Energy Enters The Matrix

[NOTE: These posts are an ongoing presentation, meant to be read beginning with the earliest and ending with the most recent. If not read in that order, there is a potential loss for the reader in an overall understanding of what is being presented. You have been warned.]

Before I tell you about the amazing thing that happened in the early part of the 20th century, we ought to talk about a few other aspects of life on this amazing spaceship that we call earth. What I intend to tell you about are some deep secrets about the economy that are going to bring new insight into what is going on with the economy right now, and what has actually been taking place within the world economy for most of the last 100 years. And I guarantee that it has nothing to do with any of the crap that you have heard from anybody else. It’s a secret, not because anyone has deliberately been hush hush about it, but because it is hard for many people to understand, much less believe. However, that’s why I am writing all of these posts, in order to give the reader some background material in better understanding that reality can be more than just one narrow viewpoint. So before I spring the big surprise on you, I want you to have some time to digest information about other aspects of our social and governmental functioning from other perspectives. This will help to prepare you for what is to come. So let’s continue.

Up until the Industrial Revolution things were essentially created by a craft person using their knowledge and their tools. Much of the work that was required in order to produce a product was provided by the physical ability of the crafts person. At times, they might require the use of fire, which, in turn necessitated a fuel like wood or coal. As manufacturing evolved new forms of energy were sought out to fuel the creation of light, of heat in the winter, and the automatic movement of various parts of the manufacturing process.

Let there be oil. Yes, oil and its derivatives raised their heads and began to provide the energy needed to drive the growing needs of the Industrial Revolution. Gradually, energy took over as king. An interesting story has to do with a decade-long battle between the transmission of Direct Current electricity versus Alternating Current electricity. The man who is credited in American educational curriculum with being the major motivating force behind the development of electricity is Thomas Edison. This is misleading, to say the least.

For years, Thomas Edison promoted the use of direct current electricity. This was not very efficient, for direct current cannot be transmitted over great distances without losing a good deal of power. It would, therefore, be necessary to build electricity generating plants every few blocks. A tremendous overhead expense. Edison’s major competition was Nicola Tesla. Tesla had discovered alternating current, held the patent on it, and was working with it. AC had a much lower overhead since it could be transmitted very long distances, thereby requiring far fewer generating plants.

The story is that, in an effort to discredit Tesla, Edison would schedule press conferences at which he would take stray cats and dogs and place them upon a metal plate wired with alternating current. The animals were prompt electrocuted as Edison would pronounce the life threatening danger accompanying the use of alternating current electricity. What he failed to point out is that the animals would have also been fried if the electricity had been direct current. Minor point.

Why would Edison do this? Perhaps it had something to do with his chief financial “backer” being J.P. Morgan, the big Wall Street banker and financier. Morgan had dreams of “cleaning up” by being paid to build all of the power plants that direct current would require. Fortunately, AC won out over DC and Edison finally admitted that he’d always known that AC was the wiser, more efficient, more cost effective way to go. AC may have triumphed but the credit went not to its founder, Tesla, but to its founder’s competitor, Edison. If you’re interested in more detail, read the fascinating book: “Tesla: Man Out Of Time” by Margaret Cheney.

All the while oil was waiting in the background while people began experimenting to see what all they could do with this gooey, smelly mess that would become known as “black gold.” As its uses became more apparent, then the quest to find more sources for it escalated. As oil was processed into gasoline and used to drive the internal combustion engine, the automobile came into existence and a new afore-undreamed-of world of mobility allowed the age-old small villages of people around the world to begin to interact. To give you an idea of what life was like before this massive growth in transportation drove into humanity’s lifestyle, back in the 1700’s, Benjamin Franklin was in France (1776-1785) as the United States’ Ambassador to that country. Reportedly, one day, George Washington said, “We haven’t heard from Ben Franklin this year. Perhaps we should send him a letter.”

Oil and industrialization changed all of that. Oil allowed for all kinds of new opportunities to open up for millions of people. In the 19th Century there was a saying that “cotton is king.” Well, in the 20th Century oil had become emperor and the entire world was its empire.

There have been some problems, however, with oil and its byproducts. First is the fact that it’s not replenishable. That means that when it’s all gone, there is no more. And we have absolutely no plans to replace it. Replace it? Now there’s an interesting idea. What would it take to “create” oil from scratch instead of just pumping it out of the ground. Well, the way that oil came into being is that millions of years ago, massive amounts of organic matter (that means dead stuff) got covered up by increasingly tremendous amounts of dirt and rock until it was compressed under incredible pressure for millions or years, ultimately resulting in that familiar black goo and gas. That’s gaseous gas, not gasoline gas.

So here’s a question for you. What do you suppose it would take, how long do you suppose it would take, and what do you think it would cost to create, from scratch, a gallon of gasoline? Perhaps as much as a billion dollars. Now you know why oil is considered to be non-replenishable. It’s because it would require too much effort, take far too much time, and cost way too much to replenish just one barrel of oil. When I was a kid, I remember gas at 19.9 cents a gallon. Now we have seen it as high as $5/gallon, but that’s just a spit in the bucket compared to what it would cost if we had to create it, rather than simply find it, steal it, and refine it.

From time to time our wonderful economy has brought us an energy crisis, a time when supply dwindles and price rises. Yet nowhere have any of those crises begun to approach the cost and inconvenience that would result from creating oil ourselves.

Of course another problem with oil is how to handle all of its byproducts, and particularly those created by its refining and combustion. We now find ourselves forced into considering and dealing with these issues because of their possible impact upon our planet’s weather. Is carbon pollution causing global warming? Hard to say. Is carbon pollution contributing to global warming? Without a doubt.

There must be some better way to obtain the energy that we need. Turns out that there are a number of better, more efficient, more cost effective ways of generating energy. So let’s take a look at some of those so-called alternative fuels.