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

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, the Ring of Fire is where the most accessible magma resources are located: the west coast of the Americas, countries on the rim of the NE Pacific such as Japan, The Philippines and Indonesia. Parts of the Mediterranean basin and western Eurasia are also possibilities. These would all have accessible resources. But that still leaves a lot of the world without such easily accessible resources. In areas far from plate boundaries you would have to drill through miles of continental crust to access useable energy and then build transmission networks across deserts and tundra to cities where the power could be used. I imagine all this would be a formidable technical and economic challenge, especially for poor countries. Moreover, water resources in the interiors of continents such as Australia and Africa are extremely limited so producing hydrogen from water at inland sites thousands of miles from the ocean would not be feasible. There is also the problem that plate boundaries are the most seismically unstable areas on earth, so there would be great risk to magma tapping infrastructure in those area. So whilst the best options for tapping magma energy are on the plate boundaries, there are challenges and risks involved. For areas far from plate boundaries, solar, wind, hydro would seem to be better options.

So much is going to depend on the political will of people and their governments to get the job done so we can quit fossil fuels and save the climate. I'd like to be confident humanity could act in concert to get the job done but... Well, humans being humans, it's hard to see it happening anytime like soon enough to avoid continued rapid deterioration of the global climate.

[Mercury]

Yes, the Ring of Fire is where the most accessible magma resources are located: the west coast of the Americas, countries on the rim of the NE Pacific such as Japan, The Philippines and Indonesia. Parts of the Mediterranean basin and western Eurasia are also possibilities. These would all have accessible resources. But that still leaves a lot of the world without such easily accessible resources. In areas far from plate boundaries you would have to drill through miles of continental crust to access useable energy and then build transmission networks across deserts and tundra to cities where the power could be used. I imagine all this would be a formidable technical and economic challenge, especially for poor countries. Moreover, water resources in the interiors of continents such as Australia and Africa are extremely limited so producing hydrogen from water at inland sites thousands of miles from the ocean would not be feasible. There is also the problem that plate boundaries are the most seismically unstable areas on earth, so there would be great risk to magma tapping infrastructure in those area. So whilst the best options for tapping magma energy are on the plate boundaries, there are challenges and risks involved. For areas far from plate boundaries, solar, wind, hydro would seem to be better options.

So much is going to depend on the political will of people and their governments to get the job done so we can quit fossil fuels and save the climate. I'd like to be confident humanity could act in concert to get the job done but... Well, humans being humans, it's hard to see it happening anytime like soon enough to avoid continued rapid deterioration of the global climate.

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with regard to your repeated assertions that 'a lot of the world without such easily accessible resources.' What do you suppose is the implication of that? That we'd produce energy in one place and transport it to another, like we do now with fossil fuels? That's the conclusion I draw; like where I said:

"I don't know why you assume magma energy has to be sourced locally. It won't go off!"

A staggeringly witty remark, it saddens me to suppose you missed out on!

Generally, due to transmission loss of around 10% per 1000km, it's best to keep transmission lines short. That said, the longest is the Belo Monte-Rio de Janeiro transmission line in Brazil at 2,543km. I'm not an engineer, so challenging me with engineering questions, will produce googled answers. It's the best I can do for you. But I think it worthy of note that Magma is constant high grade energy - as opposed to say wind or solar, which is low grade and inconstant. Transmitting high grade, base load electrical power is more efficient - and I'd expect a much improved global transmission network would be developed over time. Otherwise, hydrogen fuel produced by electrolysis, can be transported from A to B - where A is a volcano, and B is a power station in another country.

Political philosophy is my area; I need only show that it is technologically possible - rather than identify the best engineering solutions to any and every situation, my concern is getting Magma Energy talked about - and showing that a Limits to Growth approach to the climate and ecological crisis is politically motivated, and false. What makes my eyes boil in their sockets is that the supposed environmental left - have ignored Magma Energy for the past 40 years, and terrorised people with existential guilt. They fostered the impression that the only way to solve climate change is to sacrifice the economic good - estranging governments from the diligent pursuit of the good of the people, and burdening children with a doom laden future. It's outrageous. How dare they?

To what degree do you think, your attitude is affected? You say:

"Well, humans being humans, it's hard to see it happening anytime like soon enough to avoid continued rapid deterioration of the global climate."

The firm that put men on the moon, say there's endless clean energy available.

"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."

