Ask all you want!
I will start with a disclaimer that many of you know already. I am a geologist, an earth scientist. I understand and work in extraction (which is a bad word) of a particular natural resource, Oil & Gas, yes it is two, but we combine them as one because for all practical purposes, they are just two different phase, like Ice and Water. When we talk about natural resources, they are non-renewables mostly, and they are from planet earth. Like it or not, we understand and study the planet earth:) Lot of people often forget that. Lot of people often also forget that we have children too, just like you; and we also expect our children to be alive and thrive, after we are gone from this planet, just like you. So, we the earth scientists, want clean air and clear water, just like you do, and with we due respect, we in fact know how to do it, as opposed to many of you who can only point to the problem and can't provide a solution. That is okay, we don't mind. I can't find a solution to why exactly Neutron Stars have formed, I rely on an Astrophysicist to tell me that! :)
With that background and digression out of the way, let us focus on the current topic. I got the idea of the current post from a comment michealb. He was correctly trying to educate me on people's ability to ask whatever they want, and I shouldn't try and dictate them. He is correct off course. However, I am also a dad of two kids, and they are asking me for all sorts of things all the time. Do I give them all they want? Can I?
That brings me to two Financial and Economic theories: both are very close to my heart.
Scarcity of Resources: The fundamental economic principle of scarcity states that human wants are unlimited, but the resources available to satisfy them are limited. This creates inherent limitations on what can be achieved or acquired.
Social Constraints: Societal norms, laws, and ethical considerations can also limit individual desires and their pursuit. Demanding behavior, especially when it infringes on the rights or well-being of others, can lead to negative consequences.
Above are the current projections of availability of four most common or relevant natural resource for today, in the four most consumption heavy countries: Water, Fossil Fuels, REE (for you TESLA drivers, and green energy folks), and Forests. Without getting into the details, you might observe that the projections are near linear. Yes, their rates are different in different countries, but it is a given that we will have less natural resources (yes both Fossil Fuels and REEs) in 2050 compared to today. People often don't get it. Just because you will drive a Tesla, doesn't mean you consume less natural resources that are non-renewable. In fact, those REEs that you will consume, a lot of them are open-cast mines in some countries where environmental regulations are much less restrictive. Also if you bring more restriction, your cost of that Tesla or that Solar Panel goes up. Full Disclosure: I have roof-top Solar Panel and TESLA powerwall both! :)
My point is, just because you switch from one resource to the other, the problem doesn't disappear. You just have moved it from one box to the other.
This is energy consumption in exajoules (EJ), and again this trend is linear and up:) There is no way that this trend can reverse unless we get hit by a meteor! :) Oh, sorry, 1 exajoule = 10¹⁸ joules. Sorry again, that is about....let me think...
- The energy content of about 170 million barrels of oil.
- The electricity used by about 26 millions of households in a year
Hope this helps:)
Social Constraints
Yes, I can't tell you that you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't say that. Or this proposal can not pass or shouldn't pass. You might have a desire to do certain thing for hive ecosystem and/or SL ecosystem. You also might have positive intent. You really believe that you will do good thing and your project is the right one and is better than that other thing that we are proposing or perhaps we the stakeholders are proposing do nothing! But just because I am saying NO, doesn't make me a bad person, or you saying YES, doesn't make you a good person.
You may have the best intent, but it could be the fact that we ain't have the money! What you say to that?
In social network, Code is NOT the law. Social interactions are the law. There are intangible things and benefits in social network that you can't explain by code. Please consider respecting that. Your social interaction with me does have consequences. You may deny it, or I may overlook it, but it does exist. It may not surface today, but it will surface some other day, trust me, that is social network.
When I read a post like this I think of my mother. She didn't understand geology or astrophysics (neither do I). However, I don't think I ever saw anyone do more with less. If she had a candy bar, she'd break it up into pieces and let it last several days. Something like a paper towel would be anathema to her. She saved water, even when there was lots of water. In a consumer oriented society, she was an anomaly.
Maybe we will still run out of resources, but if we all had my mother's frugal perspective, maybe we could push those projections down the road.
Also, given the graphs you provide, do we really need more people on earth, consuming more resources??? Maybe we should rethink natalist philosophy?
