Fwd: Re: [p2p-research] Is there any point to staving off industrial apocalypse
Paul D. Fernhout
P2P list might find this amusing. Sorry about any overlap.
Basically, it is a rough calculation that in about fifteen years, just four
of the top British newspapers print enough surface area that they could
power the entire world if they were printing Nanosolar PV panels instead of
articles about how we are all doomed from Peak Oil. :-)
It also relates to this discussion:
"[p2p-research] Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004248.html
Although there I just made an off-the-cuff guess about the NYTimes which was
off by a lot for several reasons, but inspired this other calculation. In
general, the point of these ballpark calculations is not to be exact, but
just to show the possibilities. If every New York Times or Guardian
individual physical paper copy has about enough surface area to produce
enough solar power to indefinitely support the current lifestyle for the
average person reading in it about their doom from Peak Oil, that is still
pretty ironic just by itself. :-)
For those unfamiliar with how solar panels can be produced on printing presses:
>> Except that some people are now printing solar panels essentially the way
>> other people are printing newspapers.
>> "Solar Panel Printing Press"
>> http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/193
>> "Awesome Video of Solar Printing Press in Action "
>> http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/796
>> Those references are two years old.
In general, I like many of George Monbiot's essays. I even agree with the
tag line that is on his site: :-)
http://www.monbiot.com/
"Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it.
Tell them something new and they will hate you for it. "
If anyone knows George Monbiot's email, feel free to forward this to him.
:-) Of course, then he might hate me. :-)
We are so close to global abundance. It's mostly just scarcity ideology in
the way at this point, and then a decade or two of hard work. :-)
At least all those employees of struggling newspapers will have good jobs
they can be proud of for many more years to come, printing solar panels. :-)
If they want them instead of retiring on a basic income made possible by all
this exponentially expanding abundance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Note the Paul mentioned in the discussion referenced between George Monbiot
and Paul Kingsnorth is not me of course:
"Should We Seek to Save Industrial Civilisation?"
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/08/18/should-we-seek-to-save-industrial-civilisation/
========
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Is there any point to staving off industrial
apocalypse
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:38:08 -0400
From: Paul D. Fernhout
To: Peer-To-Peer Research List
Ryan Lanham wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/aug/17/environment-climate-change
The blind arguing with the blind, just assuming apocalypse is likely
technically, and wondering if it is good or bad.
The Guardian has an average daily circulation of about 360K copies per day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian
"The Guardian had a certified average daily circulation of 358,844 copies in
January 2009 – a drop of 5.17% on January 2008, as compared to sales of
842,912 for The Daily Telegraph, 617,483 for The Times, and 215,504 for The
Independent."
So, about one million copies every three days. I'm assuming it has about one
hundred sides of paper each about a meter square (probably less, but I'm
working with round numbers). So, the Guardian prints about one hundred
million square meters of content every three days. Or, if this was done
using Nanosolar or First Solar at 10% efficiency through their printing
technology, the Guardian would be producing about 100 watts per sq meter
times 100 million sq meters, 10 gigawatts worth of solar panels every three
days. Now, the world uses about sixteen terawatts of power for all purposes.
And solar panels only work on average about one sixth capacity due to
climate and clouds, so we need about 100 terawatts of panels to produce all
power from solar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
So, in about 30,000 days, or one hundred years, the Guardian by *itself*
would have produced enough solar panels to power the entire planet. But
instead they choose to print articles about how we are doomed. :-)
And if the Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Independent were to help out,
with about 5X the circulation of the the Guardian, this would be cut down to
saving the planet in about fifteen years, just from the presses of four big
British newspapers.
Look, I linked to a solar plan that would power the USA from renewables for
only US$420 billion in costs spread over forty years assuming current
technologies. That is less that half of one years National Security budget
in the USA. These problems are all solvable technically and economically.
But how can I solve the ironic problem of a small newspaper that could print
enough solar panels instead of paper to power the world in 100 years to see
that?
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
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Chris Watkins
Could you show us where printing solar cells is equivalent to printing newspaper?