[Lagayascienza]

About growth. I think there are limits to growth – at least the sort of growth we’ve seen thus far. The earth has a limited carrying capacity. An analogy: If a sheep farmer’s land can carry 10 sheep per acre and he stocks it with 20 per acre then the sheep are going to starve, the land will be over-grazed and the soil damaged and so, in future, it will be able to carry less than 10 sheep per acre until/unless the soil is restored. It’s the same with the earth’s capacity to support humans. There is a limit beyond which earth systems are damaged and carrying capacity is reduced. I don’t think this is a defeatist attitude. It’s just a recognition of physical realities that we ignore at our peril. Nor is it politically motivated. And I don’t think it is the environmental left who have ignored magma energy. It is more likely to have been the right-wing profit motivated fossil fuel companies who are interested only in short-term profit who will have stifled the development of magma energy to date. With 8 billion of us, the world is already overpopulated with humans. Can you imagine what a world with 20, 30 or 50 billion would be like. It would mean misery for all. We must rein in population growth. We can do that, and have enough clean, renewable energy to maintain our standard of living and foster economic growth. There is nothing defeatist or political about that.

I hope that if magma energy is technically and economically feasible, it will play a part in the development of clean energy so that we can start to heal the damage we’ve done to the atmosphere and hence to earth’s carrying capacity.

[Mercury]

About growth. I think there are limits to growth – at least the sort of growth we’ve seen thus far. The earth has a limited carrying capacity. An analogy: If a sheep farmer’s land can carry 10 sheep per acre and he stocks it with 20 per acre then the sheep are going to starve, the land will be over-grazed and the soil damaged and so, in future, it will be able to carry less than 10 sheep per acre until/unless the soil is restored. It’s the same with the earth’s capacity to support humans. There is a limit beyond which earth systems are damaged and carrying capacity is reduced. I don’t think this is a defeatist attitude. It’s just a recognition of physical realities that we ignore at our peril. Nor is it politically motivated. And I don’t think it is the environmental left who have ignored magma energy. It is more likely to have been the right-wing profit motivated fossil fuel companies who are interested only in short-term profit who will have stifled the development of magma energy to date. With 8 billion of us, the world is already overpopulated with humans. Can you imagine what a world with 20, 30 or 50 billion would be like. It would mean misery for all. We must rein in population growth. We can do that, and have enough clean, renewable energy to maintain our standard of living and foster economic growth. There is nothing defeatist or political about that.

I hope that if magma energy is technically and economically feasible, it will play a part in the development of clean energy so that we can start to heal the damage we’ve done to the atmosphere and hence to earth’s carrying capacity.

"at least the sort of growth we’ve seen thus far"

That's quite the caveat. Given we are faced with a climate and ecological disaster, I'm forced to agree. However, given an abundance of clean energy from magma - I do not agree. Earth is a big ball of molten rock, and Nasa/Sandia Labs say we can harness that energy. Current global energy demand is around 600 quads. Nasa estimated 50,000 quads minimum, just from the US alone. Given such massive energies to spend - we can desalinate, irrigate, recycle and capture carbon, develop wasteland rather than burn forests for agriculture, we can farm fish inland, there's a pig skyscraper in China, there are vertical hydroponic farms in warehouses - the main difficulty with which is the energy costs. Given near limitless clean energy we can increase food production even while reducing our dependence on nature.

Then, in the UK where I live, a mere 2% of the land is built upon. The UK is 51st from 248 countries in terms of population density, meaning that ~75% of countries are less densely populated than that. In part we choose to live in densely populated cities, but also - it's about a dependence on natural water sources. Given enormous amounts of energy to spend, to desalinate and irrigate - we can spread out, build new cities where before it was impossible because there's no water. I'm sure you're aware of the Hoover damn project that allowed Las Vegas to be built in the desert. Magma Energy is so vast, we can power desalination on that scale.

Further, consider this: 7/10ths of the earth's surface is untouched by mining because it's underwater. Underwater mining is in its infancy. In conjunction with the energy to recycle all waste - such that a landfill becomes a goldmine it would become economically viable to excavate and process for resources, metals are not an absolute limit on growth. So what is?

The original Limits to Growth guy was Thomas Malthus. In his Essay on the Principle of Population 1798, he posited that because population grows geometrically (2,4,8,16,32 etc) while agricultural land can only be added arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5, etc) one acre at a time, population would necessarily outstrip food resources and people would starve en masse. His logic seemed sound, but he was proven wrong by history. People invented tractors, trains, fertilisers and refrigeration, among other things that multiplied food resources far beyond population growth. Nonetheless, the argument is restated in Limits to Growth (Meadows, 1974) and similarly, we can apply the technology, specifically Magma energy/ electrical power/ hydrogen fuel technologies to multiply resources, including environmental resources, to provide for human needs and wants.

