Product Description

This is a myth-shattering book that explains why energy is not scarce, why the quality of energy is more important than quantity, and why "waste" of energy is both necessary and desirable. The sheer volume of talk about energy, energy prices and energy policy at both ends of the political spectrum suggests that we must know something about energy. But according to Peter Huber and Mark Mills, the things we "know" are mostly myths. In "The Bottomless Well", Huber and Mills debunk the myths and show how a better understanding of energy will radically change our views and policies on a number of very controversial issues. They explain why demand will never go down, why most of what we think of as "energy waste" actually benefits us, why greater efficiency will never lead to energy conservation and why the energy supply is infinite - it's quality of energy that's scarce and expensive. "The Bottomless Well" will also revolutionize our thinking about the automotive industry (gas prices don't matter and the hybrid engine is irrelevant), coal and uranium, the much-maligned power grid (it's the worst system we could have except for the others), what energy supplies mean for jobs and GDP, and many other hotly debated subjects.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #344431 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"This is the only book I've seen that really explains energy, its history, and what it will be like going forward." Bill Gates"

About the Author
Peter Huber is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy, where he specializes in issues related to technology, science and law. His previous books include Hard Green, Liability, Orwell's Revenge and Galileo's Revenge. He is a frequent contributor to many publications including, Science, the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. Mark P Mills is a founding partner of Digital Power Capital and the Digital Power Group. A former staff consultant to The White House Science Office and member of the American Physical Society and Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers. Both authors live in Washington DC.

Customer Reviews

What planet do these guys live on?
This is undoubtedly a very interesting book even if its tone is horribly smug and patronising and its conclusion monumentally wrong-headed.
In essence it is a simple trotting out of the tired ostrich-head-in-the-sand Anglo-American idea that technology will come to the rescue of humanity. It contends that our boundless ingenuity and brilliance will avert the Malthusian notion that we might one day run out of "energy" with disastrous consequences for our continued existence as a species.
The fundamental premise is that we silly lay-people don't understand "science" and the strict Newtonian notion of "energy". Humanity strives to bring order from chaos, say the authors, and we've been getting increasingly good at it in recent history. SO WHAT?
The trouble is that whilst these authors may have a splendid understanding of how the semi-conductor industry continues to adhere to Moore's law and just how clever our technology is at rooting out BTUs where-ever they be (12kms beneath us rather frighteningly now we've found all the easy stuff), they seem to have no grasp at all of history or geo-political reality or the very real advent of resource scarcity all over the world TODAY.
All this wonderful technological wizardry clearly looks unstoppable from the naive ivory towers of US academia but there are already quite literally billions of people on this planet living with the apocalyptic implications of real energy scarcity (war, famine, disease, genocide) NOW.
The projected 11 billion global population by 2050 into one planet simply doesn't go - no matter how ingenious our conversion of sunlight or wind power is or how brilliantly our supercomputer-driven, LED-lit submarines find new oil resources at the bottom of the ocean.
Just start with water - life's most precious commodity. Whilst energy may be indeed turn out to be a "bottomless well" thanks to our technology - fresh water categorically is not (the UN estimates that 2.3 billion people will lack access to water by 2025 - how do the authors think these people are going to react to that?).
Arable land, too, is in finite supply. Yes, we have raised agricultural yields spectacularly over the last 200 years with our technology but this has come with frightening and poorly understood consequences for the long term.
All over the world farmers (miners and fisherman too for that matter) have been robbing the Peter of future sustainable yields to pay the Paul of present day demand (and this with a current population of "only" 6 billion, most of whom live on about 1/200th of what Americans and Europeans currently live on. This is of course is still three times the population of a century ago... think about that for a moment!!).
The result, to name but three of dozens of examples include:
1) The loss of a substantial percentage of viable arable land all over the world with most scientists predicting a great deal more to follow (through soil-erosion and salinisation in particular - much of which is irreversible and yet to fully impact us in terms of the damage done).
2) A possible complete extinction of edible fish-stocks globally by 2048 (according to work that many marine biologists describe as "conservative").
3) Fertility levels dropping all over the world (due to concentration of chemicals used in high-yield agriculture)
These guys need to come out of the lab, get their noses out of physics text books and look around at what is actually happening in the world right now. I would heartily recommend a trip to Rwanda for starters (or Iraq - if the well is so bottomless why are all of America's theatres of war suspiciously close to where the wells are?!).
Perhaps more easily they could start by reading Jared Diamond's excellent book "Collapse"...

Makes you think differently about energy
The Bottemless Well is a very optimistic book. At the moment there are lots of scare stories regarding energy - energy supplies running out and people telling us to be energy efficient. The authors expalin why energy will never run out. They also explain why energy efficiency leads to more energy use not less (efficiency paradox). Hence this books shatters many misconceptions.

My main criticism is the author's unashamed pro-Americanism (and i'm pro-American!). For example they point to an article which shows that North America does not release any net CO2 emissions because fossil fuel burning is absorbed by tree growth. Even if this is true the author's underhandedly apply this to the US. But surely most tree growth has been in Canada? Whilst the authors doubt golbal warming in many ways global warming does not matter to their core arguments (they explain that even if global warming is happening why energy use will continue to rise and investigate the economics and science of carbon capture and other technologies).

That said on the whole this is a good book. I fully agree with the authors that energy consumption will rise forever and this will make humans live ever happier and more prosperous lives.

The thinking person's guide to energy and its environmental impact
Buy this book if you want to understand the real importance of energy to the way our world works.

This book sets out to give perspective on the current environmental concerns about the way we use fuel. In particular it covers the use of hydrocarbons, which produce billions of tons of carbon dioxide that go into the atmosphere and are changing our planet's climate. It also looks at the alternatives, such as solar energy and a return to traditional power sources.

The real beauty of the book is that it quantifies things - how much oil, gas and nuclear power we use, and how much is available, how many acres of land would be needed to provide the energy we need to run our lives in other ways.

This is not an easy read. Any book that tries to explain the first and second law of thermodynamics in detail is not going to be a straightforward read, but the challenge is worth it.

It is perhaps a little too upbeat. The authors have real confidence that humanity can and will solve the problems that will face it over the coming century. However, if reading environmental books is making you feel that we are all doomed, this is a great alternative perspective.

Highly recommended.