The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy 
asked by bulldogs on November 10, 2006 8:19 AM
A myth-shattering book that explains why energy is not scarce, why the price of energy doesn't matter very much, and why "waste" of energy is both necessary and desirable.
The sheer volume of talk about energy, energy prices, and energy policy on both sides of the political aisle suggests that we must know something about these subjects. But according to Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, the things we think we know are mostly myths. In The Bottomless Well, Huber and Mills show how a better understanding of energy will radically change our views and policies on a number of very controversial issues.
Writing in take-no-prisoners, urgently compelling prose, Huber and Mills explain why demand for energy will never go down, why most of what we think of as "energy waste" actually benefits us; why more efficient cars, engines, and bulbs will never lower demand, and why energy supply is infinite. In the automotive sector, gas prices matter less and less, and hybrid engines will most likely lead us to cars propelled by the coal-fired grid. As for the much-maligned power grid itself, it's the worst system we could have except for all the proposed alternatives. Expanding energy supplies mean higher productivity, more jobs, and a growing GDP. Across the board, energy isn't the problem, energy is the solution.
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The title of this book is a good summery of their views. Most if not all of what the authors have to say is true and much of it interesting. They talk a lot about computers and how they will make cars more efficient and even about one author's theory about how life began. They are very optimistic about science finding ways to handle our energy needs without much change in our lifestyle or the health of our economy. However if you want to know something about how much oil is left, what are the prospects for specific alternative energy sources and how global warming will impact the trade offs I suggest you go to another source. The best I have found is: ENERGY AT THE CROSSROADS by Vaclav Smil. He is an academic who has studied energy issues for 40 years. It is a tougher read because it has a lot more pertinent science and information. He is not given to prediction because he has seen so many fail but he does address the issues in a thoughtful and nuanced way.
reviewed by linda on November 20, 2006 3:43 PM
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Huber and Mills tell a happy and triumphant story in The Bottomless Well. Our energy future is secure. "Energy technology is now poised to evolve faster than at any time before in human history." Don't worry about the details, the markets will work it all out (markets never fail). The story is cast as a battle between order and chaos, life and death. It is a "chronicle of humanity's struggle against the second law of thermodynamics, not in theory but in the real world . . . It is a story of ingenious valves and gates that flip open and closed, with just the right timing, to push energy up the thermodynamic hill, to structure our environment, and to add order to our lives." xxix. Capitalists are on the side of order. Ghandi and government regulators are on the side of chaos.
In order to follow the story, the reader must grasp a number of basics.
1) "Raw energy is nothing; context and order are everything." 54.
2) "Order is life and chaos is death." 153.
3) "The more energy we capture and put to use, the more readily we will capture still more." 5.
4) "We use well-ordered energy to distance ourselves from chaos." 53.
5) "It is by throwing [low-grade] energy overboard that we maintain and increase the [high-grade power and therefore the] order of our existence." 44.
6) "Massive amounts of low-grade energy are consumed to deliver relatively tiny amounts of high-grade power." 49.
7) "Efficiency increases consumption." 123.
8) "Heat - chaos - is where ordered power ends up when the order dissipates . . . If it isn't effectively dissipated, heat takes microprocessors, sensors, and engines to the grave with it. Heat is the insidious enemy of valves, seals, capacitors, and logic." 146.
So, according to our authors, low-grade energy is converted to high-grade power, high-grade power creates order and order defeats chaos. Why believe the authors? How do we know that order prevails? The authors invite the reader to be awed by what technologically super-charged power can do. For example: "pump up millimeter-wave power high enough and it can cook things, or people, or hostile microorganisms, at quite a distance." 148. "It takes far fewer people to fight and direct wars today than it did even less than a decade ago, because the speed and power of the front-line soldier had been so greatly amplified; our distant wars are now fought, once again, by a few, a happy few, a band of brothers, while the rest of us lie a-bed, watching their progress on Fox." 149.