It's very important, and urgent, because the leading edge of this crisis is upon us. If we accept Limits to Growth as a basis for policy making then terrible things will follow, and the opportunity for a prosperous and sustainable future will be lost.

[Lagayascienza]

I don't agree that, if we accept limits to the type of growth that we have seen thus far, that "terrible things will follow" or, that if we do change our profligate ways, "the opportunity for a prosperous and sustainable future will be lost." I think terrible things will follow if we don't change our ways. But we are smart. We don't have to keep doing what we've been doing. We don't need to keep trashing the joint. We can bring our population growth down to sustainable levels and have enough clean, renewable energy to fuel economic growth and maintain our standard of living. This may include energy from magma.

It may be true that only a very small part of the UK is built on. That is good. You are lucky that much of what remains is good for food production. Britain is a green and fertile land. Many countries are not in that fortunate situation. You can't grow spinach in the vast Sahara or in the wide Australian deserts without fresh water. Only a smallish part of the earth's surface is suitable for food production, and much of that is already producing at capacity or beyond and is being, or has already been, degraded. The Earth is a finite size and agricultural land is a very limited and precious resource.

I hope that magma energy has the potential you believe it has. I can imagine using it for massive desalination plants on the coast and piping the fresh water to to our vast deserts on a big scale to turn them into productive land. I can also envisage using magma energy to produce hydrogen to provide energy to places that are far from plate boundaries where magma energy is accessible.

What I am still not understanding, however, is why, if magma has the potential you believe it has, I can find very little evidence that it is being pursued by the big energy companies who know all to well that fossil fuels are a dying industry. These companies have the exploration and drilling expertise to tap magma reserves and they have a profit incentive to do so. So why are they not doing it? I don't think this has anything to do with leftist greenie tree-huggers. Surely, if these massive, wealthy and powerful multi-national energy companies believed there was money to be made they would be doing it? Something seem to be stopping them. But what?

[Mercury]

I don't agree that, if we accept limits to the type of growth that we have seen thus far, that "terrible things will follow" or, that if we do change our profligate ways, "the opportunity for a prosperous and sustainable future will be lost." I think terrible things will follow if we don't change our ways. But we are smart. We don't have to keep doing what we've been doing. We don't need to keep trashing the joint. We can bring our population growth down to sustainable levels and have enough clean, renewable energy to fuel economic growth and maintain our standard of living. This may include energy from magma.

It may be true that only a very small part of the UK is built on. That is good. You are lucky that much of what remains is good for food production. Britain is a green and fertile land. Many countries are not in that fortunate situation. You can't grow spinach in the vast Sahara or in the wide Australian deserts without fresh water. Only a smallish part of the earth's surface is suitable for food production, and much of that is already producing at capacity or beyond and is being, or has already been, degraded. The Earth is a finite size and agricultural land is a very limited and precious resource.

I hope that magma energy has the potential you believe it has. I can imagine using it for massive desalination plants on the coast and piping the fresh water to to our vast deserts on a big scale to turn them into productive land. I can also envisage using magma energy to produce hydrogen to provide energy to places that are far from plate boundaries where magma energy is accessible.

What I am still not understanding, however, is why, if magma has the potential you believe it has, I can find very little evidence that it is being pursued by the big energy companies who know all to well that fossil fuels are a dying industry. These companies have the exploration and drilling expertise to tap magma reserves and they have a profit incentive to do so. So why are they not doing it? I don't think this has anything to do with leftist greenie tree-huggers. Surely, if these massive, wealthy and powerful multi-national energy companies believed there was money to be made they would be doing it? Something seem to be stopping them. But what?

In what way do you think fossil fuels are a dying industry? They don't think so.

"Oil and gas upstream capital expenditures (oil and gas exploration) increased by 39% in 2022 to $499 billion, the highest level since 2014 and the largest year-on-year gain in history." (IEF Upstream oil and gas investment outlook report 2023)

According to the IEA; similar but different to the IEF - global energy demand will increase 50% in the next 30 years with much of that increased demand being supplied by fossil fuels. We are not nearly on a trajectory to meet Net Zero targets - the primary purpose of which seems to be to kick the can a long way down the road.
President Biden is drilling more oil and gas than did former President Trump; in part because the war in Ukraine severed Europe's pipelines to Russia, but still. The UK government recently issued a hundred new oil and gas licences for the North Sea. Fossil fuel industries are a long way from dying out. Coal use has been reduced significantly in recent years - maybe that's what you mean.

