Energy decline theory is pseudoscience

Here is a response I wrote on a forum:

I'm sorry, but there's just no science happening here. It's not sufficient to say the word "science" and to use scientific-sounding terms like "biophysical". Those kinds of things are also common within pseudoscience.

What is required are specific, falsifiable, risky predictions of things which weren't happening anyway. Then those predictions must be confirmed by subsequent evidence. That is the first step toward actual science, and it has never happened and is not happening within this group.

This group has all the hallmarks of pseudoscience. It has never produced any risky, falsifiable predictions which were confirmed by subsequent evidence, not even once. There have been massive failures of prediction, over and over again, but the theories remain totally unchanged, and the failures of prediction are not even addressed. Failures of prediction are handled by making the theory less and less falsifiable ("there is now a long descent which is difficult to see", see John Greer). Members do not respond to criticism, and leave errors uncorrected when they are pointed out. Notably, this group is ignored by legitimate researchers. There is almost no interconnection between this group and actual legitimate fields of study, and this material is rarely cited outside this group. Notably, it appears that this group settles its conclusions in advance ("civilization is about to collapse"), then generates theory after theory which all lead to that conclusion, but then the predictions all fail.

If you guys want to start doing science, then you need to respond to criticism without badly misreading it, modify your theories in light of failed predictions, and make falsifiable, risky predictions which are confirmed by subsequent evidence. Those things would be the first steps toward actual science, but those things are just not happening here.

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Here is another post from the same thread:

George, you said:
"I'm talking about net free energy per capita, not raw energy produced... The numbers you quote do not take into account the amount of that energy it took to obtain that amount...So with slowing net energy increase and increasing total population the amount of usable energy for the economy per individual is in decline."

No, that's clearly wrong. Let's do the math. According to the EIA's numbers, world energy consumption has increased from 480x10^15 to 524x10^15 btu, between 2009 and 2013 (inclusive). At the same time, world population increased from 6.83x10^9 to 7.08x10^9 people (http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history3.aspx). That means that per-capita energy consumption has increased from 70.27x10^6 btu/capita to 74.01x10^6 btu/capita in that time. In other words, per capita energy consumption increased by 5.3% in 4 years, which is a compound growth rate of ~1.3% per year.

Now let's look at the prior 29 year period, from 1980-2009 (inclusive), using the same sources of data. Per capita energy consumption increased from 63.63x10^6 btu/capita to 70.27x10^6 btu/capita over 29 years, which is an increase of 10.4% over 29 years or only ~0.35% per year.

In other words, per capita energy consumption is not only increasing, but the rate of increase accelerated. The growth in per capita energy consumption was much faster during the period of 2009-2013 than during the prior 29 years.

Those figures are not EROI adjusted. It's impossible to find reliable statistics on worldwide average EROI.

However, it's totally implausible that average EROI worldwide has dropped by an amount sufficient to erase that acceleration in energy consumption. Even if EROI had been stable and had not declined at all over 29 years, and then suddenly dropped from 30 to 15 (a decline by half, which is totally implausible) in only the 4 year subsequent period, the EROI-adjusted per capita energy consumption still increased faster (0.5% vs 0.35%) during the period from 2009-2013 than during the prior 29 years.

The straightforward conclusion from this, is that per capita energy consumption is increasing, and the rate of increase has sped up, no matter what you think happened to EROI (within reason).

I don't know how you arrived at the conclusion that "usable energy ... per individual is in decline". Your statement is not compatible with the data which hitssquad just presented.

This is exactly the opposite of what energy doomers had predicted. They had confidently predicted a sudden collapse of civilization in the late late 2000s and rapid declines in energy consumption. What happened was the opposite of what they had predicted, yet again.
The consistent and severe failure of prediction from these theories implies that there is something seriously wrong with them. It's long overdue to start asking what is wrong.

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Here is another post from the same thread:

Hi Harry,

I just read through the comments again, and came across yours. You said:

"Could you be very kind and point me to some of those suggestions? I am about to radically decouple!"

Harry, are you going to radically decouple because you expect civilization to collapse soon? If so, you're about to throw your life away. Civilization is not collapsing for these reasons. The most recent collapse predictions from this group are no more scientific, and no better founded, than any of their other collapse predictions over the prior decades.

This material is just totally wrong. It's littered with severe errors that invalidate its conclusions, it's ignored by almost all relevant experts, it does not meet the minimal criteria of a valid scientific theory, and it's characterized by massive, repeated failures of prediction without any corresponding correction of the underlying theories.

There have already been many people who moved out into the wilderness circa 2005 in expectation of a drastic collapse of civilization, for these reasons. They wasted ten years of their lives on a fringe doomsday theory. Do you really want to join them? Of course, you can do whatever you want, but you should clearly envision what you will feel like when five or more years have passed and civilization hasn't collapsed and not that much has happened other than you living in the middle of nowhere.

The original conversation is here.