Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Mercury]

QED, I'd say.

You persist in not addressing my points WRT the difficulties and risks involved in plugging into magma on volatile volcanoes. You are determined to continue down the magma energy rabbit hole. Well, I am not here to stop you. All I want is clean, reliable, baseload power, the reduction in GHG emissions to save the climate, AND economic growth. That is all I care about.

I set out some back of the envelope calculations, for your edification, on what powering the world with wind would look like. It cannot work. It would take 1.5 million windmills just to supply electricity, which is 20% of all energy use. Supplying the other 80% would require an additional four times as many windmills, which gets us to 7.5 million windmills. Windmills last around 20 years, and cost about $1m per MW/Hr - these are 4MW turbines, so that's $4m times 7.5 million windmills every 20 years. $30 trillion? Just to stand still in terms of total energy availability. Only energy demand is increasing - according to the IEA, likely to grow by 50% in the next 30 years as developing countries increase energy demand.

If you still cannot see the need for magma energy, I cannot explain it to you more clearly than that.

What is clear to anyone who has cared to look honestly into this problem,

Whoa. If you think I'm factually wrong about anything please point it out, but I'm not having you say I don't care, nor that I'm dishonest. I've struggled with existential guilt since I was 20 years old. I believed the Limits to Growth narrative, and stared questions like over-population in the eye - with horrifying implications that plunged me deeper into the abyss. I've despaired. And you say I don't care, and that I'm dishonest? I'm not, and I don't think I'm wrong either. But one must always allow for the possibility, and if it turns out that I am wrong - I'll admit it, because I do care.

is that saving the climate AND economic growth are both possible with proven, ready-to-go technologies.

Not wind and solar, not even as part of a 'diverse energy mix' politicians are apt to appeal to without ever defining. Given the calculations above, it's clear wind and solar cannot meet current energy demand, less yet increased demand without economic and environmental ruin. So how much economic and environmental ruin are we going to have, to mitigate what percentage of carbon emissions from fossil fuels? And how severe will be the impositions on individuals and business, to reduce demand, to reduce carbon, to meet Net Zero targets?

You refuse to even consider that possibility because, as you have made clear, you don't like the look of windmills, which are already part of the landscape and energy mix, and you don't like the look of power lines. Well, boohoo!

I like how windmills look. They have a melancholy grace. As a sculpture, they're really quite beautiful. Pylons and power lines, by contrast have a utilitarian aesthetic I'm able to admire, albeit without invoking the same sense of melancholy. They're not beautiful, except in the efficiency of their design; a bit like a zippo lighter, AK47 or a jeep, there's a minimalist relation between form and function that's appealing.
It should be noted that supplying hydrogen fuel from magma energy; where base load power cannot be delivered directly, would nonetheless, be burnt in power stations fuelling existing electricity grids. I have no problem with pylons and power cables. I don't know where you get that impression, but it isn't from me.

That's too bad for you. Your aesthetic sentiments are irrelevant. Others love windmills and we are, all of us, long used to powerlines. The windmills are already pumping out power, hydrothermal is providing baseload power to countries on the Ring of Fire , and rooftops the world over are being covered in solar panels. And the power lines to distribute that power are already there. All that is required is greater uptake of these proven technologies, upgrading the existing grid, and more battery storage. Your aesthetic sentiments are of supreme disinterest to people concerned about the climate catastrophe that now confronts us.

You don't seem to have any appreciation of the difficulties associated with integrating wind and solar energy into existing electricity grids. I don't think I can explain it to you, because it's quite technical, I'm not an electrical engineer, and you're unwilling to learn. You could however look to the long list of people sold tesla solar roof and home battery technology - unable to get licensed as an energy producer, unable to sell their surplus back to the grid. Or you could look at what in the UK are called 'Disbursement Payments' to wind power companies, paid by tax payers in the billions of pounds every year, for energy generated from wind that can't be used - and I suspect is disbursed into the oceans, killing sea life by electrocution. This occurs for want of the storage infrastructure for wind energy, and for want of interconnectors, energy companies are discouraged from building by fossil fuel companies. How'd you like the look of those windmills now?

What reasonable people are now concerned with is saving 100s of millions of people from displacement and death, and the economic disaster inherent in a climate meltdown that would ensue with the business-as-usual scenario that you seem to favor. Climate scientists are unanimous in telling us that we must not go down that path. I believe them. You don't. You firmly believe it is the eco-nazi-enviro-left who are lying. That being so, you are beyond help.