Limits to Growth isn't susceptible to the kind of distinctions you seek to make. It's difficult to explain, but at the heart of LTG is an assumption that human needs and environmental needs are directly contradictory - a zero sum game, where human needs can only be supplied at environmental cost. Above, I discussed just a few ways that magma energy allows humans to, almost negate a dependence on natural resources in food production. Farming fish instead of hunting the oceans to death, is a good illustrative example. But this requires a lot of energy - more even than can be supplied by fossil fuels. A cubic meter of water weighs a tonne - that takes a lot of energy to move, particularly pumping water uphill, inland from a desalination plant near the ocean. The price, and carbon emissions of desalination and irrigation using fossil fuels are prohibitive. Similarly, we cannot recycle all our waste with fossil fuels - it's just not economically viable. If we have an effectively limitless source of clean energy from magma however, much that was previously impossible becomes, not just economically viable, but hugely profitable and environmentally beneficial. Limits to Growth is false.

I'd love to hear how you propose we "bring our population growth down to sustainable levels." Are you volunteering for castration? Or do you think we should just murder people? Are you willing to be murdered? Or is it other people you'd have castrated/murdered while you remain alive and fully functional? You don't think it would be a terrible thing to invest governments with that kind of power? And do so merely to reduce demand, in the name of climate change, while still drilling oil and gas, pumping at top speed?

The potential of Magma Energy is described by Nasa and Sandia Labs, but it makes sense. Earth is a big ball of molten rock. I think the reasons it hasn't been developed are fairly mundane - at least initially, on the right, fossil fuel revenues and employment, on the left Malthus, Marx and Meadows. Magma energy falls between two stools, the excluded middle.
The right engaged in climate change denial, while more radical elements of the left pursued Meadows Limits to Growth. Part of problem I believe, is that capitalism has surreptitiously weaponized environmental concern since the 1980's. Suddenly they're marketing plastic rcap with green labels, and building windmills. Sourcing energy for EV's from the national grid will hugely increase energy demand, while wind and solar reduce supply, thereby increasing energy prices. Then you can look to concerns around market stability, to the geopolitics of nations dependent on fossil fuel revenues. There are a good many reasons the right haven't developed magma energy; while the left have been concerned with proving Malthus, Marx and Meadows right, and capitalism wrong.

There are some companies - or often university research project/companies, that are having an underfunded go at it. I wonder at their aims sometimes, it seems like they're trying to problemtize rather than solve, less yet produce energy commercially. Quaise Energy, for example - I don't understand how they imagine its necessary to drill to 20km deep, the deepest hole ever drilled, to hit magma, or how they propose to do so with a laser cutting machine as big as a house. Are they proposing to lower this machine down the hole? Or invent phasers like from Star Trek? Disinformation funded by fossil fuels? I don't know. What's Hanlon's Razor say: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[Sy Borg]

A thought: Mercury have you read any discussion about possible geological instability caused by removing the huge amounts of heat from underground to supply the world? Logistically, current geothermal projects are a drop in a bucket. The nature of things can change with scale.

While I know nothing about geothermal, physics tells me that rapid removal of heat would lead to contraction until the area was refilled by the chamber below, in which case it would expand again.

So I'm thinking of instances where mining has caused earthquakes and sinkholes, and use of below-ground water can do the same. It's not a rejection, only a consideration.

[Mercury]

A thought: Mercury have you read any discussion about possible geological instability caused by removing the huge amounts of heat from underground to supply the world? Logistically, current geothermal projects are a drop in a bucket. The nature of things can change with scale.

While I know nothing about geothermal, physics tells me that rapid removal of heat would lead to contraction until the area was refilled by the chamber below, in which case it would expand again.

So I'm thinking of instances where mining has caused earthquakes and sinkholes, and use of below-ground water can do the same. It's not a rejection, only a consideration.

It depends. There's a risk of geological instability resulting from pumping water into the ground. It expands, and can cause earthquakes. There are alternate methods that go under the general heading 'closed loop systems' that don't rely on pumping water into the earth.

I can't imagine simply removing heat would cause geological instability because of the scale of a magma chamber, relative to the mosquito bite of energy extraction. This is a description of the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone:

'The shallower one is composed of rhyolite (a high-silica rock type) and stretches from 5 km to about 17 km (3 to 10 mi) beneath the surface and is about 90 km (55 mi) long and about 40 km (25 mi) wide.'

The magma chamber beneath Vesuvius is 400 square km. Unfortunately it's 8km deep. It's too deep to begin with; likely the technology will improve, but one would look first to a smaller magma chamber at 1-3km depth. Still we get some idea of the scale of these geological features, full of magma at 1800-2700'C, there's no amount of energy we could physically extract that's going to cause the sort of instability you describe.