- Last I heard the technology was a promising one but still in the lab
- It almost certainly won't be the same price as newspaper, esp in the beginning
- If they could do it this easily, they could make more money from solar cells than from newspaper. To suggest that they don't do it because of greed makes no sense.
Chris Watkins
Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.
identi.ca/appropedia / twitter.com/appropedia
blogs.appropedia.org
I like this: five.sentenc.es
Paul D. Fernhout
Thanks for the replies. The links I included show the printing process:
>> >> "Solar Panel Printing Press"
>> >> http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/193
>> >> "Awesome Video of Solar Printing Press in Action "
>> >> http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/796
>> >> Those references are two years old.
Well, it won't be the same price at the start, but ultimately, there is not
a huge reason it will be enormously different in the long run. For example,
paper is often wood pulp, and trees are essentially solar collectors. How
cheap in a head of lettuce? That has probably a meter of surface area. So,
there is not a huge difference in concept from printing solar panels and
printing newspapers.
Granted, we need to mine some materials for ink, and that takes energy --
but the payback period on energy for thin film solar panels is less that one
year out of a thirty year or more lifetime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Solar_cells_and_energy_payback
And this is a number that continues to drop, meaning it takes less and less
time for a solar panel to produce the energy used to make it.
I don't know about your references to "they" or "greed"?
To sell things, you need a market. The market for solar panels is expanding
exponentially as the price drops and the quality in various ways improves.
What I am saying is that there are straightforward technical solutions to
the problems of oil use (pollution, security, political, etc.). We already
have a similar scale infrastructure in place for printing newspapers. Given
that, the gloomsterism of many in the Peak Oil camp is harmful, and is
actively harming our chances for abundance.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Chris Watkins wrote:
> Paul,
>
> Could you show us where printing solar cells is equivalent to printing
> newspaper?
>
> 1. Last I heard the technology was a promising one but still in the lab
> 2. It almost certainly won't be the same price as newspaper, esp in the
> beginning
> 3. If they could do it this easily, they could make more money from solar
Kevin Carson
> Well, it won't be the same price at the start, but ultimately, there is not
> a huge reason it will be enormously different in the long run. For example,
> paper is often wood pulp, and trees are essentially solar collectors. How
> cheap in a head of lettuce? That has probably a meter of surface area. So,
> there is not a huge difference in concept from printing solar panels and
> printing newspapers.
Well, yeah, unless the newspapers convert to printing via biomickry,
which would require (to say the least) an enormous investment in new
processes and require significant capital outlay, there really is a
huge difference in concept. Growing solar panels like lettuce leaves
may be feasible at some point, but I don't see why a newspaper
publisher in particular should be blamed for not doing it.
--
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
Paul D. Fernhout
> On 8/24/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfer...@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, it won't be the same price at the start, but ultimately, there is not
>> a huge reason it will be enormously different in the long run. For example,
>> paper is often wood pulp, and trees are essentially solar collectors. How
>> cheap in a head of lettuce? That has probably a meter of surface area. So,
>> there is not a huge difference in concept from printing solar panels and
>> printing newspapers.
>
> Well, yeah, unless the newspapers convert to printing via biomickry,
> which would require (to say the least) an enormous investment in new
> processes and require significant capital outlay, there really is a
> huge difference in concept. Growing solar panels like lettuce leaves
> may be feasible at some point, but I don't see why a newspaper
> publisher in particular should be blamed for not doing it.
>
I must not be effectively communicating my points.
My major point is to show the irony of newspaper publishers publishing
articles about how we can't possibly save ourselves from the peril of Peak
Oil when the newspaper industry is of the same order of magnitude as an
enterprise that could do move us to all solar power in a few years. :-)
I am talking physical orders of magnitude here, not specific production
plans. The reason to understand these approximate calculations is to ground
discussion about energy abundance in real numbers. The basic numbers are
that our entire civilization uses about 16,000,000,000,000 watts of
electricity-equivalent, and a one meter solar panel at 10% produces about
100 watts. So, you would need about 160 billion such panels if the sun
shined all the time, but since it does not, with night and bad weather, you
need about six times that number of panels. Of course, there are many ways
to produce energy (especially heat energy) and many ways to save energy. So,
in practice my calculations are very conservative, as we don't need that
many solar panels.