If there is anyone other than the authors (perhaps a Fox viewer or two) who believe there are a "happy few, a band of brothers" creating order and defeating chaos in Iraq, thanks to our awesome ability to "cook people from a distance," then perhaps the authors have made their case. Those who see the facts otherwise, however, may wonder what planet the authors are talking about. It seems the authors mistook their happy dream of order for reality. Though the Iraq reality check did not register with them, you would have thought any number of environmental reality checks would have registered. Not so. "The logic [they say] of fuel-retrieving machines has advanced much faster than the fuels have retreated - we keep getting closer to the receding horizon. Environmental concerns are a separate matter, important in their own right. But the issue of exhaustion is resolved. Energy supplies are - for all practical purposes - infinite." 181. In other words, don't worry about the chaos, the dumping of heat - "the insidious enemy of valves, seals, capacitors, and logic" -- into the distant reaches of the planet. The oceans and sky are big enough to take it. Dump away. Indeed, "we [the happy few] use well-ordered energy to distance ourselves from [environmental] chaos [and evil doers]."
One could conclude that the authors are a couple of happy, delusional guys (neo-cons maybe). The truth is, however, that Huber, at least, is probably more angry than happy. He despises environmentalists, who, he believes, have cooked up more trouble and hoaxes than the devil himself. Environmental concerns exist largely in the minds of weak-headed liberals. (See Huber's book Hard Green).
In spite of its faults, this book is well worth the read. The authors have an interesting perspective. They write well. At their best, they tell a grand tale and present a sometimes reasoned challenge to the gloomy Malthusians. Many of the basics listed above are defensible, and all of them are worth thinking about. At their worst, the authors treat you to science fiction.
In order to follow the story, the reader must grasp a number of basics.
1) "Raw energy is nothing; context and order are everything." 54.
2) "Order is life and chaos is death." 153.
3) "The more energy we capture and put to use, the more readily we will capture still more." 5.
4) "We use well-ordered energy to distance ourselves from chaos." 53.
5) "It is by throwing [low-grade] energy overboard that we maintain and increase the [high-grade power and therefore the] order of our existence." 44.
6) "Massive amounts of low-grade energy are consumed to deliver relatively tiny amounts of high-grade power." 49.
7) "Efficiency increases consumption." 123.
8) "Heat - chaos - is where ordered power ends up when the order dissipates . . . If it isn't effectively dissipated, heat takes microprocessors, sensors, and engines to the grave with it. Heat is the insidious enemy of valves, seals, capacitors, and logic." 146.
So, according to our authors, low-grade energy is converted to high-grade power, high-grade power creates order and order defeats chaos. Why believe the authors? How do we know that order prevails? The authors invite the reader to be awed by what technologically super-charged power can do. For example: "pump up millimeter-wave power high enough and it can cook things, or people, or hostile microorganisms, at quite a distance." 148. "It takes far fewer people to fight and direct wars today than it did even less than a decade ago, because the speed and power of the front-line soldier had been so greatly amplified; our distant wars are now fought, once again, by a few, a happy few, a band of brothers, while the rest of us lie a-bed, watching their progress on Fox." 149.
If there is anyone other than the authors (perhaps a Fox viewer or two) who believe there are a "happy few, a band of brothers" creating order and defeating chaos in Iraq, thanks to our awesome ability to "cook people from a distance," then perhaps the authors have made their case. Those who see the facts otherwise, however, may wonder what planet the authors are talking about. It seems the authors mistook their happy dream of order for reality. Though the Iraq reality check did not register with them, you would have thought any number of environmental reality checks would have registered. Not so. "The logic [they say] of fuel-retrieving machines has advanced much faster than the fuels have retreated - we keep getting closer to the receding horizon. Environmental concerns are a separate matter, important in their own right. But the issue of exhaustion is resolved. Energy supplies are - for all practical purposes - infinite." 181. In other words, don't worry about the chaos, the dumping of heat - "the insidious enemy of valves, seals, capacitors, and logic" -- into the distant reaches of the planet. The oceans and sky are big enough to take it. Dump away. Indeed, "we [the happy few] use well-ordered energy to distance ourselves from [environmental] chaos [and evil doers]."
One could conclude that the authors are a couple of happy, delusional guys (neo-cons maybe). The truth is, however, that Huber, at least, is probably more angry than happy. He despises environmentalists, who, he believes, have cooked up more trouble and hoaxes than the devil himself. Environmental concerns exist largely in the minds of weak-headed liberals. (See Huber's book Hard Green).
In spite of its faults, this book is well worth the read. The authors have an interesting perspective. They write well. At their best, they tell a grand tale and present a sometimes reasoned challenge to the gloomy Malthusians. Many of the basics listed above are defensible, and all of them are worth thinking about. At their worst, the authors treat you to science fiction.
reviewed by dannyboy on November 21, 2006 3:37 AM
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A character in the recent dystopian science fiction film The Island works all day injecting fluids into wires that disappear into the wall next to him. He is never told "where these wires go," and his curiousity to find out eats away at him. Without this crucial contextual knowledge, his understanding of his own role in the system is facile.