[Sy Borg]

A thought: Mercury have you read any discussion about possible geological instability caused by removing the huge amounts of heat from underground to supply the world? Logistically, current geothermal projects are a drop in a bucket. The nature of things can change with scale.

While I know nothing about geothermal, physics tells me that rapid removal of heat would lead to contraction until the area was refilled by the chamber below, in which case it would expand again.

So I'm thinking of instances where mining has caused earthquakes and sinkholes, and use of below-ground water can do the same. It's not a rejection, only a consideration.

It depends. There's a risk of geological instability resulting from pumping water into the ground. It expands, and can cause earthquakes. There are alternate methods that go under the general heading 'closed loop systems' that don't rely on pumping water into the earth.

I can't imagine simply removing heat would cause geological instability because of the scale of a magma chamber, relative to the mosquito bite of energy extraction. This is a description of the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone:

'The shallower one is composed of rhyolite (a high-silica rock type) and stretches from 5 km to about 17 km (3 to 10 mi) beneath the surface and is about 90 km (55 mi) long and about 40 km (25 mi) wide.'

The magma chamber beneath Vesuvius is 400 square km. Unfortunately it's 8km deep. It's too deep to begin with; likely the technology will improve, but one would look first to a smaller magma chamber at 1-3km depth. Still we get some idea of the scale of these geological features, full of magma at 1800-2700'C, there's no amount of energy we could physically extract that's going to cause the sort of instability you describe.

I'm confused. Aren't open and closed loop systems holes in the ground filled with fluid that exchanges heat (or cold) between the house and the mor stable underground temps?

[Mercury]

A thought: Mercury have you read any discussion about possible geological instability caused by removing the huge amounts of heat from underground to supply the world? Logistically, current geothermal projects are a drop in a bucket. The nature of things can change with scale.

While I know nothing about geothermal, physics tells me that rapid removal of heat would lead to contraction until the area was refilled by the chamber below, in which case it would expand again.

So I'm thinking of instances where mining has caused earthquakes and sinkholes, and use of below-ground water can do the same. It's not a rejection, only a consideration.

It depends. There's a risk of geological instability resulting from pumping water into the ground. It expands, and can cause earthquakes. There are alternate methods that go under the general heading 'closed loop systems' that don't rely on pumping water into the earth.

I can't imagine simply removing heat would cause geological instability because of the scale of a magma chamber, relative to the mosquito bite of energy extraction. This is a description of the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone:

'The shallower one is composed of rhyolite (a high-silica rock type) and stretches from 5 km to about 17 km (3 to 10 mi) beneath the surface and is about 90 km (55 mi) long and about 40 km (25 mi) wide.'

The magma chamber beneath Vesuvius is 400 square km. Unfortunately it's 8km deep. It's too deep to begin with; likely the technology will improve, but one would look first to a smaller magma chamber at 1-3km depth. Still we get some idea of the scale of these geological features, full of magma at 1800-2700'C, there's no amount of energy we could physically extract that's going to cause the sort of instability you describe.

I'm confused. Aren't open and closed loop systems holes in the ground filled with fluid that exchanges heat (or cold) between the house and the mor stable underground temps?

"Closed-loop geothermal is an encapsulated system within which a working fluid is contained and circulated to harvest heat from deep in the earth to be used for commercial heating applications (ex: greenhouses or district heating) or to be used to generate electricity using conventional heat to power engines ..."

In a closed loop system, the heat transfer liquid is inside a pipe. As opposed, for example, to geothermal fracking - where they pump a liquid reservoir into the ground, that then heats up, and expands, potentially causing geological instability.

I don't know what else I can tell you about a hypothetical method of extracting magma energy, yet to be developed and applied. It feels like you are leading me to speculate further and further beyond my area of expertise. I'm not an engineer. I'm a political theorist. I want to discuss limits to growth versus sustainable capitalist prosperity, as approaches to the climate and ecological threat. I need only show that this:

"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. " (Nasa/Sandia Labs, 1982.)

...as a basis for that discussion. I have sufficient reason to assert that it's technologically possible. There's an absolutely monstrous source of clean energy being ignored for political reasons, and not just by those with interests in fossil fuels. Do you not think it bizarre that the supposed environmental left have never mentioned magma energy at any time in the past 40 years?

[Sy Borg]

It feels like you are leading me to speculate further and further beyond my area of expertise. I'm not an engineer. I'm a political theorist.

Never mind, my expertise was already surpassed when I first typed a word in response. Sorry, sometimes I'm practically minded so, when it comes to energy issues, I reflexively put that black hat on and wonder about feasibility and applicability in different locales. In my experience, the world is so diverse that energy solutions will need to come from variant sources.