Are you talking to someone behind me? I'm talking about developing a source of energy that would replace fossil fuels entirely. The only 'business as usual' aspect to my proposal is the concerned with the timescale, and care with which this would need to be managed in order to get fossil fuel producing nations and energy companies on board.
My criticism of a Limits to Growth approach to climate change, you characterise correctly - only I'd have tried to work in the term genocidal. They hate people; like they watched Agent Smith tell Morpheus humans are a virus, and ran with it. Only, it's the other way around. The script of the Matrix is inspired by left wing green misanthropic views in the tradition of Malthus, Marx and Meadows.

"It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

It's so wrong in every regard, it's funny. I'll have to do a thread on how wrong this is. But mainly, it's that animals breed recklessly, exhaust resources and die out. There is no equilibrium. There's some sort of precarious balance across the entire evolutionary web of life - easily and often thrown out of whack, but that's a different matter. Only humans are capable of foreseeing the danger and adjusting our behaviours accordingly. In theory!

What is indisputable is that we are nudging 2 degrees C of warming already. The small, outdated magma study that has won your heart never promised anything. And not a watt of electricity has been generated from magma. Even if drilling millions of holes in the sides of dangerous volcanoes on the Ring of Fire were geophysically practicable, which it clearly is not, the study did not show that it would provide an economically feasible source of baseload power to even a village, let alone for the entire world.

That's indisputable is it? Wrongness often is. One can dispute it but those who are wrong won't listen. That's why they're wrong. Because they won't listen. Net Zero goals by 2050 are aimed at keeping warming to 1.5'C above pre-industrial global average temperatures. We are not nudging 2'C already.

I think drilling into hot rock surrounding magma chambers beneath volcanoes is feasible; and that's exactly why it hasn't been developed. Because likely, it would work, and could displace fossil fuels entirely.

Again, if it were feasible, our capitalist friends in the energy industry would be pursuing it already, and governments would subsidizing it so they could tax it and be able to say that they saved the climate. Well, none of them are doing any of this. And that is because it is pie-in-the-sky.

I love pie. Did you know Rolls Royce recently powered a jet engine with hydrogen. Imagine that, pie in the sky, carbon free! I'd fly round the world forever!

Magma energy is not going to save us environmentally or economically. When you first brought is up here I thought, mmm, maybe. Having looked into it, I conclude that it is, at best, woolly thinking. You do not want to accept this. That is a problem that only you can deal with.

One can but try, so why didn't they even attempt to develop magma energy? And why didn't the environmental left advocate for magma energy? Were they as acutely aware as you seem to be, of the geological and electrical engineering problems associated with such a venture? Because surely, the environmental left wouldn't have cared about economic feasibility. Why would they?

[Lagayascienza]

The solar panels on my house have cut my power bill by 75%. Virtually every house in my suburb and all over the country has installed them and we generate much of owe own power. In summer my whole house uses nothing but solar during the day. It costs me nothing. I intend to install a battery so I can use the stored solar energy at night. I could go completely off-grid as some of my friends down here have done. It's proven, ready-to-go technology that is getting cheaper year by year. Millions world-wide are doing the same. Pollution free EVs are now common on our roads. Wind turbines are pumping out power. Whole towns are being powered by wind and solar and hydrothermal systems are producing power for countries on the Ring of Fire. This is all very encouraging. What's not to like?

But not a watt has been generated from magma. And likely won't be in the foreseeable future. More, and much bigger studies, as well as actual trials that generate electricity and produce hydrogen would be need to demonstrate magma's geophysical and economic viability. For the reasons stated I doubt it would ever prove viable. If it ever gets started, proof of the concept would take decades. We don't have decades. Emissions must be brought down now and they can be by the use of proven renewables while ensuring we have the energy to power economic growth. So, we'll continue to take up renewables, upgrade our grids and increase storage capacity to ensure baseload power as we wait to see if magma can make any contribution at all. I hope it can. But it's large scale feasibility and economic viability was not demonstrated by the small, 40 year-old Scandia/NASA study.

