by Robert Bryce
SMALLER
FASTER
LIGHTER
DENSER
CHEAPER
Copyright © 2014 by Robert Bryce.
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Book design by Jack Lenzo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bryce, Robert.
Smaller faster lighter denser cheaper : how innovation keeps proving the catastrophists wrong / Robert Bryce.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61039-206-8 (e-book)
1. Technological innovations—Popular works. I. Title.
T173.8.B76 2014
338'.064—dc23
2013049381
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother,
Ann Mahoney Bryce
CONTENTS
List of Graphics, Tables, and Photos
Author’s Note
Introduction: Moving Beyond “Collapse Anxiety”
PART I The Push for Innovation, Its Consequences, and the Degrowth Agenda
1 Panama: Digging a Faster Cheaper Way to Travel
2 The Trend Toward Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper
The Brain
The Printing Press
The Vacuum Tube
The AK-47
The Haber-Bosch Process
The Diesel and the Jet Turbine
The Telescope and Microscope
The Pearl Street Power Plant
The Roller-Cone Drill Bit
Digital Communications
3 Never Have So Many Lived So Well
4 Back to the Past: The Push for “Degrowth”
SIDEBAR: Bill McKibben’s Energy-Starvation Plan
PART II Our Attosecond World: How We Got Here, Where We’re Going, and the Companies Leading the Way
5 Angstroms and Attoseconds
6 How Our Quest for Faster Drives Innovation
7 Faster Lighter Doper
SIDEBAR: Tour de Doper
8 The Engines of the Economy
SMALLER FASTER INC.: Ford Motor Company
9 From ENIAC to iCloud: Smaller Faster Computing
SIDEBAR: The Incredible Shrinking Circuit
SIDEBAR: “Green” Computing Can’t Power the Cloud
SMALLER FASTER INC.: Intel
10 From LP to iPod
11 From Kublai Khan to M-PESA
SMALLER FASTER INC.: Safaricom
12 Density and the Wealth of Cities
13 Denser Cheaper Food Production
14 The Faster the Bits, the Freer the People
SIDEBAR: Smaller Lighter Cheaper Phones
15 From Monks to MOOCs: Faster Cheaper Education
16 Smaller Faster Cheaper Medicine
PART III The Need for Cheaper Energy
17 The Faster the (Drill) Bits, the Cheaper the Energy
SIDEBAR: We’re Running Out of Oil . . .
18 The Tyranny of Density
SMALLER FASTER INC.: Clean Energy Systems
19 Smaller Faster and the Coal Question
SIDEBAR: India Is Not Going “Beyond Coal”
SIDEBAR: GOOG < Coal
SMALLER FASTER INC.: Aquion Energy
PART IV Embracing Our Smaller Faster Future
20 Getting Energy Policy Right
Reject Wind and Biofuels
Wind Energy’s Incurable Density Problem
SIDEBAR: Debunking the Big Fibs About Wind and Solar
Biofuels are “A Crime Against Humanity”
21 Climate Change Requires N2N (N2N is SFLDC)
SIDEBAR: We Need to Reduce Gas Flaring
22 Embrace Nuclear Green
SIDEBAR: Make Atoms for Peace a Reality
23 SX Smaller Faster: Why the United States Will Dominate the Smaller Faster Future
24 Conclusion: Moving Past Fear
APPENDIX A: SI Numerical Designations
APPENDIX B: Energy and Power: Units and Equivalents
APPENDIX C: Gravimetric Power Density from Humans to Jet Engines
APPENDIX D: Five Leaders in Online Learning
APPENDIX E: Wind Energy’s Noise Problem: A Review
APPENDIX F: Areal Power Density Data for Sixteen Wind-Energy Projects
APPENDIX G: Major Players in Nuclear Energy
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
LIST OF GRAPHICS, TABLES, AND PHOTOS
GRAPHICS
World Fertilizer Use and Grain Production, 1961–2011
Cheaper Airfares: The Declining Cost of US Domestic Airfares, 1979–2011
Declining Global Poverty for Various Income Levels, 1970–2006
Cheaper: The Trend in Industrial Commodities, 1850–2011
Cheaper: The Trend in Photovoltaic Prices, 1980–2010
The McKibben Plan: What a Twentyfold Reduction in Hydrocarbon Use Would Look Like When Compared to Per-capita Energy Use in 2011
Faster: Winning Times in Men’s Olympic 100-meter Sprint, 1896–2012
Faster Lighter at the Tour de France, 1903–2012
Denser: Measuring Power Density from Horses to Jet Engines
Smaller Faster Denser: Volumetric Power Density in Ford Engines, 1902–2011
Faster Cheaper: The Volume of Digital Data Created and Shared, projected to 2015
Forty Years of Smaller at Intel: From 10,000 Nanometers to 22 Nanometers
Forty Years of Denser at Intel: From 2,300 Transistors per Microprocessor to 2.27 Billion
Smaller Denser Cheaper: The Plummeting Cost of Computer Storage, 1956–2010
Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper Music Storage: From the LP to the iPod
Denser Means Richer: Highly Urbanized Countries Are Wealthier
Denser Farming: Global Grain Production Is Keeping Pace with Population Growth
The Faster the Bits the Wealthier the People
Number of US Oil and Gas Wells Drilled and Percentage of Dusters, 1949–2010
Offshore Oil and Gas Discoveries, 1995–2012
Denser Energy Is Green Energy: Comparing Uranium with Various Other Sources
Global Coal Consumption 1980–2011, and Projected to 2035
Electricity Use Is Closely Correlated with Wealth Creation
If You Want to Replace US Coal-fired Capacity with Wind, Then Find a Land Area the Size of Italy