I want to discuss limits to growth versus sustainable capitalist prosperity, as approaches to the climate and ecological threat. I need only show that this:

"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. " (Nasa/Sandia Labs, 1982.)

...as a basis for that discussion. I have sufficient reason to assert that it's technologically possible. There's an absolutely monstrous source of clean energy being ignored for political reasons, and not just by those with interests in fossil fuels. Do you not think it bizarre that the supposed environmental left have never mentioned magma energy at any time in the past 40 years?

I didn't find it bizarre because I assumed there were probably economic or feasibility issues. It's fairly common knowledge that much of Iceland's energy is geothermal, but they are basically sitting in a ring of volcanoes. So they don't have to drill to access hot material. I read that Kenya, El Salvador, New Zealand and Nicaragua also use a significant amount of geothermal and, again, they have plentiful active volcanoes.

Meanwhile, some countries with great rivers, like Brazil, have significant hydroelectric systems.

Having said that, you are right that various groups, and the media, play favourites. There's irrational aversion to nuclear, although the reasoning is understandable (Hiroshima, Chernobyl etc), if not entirely logical with modern technology. If the left have an irrational aversion to geothermal, have you any thoughts on what their reasoning would be?

[Lagayascienza]

In what way do you think fossil fuels are a dying industry? They don't think so.

It is a dying industry in that they know it will have to stop. It’s just a question of how long they will be allowed to continue. As you know, it’s changing the makeup of our atmosphere which is causing it to heat up. It’s a dying industry in that it is already killing people. I read an estimate today that 2 million have already died due to floods, hurricanes and other weather-related events brought about by global heating due to GHG emissions, mostly from fossil fuel production and use.

"Oil and gas upstream capital expenditures (oil and gas exploration) increased by 39% in 2022 to $499 billion, the highest level since 2014 and the largest year-on-year gain in history." (IEF Upstream oil and gas investment outlook report 2023)

According to the IEA; similar but different to the IEF - global energy demand will increase 50% in the next 30 years with much of that increased demand being supplied by fossil fuels. We are not nearly on a trajectory to meet Net Zero targets - the primary purpose of which seems to be to kick the can a long way down the road.

Agreed.

President Biden is drilling more oil and gas than did former President Trump; in part because the war in Ukraine severed Europe's pipelines to Russia, but still. The UK government recently issued a hundred new oil and gas licences for the North Sea. Fossil fuel industries are a long way from dying out. Coal use has been reduced significantly in recent years - maybe that's what you mean.

Yes, coal is the dirtiest fuel of all. The energy companies in Australia are still digging up millions of tons of it and selling it offshore: 172 million mt in 2023-24, up 9.6% from about 157 million mt in 2022-23, (data released by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources).

Limits to Growth isn't susceptible to the kind of distinctions you seek to make. It's difficult to explain, but at the heart of LTG is an assumption that human needs and environmental needs are directly contradictory - a zero sum game, where human needs can only be supplied at environmental cost.

Fossil fuels certainly do entail an environmental cost as mentioned above.

I discussed just a few ways that magma energy allows humans to, almost negate a dependence on natural resources in food production. Farming fish instead of hunting the oceans to death, is a good illustrative example. But this requires a lot of energy - more even than can be supplied by fossil fuels. A cubic meter of water weighs a tonne - that takes a lot of energy to move, particularly pumping water uphill, inland from a desalination plant near the ocean. The price, and carbon emissions of desalination and irrigation using fossil fuels are prohibitive. Similarly, we cannot recycle all our waste with fossil fuels - it's just not economically viable. If we have an effectively limitless source of clean energy from magma however, much that was previously impossible becomes, not just economically viable, but hugely profitable and environmentally beneficial.

Yes, but there is still a big IF involved here. It is yet to be demonstrated as feasible on the scale you imagine.

Limits to Growth is false.

The limits are only false if we are prepared to wear the environmental and economic cost of continued population growth, land degradation, and GHG emissions from fossil fuels and subsequent global heating. These problems place constraints on growth of the type we have had heretofore. We need abundant, clean sources of energy. That may include energy from magma.

I'd love to hear how you propose we "bring our population growth down to sustainable levels." Are you volunteering for castration? Or do you think we should just murder people? Are you willing to be murdered? Or is it other people you'd have castrated/murdered while you remain alive and fully functional?

