happened to Hypatia long ago - but we seem to be getting close to something like that.  The rage of those people whom we call "conspiracy theorists" is still at the formless stage of denial of everything, but it may well develop in forms that we might describe as some sort of a new crusade where, this time, the enemies are the scientists. It would not be the first time that scientists become the target of political movements, from the times of McCarthyism in the US to the "Cultural Revolution" in China. Those movements eventually subsided, but maybe we haven't seen the anti-science rage appearing in full force, yet.

The transformation of the Roman Society from paganism to Christianity took centuries and involved all sorts of violent struggles until it settled into a new paradigm and a new sapience. A thousand years after Tertullian, the world saw that flowering of thought that we call scholastic philosophy; which involved rediscovering the old sapience and merging it with the new. We are seeing today the start of a new cycle and, in time, we will have to rediscover a new sapience and a new auctoritas. What we see today obscurely, as in a mirror, then we'll see face to face.

(thanks to Ludovico Pernazza for pointing out a mistake in this text; now corrected)

The Hubbert hurdle: revisiting the Fermi Paradox

The "Orion" spaceship is pushed onwards by the detonation of nuclear bombs. It was a concept proposed in the 1950s as a way to reach the planets of the solar system in a few days and other stars in a few years. Such ships are theoretically possible but, with the amount of energy that we can manage today, is hard to think that we can assemble enough resources for building a fleet of interstellar spaceships. On the contrary, we may well be already sliding down the other side of the Hubbert curve and we may have to give up all dreams of space exploration. Could extraterrestrial civilizations do better than us? Perhaps not. It is possible that any industrial civilization based on non renewable resources would face the same problem, we are facing: collapse generated by depletion. We could call it the "Hubbert hurdle". 

When I started reading astronomy books, in the 1960s, nobody knew if there existed planets around other stars and the common view was that they were very rare. Of course, that contrasted with the main theme of the science fiction of the time, of which I was also an avid reader. The idea that planetary systems were common in the galaxy was much more fascinating than the "official" one but, at that time, it seemed to be pure fantasy. But it turns out that science fiction was absolutely right, at least on this point. We are discovering hundreds of planets orbiting around stars and the latest news are that one sun-class star out of three may have an earth-like planet in the habitable zone. Fantastic!

The measurements that are telling us of extra-solar planets cannot tell us anything about extra-solar civilizations, another typical theme of science fiction. But, if earth-like planets are common in the galaxy, then organic, carbon based life should be common as well. And if life is common, intelligent life cannot be that rare. And if intelligent life is not rare, then there must exist alien civilizations out there. With 100 billion stars in our galaxy, we may think that also on this point science fiction may have been right. Could the galaxy be populated with alien civilizations?

Here, however, we have a well known problem called the "Fermi Paradox". If all those civilizations exist, then could they develop interstellar travel? And, in this case, if there are so many of them, why aren't they here? Of course, for all we know, the speed of light remains an impassable barrier. But, even at speeds slower than light, nothing physical prevents a spaceship from crossing the galaxy from end to end in a million year or even less. Since our galaxy is more than 10 billion years old, intelligent aliens would have had plenty of time to explore and colonize every star in the galaxy, jumping from one to another. But we don't see aliens around and that's the paradox.

The consequence seems to be that we are alone as sentient beings in the galaxy, perhaps in the whole universe. So, we seem to be back to some old models of the solar system that told us that we are exceptional. Once, we were told that we are exceptional because planets are rare, now it may be because civilizations are rare. But why?

On this point we should look back at some assumptions that are behind the Fermi paradox. The basic one is that there exist intelligent civilizations, of course, but there is another one that says that civilizations move along a path of progressive expansion that leads them towards the control of higher and higher levels of energy. If you think about that, this is a typical result of the way of thinking of the 1950s, when the "atomic age" had just started and people saw as obvious that we would hop from one source of energy to another. We would leave fossil fuels soon to move to nuclear fission. From there, we would move to nuclear fusion and then to who knows what. This progression is crucial for the Fermi paradox to make sense: of course it takes a lot of energy to embark in a gigantic task such as interstellar exploration and civilization. An estimate for the minimum power needed is of of around 1000 terawatts (TW) as an order of magnitude. It is just a guess, but it has some logic. The whole power installed today on our planet is of the order of 15 TW and the most we could do was to explore the planets of our system, and even that rather sporadically.