[Mercury]

The solar panels on my house have cut my power bill by 75%. Virtually every house in my suburb and all over the country has installed them and we generate much of owe own power. In summer my whole house uses nothing but solar during the day. It costs me nothing. I intend to install a battery so I can use the stored solar energy at night. I could go completely off-grid as some of my friends down here have done. It's proven, ready-to-go technology that is getting cheaper year by year. Millions world-wide are doing the same. Pollution free EVs are now common on our roads. Wind turbines are pumping out power. Whole towns are being powered by wind and solar and hydrothermal systems are producing power for countries on the Ring of Fire. This is all very encouraging. What's not to like?

But not a watt has been generated from magma. And likely won't be in the foreseeable future. More, and much bigger studies, as well as actual trials that generate electricity and produce hydrogen would be need to demonstrate magma's geophysical and economic viability. For the reasons stated I doubt it would ever prove viable. If it ever gets started, proof of the concept would take decades. We don't have decades. Emissions must be brought down now and they can be by the use of proven renewables while ensuring we have the energy to power economic growth. So, we'll continue to take up renewables, upgrade our grids and increase storage capacity to ensure baseload power as we wait to see if magma can make any contribution at all. I hope it can. But it's large scale feasibility and economic viability was not demonstrated by the small, 40 year-old Scandia/NASA study.

Now I see the reason for your refusal to accept that magma energy is the right answer. It's because you've spent money on domestic solar panels, and are defending that decision. I'm not knocking that decision. They're two very different problems. Do you ever consider how much implicit energy you import into your '75% solar powered home' in terms of groceries, clothing, furnishings, etc? If it were calculated, that 75% figure would fall dramatically. Those goods take energy to produce. There's a bigger question here than your domestic power needs. Putting solar panels on your roof makes you a good person - you're doing your best in a bad market. I hope they're working out for you, but solar cannot power the world.

In theory, there's massively more solar energy hitting the earth than we need, but it's a diffuse form of energy that needs to be gathered from a large area and concentrated into a useful form. Like wind, solar is low grade energy, as opposed to magma energy (fossil fuels, nuclear), which are high grade, concentrated forms of energy. This matters in several respects - because there are translation costs; that is the efficiency of converting one form of energy to another, and there are transmission costs of around 10% per 1000km, that on a global scale would make it incredibly inefficient to blanket the desert in solar panels, step up the voltage for transmission, and send that energy along a cable to where its needed.

The area of desert you'd need to cover is roughly a square 450 miles to a side - which may not seem an impossible number, but that's an area of 202,500 square miles. The energy produced would be halved by the time it reached the perimeter of the square, and then you'd need to get it to where it's needed. That's a lot of solar panels, and they'd need to be manufactured, transported, and replaced every 20 years or so. Again, rather like with wind, the global economy would do almost nothing else, and that's just to stand still in terms of total energy availability. I'm glad it's working out for you at home, but it doesn't translate. It's a different question entirely.

[Lagayascienza]

Not so. I spent money on solar panels to save money and because it would lower my emissions of GHGs. I knew nothing of the magma study when I went solar and, even if I had, it would have made no difference because 1.) magma has not produced a single watt of electricity and 2.) it is not clear that it ever will.

If people generate their own solar power at home, it doesn't need to travel anywhere. And with battery storage we have power at night. There is no need to cover the country in solar panels. Rooftop solar is great. The panels are getting more efficient and durable year by year. Even if I had to replace the panels every 20 years, the money I will have saved will cover the cost many times over.

Solar alone will not power the world. We know that. But it is a valuable part of the mix of technologies that will together power growth and get our emissions down. That is what matters. A side benefit is that it save households a whack of money which they can then spend on other things, thus further supporting economic growth. What's not to like?

The Scandia/NASA study, on the other hand, did not prove that magma energy could power the world and, indeed, it has not produced a single watt. That is probably because it is not a viable concept - probably for reasons I have pointed to but which you refuse to acknowledge.

[Mercury]

Not so. I spent money on solar panels to save money and because it would lower my emissions of GHGs. I knew nothing of the magma study when I went solar and, even if I had, it would have made no difference because 1.) magma has not produced a single watt of electricity and 2.) it is not clear that it ever will.

If people generate their own solar power at home, it doesn't need to travel anywhere. And with battery storage we have power at night. There is no need to cover the country in solar panels. Rooftop solar is great. The panels are getting more efficient and durable year by year. Even if I had to replace the panels every 20 years, the money I will have saved will cover the cost many times over.