For that reason, your mother is perhaps a more environmentally conscious person than a lot of us. The point never is whether we will run out, because that is a certainty; the point always is when and how long. With better technology and prudent use of natural resources we can certain make it last through my lifetime (I am 49), perhaps to some extent my daughters life-time; but that is about it. At that point in time we would have consumed most of the natural resources of this planet, and we have to look elsewhere. It is highly likely we won't be able to take most of the population, in theory most will perish long before. If we are lucky as a species, there could be a potential future where a very small group of lucky species can leave this planet. However, I see no reason to hope or celebrate that outcome, even if that is a distant possibility.
There is no magic bullet? No genius (yet to be born) who will think of a way to make energy out of waste? Was this always our destiny, that we are so clever, so prolific that we consume resources of the earth until we are extinct?
all of that is already happening, and all of that is taken into account. We also assume the goodness in people and stable benevolent government :) :) I mean the best case social hypothesis is assumed and yet it is very hard to see beyond say 2070 :)
Mind you, extinction for a natural historian like me is like turning a page of a book.
In fact a proper mass extinction, where 95% of the planet's life goes dead is a great scenario for a long term sustainability of the planet. It is the best case scenario from a point of view of a geologist :) but I didn't want to say it earlier.
You do know mass extinctions are common in the geologic past. Those are the 'magic bullet' you talk about.
I guess it's sort of like our own death. We know about it every day of our lives, and yet, we get up in the morning.
yes, we call it natural instinct, or survival :)
That Darwin guy knew something! :)
Since your in the oil/gas extraction business. What are your thoughts on using old gas wells no longer feasible to extract from. To then to power generators to mine with ASICs? Seems like a good use of abandoned wells to me.
Solo, thank you for the comment and curiosity. I can potentially write a post explaining that.
This has been suggested. There are startups in Austin who did a pilot project in the Permian Basin Texas. It is not very successful. Let me explain why:
Re-entering existing wells are often hazardous compared to drilling a new one. This is because no one exactly knows why the well was abandoned and if there are any damage zones that could be hazardous for an re-entry. This problem can be mitigated and we frequently re-enter existing wells, but you have to pay for it and it’s specialized and costly.
A well is abandoned because it was likely depleted, so finding additional hydrocarbons in the same well along the same horizon or “bench” is unlikely.
Thank you for explaining the situation of it. I did not think of damaged wells and how those could be an issue while trying to reuse them.
I wrote a post on the topic a month ago, I have been seeing it come up every few years in discussion.
https://peakd.com/bitcoin/@solominer/using-old-natural-gas-wells-to-power-cryptocurrency-miners
Another thing mentioned in the post I go into a little bit is recapturing the flare gas to run generators as well, that way the flare gas is put to use when it leaves the wells.
flare gas is easier, because you have already got it out of the ground and you are flaring it because there is no infrastructure of gas pipelines to transport it. Pipelines are expensive and requires complicated permitting and therefore politically challenged.
Two problems here, both solvable:
Collect the flare gas with a gas pipeline
Transport all that gas to a gas turbine
As you can see both are investment heavy before you even produce a single kilowatt of electricity. The economics of this at any kind of small project scale is negative. So unless you like to burn a lot of cash, there is no point of doing this.
Great post! Sorry I missed it. I saw that you are talking about modular generators. The cost structure of those thing is difficult to scale and you will run into operational issues quickly.
You wrote this above in your post, and this is a key challenge. Just writing this sentence is probably an understatement. Currently in the US, this is the biggest challenge we face. Permitting, and there are numerous layers, is extremely complicated and costly. The politics of the whole situation is mind boggling to say the least!
In the intro you sounded like my father in law, as he is also a geologist. Which brings me to the question about your thoughts on natural energy? Things such as wind farms and solar panels.
Wind and solar are okay for domestic consumption. Texas has some of the largest wind farms in the west, generating 55% of the total wind energy delivered in the US. Solar is also popular for domestic usage in the south. Trouble is, you can’t fly a commercial airplane with those, not even a 18 wheeler commercially. Energy density is very low on those products.
Thank you, and your answer made sense due to the lack of energy density for planes and trucks. I suppose that they will all be changed over time to run on batteries.
Now here is another question for you. We have been mining and burning billions of tons of coal and oil over time, and surely the weight loss must have an effect on the planet's speed?
!BEER
I won't laugh but will try to give you an objective answer.
Removing mass from beneath the Earth’s surface (like mining coal or extracting oil) and redistributing it—especially by burning it and releasing it into the atmosphere— have negligible effect on mass and motion of the planet.