What is important to understand about printing thin film solar panels is
that the entire solar panel industry will likely be smaller than today's
newspaper publishing industry. And we have the technology now to build that
industry, and conveniently, there are already a lot of people out there who
know how to run high speed printing presses.
Likewise, what is important to understand about lettuce being a solar
collector is, it shows that physically you don't need much material to do
that. So, it is completely plausible that solar panels won't take much
resources to make, and again, thin film solar panels require just one
percent of the photo-conversion of older-style crystalline solar panels.
I'm going to forward another note on this with some more details.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Chris Watkins
Paul,
Well, it won't be the same price at the start, but ultimately, there is not
a huge reason it will be enormously different in the long run. For example,
paper is often wood pulp, and trees are essentially solar collectors. How
cheap in a head of lettuce? That has probably a meter of surface area. So,
there is not a huge difference in concept from printing solar panels and
printing newspapers.
My major point is to show the irony of newspaper publishers publishing
articles about how we can't possibly save ourselves from the peril of Peak
Oil when the newspaper industry is of the same order of magnitude as an
enterprise that could do move us to all solar power in a few years. :-)
This is an excellent point (even if I don't accept your reasoning re printing). The actual scale of the changes needed are quite manageable compared to the activities and industries in modern society.
Paul D. Fernhout
>> Well, it won't be the same price at the start, but ultimately, there is not
>> a huge reason it will be enormously different in the long run. For example,
>> paper is often wood pulp, and trees are essentially solar collectors. How
>> cheap in a head of lettuce? That has probably a meter of surface area. So,
>> there is not a huge difference in concept from printing solar panels and
>> printing newspapers.
>
> Newspapers are optimized for minimal cost, and the ink doesn't have to do
> anything fancy like produce electricity. It looks to me like you're making
> enormous leaps in reasoning.
Here is why it is not such a big leap.
First off, people like Nanosolar are printing solar panels now for wholesale
purchase, so it works. We are only talking about cost, not possibility.
"Nanosolar: Power to the people"
http://www.enn.com/energy/article/24430
"The solar cells are produced by a solar printing press of sorts rolling out
these aptly named PowerSheets rapidly and cheaply. The machines apply a
layer of solar-absorbing nano-ink onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil
reducing production costs to a mere tenth of current solar panels and at a
rate of several hundred feet per minute."
When you are using a modern bitmapped printer like in a laser printer, or
now a 3D printer, the complexity of what you are printing no longer matters.
This is an enormous difference from doing manual processes where every extra
bit of detail means more manual work and so more cost. Such a print head is
part of the Nanosolar presses.
The major determinant of how long something takes to produce with modern
desktop printing is how fast you can move the print head past the work
surface. (And Nanosolar and similar systems essentially are like huge
desktop printers.) Whether you print a black square or a green triangle or a
multi-colored spiral, it takes pretty much the same amount of time. And it
is not very much easier for the machine to do it one way or the other. The
major variable issue is often something like how much ink or toner you use.
Granted, some printers may be able to skip faster over areas they print
nothing at all.
I know a lot of newspaper presses may work differently in some ways, but
they still basically move a material past a printing plate. Much of the
hassle of running them has to do with keeping them supplied with materials
and making sure the material does not tear or get misaligned or cut wrong.
So, operating a solar cell printer or a newspaper printer is going to have a
lot of similarities.
Incidentally, that's one interesting thing about 3D printing, it generally
costs the same in materials and time to make a complex shape with extra fine
detail as to make a course shape (if they weigh the same and have roughly
the same dimensions). Gradually, designers are realizing this.
