Laws, Principles, Observations

Anything free will be over-utilised.

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EROH- energy return on heat

2021.05.06 – Ian Page This new term was introduced in a Joule paper, proposing a methodology for evaluating the use of various primary fuels for various categories of heating. While it admits that it's a flawed measure, it's better to have some measure! The paper is introductory, and might lead non expert readers to the wrong conclusions, so some way to go, but it led me to a thought on an extension to the slivers series (i.e. take a limited resource, decide what your climate objective is, and develop a series of slivers of applications of increasing effectiveness to establish a strategy for using the limited resource.) (Joule 5 531-550 mar 17 2001) In this case the estimates of the temperature of heat needed for various segments of American and EU industry show that 1/3 to 1/2 of heat needed is at fairly low temperatures (less than 200C) the "boiler "category. This is cost effectively achieved with heat pumps up to around this temperature (higher presumably if it can...
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Element cascade: Aluminum and copper example

  2021.05.24 – Ian Page Is aluminum a real threat to copper? The CHON element cascade is based on the idea that as the MROI of extraction of an element drops, the price you can sell it for reaches a "cap" at which users can't make enough profit from using it to keep their businesses going and are forced to substitute either directly or in more holistic / systemic ways. Many of these substitutions are surprising before the event, and I don’t know how to have a process to identify the specifics, however the general pattern is clear as are the endpoints which are CHON and Aluminum essentially. The concentration of copper ores is dropping in all the major copper mines and is well below 1%. One commentator said that at 0.25% (some are close to that) reserves drop sharply. (There is a proposed new mine in the Congo with what is described as an " eye watering 6% ore quality" but it's not clear if this is real yet even if it is it will be some time before it produce...
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Don’t expect the world economy to resume its prior growth pattern after COVID-19

 2021.05.29 - Ian Page From Gail Tverberg's blog... https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/05/27/dont-expect-the-world-economy-to-resume-its-prior-growth-pattern-after-covid-19/ Ian's main observations ... Peak car peak cement peak coal all look as though they happened 4 years ago. Availability  of various things per person is dropping. Gail sees this as a resource function. Resources reaching the point where cost of production is meeting ability to buy at a price that allows a profit, which we see as an MROI effect.
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