The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
by Peter Huber, Mark P. Mills
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mark P. Mills, Peter HuberEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-04-25
ISBN: 046503117X
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Basic Books
Book Reviews of The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
Book Review: A Grand Tale
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
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