I suggested no such thing. What I did suggest is limiting population GROWTH. That is a completely different thing to suggesting the culling of existing populations or forced sterilization and I cannot believe you seriously thought I was advocating such things. What we are currently seeing is that, as economic development occurs, people in developing countries are already limiting the number of children they have. Instead of having ten children they are having two. They are undergoing the same demographic transition that occurred historically with economic development in the West. That is a good thing.

You don't think it would be a terrible thing to invest governments with that kind of power? And do so merely to reduce demand, in the name of climate change, while still drilling oil and gas, pumping at top speed?

As above, no one has advocated or even mentioned a cull. A reduction in population growth will happen without coercion. So it’s not about culling. It’s about flattening the ever-upwards curve. That is achieved by limiting the number of children people CHOOSE to have.

The potential of Magma Energy is described by Nasa and Sandia Labs, but it makes sense. Earth is a big ball of molten rock. I think the reasons it hasn't been developed are fairly mundane - at least initially, on the right, fossil fuel revenues and employment, on the left Malthus, Marx and Meadows. Magma energy falls between two stools, the excluded middle.

The left had nothing to do with it. And if there is money in it it would be getting done now or will get done. The study you mention was done at sites where magma is at the surface. It is yet to be demonstrated as feasible elsewhere on the scale you imagine

The right engaged in climate change denial, while more radical elements of the left pursued Meadows Limits to Growth. Part of problem I believe, is that capitalism has surreptitiously weaponized environmental concern since the 1980's. Suddenly they're marketing plastic rcap with green labels, and building windmills. Sourcing energy for EV's from the national grid will hugely increase energy demand, while wind and solar reduce supply, thereby increasing energy prices. Then you can look to concerns around market stability, to the geopolitics of nations dependent on fossil fuel revenues. There are a good many reasons the right haven't developed magma energy; while the left have been concerned with proving Malthus, Marx and Meadows right, and capitalism wrong.

I don’t know what you mean by “more radical the left” here. You seem to use "left" as some sort of scary boogie term. I am not a communist, but I am slightly left of centre. Most of my family and friends a left-centrists like me. They all know that Malthus got it wrong, in the short term at least. Most people on the left support continued economic growth, they’re not stupid, but they would like to see growth happen without trashing the joint so much that it becomes unliveable.

There are some companies - or often university research project/companies, that are having an underfunded go at it. I wonder at their aims sometimes, it seems like they're trying to problemtize rather than solve, less yet produce energy commercially. Quaise Energy, for example - I don't understand how they imagine its necessary to drill to 20km deep, the deepest hole ever drilled, to hit magma, or how they propose to do so with a laser cutting machine as big as a house. Are they proposing to lower this machine down the hole? Or invent phasers like from Star Trek? Disinformation funded by fossil fuels? I don't know. What's Hanlon's Razor say: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Apart from at plate boundaries, if you wanted to access magma at the interior of continents you would need to drill through 25 to 70 km (16 to 43 mi) of continental crust first. Temperature increases slowly by about 30 deg C per 100km. You would need to drill down a long way to get to really high temperatures. And Sy Borg pointed to some potential problems with this. In volcanic areas along plate boundaries magma can be tapped at much shallower depths. But as I mentioned earlier, these are the most seismically active places on earth and so there would be great risk to magma tapping infrastructure that would need to be factored into the cost of magma energy extraction. But, again, if there is profit in magma energy then market forces will dictate that it is used. However, I’m seeing no sign of that happening yet.

Finally, I’m not trying to be killjoy here – I accept that magma it is an untapped resource and I hope energy from magma proves to be the almost limitless energy resource you believe it can be and that, if is so proves, we start using in a big way ASAP.

[Mercury]

It feels like you are leading me to speculate further and further beyond my area of expertise. I'm not an engineer. I'm a political theorist.

Never mind, my expertise was already surpassed when I first typed a word in response. Sorry, sometimes I'm practically minded so, when it comes to energy issues, I reflexively put that black hat on and wonder about feasibility and applicability in different locales. In my experience, the world is so diverse that energy solutions will need to come from variant sources.

That's a very practical and pragmatic outlook - but you may be failing to appreciate the sheer scale of magma energy. Current global energy demand is around 600 quads. Nasa/Sandia say here, there's 50,000 to 5000,000 quads of magma energy just in the US alone. If we crack this nut, humankind's energy needs are solved forever. Energy would be as free as the air we breathe, which in turn would be a lot cleaner than the air we currently breathe. A diversity of energy sources would be unnecessary, and it wouldn't matter where in the world you are. I use a ton of middle east oil every year. Why would it matter where magma energy is produced?