Solar alone will not power the world. We know that. But it is a valuable part of the mix of technologies that will together power growth and get our emissions down. That is what matters. A side benefit is that it save households a whack of money which they can then spend on other things, thus further supporting economic growth. What's not to like?

The Scandia/NASA study, on the other hand, did not prove that magma energy could power the world and, indeed, it has not produced a single watt. That is probably because it is not a viable concept - probably for reasons I have pointed to but which you refuse to acknowledge.

You still don't know about the magma energy study. But okay, never heard anyone deny they're a good person and insist they're a cheapskate. How long do you calculate it will take for those solar panels to pay for themselves? Before they need replacing? How long have you had them? Where were they manufactured? Are they double sided? Do they produce as much energy now as they did when they were installed? How much energy do they produce? How many hours sun do you get a day where you live? What can you run from them? Do you have an electric car? Inquiring minds need to know!

[Lagayascienza]

Oh, I know plenty about the magma study. I have a copy of it and have read it closely. It demonstrated little, it promised nothing, and it has yielded nothing.

My panels gurantee 80% production at 20 years. They'll see me out. They will have paid for themselves several times over before they need relacing. They currently produce enough energy to reduce my power bill by 75% and, since I have plenty of roof area, I could always install more if needed. They're a win for the climate and a win for my pocket. Everyone is doing it. Why wouldn't they? There's no point in waiting for pie-in-the-sky magma.

[Mercury]

Oh, I know plenty about the magma study. I have a copy of it and have read it closely. It demonstrated little, it promised nothing, and it has yielded nothing.

My panels gurantee 80% production at 20 years. They'll see me out. They will have paid for themselves several times over before they need relacing. They currently produce enough energy to reduce my power bill by 75% and, since I have plenty of roof area, I could always install more if needed. They're a win for the climate and a win for my pocket. Everyone is doing it. Why wouldn't they? There's no point in waiting for pie-in-the-sky magma.

Okay, but like I've said three different ways, domestic electricity is a tiny part of overall energy use, so even if they're great for you, and I hope they are, there is still a huge need for magma energy.
I wish I could make you understand what would be possible given massive amounts of clean energy, but maybe you've no appreciation of how we've trashed the planet. If you have enough electricity left over, watch the film Wall E one evening, and imagine those mountains of trash are mostly solar panels. Because that's what we're looking at 20, 40, 60 years hence! Mountains of tech scrap we won't have the energy to recycle.

The Magma Energy Project report is fortunately not as pessimistic as you are about the prospects of supplying a virtually limitless source of clean energy, so perhaps you can explain how you get:

"I have a copy of it and have read it closely. It demonstrated little, it promised nothing, and it has yielded nothing."

from:

"The current magma energy project is assessing the engineering feasibility of extracting thermal energy directly from crustal magma bodies. The estimated size of the U.S. resource (50,000 to 500,000 quads) suggests a considerable potential impact on future power generation. In a previous seven-year study, we concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept. Several concepts for drilling, energy extraction, and materials survivability were successfully demonstrated in Kilauea Iki lava lake, Hawaii."

Because to me, that seems very promising, and it's tragic that you get a dwindling trickle of electricity from the technologically sub-optimal - future environmental hazard on your roof! Even if it saves you a few bucks before you die!

[Lagayascienza]

I do understand the huge potential energy source beneath our feet. It's just enormous. The problem is in the difficulties of accessing it. Until more work gets done where the Scandia/NASA study left off, we are not going to know whether it is going to be physically and economically feasible on a world-wide, or even on a regional scale where suitable volcanoes occur. I hope it will be. But, in the meantime, it would be unwise of us to wait around doing nothing to reduce emissions.

I agree that domestic solar installations are not going to alone solve the problem. Fortunately, there are other renewables such as wind, hydro, tidal etcetera to add to the mix. In my own state, hydo generation accounts for 100% of baseload power. Yes, 100%. I didn't actually need to go solar as I was producing no domestic emissions, but I wanted the savings on my power bill as I'm retired and living on my retirement pension. The solar has been a great help. My state sells its excess hydo power to another state which still relies a lot on coal so, in that respect, we're helping that state to reduce its emissions, too. The other Australian states are not as blessed with hydro resources as my state, but hydro, and other renewables, do make a significant contribution. For example, renewables are supplying 53% of all power in our most populous state, New South Wales. So we're doing well and are ahead of our GHG emission goals. Countries like Australia will be net zero emitters in the not-to-distant future.