Amory Lovins’s Vision for Biofuels: Producing 23 Percent of US Energy by 2050 from Plants Would Require Three Italys of Land
Global Energy Demand Since 1990 and Projected to 2035
Cheaper: Natural Gas Prices in the United States, Germany, UK, and Japan, 1995–2012
TABLES
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ List of Ten Most Censored Countries (2012)
Number of Days Needed to Consume 100 Kilowatt-hours
Estimated Cost of Electricity for Generation Plants Entering Service in the United Stat
es in 2018
Residential Cost of Electricity in the United States Versus Other Developed Countries in 2012
PHOTOS
Excavating the Culebra Cut, Panama, 1909
Cruise ship heading south through the Culebra Cut, 2013
Printing operation at Claflin University in 1899
Vacuum tube
The AK-47
The GEnx-1B jet turbine
Woodcut of a man looking through a telescope, 1637
Students using microscopes at Bethune-Cookman College, 1943
Thomas Edison in his laboratory
A fishtail drill bit
Patent document for the roller-cone drill bit
Canadian scientist Paul Corkum in his laboratory in Ottawa
Eadweard Muybridge image of a galloping horse
Race car driver Bob Burman, 1910
Driver Andy Green next to the Thrust SSC, 1997
Bicycle racer from the early 1900s
Waterwheel on the Orontes River in Syria
Amish farmer working his fields in Pennsylvania
Portrait of James Watt, who made critical improvements to the steam engine
Locomotive for Lincoln’s funeral train, 1865
The Corliss steam engine at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876
Henry Ford stands next to race car driver Barney Oldfield, 1902
ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose electronic computer
ENIAC-on-a-chip, 1996
Top view of an Intel 8086 processor, circa 1978
Bottom view of an Intel Core i7 processor
Computer pioneer John von Neumann standing next to MANIAC, about 1952
Thomas Edison and colleagues with Edison’s wax-recording phonograph, 1892
Confederate bank notes
Market Street in San Francisco, early 1900s
Image from Eric Topol’s book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine
Artie White, a driller on an AC top-drive drilling rig, 2013
A pair of roughnecks working on a drill rig, 2013
A polycrystalline diamond compact drill bit, 2013
Heath Evenson of Clean Energy Systems, 2013
A Peabody Energy employee at the North Antelope Rochelle Mine, 2012
Coal miners working by candlelight, 1906
Battery designer Jay Whitacre of Aquion Energy, 2012
Windmill in East Hampton, New York, 1872
Reactor vessel arrives at Shippingport Atomic Power Station, 1956
Jaime Emmanuelli and Jon Miller, the owners of Hive Lighting, at South By Southwest Interactive, 2013
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I like Austin Kleon’s 2012 book Steal Like an Artist: Ten Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. One of the lines from it resonated with me: “Write the book you want to read.”
I did that here.
Kleon’s book is quirky, and the one you are holding is, too. My aim was to make this book inviting and easy to read. That’s why I’ve included so many graphics and photographs. I wanted to provide lots of entry points so that even if readers don’t capture every word, they can still grasp the key arguments and understand why I’m optimistic about the future and why they should be, too.
Before I go further, a note about vocabulary. The word “density” usually refers to mass per unit of volume. Here I’m using a broader interpretation of density, so that it includes population density, agricultural density, and other metrics. Given how critical density is to our culture, we need a broader definition of “dense.”
One other note about the content: where possible, I’ve included metric conversions so that readers from outside the United States, as well as those living here, can have the units being discussed in SI form. (SI is an abbreviation for the System of International Units.) I’ve also included a list of SI numerical designations in Appendix A, as Americans need to get more familiar with the nomenclature.
Now for some acknowledgments. Books, at least in my case, are solo projects. While this was a solo writing effort, it required lots of people to make it happen. As such, I have many people to thank and acknowledge. The people at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research were wonderful. I joined the think tank in 2010 at about the same time that my last book, Power Hungry, was published. The affiliation has been stimulating and productive. I’m bored by the Left-Right, Democratic-Republican, liberal-conservative divide. I want to be with smart people who are promoting economic growth and liberty. Manhattan Institute is packed with smart people who are doing just that. In particular, I must acknowledge Howard Husock, MI’s director of research. Howard has repeatedly shown his ability to distill complex arguments into their essential points. My other colleagues at Manhattan Institute, including Larry Mone, Vanessa Mendoza, Michael Allegretti, Matt Olsen, and Bobby Sherwood, were also extremely supportive.