So, the Fermi paradox  requires that alien civilizations would follow more or less the same route that was seen as laid out for us in the 1950s. They would start from fossil fuels, then move to various forms of nuclear energy. Up to a certain point, it is not a bad model. It is likely that extrasolar "earth-like" or "superearth" planets would have an active plate tectonics and, if they develop life, that would lead to the formation of fossil fuels as the result of the sedimentation and burial of organic matter. Then, we may assume that intelligent aliens would operate according to economic principles
similar to the ones that govern our behavior. They would tend to use the highest energy yield resources and therefore use fossil fuels as the start for their industrial civilization.

Fossil fuels, however, are an energy source too weak and too polluting to use for interstellar travel. An extrasolar planet might well be better endowed than ours, but that would not help. The limits for our aliens would be the same as they are for us: either depletion or the saturation of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases (and perhaps both). But the limit with fossil fuels is more subtle than that and it is related to the Hubbert model which says that the pattern of energy production of a non renewable resource is highly non linear and follows a "bell shaped" curve.

The  model is based on the concept that energy production grows depending on the energy yield of the resource (energy return on energy invested, EROEI). The higher the EROEI the faster the resource is exploited. As the best (highest EROEI) resources are exploited first, the EROEI declines and eventually affects the ability of extracting more resource. Production reaches a peak and then declines. The result is the typical, bell shaped, Hubbert curve. If, in addition, the resource being exploited produces significant pollution, decline will be usually faster than growth, that is the curve will be asymmetric and skewed forward (this I have called the "Seneca effect"). The curve is general for all non-renewable resources, although it is most often applied to fossil fuels.

Tim O'Reilly may have been the first to note, in 2008, that the Hubbert curve may be relevant for the Fermi paradox. Because of the non linearity of the curve, no matter what resources are being used, a civilization literally "flares up" and then subsides, being able to maintain the highest level of energy production only for a very short time. This phenomenon that we might call "The Hubbert Hurdle" may be very general and make industrial civilizations in the galaxy to be very short-lived. The decline associated with depletion and with pollution may rapidly bring a civilization back to stone age, from which it will never be able to develop again a sophisticated technology. That is an especially difficult hurdle if the Seneca behavior sets in (maybe we could call it the "Seneca hurdle"). In any case, this effect strongly limits the life-span of a civilization.

Note how this model is different from the view of the 1950s. In the 1950s, we believed in a continuous expansion of energy production, "hopping" from source to source was seen as a smooth process. But the Hubbert model says hopping to a new source is, instead, a dramatic jump and success is by no means guaranteed. We may well have failed our attempt to hop to the "next level", seen as nuclear fission. With the decline of fossil power, it may be too late to gather sufficient resources to invest in nuclear energy. Intelligent aliens might do better than us in gathering these resources, but the Hubbert hurdle remains a major problem. One problem with nuclear energy is that it creates a particularly disastrous form of pollution: nuclear war. The possibility that alien civilizations would routinely destroy themselves as they entered their atomic age is something that Isaac Asimov proposed in his 1957 short story "The Gentle Vultures." But, suppose that it doesn't happen. Can nuclear fission provide enough energy for interstellar travel? Most likely not.

Uranium and thorium, fissile elements, are extremely rare in the universe. For what we know, they are accumulated at levels that can provide a good EROEI only on earth-like planets which have an active plate tectonics. On bodies such as the Moon and the asteroids, uranium exists in extremely tiny amounts, of the order of parts per billion and that makes extracting it an impossible task. It is unlikely that an alien rocky planet could have much more uranium than we have on ours. So, let's make a quick calculation. Today, nuclear fission is generating a power of about 0.3 TW on our planet. We said that for expanding in the galaxy we need something of the order of 1000 TW. That's a far target for us, considering that, with the limited uranium resources available, we are not even sure that we'll be able to keep active the present fleet of nuclear reactors in the coming years. We could expand these resources to non fissionable isotopes of uranium and thorium if we were able to develop "breeder" reactors. In that case, an optimistic estimate has that the uranium mineral resources could last for "30.000 years" at the present rate of consumption. Maybe, but if we were to reach 1000 TW, we would run out of uranium in 10 years. This number gives us a rough estimate of the time span that nuclear energy could sustain a civilization at a power large enough to permit interstellar space travel: tens or perhaps hundreds of years, but not much more. Such a civilization could, in principle, generate a large spike of energy production but then it would have to quickly decline back to zero for lack of fuel resources. It is, again, the Hubbert hurdle at work.