However, the real problem for the world will be in getting large developing countries to reduce their power generation from cheap coal, much of it bought from Australia. That sounds like shooting ourselves in the foot economically, but we will all suffer more in economic terms if we don't get a handle on emissions - every year in Australia is hotter than the last, the bushfire season is getting longer, and damaging extreme weather events are becoming more common. And we haven't even gone past 2 degrees C yet. So, we must encourage and help developing countries to get off coal and other fossil fuels and to take up renewables which are cheaper in the long run, as my affordable solar panels prove.

In respect of the recycling of solar panels, up to 95% of the materials can be recycled, with the most valuable parts being the silicon, aluminium frames, and silver. So that is not going to be a significant problem.

[Mercury]

According to Wastecare UK, as much as 80% of all materials sent to landfill could have been recycled. The reason they are not recycled is because of the energy costs of doing so. It's not that solar panels CANNOT be recycled. It's that it's not economically rational to do so. It costs more money than the materials are worth. Given abundant clean energy from magma however, not just solar panels, but almost all waste can be recycled.

Solar panels will not be recycled if wind and solar are part of the energy mix, because they don't produce enough energy, reliably enough to replace fossil fuels, so won't reduce energy costs overall. Across the entire energy system they have the opposite effect. I mentioned this earlier - when I explained how environmentalists are apt to point out that solar or wind are the cheapest forms of energy to build. Energy prices are determined by supply and demand. Not by construction costs. When supply is restricted by the simple inadequacy of wind and solar, while demand stays the same, the price goes up. It's the same with electric cars. Putting that increased demand on the national grid, I'm sat at home paying for you to drive in terms of higher energy bills.

Energy economics is complicated, and complicated further by the particular approach to supplying magma energy I've set out previously. I can only suppose you didn't take it in because you refused to accept magma energy is even feasible, but in simple terms - magma energy would be developed over decades and fed into the global economy from the supply side, big industrial energy users first - the man on the street last. Domestic energy markets are not the target for magma energy; not for a long time anyway. The idea is to 'green' supply chains from the production end, not from the consumption end.

This is why magma energy needs to be developed as a global good at the COP, WEF, UN level, and not commercially, by Magma Co Ltd. We'd use magma energy to desalinate, irrigate, recycle and capture carbon - mitigating the effects of the climate crisis, while building capacity to transition sectors like steel, cement, chemicals - big industrial energy users, so that all products made from these materials would be carbon free all along the supply chain. Ideally, the man on the street shouldn't even notice!

The problem with approaching this from the consumption end, is that market mechanisms work against themselves - increasing energy costs to reduce demand, may reduce carbon emissions, but makes recycling less possible, not more. Hence, more landfill. In turn this means more production of raw materials by the big energy producers we spoke of earlier. Trash planet!

[Lagayascienza]

Your problem is that you are seeing things only in either/or terms. There is no reason why we cannot use proven renewable technologies now and take up magma if and when it proves physically and economically viable.

I think concerns about recycling solar panels are over-rated. Recycling technology is improving. For example, a company in France, ROSI, has developed an economically viable process for recovering and reusing the high-purity silicon, along with other high-value materials in solar panels. As the EIB points out, solar panels will continue to be made, and if we don’t establish a circular economy at the same time as the energy transition, neither will work. So recycling must be done and is being done. Fortunately, solar panels now last 25-30 years and so we have the time to further develop recycling. Moreover, recycling will happen because, as we run short of valuable materials such as silver, resource depletion will be an increasing problem along with environmental deterioration, as predicted long ago in TLTG.

Wind and solar are a large part of the energy mix already. And, as mentioned, there is hydroelectricity which provides 100% power in my own state, as it does in some whole countries such as Norway. And then there is hydrothermal which is providing baseload power in countries such as NZ, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iceland. There is also tidal energy which has huge potential for predictable/reliable energy. And there is always nuclear. You repeatedly discount all of these because you are fixated on magma which may never happen.

I know what, in theory, COULD be done with magma energy. The problem is, as I’ve said many times, magma energy IS NOT YET AVAILABLE, and it is not clear WHEN, or even IF, it will become available. I have NEVER SAID that magma energy is unfeasible. What I HAVE said is that it is NOT YET CLEAR THAT IT ever WILL BE feasible physically or economically. And, as I have also said, we won’t know that until more work is done where the Scandia/NASA study left off. However, we don’t know when or if that work will ever be done. As far as I can ascertain, there are no signs of it happening. We cannot wait in hope. We must get emissions down.