On cost of materials, if I go into a big box store and buy a gallon of water
in a jug, it might cost me US$2 or US$3. When I buy a gallon of paint, it
might cost US$20. That is ten times more, but, when you consider all the
other costs in my time and other expenses to go to the store and get a
gallon of something, the cost may not really matter as much as you'd think
(45 minutes drive to the store, twenty minutes in the store and checkout
line, 45 minutes home, then actually using the water or the paint, and
maintaining a climate controlled place to do something with the liquid,
etc.). Naturally, when you get stuff by the truckload the cost profile will
change. I don't know the relative cost of the ink vs. the alumninum foil in
the panels vs. labor cost vs. patent cost vs. building cost vs. press cost.
But clearly, there are several potential costs involved other than ink.
Anyway, a big issue is that compared to the value of producing the solar
panels, and the time to do everything else involved, having more expensive
ink may not matter. It's a liquid. It gets put in a container. It flows
through tubes in a printhead. It is basically the same in that sense.
Note that Nanosolar claims to sell at panels at about US$1 a watt, or about
US$100 a square meter (maybe a bit more per meter if their efficiency is
greater than 10%).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar
Newspapers are heavily advertising-subsidized, so the cost for producing a
daily NY Times might be (guessing) US$5 (if the newsstand price is about
US$2). (These are all guesses; I don't know much about newspaper costs,
maybe they are a bunch lower for printing; this sounds too high.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times
I don't know for sure how many square meters a daily NY Times is. Let me
guess it is 5 square meters of surface area, so $1 per square meter. This
makes a newspaper about one one-hundredth the cost of printing solar panels.
However, you expect the solar panel to last thirty or more years, but most
people throw away (or recycle) the newspaper after one day.
Just for amusement, the list price of subscribing to home delivery of the
NYTimes according to this:
http://www.subscription-offers.com/guide/new-york-times-newsstand/
is about $70 for twelve weeks (with discount etc.). Or about US$280 a year.
For thirty years, ignoring interest, inflation, etc. that would be about
US$8400. At $1 per watt, that would buy you 8400 watts worth of solar power.
That is about enough to power the average home (1.5Kw typically, but times
six for clouds and night), assuming you had a grid-intertie system (so no
cost for batteries) and assuming no costs for mounting or other electrical
stuff (which obviously have costs, sometimes more than the panels). Costs
presumably will continue to drop for solar panels over then next thirty
years, just like they have dropped already many fold -- perhaps even to the
point where in a couple decades solar panels will cost about as much as
cardboard or newspaper. In any case, at current rates, if you decide to stop
reading the New York Times print edition, and instead put the money to
buying solar panels, in thirty years, you won't need to worry about all the
gloomy things the NYTimes writes articles about like Peak Oil, or electrical
shortages, and economic collapse and so on, because you will have enough
solar panels to generate all you home's electricity. :-)
I know, there is a lot of holes in that argument (people use much more power
than home electric considering industry, if society collapses your house may
get looted or burned down, you still need to eat and drive a car, and so
on). My point is though, look how cheap solar is right now for your house
(at least, the panel part itself) -- the cost of thirty years of a NY Times
subscription -- and just a tiny fraction of a mortgage payment over that
time. And it is getting cheaper. So, real solutions exist right now if you
are bothered by the things you read about in the NY Times. The solution is
straightforward -- stop reading the times and buy solar panels with the
money. :-)
And, speculating soon, you will be able to print your own solar panels at
home from your own 3D printer. :-) And you might get your first solar panels
and 3D printer as a gift from a relative or neighbor who printed them out on
their 3D printer powered by their solar panels. (You'll download designs for
all these things from the internet someday, too.) And the ink and such might
come from processing local dirt and rotten heads of lettuce in another
device you print out. We can't do than now though, so that is speculation.
But it would seem like someday we probably could. In any case, for now, we
can have solar power printers in every major city getting materials from
conventional mining and conventional processing, the same as we do now with
local newspapers (what are left of them).
>> My major point is to show the irony of newspaper publishers publishing
>> articles about how we can't possibly save ourselves from the peril of Peak
>> Oil when the newspaper industry is of the same order of magnitude as an
>> enterprise that could do move us to all solar power in a few years. :-)
>>
>
> This is an excellent point (even if I don't accept your reasoning re
> printing). The actual scale of the changes needed are quite manageable
> compared to the activities and industries in modern society.
Thanks.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/