I have always felt this way about energy. I make all of my energy and resource consumption decisions on the basis of the folk wisdom that certain choices are good for the environment and the long term well-being of mankind. But since I don't know "where the wires go" my decisions are...shall we say..."faith-based."
This book traces our wires back to the source. It is by no means exhaustive, but as a brief popular history of energy, it is a fantastic book. The authors not only tell the story of energy since what they have so catchily dubbed the "carbohydrate economy" of the pre-industrial age, they also place this history in the context of physical law.
There are, however, two serious problems with this book, and they are closely related. First, like all of Peter Huber's books, it is extremely divisive. The authors don't just disprove environmentalist misconceptions, they RIDICULE them. In book after book, Huber consistently overplays his hand, happy to alienate potential converts so long as it pleased the choir. Like Nietzsche or Richard Posner, his good points are buried in cavalier sarcasm.
The second problem is that they fail to prove their most (jaw-droppingly) provocative theses (paraphrasing): 1) that waste is virtuous and 2) that we will never run out of energy. They make a compelling case that using energy to extract energy is expanding the practically-available supply. They also demonstrate that the price of fuel in decreasingly significant to the price of end-user energy. But it doesn't follow from either of these that waste is a good thing. Insignificant, MAYBE, but not virtuous. Huber would undoubtedly respond that he's just being an advocate, providing a counterweight to the grim greens. But the authors accuse environmentalists of Malthusian doom-saying even as they charge into this Panglossian optimism. For a nitpicking critic like Huber, this is a fatal flaw. He even concedes as much at one point, stating something to the effect that "if you wanna get all technical about it" the Second Law of Thermodynamics beats us all in the long run.
For any lesser intellect, this might not be a total cop-out. But the authors invoke the laws of physics as the gold standard of their own analysis. Dismissing these laws as technicalities whenever they don't fit the book's subtitle inflates the claims the authors can plausibly make and therefore (presumably) their book sales. Perhaps it was naive of me to hope that this book could tell me why my SUV-driving is a selfless gift to humankind, but I still expected a bit more.
I have always felt this way about energy. I make all of my energy and resource consumption decisions on the basis of the folk wisdom that certain choices are good for the environment and the long term well-being of mankind. But since I don't know "where the wires go" my decisions are...shall we say..."faith-based."
This book traces our wires back to the source. It is by no means exhaustive, but as a brief popular history of energy, it is a fantastic book. The authors not only tell the story of energy since what they have so catchily dubbed the "carbohydrate economy" of the pre-industrial age, they also place this history in the context of physical law.
There are, however, two serious problems with this book, and they are closely related. First, like all of Peter Huber's books, it is extremely divisive. The authors don't just disprove environmentalist misconceptions, they RIDICULE them. In book after book, Huber consistently overplays his hand, happy to alienate potential converts so long as it pleased the choir. Like Nietzsche or Richard Posner, his good points are buried in cavalier sarcasm.
The second problem is that they fail to prove their most (jaw-droppingly) provocative theses (paraphrasing): 1) that waste is virtuous and 2) that we will never run out of energy. They make a compelling case that using energy to extract energy is expanding the practically-available supply. They also demonstrate that the price of fuel in decreasingly significant to the price of end-user energy. But it doesn't follow from either of these that waste is a good thing. Insignificant, MAYBE, but not virtuous. Huber would undoubtedly respond that he's just being an advocate, providing a counterweight to the grim greens. But the authors accuse environmentalists of Malthusian doom-saying even as they charge into this Panglossian optimism. For a nitpicking critic like Huber, this is a fatal flaw. He even concedes as much at one point, stating something to the effect that "if you wanna get all technical about it" the Second Law of Thermodynamics beats us all in the long run.
For any lesser intellect, this might not be a total cop-out. But the authors invoke the laws of physics as the gold standard of their own analysis. Dismissing these laws as technicalities whenever they don't fit the book's subtitle inflates the claims the authors can plausibly make and therefore (presumably) their book sales. Perhaps it was naive of me to hope that this book could tell me why my SUV-driving is a selfless gift to humankind, but I still expected a bit more.
reviewed by bigben on November 25, 2006 2:50 AM