Reducing GHG emissions will not be solved by looking at the problem from the supply side only. A market economy only works efficiently when driven by both the supply and the demand sides. Command economies don’t work as we saw in authoritarian systems such as the USSR. If magma energy is economically feasible it will happen eventually. In the meantime, as we wait to find out, we must get emissions down. If magma energy does prove feasible down the track, we’ll be able to plug into it then. I suspect that, for the reasons mentioned, it will only be feasible on a local or regional scale where the right sort of volcanos with shallow magma are available.

[Mercury]

Your problem is that you are seeing things only in either/or terms. There is no reason why we cannot use proven renewable technologies now and take up magma if and when it proves physically and economically viable.

I think concerns about recycling solar panels are over-rated. Recycling technology is improving. For example, a company in France, ROSI, has developed an economically viable process for recovering and reusing the high-purity silicon, along with other high-value materials in solar panels. As the EIB points out, solar panels will continue to be made, and if we don’t establish a circular economy at the same time as the energy transition, neither will work. So recycling must be done and is being done. Fortunately, solar panels now last 25-30 years and so we have the time to further develop recycling. Moreover, recycling will happen because, as we run short of valuable materials such as silver, resource depletion will be an increasing problem along with environmental deterioration, as predicted long ago in TLTG.

Wind and solar are a large part of the energy mix already. And, as mentioned, there is hydroelectricity which provides 100% power in my own state, as it does in some whole countries such as Norway. And then there is hydrothermal which is providing baseload power in countries such as NZ, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iceland. There is also tidal energy which has huge potential for predictable/reliable energy. And there is always nuclear. You repeatedly discount all of these because you are fixated on magma which may never happen.

I know what, in theory, COULD be done with magma energy. The problem is, as I’ve said many times, magma energy IS NOT YET AVAILABLE, and it is not clear WHEN, or even IF, it will become available. I have NEVER SAID that magma energy is unfeasible. What I HAVE said is that it is NOT YET CLEAR THAT IT ever WILL BE feasible physically or economically. And, as I have also said, we won’t know that until more work is done where the Scandia/NASA study left off. However, we don’t know when or if that work will ever be done. As far as I can ascertain, there are no signs of it happening. We cannot wait in hope. We must get emissions down.

Reducing GHG emissions will not be solved by looking at the problem from the supply side only. A market economy only works efficiently when driven by both the supply and the demand sides. Command economies don’t work as we saw in authoritarian systems such as the USSR. If magma energy is economically feasible it will happen eventually. In the meantime, as we wait to find out, we must get emissions down. If magma energy does prove feasible down the track, we’ll be able to plug into it then. I suspect that, for the reasons mentioned, it will only be feasible on a local or regional scale where the right sort of volcanos with shallow magma are available.

I am not seeing things in either/or terms, but rather insisting that where I'm right and you're wrong, I'm right! You describe the current situation - "use proven renewable technologies now and take up magma if and when it proves physically and economically viable" as if it were satisfactory, but it isn't. Magma Energy was proven viable 40 years ago, by NASA and Sandia National Laboratories - no less, not SCANDIA who I think build trucks in Norway. If you don't know who Sandia National Laboratories are, I suggest googling them. They are the brightest and the best world scientists speaking three years after putting men on the moon, about a source of energy so monolithic, as to provide abundant clean power to the world, forever.

The failure is political, not scientific - left and right alike, ignored the science in service to their political ends. The left so they could continue their attack on Western capitalism in the course of Malthus, Marx and Meadows; the right because of the geopolitics and economics of fossil fuels. And here's the point. It's NEVER going to be economically rational in the sense you suggest it ought to be. It's more profitable to keep pumping oil and gas, stamp on the poor with green taxes and price rises, greenwash with a trickle of wind and solar, and set the sky on fire sometime after all those making decisions and money from the status quo today, are dead and gone. This is a Riparian Rights problem - crapping in the river without regard for those downstream.

