Limits to Growth and Mineral ResourcesUgo Bardi

University of Florence, Department of Earth SciencesThe Club of Rome

You can solve a problem, but you cannot solve a change

(especially if it is an irreversible change)

Diamond mine of Mir, Siberia

"The Hope Diamond - SIA" by Unknown - http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_8819. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Hope_Diamond_-_SIA.jpg#/media/File:The_Hope_Diamond_-_SIA.jpg

Rosia Montana gold mine, Romania

Gold extraction costs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Native_gold_nuggets.jpg

Depletion: as you eat the cake, it becomes less and less tasty

Net Energy: the concept of EROEI

Hall and Day, 2009

EROEI

Image from “Fantazzini et al, 2011http://energyskeptic.com/2015/global-oil-risks-in-the-early-21st-century-energy-policy-2011/financialsense.org”

Source: Ron Patterson: peak oil barrelhttp://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/World2.jpg

Crude oil + condensate

World oil production

Dati ASPO (2008)

The Limits to Growth, 1972

World3 calculations 2004

Irreversibility: once you eat the cake, you don't have it any more

Solar energy arriving to the earth surface 87,000 TW

Human generated primary energy from fossil fuels 15 TW

Total greenhouse forcing 1500 TW

Global warming: a few numbers

100 + 1 kW heaters per person

Archer et al. 2005

Irreversibility: persistence of CO2 in atmosphere

Unpropaganda: the other side of propaganda

Reversibility: With energy, almost any feat is possible....... W.S. Jevons

Synthetic diamonds

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Energiewende

Energy in truth stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities.... With energy almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of early times.

William Stanley Jevons, 1866

Sgouridis, Bardi, Csala, http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.06832

The great sustainable transition

As a man himself sows, so he himself reaps... The fruit is of the same quality as the action.

—Mahabharata, xii.291.22

Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Corinthians 9:6

The Sower's Strategy:Using today's Energy for the energy of tomorrow

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Substituting, recycling, reusing.....