Figures May Lie By William Lama, Ph.D and John Lama
Cogniview - Organize Your Life and Manage Your Statistics
There’s an old saying, “figures don’t lie but liars figure.” One could note a rising graph of ice cream sales, then lay on top of that a rising trend of homicides, and come to the wrong conclusion. Vaclav Smil has made it his life’s work to demystify figures. Son John and I are reading Smil’s Numbers Don’t Lie and comparing notes via WhatsApp. We can’t resist telling you about it.
First and foremost, this book is about getting the facts straight. Smil uses national GDP to illustrate the point. “In 2010 the French GDP was $2.6 trillion. But was that in current or constant monies and was the conversion from euros to dollars done using prevailing exchange rates or purchasing power parity?” An example closer to my heart: Say you’re looking to buy a hot car and comparing a Tesla rated in kilowatts to a Corvette rated in horsepower. Can’t afford either one? Take consumer electronics where the processing speed doubles or the cost halves every two years according to Moore’s law. Does that law apply to solar cells?
Numbers Don’t Lie is a collection of 71 fascinating stories about people, health, food, farming, energy, inventions, technology, machines, transportation, the environment, globalization, wealth, and more. A peek at a few of the essays may pique your interest. Here we go.
Amazon.com: Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World
Smil identifies the four pillars of modern civilization as steel, cement, ammonia (for fertilizer) and plastics. The prime focus of Smil’s research has been energy production and consumption. Let’s focus on energy; a primer on energy and power may be found at the end of this essay.
How big can a wind turbine be?
The power output from a wind turbine depends on the density of air, the area swept out by the blades of length L, and the air speed V.
For V = 12 m/sec and L = 275 m, the power produced is P = 10 million Watts = 10 MW.
The total electricity generation rate in the US is about 1 million MW. To produce that power would require 100,000 of the 10 MW windmills. Vesta Corp’s new 10 MW wind machine weighs 435 tons. Imagine 100,000 of these beasts! The largest wind turbine is GE’s Haliade-X offshore behemoth, with blades 107 meters long producing 14MW. There is some opposition to wind farms in my neighborhood, and in Cape Cod. How to Select a Location for a Wind Farm (routledge.com)
The slow rise of photovoltaics
A typical electrical power plant generates 1000 MW. A typical solar panel has a power output of 150 W per square meter. Thus, a 1000 MW solar farm would require at least 6.7 M square meters or 2.5 square miles. To supply all US electricity from solar would require a lot of land. Decarbonizing the Grid Means Using a Lot More Land to Produce Electricity | RealClearScience
Solar photovoltaic plants generate 3% of electricity in the US and could reach 10% in 2030. But they will need to be backed up by fossil fuel plants or batteries due to the lack of sunshine at night. How do Photovoltaics Work? | Science Mission Directorate (nasa.gov)
Here is a neat combo wind/solar solution for a boat.
SUNRISER SIX PACK SOLAR BOAT RACE WORLD ZERO CARBON CHALLENGE
Why we need bigger batteries
To back up the wind or solar power plants, the favored solution is batteries, lots of them. The Lithium-ion storage system in Long Beach stores 400 MWh of electricity in one million batteries. It is intended to provide back-up power to Los Angeles in the event of a blackout. Los Angeles consumes 26 million MWh per year = 50 MWh/min. The Long Beach facility can provide 400/50 = 8 minutes of backup power. In the event of an earthquake many days or weeks of power backup may be needed. To supply power for at least one day would require 71,000 MWh or 178 Long Beach facilities. Might they put one in Palos Verdes?
Giant Long Beach AES battery storage facility in full operation – Press Telegram
The inevitably slow pace of energy transitions
The following figure shows world energy consumption from 1830 to 2010 in Exajoules which is a billion-billion joules or (278M) MWh. World consumption of energy in 2021 was ~590 EJ.
Rembrandt Koppelaar on World Energy Consumption 1830-2010 | DeepResource
Since 1800 the percentage of primary energy from biomass (wood, charcoal, dung) has declined from 98% to less than 12% in 2000. Coal became the dominant source in 1900, then oil around 1970. In 2010, 80% of the energy was provided by fossil fuels, and only 0.4% from renewable energy sources, not visible on this graph. By 2020, the fraction (wind + solar) reached about 1.5% of the total. Slow going.
Energy transitions take time. In the 1970s an energy substitution model was developed to understand transitions from fuels of lower to higher energy densities. It’s simple chemistry. The ratio of hydrogen (H) to carbon (C) atoms in coal is 1/1 while H:C = 2/1 in oil and H:C = 4/1 in natural gas. The more hydrogen the more energy dense the fuel. Amazon.com: Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses (The MIT Press)
The following figure shows the actual transitions from 1800.
For most of human history wood (biofuel) was the only source of energy. Then British coal began fueling the Industrial Revolution, surpassing wood use in 1880. This was followed by a transition to oil in 1970.
