Opinion
Webber: Solar panels are significantly more land-efficient than corn ethanol
“If you have an acre or whatever amount of land you have and is hit with photons, you can convert those photons into a useful form of energy, say electricity, with something like 20% efficiency. But if you convert it first into bioenergy, Corn for ethanol, then…”
Opinion
Webber: Oil and gas conflicts risk being replaced by water wars
“But I worry that we're going to replace oil resource wars, or what we're seeing today, natural gas resource wars, with water resource wars. There have been water wars in the past. I'm worried that we'll have more water wars. That, that's something I really am …”
Assertion Supported
Webber: US food cold chain outspends Switzerland and Sweden's total energy
“We use more energy for our cold chain than countries like Switzerland and Sweden use combined for all purposes.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Shipping wine from France to NY uses less energy than California
“Wine from France delivered by ship to New York is less energy intensive than the closer wine in California moved there by truck.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Dietary choices impact the environment far more than food miles
“The transportation miles Tends to get the most attention, but actually is not as important. A great study came out of Carnegie Mellon over a decade ago, looking at sort of these food miles, and they're, the conclusion they had was that food choices, meaning th…”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Multi-paddock cattle grazing can achieve net-negative carbon life cycles
“There are some analyses just actually they will be carbon negative on life cycle because what the cattle do if it's not too concentrated will improve the soil health and take CO two out of the atmosphere.”
Insight
Webber: Cheaper energy may drive energy-intensive desalination via Jevons paradox
“The correction to that might be, if you lower the cost of energy, you might end up pursuing more energy-intensive forms of water-like desalination, so it might end up settling out at about the same price. And in fact, that's what we see in many places, is that…”
Insight
Webber: Energy emissions and water disruptions form an accelerating feedback loop
“Part of that is one of the deep ironies of the energy-water nexus is that the energy system helps create climate change through the radiative forcing of the emissions from the fuels we use, and the way climate change manifests itself is through changes to the …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Webber: US water desperation will soon force creation of trading markets
“We're not quite at that point in the United States or elsewhere, so we haven't had the desperation, but it feels like we're knocking on the door of it, and we'll get there soon.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: The US spends nine energy units per food unit ingested
“So the food we need to ingest in the United States is about one quad of energy a year, and we consume about a hundred quads of energy over the course of a year. One quad of that is in the food we eat, but there's another, say, nine quads of energy to grow and …”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Consumers waste less meat than produce primarily because of price
“The good news of the meat world is that we tend to waste less meat because it's so expensive. We tend to waste other things that are Sort of less expensive fruits and vegetables that don't have good shelf life”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Hundreds of millions of tons of manure could supply biomethane
“We have especially hundreds of millions of tons of manure that we could turn into biomethane as opposed to just leaving it as an environmental hotspot, a liability.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Webber: Climate change will increase energy needed for agriculture and storage
“It looks like we'll spend more energy to overcome the consequences of climate change, to make up for the lost productivity, or to store the food and the crops.”
Insight
Webber: Indoor farming economics work for produce, but not commodity grains
“It ends up being pretty expensive, so we wouldn't do it for the bulk commodity crops like wheat or corn, but for fruits and vegetables, that might work.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: US water heating uses more energy than Switzerland and Sweden combined
“That four percent of national energy consumption in water heating is bigger than what Switzerland and Sweden use for all purposes combined in a year.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: 40% of US water withdrawals cool power plants
“And about 40% of all the water withdrawals in the United States every day are just to cool power plants.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Nuclear, carbon capture, and bioenergy are highly water-intensive
“Traditional nuclear, 19 seventies nuclear with big water cooling, very water intensive. Carbon capture systems are very water intensive. Bioenergy crops are very water intensive.”
Insight
Webber: Fuel choice impacts water use more than improving heat exchangers
“But I think the primary choice is ultimately on the energy side. Fuel choice has a bigger impact than improving the heat exchangers.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Webber: Decarbonization will reduce water intensity by 2036 despite severe strains
“And so I think there'll be some celebration of how the process of decarbonization reduced our water intensity overall, but we're still going to have some pretty severe strains we have to deal with.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Dietary fats share roughly the same energy density as fossil fuels
“Material, especially like the lipids and fats are kind of the same energy density as fossil fuels, which is really incredible.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Global photosynthesis averages 0.3% efficiency, peaking at 10%
“The global photosynthetic mean is like.3% efficient, and really good crops in really healthy areas, and the ecosystem might be as high as a few percent, maybe eight or 10% in some places, and this is far shy of the efficiency of like an electric motor.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: The US food system consumes up to 15% of national energy
“Different people do the analysis and come up with anywhere between like eight and 15% of national annual energy consumption is for the food system.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Cold chain and cooking consume 40% of food system energy
“And then another, like, 40% of the food system's energy requirements, or like four percent of national energy consumption, is in the cold chain and in the cooking.”
Assertion Supported
Webber: Wealthy nations throw away up to 50% of edible food
“That food waste number is something like 30 to 50% of the edible food in the United States is thrown away. Typical numbers say 40%. Similar numbers in, say, the UK and other rich countries”
Dr. Michael Webber