So let me tell you why that matters; at least to me. I see myself as the consequence of a long line of people who have survived against all odds, they've survived war, disease and hunger, heat and cold, hell and highwater to raise children generation after generation, to give me the chance of life - and in theory, there's another virtually endless chain ahead, of my forbears. I am not going to be the weak link in that chain. I'm not going to be the self satisfied, self regarding individual that cares for nothing beyond my own masturbatory pleasure - that plants no trees for the shade of future generations, the one that takes all that has been won by the struggles of all previous generations for myself, and leaves nothing in my wake for subsequent generations. It would be OBSCENE!

[Mercury]

But probably not since the Teapot Dome scandal under Warren Harding in the 1920s had a President been so personally concerned in oil as Bush Senior.

As Ronald Reagan's Vice President, Bush was intimately involved with NASA throughout the 1980s.

President Bush visits Sandia, signs sweeping energy bill.

Seated before a huge sky-blue-cloud-and-silver photograph of a Sandia solar collector array, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law last week at Sandia’s Steve Schiff Auditorium. He said the bill’s provisions will make America less reliant on foreign energy sources, encourage more environmentally friendly energy usage, promote nuclear, solar, and other alternative energy sources, boost the nation’s recovering economy, and keep the American homeland safer and more secure.

Energy Policy Act of 2005.
‘‘(b) REQUIREMENT OF PLANS UNDER NEW LEASES.—The Secretary may—
‘‘(1) provide that geothermal leases issued under this Act
shall contain a provision requiring the lessee to operate under
a unit agreement; and
‘‘(2) prescribe the unit agreement under which the lessee
shall operate, which shall adequately protect the rights of all
parties in interest, including the United States.

‘‘(g) DRILLING OR DEVELOPMENT CONTRACTS.—
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary may, on such conditions
as the Secretary may prescribe, approve drilling or development
contracts made by one or more lessees of geothermal leases,
with one or more persons, associations, or corporations if, in
the discretion of the Secretary, the conservation of natural
resources or the public convenience or necessity may require

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Subject to paragraphs (2) and (3), if,
at any time after commercial production under a lease is
achieved, production ceases for any reason, the lease shall
remain in full force and effect for a period of not more than
an aggregate number of 10 years beginning on the date production ceases,
if, during the period in which production is ceased,
the lessee pays royalties in advance at the monthly average
rate at which the royalty was paid during the period of production.

[Lagayascienza]

I have not argued that anything is or isn't "satisfactory". I have merely stated what I think to be the case re energy from magma and I have given reasons for why I believe it to be the case. You latch onto a spelling error and again launch into an irrelevant diatribe about your pet, eco-nazi-eviro-left-Malthusin conspiracy theory. It's silly. Arguing against it would be pointless. In the circumstances, all I can do restate my position simply and briefly:

IF magma energy is geophysically and economically feasible, it will happen eventually. If it is not, it won't. In the meantime, as we wait to find out, time is running short and we must get emissions down to save the climate. Proven, ready-to-go-technologies that are already supplying energy to whole countries are what we need NOW. If magma energy does prove feasible down the track, we’ll be able to plug into it then. I suspect that, for the reasons mentioned, it will only be feasible, if at all, on a local or regional scale where the right sort of volcanos occur. Where feasible, it might become part of the energy mix. On its own, it is never going to save the climate. The climate, and the physical and economic wellbeing of hundreds of millions people, is what matters.

[Mercury]

I've just realised that Nasa/Sandia Labs Magma Energy Project research was thirteen years after they put men on the moon, not three years. The moon landing was 1969. The 1982 Magma Energy Project was three years after Margaret Thatcher came to office in the UK, in 1979. I got them mixed up, because Thatcher was the transatlantic partner in "Reaganomics" - the de-regulatory economic theory of President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan's Vice President was George H.W. Bush, and it was he who made the development of Magma Energy impossible.

A Texan up to his eyeballs in oil, he visited Nasa and Sandia Labs, and he designed regulation to make geothermal energy development economically unattractive with a leasing scheme - that would require government approval, and if it were granted, keep the company on the hook for 10 years whether the geothermal well produced energy or not.

BTW - it's not a spelling error if it's repeated numerous times across several posts. Far from latch onto you calling Sandia National Laboratories - Scandia, I have at last mentioned your repeated error. We all make mistakes. The difference between us is, I admit my mistakes and seek to understand why I made them.

This leads us to your assertion I have a: "pet eco-nazi-eviro-left-Malthusian conspiracy theory."

