Light, Energy and Civilization - Part 1

The U.S. now has the opportunity to lead a Renaissance of the underserved but irradiated world. A combination of science, a passion for equality, irradiance and the visualization of global trade finance serve this unrealized dream.?

"There exists a passion for comprehension, without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science" ~ Einstein?

A Little History

The pyramids of Egypt bear proof that the sun was not only worshipped as a god during ancient times but served as a source of energy for that ancient civilization. Perovskite, a photoelectric mineral, was applied to the surface of pyramids which served to generate and to store electricity.?Today, a similar electromagnetic process is used to generate and to store electricity-using perovskite.?

As foreseen by Dali, in his "The Last Supper," dodecahedrons:

surface - coated with platinum and underlaid?with copper, provide maximum opportunity for generating hydrogen from the electrolysis of water. Not a day goes by without?the “passion for science” revealing a new way of generating and storing energy.?

The considerable irradiance prevalent in such countries as Ukraine and countries located near or under the equator, provide opportunity for much of the energy required to grow economies.?

Serving the Underserved??

The entire Southern Hemisphere of the Earth is underserved in the use of energy. Energy, as Vaclav Smil writes, is essential to the infrastructure and development of civilizations and economies.?

Bill Gates: “Here’s (Vaclav) Smil’s thesis in a nutshell: Once groups of humans graduated from hunting and gathering and learned how to cultivate crops in ways that would produce more food than they needed for their own survival, they had the time and energy to use their brains in new ways. They applied that brainpower to getting even more efficient at converting energy into food—using animal power, tools, crop rotation, fertilizers, irrigation, and new seed varieties. The gains in crop production led directly to higher population densities. This, in turn, led to more complex societies and greater specialization of work, and an incredible array of advances in every area of human endeavor.”

“The past 300 years have seen the most miraculous advances in the human condition—and just about all of those advances can be traced directly to the exploitation of new forms of energy. Smil takes you through these advances in painstaking detail. For example, he shows that the biggest transition in the human condition started in the mid-18th century, after ironmasters in Europe began firing their furnaces with metallurgical coke, made from low-ash, low-sulfur coal. Coke-fueled furnaces could be much larger than charcoal (wood) furnaces and drove an increase in global production from 800,000 tons in 1750 to 30 million tons in 1900. A series of additional metallurgical innovations in the late 1800s led to the modern steel industry, which has provided the most important material for industrial development ever since.”

“With the help of original calculations and some good explanatory illustrations, Smil describes the other energy-related innovations that drove rapid economic growth and quality-of-life improvements—as well as profound environmental degradation—in the 19th and 20th centuries. While many of the innovations will be familiar to you, you will undoubtedly learn new things about the steam engine, internal combustion engines running on gasoline, the generation of electricity, the transformer (‘It made inexpensive, centralized electricity generation possible [and] would probably win a contest for a device that is as common and indispensable for the modern world as it is absent from the public consciousness’) and renewables.”

“As usual with Smil, he doesn’t overstate or oversimplify his case. He’s well aware that energy is not the only way to view the advance of humanity – things like morality play crucial roles too. ‘Energy is not the only determinant of … life in general and human actions in particular…. [It is] among the most important factors shaping a society, but [it does] not determine the particulars of its successes or failures.’ I’ll admit that Energy and Civilization is not easy reading. In fact, when I read my first Smil books years ago, I felt a little beat up and asked myself, ‘Am I ever going to be able to understand all of this?’ But Energy and Civilization follows an easy chronological progression and is well edited.”

“The best way to give you a sense of the book is to share some of the remarkable facts Smil digs up.??It’s fascinating to reflect on how much energy innovation occurred during the course of a single century. ‘When in 1900 a Great Plains farmer held the reins of six large horses while plowing his wheat field, he controlled … no more than 5 kW of animate power. A century later his great-grandson, sitting high above the ground in the air-conditioned comfort of his tractor cabin, controlled effortlessly more than 250 kW of diesel engine power.’

Waste

“We waste a tremendous amount of food. The food supply in affluent countries is now 75% higher than actual need, resulting in enormous food waste (30-40% of all food at the retail level).”

“Throughout every section of the book, Smil makes a clear case that energy consumption and economic growth are inextricably linked. In his words, ‘to become rich requires a substantial increase in energy use.’ “I fully agree with him. And in the past century or so, the biggest increase in energy use has come from fossil fuels—which are expensive and drive climate change. That’s why I’m spending a lot of my time and resources trying to accelerate research and development to make clean energy less expensive than fossil fuels, and just as reliable.”

“The main disagreement I have with Smil is about how quickly we can make the transition to clean energy. He is absolutely right that Moore’s Law and the speedy advances in software have misled people into thinking all innovation and adoption happens that quickly. Yet I am more optimistic than he is about the prospects of speeding up the process when it comes to clean energy.”

My Comment: I respect the ideas of both Vaclav Smil and Bill Gates. Both have not considered the role of trade and global trade, a $29 trillion enterprise in transforming the world. To quote from Vaclav Smil: “Once groups of humans graduated from hunting and gathering and learned how to cultivate crops in ways that would produce more food than they needed for their own survival, they had the time and energy to use their brains in new ways."

My Comment: What is not sufficiently considered by both Vaclav Smil and Bill Gates is the fact that “once groups of humans cultivated crops that would produce more food than was needed for their own survival,” they traded these goods with neighboring and far-flung tribes and civilizations as an alternative to killing them and warring with them.

Next Part 2: Trade and Civilization?