I want to discuss limits to growth versus sustainable capitalist prosperity, as approaches to the climate and ecological threat. I need only show that this:

"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. " (Nasa/Sandia Labs, 1982.)

...as a basis for that discussion. I have sufficient reason to assert that it's technologically possible. There's an absolutely monstrous source of clean energy being ignored for political reasons, and not just by those with interests in fossil fuels. Do you not think it bizarre that the supposed environmental left have never mentioned magma energy at any time in the past 40 years?

I didn't find it bizarre because I assumed there were probably economic or feasibility issues. It's fairly common knowledge that much of Iceland's energy is geothermal, but they are basically sitting in a ring of volcanoes. So they don't have to drill to access hot material. I read that Kenya, El Salvador, New Zealand and Nicaragua also use a significant amount of geothermal and, again, they have plentiful active volcanoes.

Meanwhile, some countries with great rivers, like Brazil, have significant hydroelectric systems.

Having said that, you are right that various groups, and the media, play favourites. There's irrational aversion to nuclear, although the reasoning is understandable (Hiroshima, Chernobyl etc), if not entirely logical with modern technology. If the left have an irrational aversion to geothermal, have you any thoughts on what their reasoning would be?

Yeah, but you are not the whole of left wing environmentalism since 1982 - so you; despite reading that "there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept" are free to draw the conclusion that there are insurmountable barriers that invalidate the magma energy concept! You can think what you like. You can say the earth is flat and the the moon landings were faked, despite Nasa providing evidence to the contrary; but if left wing environmentalism is to have an ounce of credibility, as a basis to make demands on people's liberty and property, you'd have thought that the academic and political movement would be obliged to address magma energy, no? Y'know, before telling children that the human species is doomed to an ignominious death, one might want to exhaust all other possibilities. Don't you agree? If only to keep kids from running into traffic!

[Sy Borg]

I identified as left wing all my life but I do not understand today's left. I thought the Greens were about, you know, greenness - the environment. Now they are over-focused on social issues - race, gender, Palestinians (seemingly no one else is oppressed) while the subject of their original brief - nature - degrades.

[Mercury]

Finally, I’m not trying to be killjoy here – I accept that magma it is an untapped resource and I hope energy from magma proves to be the almost limitless energy resource you believe it can be and that, if is so proves, we start using in a big way ASAP.

I appreciate your commitment in dealing with all those quotes, but our joint efforts would become absurdly long if I then responded to your replies to my replies, to yours, to mine, to you to me. I'm going to address your argument in its entirety, but if there's any particular point you insist I address please feel free to repost it.

What I'm getting is, you think fossil fuel industries sincerely intend to transcend fossil fuels, and yet you agree they are putting $500bn dollars into oil and gas exploration every year, and are kicking the can down the road with Net Zero twaddle?

You agree it is feasible to negate human dependence on nature IF magma energy is viable, but still insist population growth and land use constitute a limit to growth?

You want to limit population growth, and vigorously deny any suggestion of castration or murder, but still don't say how that would be achieved. Demographic decline in the West was due to increased living standards since the Industrial Revolution; so you favour increased living standards in the rest of the world as a means to reduce population? How do you do that without Magma Energy?

Don't worry. This is an incredibly complex set of ideas; inherently contradictory. I'm not trying to embarrass you, but you've got to admit your position is somewhat pretzel shaped. And we haven't even got to the really counter-intuitive part yet. Inter-generational demographics are weird. If we CHOOSE to stop having children, the population doesn't just decrease, it ages. The average age gets older. This has all sorts of implications for work, taxation, pensions, healthcare - and many other things. We need more people, not less. We need to provide for young people to have families - and pay them for every extra kid they have, because that, in turn, is going to pay for public services and old age pensions. We need to keep growing. And Magma Energy is how we do it without setting the sky on fire!

But, again, if there is profit in magma energy then market forces will dictate that it is used. However, I’m seeing no sign of that happening yet.

Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons is instructive on this issue. It's a justification of private property using the olde worlde system of common grazing land as a metaphor. Hardin says that any freely available resource, such as grazing land, will be exploited to exhaustion. Thus, we need private property to protect the resource from the tendency of each person to add another cow, sheep or possibly goat to the common, and another and another, to maximise their profit until the resource is destroyed.
On the basis of that logic you'd naturally assume market forces would dictate that magma energy is used extensively. On energy however, I'm not seeing free market capitalism - that would, surely seek to exploit Magma Energy to the max. If they did so, all would be well. But what I'm seeing is fossil fuel cartels, related to national energy policies and a WWII 'coal and steel' national defence mindset. Consequently, I reject the argument that if it was possible and profitable we'd have it already!