The total mass of fossil fuels extracted annually (around 14 billion tonnes) is only a fraction of the mass involved in something like lake Mead as an example. Water is heavy. Lake Mead holds ~28.9 million acre-ft of water that is ~35.7 trillion gallons = 135 billion cubic meters = 135 Billion Tonnes!!
So by some magic if you make Lake Mead disappear, not evaporate, just making that 135 Billion Tonnes disappear, that will slow down the rotation of earth about 0.06 microseconds. I hope you got the perspective :)
I am glad that you did not laugh, now I know how silly my fears are. I certainly get the perspective :)
Please, I don't need the 'beer' :)
I believe all those things at hive 'beer', 'pizza', "LOL" ,,,,,,,,,,all these are spam at hive. We should get rid of them immediately. They don't do anything but to just create fake traffic of the chain.
I have them muted.
Oh? I have always had the thought to rather give people tokens, as they have better value than a few cents on a reply. Now I am really confused, but in my stead, I can blame it on my age :)
Sorry if I offended you.
You didn't offend me at all. Just letting you know.
Thank you, and I will look into it.
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Yesterday I spent the night in an empty apartment. Where I grew up since the late 1970s. I opened my old books on various topics and I was attracted by the preface to one book - there are now 4 billion people on Earth. I'm not even 50 yet, and there are already 8 billion people on earth, and most of them have a better life than they did in the 1970s. We consume too many resources.
Yes. 4 to 8 billion is a 2X jump.
You made an important point, with all things considered, arguably the quality of life globally is probably better today during and after the 2X jump. So mankind have after to sustain it.
Trouble is population jump is in GP.
So all else being equal next time you will look at this corner of this apartment world population will be 16 Billion! Now just thinking about it I am getting very nervous. Statistically my math says there is a nonzero possibility that you and I won’t be here if/when that happens! And yet that day could be out there.
Most scientists agree that we don’t have resources to get there, so population growth will have to slow down long before that.
I have no way of predicting if this projection will be true or not. But that 10 billion number by 2050 makes me very nervous.
You touch on a few good points here in your write up.
However, code is law. Just like law is law. Law is a social construct, it's the majority opinion and the current state of things. Whether it's the double life sentence for building the silk road, buying non-voting stake in STEEM, or the DAO hack that split ETH from ETC... what changed was the law, some people stayed on STEEM, some people stayed on Ethereum Classic. But more people voted for ETH, HIVE, and Trump who pardoned Ross Ulbricht.
Law is the social construct. On Hive the witnesses we elect run the code, and that is the law.
Ignorantia juris non excusat.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. That applies just as much to thermodynamics as to social constructs.
You seem to grasp this point very well when applied to energy... it barely matters what somebody chooses to do. The energy demand will drive prices, and those prices will drive pit mines and deforestation in places with fewer regulations. Hive is a market too, one you're actively trying to attract business to. Are we building a top down dictatorship, or a free trade zone to drive growth? Would you rather live in North or South Korea?
This isn't the whole picture though. Ethereum first broke $2000 in April of 2021. It Broke $2000 again in May of 2025 (last month). Hive was in the 20 cent range on it's first day, and it's still there today more than 5 years later. We have incredibly stable prices.
However, our DHF has grown in that time from $1M to $23.5M. At our current spending levels it will continue to grow the rest of your natural life. We certainly have the money to spend more.
The real question is, can we attract the right developers to spend it on. Can we market the chain well enough to at least keep our price above 20 cents? Can we drive adoption and bring people to Hive?
Framed in this reality the DHF should weight it's proposals as: Will a proposal drive an equal or greater amount of buy pressure to our market?
Solana has gone from 95 cent to $145 during Hive's lifetime. I wonder if it's because they have too many DEXs, too many NFT marketplaces... certainly lacking a few things I want to build.
DHF votes have consequences... a project that might bring something to Hive may have an easier to getting funded at a DAO on another chain. That project could make hive a $1 or a $100 coin.
I invite everyone to look at the DHF 3 year projections, and runway estimates at dlux.io's proposal page
I also invite comments and considerations to a DHF vote weighting hardfork.
Often times when you are too close to something you lose focus.
You seem to be hung up with something that you enjoy: code is law. Perhaps you are missing the point that half the educated population of the world probably don’t know what Ethereum is :)
I think I am not even going to ask them about hive :) because they will correctly answer that’s where bees live.