The model did not account for technology advances and geopolitics. Coal experienced a renaissance when China industrialized. Oil rose again due to technical advances such as fracking. Ironically, California missed out on the shale oil boom due to government restrictions. California's Oil Hypocrisy Presents a National Security Risk (forbes.com) Nuclear energy looks to have peaked due to Western politics. The transition to wind and solar is TBD.
Running Into Carbon
We are going to need a lot more energy in the near future. The following figure shows energy use by region from 1970 and projected to 2040.
Statistical Review of World Energy 2022 (bp.com)
The energy unit is the TOE = tons of oil equivalent = 11.7 MWh. Note that energy use in the developed world (OECD) has peaked, while consumption in China, India and Africa is growing, as it should.
Industrialization and increasing energy consumption have been overwhelmingly positive for humanity. From preindustrial times life expectancy increased from 30 to 73 years while infant mortality declined from 43% to 4%. Before the Industrial Revolution 95% of the population lived in extreme poverty, less than $1.90/day in current dollars. With booming energy use from cheap fossil fuels, the extremely poor population is declining fast. From 1980 to 2015 the population experiencing extreme poverty declined from 44% to 10%.
Authors Bjorn Lomborg (False Alarm), Michael Shellenberger (Apocalypse Never) and Alex Epstein (Fossil Future) make the case for increasing fossil fuel use in the decades ahead. It is the moral thing to do.
Bjorn Lomborg: 7 myths about climate change - YouTube
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us | Michael Shellenberger - YouTube
We Can Survive Global Warming. But Not Without Fossil Fuels: Alex Epstein - YouTube
Figures and Numbers (36-24-36)
Marilyn Monroe was said to have the perfect hour-glass figure. But women's clothing sizes have dramatically changed in last 50 years.
Marilyn Monroe would be anything between a size 2 and 12 today | Daily Mail Online
The saying “Figures don't lie, but liars figure” is often attributed to Mark Twain. To understand the world, Vaclav Smil says that “Numbers Don’t Lie” --- except when it comes to women’s measurements.
Appendix: Energy, Power and People
This appendix is for those who want a better understanding of energy and power and how these quantities benefit people. The Joule (J) is the physicist’s unit of energy or work. The work done to accelerate a 1kg mass to a speed of 1 m/sec is 0.5J. The mass then has 0.5J of kinetic energy. The work done to lift a 1kg mass a height of 1m is 9.8J. The mass then has a potential energy of 9.8J. (My Westie Charlie weighs 22 pounds = 10kg. I’d use 98J picking him up a meter from the floor. Charlie would then have 98J of potential energy. If I released him that potential energy would turn into kinetic energy. Look out below!)
A Joule is a small amount of energy. A more practical unit is the GJ or one billion Joules. Other practical units are kWh or MWh for electrical energy, and tons of oil equivalent (TOE) which is the energy released from burning one ton of oil. The conversions are
1 TOE = 42 GJ = 11,600 kWh = 11.6 MWh
The world consumption of energy per year is ~590 billion GJ = 164B MWh = 14B TOE.
The world population is ~8 billion. Thus, the average energy use per person per year is 1.7 TOE/pp. The US average is 6.4 TOE/pp, while China = 2.6 and India = 0.7. Energy use powers income in GDP/pp: US = $69,000, China = $11,000 and India = $1,900.
Food is for living. Since 1950, world population grew by a factor of three, the production of grain by 9 times, and the use of synthetic fertilizer by 39 times. Lacking fertilizer (derived from the energy intensive Haber-Bosch process) the grain produced in the world could support a global population of just over 3B people. What about the other 5B people? (Smil, p. 223)
Let’s conclude with another look at energy use and human well-being. From 1900 to 2000 the world GDP per person grew from $4,300 to $35,000, that is by a factor of eight adjusted for inflation. The average person in 2020 is 8 times better off than the person living in 1900, and that does not take into account modern appliances, television, the internet, robot assisted surgery, Tesla, WhatsApp and more. That prosperity growth was fueled by energy use that grew by 15X over the 20th century. Lecture 18 Notes (psu.edu)
However, there is a long way to go before the entire world population can live like Americans. Cheap fossil fuel can make that happen. Energy Talking Points - Alex Epstein
William Lama
Dr. William Lama has a PhD in physics from the University of Rochester. Taught physics in college and worked at Xerox as a principle scientist and engineering manager. Upon retiring, joined the PVIC docents; served on the board of the RPV Council of Home Owners Associations; served as a PV Library trustee for eight years; served on the PV school district Measure M oversight committee; was president of the Malaga Cove Homeowner's Association. Writes about science, technology and politics, mostly for his friends. email: wlama2605@gmail.com
John Lama
John Lama graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Rochester. His first job was with Price Waterhouse in New York City where he rose to senior consultant. He then joined Summation Legal Technologies in San Francisco as director of sales and client development. After Summation was sold, he moved to Colombia, South America where he was a partner in Tao Minerals Ltd, a mining company. He is currently in real estate development.