That's not what it is. It's an attempt to explain why the environmental left did not demand the application of Magma Energy technology from the early 1980's, allowing Bush to regulate to make Magma Energy development impossible, leading to the situation we have today - with continued and increasing fossil fuel production, offset by a trickle of wind and solar, and children hurling themselves into traffic in desperation to Just Stop Oil.

It's also an explanation of the likely consequences of pursuing the Limits to Growth approach they did in fact pursue, rather than demand Magma Energy technology be applied. A Limits to Growth approach implies carbon taxes and price rises that will exclude the poor from the market to reduce demand, to reduce carbon emissions. The rich will hardly feel these increased costs because they spend a tiny portion of their incomes on things like heat, light, food, travel, etc. The poor will be starved to death before such measures provide a motive for the rich to change their behaviours.

I wonder if the environmental left will ever admit their error? I suspect not. I've made endless attempts to communicate the potential of Magma Energy; most recently a UK green MP named Caroline Lucas who was quoted in the press as being 'deeply depressed' about the Labour Party cancelling a proposed £28bn 'green investment pledge.' I sent her an email explaining Nasa/Sandia Labs Magma Energy Project research, and someone wrote back on her behalf asking 'Are you a constituent?' Implying she can't talk to me as I'm not a constituent. And she hasn't.
It was much the same when I tweeted Greta Thunberg almost everyday for six months - not only did she not reply, but not one of her followers were interested either. I've written to George Monbiot, Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, COP25, 26, 27, 28, the BBC, Channel 4, any and everyone who talks about climate and environment - and now I'm talking to you, who calls me a conspiracy theorist.

I don't think it is a conspiracy as such. I think it's a false belief; a Limits to Growth assumption so ubiquitous it becomes impossible to speak in any other terms about the climate and ecological threat. I had hoped it would be possible on a philosophy forum, to find someone open minded enough to understand an alternate approach. But instead I have you - a lazy reader with solar panels on his roof, who is similarly stubbornly un-receptive.

[Lagayascienza]

.
If you think the poor will starve using proven, ready-to-go renewables, then they will have turned to dust before magma powers the world.

If you have received no feedback from the Greens, Greta Thunberg etcetera, I imagine it's because they realize that the idea of magma powering the world is just too silly for serious consideration.

You talk repeatedly of the earth being a great ball of hot magma. That is just over-simplified primary school stuff and one does not need to be a geologist to know it. My first degree had a large geology component. So I’m very familiar with plate tectonics, plate boundaries, volcanism etc. It’s stuff I’m inherently interested in and have read and kept up-to-date with it all my life. I have visited many volcanoes.

If you are going to access shallow magma as the Nasa/Sandia did, it would need to be a magma chamber beneath one of the large, gently sloping, effusive shield volcanoes such as Kilauea in Hawaii. Why do you think the study used Hawaii? These volcanos generally release relatively slow-flowing fluid lavas rather than sudden, explosive releases of gases, tephra and pyroclastic flows. On these types of shield volcanoes, it may be possible to place infrastructure far enough away from active fissures and lava flows. But even these more gently erupting volcanoes can have periods of explosive eruptivity and send fast-moving super-heated pyroclastic surges far down the sides of such mountains to the sea. The risk to infrastructure and personnel would be enormous. In any case, most volcanoes are not of the massive shield variety and do not occur over isolated hotspots like Hawaii. Most volcanoes are explosively dangerous stratovolcanoes that occur along the Ring of Fire which is also the most seismically active region on earth. These volcanoes on the Ring of Fire would be quite unsuitable. Again, the risk to infrastructure and personnel would be enormous. Therefore, if shallow magma cannot be safely accessed under volcanos, you would have to drill through 30 - 70kms of continental crust to access magma. The deepest hole ever drilled is about 12kms deep, it is just a 23cm (9 inches) in diameter and took 20 years to drill. Clearly, deep magma is never going to provide baseload power for the world any time soon and certainly not soon enough to save the climate.

You talk as if the earth is a great big ball of magma just waiting to be tapped for energy. This is far from true. The 40 year-old Nasa/Sandia study did not demonstrate the large-scale geophysical feasibility of extracting energy from magma on a scale needed to power the world and nor did it demonstrate that it would be economically feasible to do so any time soon. Do you have any better ideas for addressing the climate emergency?

Do continue to check my posts for spelling errors. I won't bother returning the favor. I have better things to do.