Transcript - Sustainable Loudoun

Don Sandros (right) presenting a solar charging pack to Jerry Stewart (left) to
use on his walk in the Great March for Climate Action (March 2014).
Don Sandros
10/27/1943 – 6/27/2014
Don Sandros Energy
Summit
George Washington University Ashburn Campus
October 23, 2015
Tony Noerpel October 23, 2015
2
Sponsors
 George Washington University
 REHAU
 Corcoran Winery
 Sustainable Loudoun
 Your Business Our World
 CCAN
 Solar Solutions for All
 350 Loudoun
 Whole Foods
Tony Noerpel October 23, 2015
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Exhibitors
 REHAU
 You Business Our World
 Solar Solutions for All
 Solar Odyssey
 Northern Virginia Drilling
 Corcoran Winery and Brewery
 NOVA Spray Foam
 SOLARFOUR LLC
Tony Noerpel October 23, 2015
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Exhibitors
 350 Loudoun
 Sustainable Loudoun
 Great Falls Sierra Club
 CCAN
 Climate Reality Project
Tony Noerpel October 23, 2015
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Upcoming events
 The 6th Annual Green Business Challenge Awards Gala
Thursday November 5th at REHAU from 5:30pm - 8pm.
Loudoun County Chamber will honor the top
performing companies in the 2015 Loudoun-Dulles
Green Business Challenge. Tickets can be bought on
Loudoun Chamber of Commerce’s website.
 Leesburg/Kiwanis Halloween Parade, Saturday, October
31, 2015, 4:30 pm line-up at Ida Lee Park, 60 Ida Lee
Drive, N.W., Leesburg, VA. March begins at 6:00 pm.
March with 350 Loudoun & Sustainable Loudoun.
Program
 Tony Noerpel – Introduction – “Expanding the
Solution Space”
 Professor Klaus Hubacek- “Global Income
Inequality and Carbon Footprints”
 Discussion
Tony Noerpel October 23, 2015
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“Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power.” - Adam Smith
“[T]he fundamental theoretical and empirical assumptions behind free-market
economics are highly questionable. Nothing short of a total re-envisioning of
the way we organize our economy and society will do.” – Ha-Joon Chang,
economist, London School of Economics.
Expanding the Solution Space
Tony Noerpel
Don Sandros Energy Summit
October 23, 2015
Tony Noerpel October 23, 2015
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50
Gas
NGLs
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
World Energy Flow Hockey Stick
(what drives the human economy)
1970
1990
2010
2030
2050
Homo sapiens Energy Flow = 550 Exajoules/year = 550x1018
Homo sapiens GDP = $50,000,000,000,000 = 50x1012
GDP (100 billion US Dollars)
30
Energy Flow (Exajoules/year)
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
The human system grows through a selfperpetuating feedback loop in which the
consumption rate of primary energy resources
stays tied to the historical accumulation
of global economic production through a timeindependent factor of 9.7 ± 0.3 mW per
inflation-adjusted 1990 US dollar.
Year
Source: Timothy J. Garrett, “Are there basic physical constraints on future
anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?, Climatic Change (2011) 104:437–455DOI
10.1007/s10584-009-9717-9
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
30
Gas
NGLs
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
1970
1990
2010
2030
The Mother of All Energy
Gradients on Earth
2050
Plasma Core Temperature
15,700,000 Ko
Sun
(energy release rate: 276 mWatts/ cm3)
Highly energetic visible light photons
5770 Ko
Empty space
1366 Watts/m2
Low energy infrared heat photons
0 Ko
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
30
Gas
NGLs
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
1970
1990
Combustion of Carbon Energy
Gradient (buried sun shine)
2010
2030
2050
C + O2 -> CO2 -394 kJ/mol
Burning Coal with Oxygen yields 394 kJ/mol of
energy
A chemical energy gradient exists between the fossil
fuels in the ground and the oxygen in the atmosphere
We consume 1,000,000 years worth of stored
energy every year
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
30
Gas
NGLs
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
1970
1990
2010
2030
2050
Solow-Swan total factor
productivity
• Y(t)=K(t)a(A(t)L(t))1-a
–
–
–
–
where…
Y is productive growth
K is capital
L is labor or population
A is “technical progress”
• Where is the energy gradient or power?
• Where is the impact of pollution and waste?
• Y, K, L and A are consequences of dissipating an energy
gradient. They are dependent variables. They are not
causal except as feedbacks.
• Energy flow and pollution, the independent variables, are
missing from their theories.
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
30
Gas
NGLs
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
The downside of entropy production Human behavior as an amplifying feedback
1970
1990
2010
2030
2050
To help finance its adaptation to climate change; Alaska’s governor Bill
Walker told BBC News on October 12, that the state needs to “urgently”
drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “We are in a significant fiscal
challenge. We have villages that are washing away because of changes in
the climate.” This is surreal but predictably dysfunctional behavior.
“Increased warming is negatively impacting the hydrological system requiring
more desalination of sea water which is currently fossil fuel intensive.
Agriculture will become more difficult requiring more intensive use of fossil fuels
to replace the services formerly provided by nature. All geoengineering
techniques being discussed are energy intensive. The Arctic sea ice is melting
enabling corporations to exploit Arctic oil reservoirs. These activities and more
will release even more carbon into the atmosphere.” –Tony Noerpel
Source: Tony Noerpel, Pungent Curry, Blue Ridge leader, April 9, 2014 http://brleader.com/?p=13243
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
30
Gas
NGLs
Neo-Liberal Economic fallacy
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
1970
1990
2010
2030
2050
“In so far as a theory can be said to have assumptions at all, in in so far as
their realism can be judged independently of the validity of predictions, the
relation between the significance of a theory and the realism of its
assumptions is almost the opposite of that suggested by the view under
criticism. Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have
assumptions that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality
and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the
assumptions.” Milton Friedman, 1953
This is the back bone of neo-liberal economic theory. This is as fellow
economist Paul Samuelson remarked “empirically dead wrong.”
It violates the logical theorem ex falso quodlibet .
Expanding the Solution Space
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
Gas
40
NGLs
Polar Oil
30
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
•
1950
1970
Every single thing neo-liberal economists tell us is unsupported and a
consequence of flawed logic and cherry picked data.
1990
2010
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
2030
2050
Minimum wage laws are bad
Collective bargaining and labor unions are bad
Consumer unions are bad
Tax cuts for the wealthy are desirable
Deregulation of finance and industry is good
No such thing as too big to fail
Markets are indispensable
Good economic modeling is impossible
Inequitable distribution of wealth and income is fine
Estate taxes are bad
Governments should be limited and very small
Greed is good
Carbon pricing and carbon taxes are bad
Socialized medicine or universal health care is bad
Free public education is bad
Human-caused climate change isn’t happening
Every good progressive idea is back on the table
50
Production, Gboe/a
Non-con Gas
40
30
Gas
NGLs
Polar Oil
Deep Water
Heavy
20
Regular
10
0
1930
1950
1970
Is the existence of large
multinational corporate entities
a good idea?
1990
2010
2030
2050
"The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from
[businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution,
and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and
carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the
most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose
interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have
generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and
who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and
oppressed it." – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the
Wealth of Nations, Book 1, chapter xi, Conclusion of the Chapter, last
paragraph (1776)
Program
 Tony Noerpel – Introduction – “Expanding the
Solution Space”
 Professor Klaus Hubacek- “Global Income
Inequality and Carbon Footprints”
 Discussion
Tony Noerpel October 24, 2014
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