So we arrive now to nuclear fusion, the poster child of the Atomic Age. Fusion can use hydrogen isotopes and hydrogen is the most abundant element of the universe. The idea that was common in the 1950s is that with fusion we would have had energy "too cheap to meter", so abundant that we could have had week-ends on the moon for the whole family. Well, things turned out to be much more difficult than they seemed to be. In more than half a century of attempts, we have never been able to get more energy from a fusion process than we pumped into it. Even “fusion bombs” are actually fusion enhanced fission bombs. Maybe there is some trick that we can't see now to get nuclear fusion working; maybe we are just dumber than the average galactic civilization. We might also maintain, however, that there simply isn't a way for fusion to be obtained with an energy gain outside stars. Of course, we can't say, but the Fermi Paradox could be telling us, actually, "look, controlled nuclear fusion is NOT possible."

Of course, there are other possibilities for a civilization to develop powerful sources of energy. For instance, think of black holes. If you can control a small black hole, throwing anything into it will generate a lot of energy that could be used for interstellar travel. Black holes are very difficult to control and a civilization using this technology would face the ultimate pollution problem: the creation of a black hole big enough that it would gobble everything around, including the civilization that created it. In any case, even black holes are subjected to the Hubbert Hurdle, as you keep throwing matter into them, you gradually run out of it. A civilization based on black holes would flare up very rapidly and then disappear, leaving nothing except black holes.

Clearly, we are entering a realm of speculation but the point I wanted to make with this post is that the Hubbert mechanism generates a short lifespan for a civilization based on non-renewable resources. It also generates dramatic problems in switching from a resource to another. If this is a general behavior for civilizations, then it can explain the Fermi paradox. Sentient beings may be common in our Galaxy, but their existence as industrial civilizations may be extremely short. So, we shouldn't be surprised that we don't find alien spaceships cruising around.  Perhaps we'll have a chance to get a radio signal from one of these civilizations, but that will be just like spotting another ship while crossing the ocean. There are plenty of ships crossing the ocean, but take a given moment and a specific place and it is very unlikely that one will be visible from there.

In the end, the energy source available to a planetary civilization is limited to what can be obtained from the planet's sun. That may be a lot: on Earth the total amount arriving is about 100.000 TW; which can be further increased using space installations. With that, it would be perfectly possible to arrive to those 1000 TW that we said are necessary for interstellar travel. But we have arrived to a concept completely different from the one that is at the basis of the Fermi paradox: the idea, typical of the 1950s, that a civilization keeps always expanding. A civilization based on a fixed energy source, a star, may reason and behave in completely different terms. It might concentrate on the exploitation of the star (this is the concept of the "Dyson sphere") rather than on interstellar travel.

As we move away from things we are familiar with, we find ourselves in unknown terrain. How would such a high power civilization manifest itself? What is in the universe that we can define as “natural” as opposite to “artificial”? The only thing we can say is that stars are wonderful engines: steady, powerful, reliable, and long lasting. If they were not natural, someone should have invented them..... But, of course, they are natural......yes...... I think they are......... .


Note added after publication: I discovered that John Greer had examined this subject in similar terms in 2007, (h/t Leanan)

The renewable revolution, III - the Jevons paradox

I received an interesting comment today on my first post on the renewable revolution. In answering it, I thought that the exchange was worth publishing as a post in its own, so here it is. 

Karl North said... 

 

Ugo, you are no doubt familiar with the Jevons Paradox, which says that energy efficiency gains, in a typical capitalist political economy of few policy constraints, are used in ways that lead to higher energy use at the macro level. In my view something similar is at work if the “clean” energy alternatives that you are advocating replace fossil fuels to a significant degree. The use of alternatives (again in our dominant form of political economy) will be used to chew up the same resources as fossil fuels do. Many of these resources are nonrenewable, many of them destructive of global carrying capacity in their production and use. As just one example, fossil fuels have permitted an industrialized form of agriculture that is an ecological slow-moving disaster but has temporarily doubled world population, which in turn is causing its own problems. As a systems analyst I am sure you can appreciate the positive feedbacks involved. So in general, significant production of alternative fuels would continue the disastrous process that is producing ‘peak everything’ both in terms of resource depletion and nest fouling.

Few writers on the subject of energy flow in our planetary system are considering the question: What is the level of energy use (of any sort) that is excessive, because it simply wears out the system. I liken the problem to running a car at rpms that are in the red zone of the car’s tachometer. Again, as a systems analyst I would think that you would be interested in such questions.

October 4, 2011 6:50 PM

My answer:

Karl, I am glad that my post generates such interesting questions; what you say deserves a post on its own. 