This world will run fine without BTC or Ethereum. Wake up my friend. :)
None of this matters.
ignorantia juris neminem excusat
Ignorance of reality is not an excuse either:)
I am not a geologist or energy specialist, at least not this type of energy! I understand that living beings' energy is produced in a beautiful way, using sugar and oxygen essentially! Anyways, what you mention, I read something similar some other times using electricity power doesn't look like the best way, especially if you take this electricity from an outlet plug that comes from a power plant that burns a fossil fuel.
So my question is, do you see a future in hydrogen fuel? Can it fix this problem?
No. I don't see any future in hydrogen. This is simply because it doesn't have enough energy density with current and projected (50 years) technology.
Well, so we are still looking for a better way :)
Our current technology is primitive at best, arcane in galaxy standards, at worst :)
I listed one day, a physicist talking about nuclear fusion is the answer for our energy problems lol.
Nuclear fusion does have high energy density, very high in fact. However, that is the end of the good news. It is still a natural resource and rare. You still need to mine the mineral and there is a finite amount left.
It makes sense. But also it will take time to manage this type of method, maybe we will extract from other sources in the universe when the time arrives?
Oh man, I wish I could give this post 200%. But that code law doesn't allow that 😝
I was very dogmatic starting to study environmental sciences. Well, on anything. But after a while living outside of the pampered world of an industrialized country, and within what is considered "3rd world" that relied and relies heavily on resource extraction, relativity struck me.
Ecuador has a very interesting history of (miss-)managing their resources, and I'll most likely write an article about it, as I'm within the Intag Valley right now, where the fight against extraction and FOR (yes, one for the places where they came up with not only one alternative, but several options!) sustainable management of the existing riches. But in a nutshell - the former government, very populist-leftist, pushed a lot of superficially great projects while the oil price was high and they had a huge influx of money. Education, "Buen Vivir" as constitution, civil rights, infrastructure, everything was booming in a good way - except for economic sustainability.
Now, many of those universities lie in scrambles. Yachay was never completed, due to corruption and miss-management. Many fancy words, but as soon as the oil price dropped and the money influx stopped, reality hit. And, as always, budget cuts first hit culture, than education. The sustainable mindset never had a chance to establish itself.
About the cars: It is often forgotten that "regular" cars also need a lot of other resources besides gas. All those metals and wires and stuff doesn't appear out of thin air, but same as REE, they come out of many questionable sources. The positive part about most electric vehicle research is that they're now focusing heavily on being recyclable. You can't really recycle burned gasoline.
All resources can be managed sustainably. It depends on what a culture wants and needs. And how much value driven resistance they can put up against a system with increasingly centralized power structures.
What you describe in Ecuador (and this is true elsewhere too) is not really an environmental problem, but rather a people problem. It is always a human problem. We as a species are highly problematic and lot of our issues are human-made.
Correct, that would be my argument. Oil/gas/copper and such aren't the problem, it's the way we (ab)use them, rely on them without any foresight nor long term thinking. That there's always greed in the way. More money to be made if maintenance is delayed. Cheaper to superficially clean the oil after a spill, and pay a symbolic fine.
The Intag Valley proposes eco-turism, agriculture of incredibly good coffee and other products, fascinating geology (I took a picture just for you), biodiversity and other things that provide intrinsic and deep value - but in a world of money, it's a more important to destroy a large part of it for a quick gain. Because the "responsible mining" might work in theory, but in a corrupt society, it does not. If it was to pay for education, an investment into the future so the generations after us won't have to destroy anything ever again - I'd understand the idea of sacrifice. But not like it is.
this is actually a very well written piece of excellent data about the really important issues and limitations of our planet. At one point I want to disagree with you: I believe you are too harsh to yourself. Having roof top PV and a powerwall is already a lot you can do as a consumer. And yes, it may be, that humanity will use every single drop of fossil fuels or any pound of raw material left in the soil, but we are also at a fast pace in regards to technology and clean technology development that could really be a game changer. And the current small use of renewable energy and EV (there is now a multitude of studies that shows that EV and renewable energy - looking at the total life-cycle - are already, using the current technology, environmentally better than their fossil counterparts) could help us get that extra time we need for solid state super batteries or even fusion power.
I love your optimism. World needs it for sure! I really mean, and this is not a snark.
The human touch cannot be replaced by anything, no code, no AI, no artificial robots...It is always easy to ask, the difficulty lies in answering.
