Spam: OT:Energy content of human labor was: Real Linux Men (was: [SGVLUG]Guns, 4WD...and Linux)

[Emerson, Tom (*IC)]

I have NO idea why your plain-text-without-any-links message got caught
by our corporate spam filter, but it did...

> -----Original Message----- Of David Lawyer
[...]
> 
> To estimate the energy require to make corn ethanol, just put 
> all the facilities and support needed for making ethanol in a 
> small city surrounded by corn farms.  And make a colored 
> fence enclosing this community (and farms) with only one 
> entrance gate to the outside world with no people flow thru 
> the fence or gate.  The only export from this community is 
> ethanol and the imports consist of all goods needed to 
> support the ethanol production and the people who live in the 
> community all of which are directly or indirectly associated 
> with the production of ethanol.  
[...]

Anyway, after retrieving it from the shredder and taking a look at it, I
can't help but think that while this is a novel approach, you're
overlooking something obvious which negates the entire premise, such as
the fact that a "corn ethanol worker" does not spend 100% of his waking
hours producing corn ethanol...

You are also discounting (or actively ignoring) the fact that there
appears to be some self-sufficiency within the community -- the fact
that a "corn ethanol" facility is surrounded by cornfields gives rise to
the possibility that SOME of the corn grown might be diverted to the
local markets and sold [internally] as FOOD for the workers.

> Now for every person in the community who works on the farms 
> or in ethanol production, a few other non-production people 
> will be needed to provide services to people.  There will 
> also need to be spouses and children supported to sustain the 
> population.  Also, retirees from this community will need to 
> be supported as well.  Thus you will need government, 
> teachers, schools, roads, food, clothing, hardware, energy 
> depreciation of infrastructure, etc. (excuse the possible 
> double counting).

Likewise, most, if not all, of this "non-production support" is a bit of
a red herring -- you don't need teachers if you "home school" the
children [because if you take this to the logical extreme, the only
thing the children need to learn is how to be a corn ethanol worker,
because if they learn ANYTHING else, that {knowledge} will naturally be
an "export" from the community, and you've already stated the ONLY
export is corn ethanol...]  

To clarify: if a child learns ANYTHING other than how to produce corn
ethanol, and that knowledge CANNOT be used within the community, then
that becomes a WASTE PRODUCT since you've declared that the only export
from the community is corn ethanol -- the child cannot "leave" the
community and spread this knowledge elsewhere...

You won't need police or government, because the only thing people can
do within this community is produce corn ethanol  (i.e., they cannot be
criminals...)  You've stated this is a "small" community, so roads need
not be anything more than dirt paths [people will walk -- no need for
fancy cars or even bicycles -- those just expend extra energy with no
tangible return...]  OTOH, it could be argued that the energy expended
by pedaling a bike would be less than the energy needed to "walk" to
work and back, but this is only viable if the "total energy needed to
produce and maintain the bicycle" is less than the energy saved by
bicycling instead of walking, and thus we get into a circular death
spiral...

> So for the ethanol production to yield a positive energy 
> return on energy invested, the energy represented by the flow 
> of energy into the enclosed community must be less than the 
> flow of energy out in the form of ethanol.

Heh heh heh -- with this thought in mind, I invite you to join my
sourceforge "project" called "YATSkit" -- though I'm still in the design
and discussion phase, the goal is to produce some classes that can be
used to simulate real-world economic/transport systems.  No reason we
can't include "energy" as part of the model...

> ... just the input energy required to support the production 
> workers.  To support a person in the US with a typical 
> lifestyle requires about 100 times the food calories one 
> eats. ...[snip]...  we now have about 1200-times.  Thus the fuel
energy 
> of a worker producing ethanol or corn is over 1000 times his 
> caloric food energy expended.

Who said the workers in this "community" would be "enjoying a typical
lifestyle"?  After all, the "only export" from this community is corn
ethanol, so any activity that leads to the production of ANYTHING other
than corn ethanol would have to be considered "waste".  [note: this
leaves the possibility of procreation up for debate -- while the end
product is not corn ethanol, what is produced are corn ethanol-workers,
presumably to replace worn out units...]

OTOH, if we do allow the community members the ability to "enjoy a
typical [US] lifestyle", then we have to consider the fact that the
nominal output of the corn ethanol worker is 1/100th of the caloric
input of the worker -- the other 99/100ths are spent on "lifestyle"
activities [such as engaging in pointless debates via e-mail...]