Link? Who is Tom Murphy? Why should I Google him? What's the source of the image? Why is there a spike? How does he know that after a few hundred years our energy consumption / use / whatever you want to call it will tail off as quickly as it had rose?
The link's below the picture. Tom Murphy is a physicist that blogs on the peak fossil fuel phenomena. I think there's some merit in discussing the ideas he raises; for example, here the energy extraction from fossil fuels vastly dominates that from pre-industrial means to such an extent that it resembles a delta function.
Any limited resource will have one global peak extraction; the question the graph raises is 1) how soon; 2) what shape; and 3) what will replace fossil fuels given that current renewables have much lower returns on energy investment.
Link? Who is Tom Murphy? Why should I Google him? What's the source of the image?
ReplyDeleteWhy is there a spike? How does he know that after a few hundred years our energy consumption / use / whatever you want to call it will tail off as quickly as it had rose?
The link's below the picture. Tom Murphy is a physicist that blogs on the peak fossil fuel phenomena. I think there's some merit in discussing the ideas he raises; for example, here the energy extraction from fossil fuels vastly dominates that from pre-industrial means to such an extent that it resembles a delta function.
ReplyDeleteAny limited resource will have one global peak extraction; the question the graph raises is 1) how soon; 2) what shape; and 3) what will replace fossil fuels given that current renewables have much lower returns on energy investment.