The entire crew at PublicAffairs were, as usual, wonderful. They are all pros. I have been extraordinarily lucky in my book publishing career to have had a single publisher (PublicAffairs) and a single editor. I’m proud to call Lisa Kaufman my editor and my friend. Lisa has a genius for being able to read a 90,000-word manuscript, digest the entire thing, and then explain how it needs to be organized to make it better. She’s the best. My other friends at PublicAffairs—Clive Priddle, Susan Weinberg (who’s now the group publisher for Basic Books, Nation Books, and PublicAffairs), Peter Osnos, Melissa Raymond, Tessa Shanks, and Jaime Leifer—were also great. In addition, Collin Tracy did a great job managing the production of the book, and copy editor Jerold Kappes was thorough and patient.
I’ve also been lucky to have the same person doing the fact checking on all five of my books. My pal Mimi Bardagjy worked through about a thousand footnotes. She treated each one punctiliously. Better still, she kept her good humor throughout.
I’ve had plenty of research help. Grant Huber provided helpful data. My friend Leslie McLain was, once again, invaluable. Yevginy Feyman at the Manhattan Institute was great at providing research and graphics. George Voorhes of Red Barn Muse Creative Group in Portland made the majority of the graphics. I recommend his work without reservation.
While I had plenty of help putting this book together, any errors are mine and mine alone. If you spot a mistake, please let me know so it can be corrected for the paperback edition.
My appreciation also goes to my friend Buddy Kleemeier, who was instrumental in arranging my visit to a drill rig. Hans Helmerich and Rob Stauder were patient tutors regarding drilling-rig technology. Cal Cooper offered valuable perspective on the history of drilling and the ongoing progress being made in that sector. My friends Hill Abell and Frank Kurzawa never tired of talking about bikes and watts. Jan Van der Spiegel at the University of Pennsylvania went out of his way to send me a photo of ENIAC-on-a-chip that he and his students developed about two decades ago. John Fannin and Michael Ramos were helpful in discussing music technology and recording. I must also thank my pal and Web guru Tyson Culver, who has been instrumental in keeping me current in the digital age.
I also want to thank Joe Bruno, Mark Ehsani, Anthony Holm, Rob Manzer, Eric Topol, Anas Alhajji, and Jesse Ausubel. Others who need to be acknowledged and thanked include my longtime friend Robert Elder Jr., who patiently read many different drafts and offered encouragement and insights. Omar Kader, the CEO of Pal-Tech, also made time in his busy schedule to read over a draft of the manuscript. Stan Jakuba, who was a pivotal reviewer of the early drafts of my last book, Power Hungry, was also a sharp-eyed reader. So, too, was Rex Rivolo. Rex has been a friend for many years, and he offered some key technical guidance as I thought about power density. Another friend, Bruce Hamilton, provided guidance on nuclear technology and helped me avoid several errors.
In addition, my Tulsa connections—Bryan Shahan, Violet and Ronald Cauthon, Chris Cauthon, and R. Dobie Langenkamp—have always been supportive and helpful. I must also acknowledge my father-in-law, Paul Rasmussen, a professor emeritus in chemistry at University of Michigan.
Even in his 70s, Paul remains one of the hardest-working people I know. He read numerous chapters and untold drafts with good humor. He was particularly helpful when it came to understanding battery technology.
I must also acknowledge my agent, Dan Green. We have been friends since 2001, when we were introduced by our mutual friend, Lou Dubose. I am proud to work with Dan. He’s a pro.
Finally, I must thank my wife, Lorin, and our three children, Mary, Michael, and Jacob. Lorin and I have been married for nearly three decades. Every day I am amazed and humbled by her love and support. As for my children, no father has ever been as proud.
We are lucky to be living in extraordinary times. And because of the inexorable trend of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper, those times are only going to become more extraordinary.
11 December 2013
Austin, Texas
INTRODUCTION
MOVING BEYOND “COLLAPSE ANXIETY”
We are besieged by bad news.
Climate change, pollution, famine, water shortages, war and terrorism, the mess at Fukushima, political gridlock, and the ongoing debt problems and economic malaise in Europe and the United States are dominating the headlines. On October 31, 2011, demographers at the United Nations announced that the Earth now hosts some seven billion people, prompting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to declare that “alarm bells are ringing.”1
Those alarm bells are also continually ringing about the danger of pandemics and epidemics. In 2007, the head of the World Health Organization warned that new diseases are “emerging at the historically unprecedented rate of one per year,” and given the ease of international air travel, she went on to say that it would be “extremely naïve and complacent” to assume that the world will not be hit by another disease like AIDS, the Ebola virus, or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).2 In 2013, two new respiratory viruses came to light—including a coronavirus in the Middle East that is similar to a bat virus, and a new strain of bird flu in China, known as H7N9—and the WHO quickly warned health officials to monitor any unusual cases of respiratory problems. Those outbreaks came on the heels of outbreaks of swine flu and a strain known as H1N1.3