Now, the Jevons "paradox" is not a paradox at all, as you know. It is not coded explicitly in the models but it is there. It is a consequence of the positive feedback relationship of consumption and production. It is a very simple assumption, it is curious that it works; but it does. Basically, people always want more, they maximize their "utility function" by satisfying their short term wants. Nate Hagens explains this in terms of dopamine production within the brain. It is the way things are, at least for our civilization. I am not sure it is so general over history, there may be social rules that control it. I am sure that in several societies these social brakes have been very effective, but in our case it is dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, and the more, the better.

Now, Jevons's idea, positive feedback if you like, is what leads to overexploitation, or overshoot as it is often termed. It is the main source of our troubles. As production grows so does consumption and if there were no negative feedbacks both would grow to infinity. These negative feedbacks, pollution and depletion, exist, but arrive with a time delay; too late. The result is that you have badly depleted your resource and you must go back not just to the sustainability level, but to a much lower level in order to allow the resource to grow back. That's what we call collapse. In the end, it is caused by a molecule called dopamine, probably the most dangerous molecule on earth, perhaps even more than CO2!

These are very general considerations that apply to non renewable or slowly renewable resources. There is a different case, though, that of renewables. The trick with solar or wind based renewables is that you can't overexploit the sun. That is true, at least, for renewables such as wind and photovoltaics. Agriculture, instead, has a big problem of soil erosion that makes it often a non renewable resource. It doesn't have to be; you can create an agriculture that doesn't overexploit the soil, but let's remain now on technologies which don't damage the soil; such as PV.

Then, if you model the growth of renewables you have some of the same mechanisms that control the growth of non renewable resources. It is generated by a positive feedback and it grows rapidly. But the point is that the negative feedbacks do not generate such disastrous consequences as they do with non-renewable resources. That is, you might find that you installed too many solar panels and that it has negatively impacted agriculture. Well, at this point you may simply go back to the sustainability level, just removing the excess panels. The soil below the panels is still as good as before (and perhaps better). You didn't affect the solar flux so you don't have to remove more than those panels which exceed the sustainability level. 

In the model, you would assume that the flux from the resource stock remains unchanged. Playing with the models, what normally happens is that the system naturally stabilizes to the sustainability level. I don't know whether this would happen in the real world, but I notice that people are already loudly  complaining about PV using "too much land" and clamoring for stopping installations, even though the area used up to date is minuscule. So, I think that there are built-in mechanisms that would stop PV installation much before paving the whole planet with silicon cells. That applies not only to the use of land area but also to the use of mineral resources to build the panels themselves. If recycled carefully, which can be done, these resources can last a long, long time.

So, I believe that renewables are not subjected to over-exploitation themselves, or at least that the tendency to overexploitation/overshoot can be kept under control. It is a different mechanism of growth.

Now, to go back to your comment, what you say, actually, is more complex. If renewables alone are not so damaging to the environment, you are correct in saying that the mix of fossils and renewables is a different matter. It may well be a very unhealthy in the sense that it would generate a higher consumption of fossils and other mineral resources. And I am afraid you are totally right. If we were to come up with the perfect energy source, say something with EROEI= 100 and that lasts forever, then we would have electric power for free, but people would still want SUVs and they would invest in pulling out of the ground every and anything that can be burned: Tar sands, shale oil, bitumen, anything.....

Within some limits, this is an unsolvable problem. It has to do with human nature; can we fight dopamine? I don't know - perhaps not. The only thing I can say is that if we have renewable power we have a chance to convince people that destroying the earth to burn fossil fuels is not a good idea. We can say that, because we can say that we don't need to do it. If we don't have an alternative, we have no chance - it doesn't work. If you tell people simply that they have to stop burning oil and coal and be happy with less; well, look at the debate on global warming and see what is happening. Look at the debate on shale gas. These are dopamine driven debates. What people are saying is, "we must burn X (X=coal, oil, shale gas, etc....) because we don't have alternatives." If we can't propose alternatives, they'll burn everything that can be burned and then we'll be back to Middle Ages (if we are lucky, because the alternative is the Olduvai Gorge and not even that: it could be a place as ancient fossils ourselves).

I am personally convinced that there exists a road to sustainability based on renewables; a road to a world that maintains some of our good things we did, such as that modest prosperity and freedom from the elementary wants, hunger, that we have been able to create at least in a fraction of the world and even there in a fraction of society. But it is something compared to the alternative which is - to cite Jevons - that "laborious poverty" of old times.

I am also convinced that we'll arrive there, eventually. But the road is narrow and winding, and there are good chances to make a mistake and end up as Wily Coyote, squashed at the bottom of the canyon. I think, however, that we should try to see this road and do our best to follow it.