Yes. I have a friend here who codes and thinks believes code is the law. He does have a valid argument. It’s not easy to break the code. For example you upvoted this post using your voting power. Even if you want you can’t vote it with a $100 upvote or downvote. Laws or Codes built-in prevents you to do that.
But yet, this same friend is trying to get his proposal funded. That requires a human interaction where he is struggling. If this was coded and part of the law, he didn’t require my vote or anyone’s vote to get his proposal funded. It would have been part of the law :)
Sadly that is not the case for @disregardfiat
I have decided not to vote for his proposal because
I don’t know what it does for me
I can
I also challenge him to code this part so that he doesn’t have to ask my permission for this mundane thing
It can be the code or law that we all automatically vote to his proposal :)
Problem solved! ;)
So this isn't an AMA post? :) I was going to ask what your opinion is on nuclear power. That's still a pretty finite resource isn't it? I think it has a lot of potential if they can figure out how to keep getting it safer and safer.
You can always ask :)
Yes nuclear is a viable technology, in fact much more viable than solar, but with higher containment risk. It is very unforgiving if a disaster happens. You already know this.
Thank! Yeah, some of the new designs are supposed to be meltdown proof and that would be cool if they could actually pull it off. There's still the issue of whatever is left over, but maybe newer models and technology will be more efficient.
It is not just that. You still have to mine the raw mineral and they are rare, very rare. There is a finite amount of them present in this planet as well. We are back to square one :)
It would seem so.
Unless you switch to Nuclear Power :) You have other issues then like Chernobyl ;)
Not only that, all nuclear minerals are finite natural resources too.
Also they need to me mined and they are very rare.
The problem remains.
Isn't the amount of energy that can be produced from Nuclear is a lot more than Oil and Gas combined? Also, it is good to use all sources of energy as your charts illustrate by going down meaning you have more overall energy if you utilize multiple sources of energy.
As far as asking you, I wonder if you think Peak Oil theory is true or is it false?
This is an easy plot for me to generate. You can get the data from EIA which I trust. You can see the covid there obviously. You can also see that we made a higher high, which is great for business. However, the point always is projecting on the right side! We call it the "hard right edge".
My job is to project the next 25 years!! :) :)
In the previous 25 years we did 75 to 105. If I do linear....very basic. we got to go from 105 to 135 MMBOPD! My palms get really sweaty when I think of 135 MMBOPD. The first question comes to my mind, yes, but at what cost?
PS. you asked a question very close to my heart....I mean I am probably the best person to address the question :)
Also I wanted to include this the official projection, but they only do 1.5 or 2 years :)
Yes, several orders of magnitude more. But uranium’s relative abundance is several more orders of magnitude less in the other direction :)
Yes, we absolutely need all sources of energy.
Yes, as described in the 80s peak oil is false. But that hardly matters today. We can’t make our current production as a plateau for next 10-20-30 years. What we ideally needed to do to keep up with population growth is to increase. It is highly unlikely we can do that.
I'm hoping to see more and bigger Thorium salt reactors. ~4x as common as Uranium... and the fertile isotope is 120x more common than U-235.
I've seen estimates for over 50,000 years of nuclear power there. Uranium might not last us through the century.
Hope is a beautiful thing! We should keep that alive!
Molten salt and the impurities within it often corrode metals, ultimately causing them to crack, weaken, and fail. That will lead to loss of containment issues.
It’s a solvable problem. But world needs to pay for it :)
Good to see earth science knowledge being shared! 🪨 Understanding phases like Oil & Gas helps the in-game resources make sense. 👍
I used to think switching to electric cars or using solar panels was enough to help the planet, but now I realize it's more complicated. You're right — just because we shift from one kind of energy to another doesn't mean we stop using natural resources.
Thank you for your comment!
Would you consider lowering your KE ratio?
Details can be found here
https://peakd.com/hive-180505/@azircon/ke-ratio-a-personal-perspective
Hi there, @azircon..
I'm also a geologist (or at least in the making). It's so nice to meet you! I always feel delighted when I meet fellow geologists.. I believe it's one of the most underrated disciplines out there, especially in this part of the world.
I'm in my final year now and will be done by September. I plan to pursue a Master's degree in exploration geophysics afterward. Perhaps we might have shared interests.
Unrelatedly-related:: I’d really love it if there could be a community for geologists on here. It would be great, don't you think?
It's sooo nice to meet you once again Cratonic Sir 🙌