by zeroday 254 Replies latest jw friends
Clusterfuck Nation, hahahahaha, I post there as Brandon, or did for many months when I was a doomer.
I never read the comments section. I was once a doomer too. I am a lot more upbeat now. Of course, I think things could get very, very, nasty for a time. However we have faced resource crises before and have innovated our way out of them. Pain is necessary for growth, I think. Here is an ancient example:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278703
Cheers,
Burn
I read Rupert's book early 2005. The problem is that his assertions are sometimes so incredible and his sources are so secret at the same time. I have a hard time with them. Also, over the years, he has made predictions and they do not come true. I think he predicted a descent into a fascist, Peak Oil aggravated, collapse in 2005 for the following year. It did not play out. It is just hard to take him too seriously with stuff like that.
Here's the thing. I never buy into any predictions. At all. However, the basis for those predictions are what I think about. I can still agree something is going to happen, but like the WT teaches us, we can never know when!
However we have faced resource crises before and have innovated our way out of them. Pain is necessary for growth, I think.
Yes, but we've never faced resource crises at a dead end. In the 30s there was enough oil to swim in, and look how bad that was. Imagine something worse than the Great Depression, but without the agrarian infrastructure and no oil to support said non-existant agrarian infrastructure.
You mentioned diminshing returns, but you seem to fail to recognise their important in the grand scheme of things. Let me re-post something I wrote to people who believed that technology is somehow the same as energy. Let's remember what the 20 somethings at Google said to Kunstler when he gave them his presentation: "Dude! We've got technology!"
This is what I wrote:
6-7% increase in energy production and consumption vs. a 9-11% increase in GDP for a net gain in energy efficiencyYou're right here - This is true almost everywhere. We continue to increase the efficiency of our energy consumption year after year globally. However, Our total energy consumption still continues to rise year after year. Increases in efficiency of usage only serves to offset our increasing demand marginally.
At current rates, China's energy demand is doubling every seven years. This is with increasing efficiency of consumption. (Incidentally, the same thing is happening in North America). I think a fundamental problem people who dismiss peak oil have is a lack of understanding of the exponential function. This also has a lot to do with the point of diminishing returns that our civilisation is close to reaching. Should we double our energy consumption globally by 2030 like we must do in order to maintain the status quo and keep our economic system from collapsing (for our economic paradigm depends on economic growth to function), we will consume an equal amount of energy equal to the total of all energy consumed in the history of civilisation! That is the exponential function! Since we have burned already half of the worlds initial endowment of oil since we started using it, we will need to PRODUCE the next half (or 1 trillion barrels) and consume it in the next 20 years.
We should know by now however that oil well physics don't work that way. The easy to get and thus cheapest stuff is gone. ERoeI has decreased not for economic reasons but due to basic laws of nature. When the stuff stops flowing out of the ground under pressure you have to pump it. Deep ocean drilling is extremely energy intensive. Etc.Once the fixed costs of producing computers and internet infrastructure are taken into account, which would be decidedly less than those require for producing cars, extensive roads, and transporting bulky raw materials, the variable expenses of sending an email are relatively small, given that it would require only a few electrical signals.This is where the point of diminishing returns limit comes into play. As civilisation grows year after year, we must expend energy to accomplish new growth while also maintaining the sum of all past growth. As we double our economic output we are now stealing the energy required to maintain past infrastructure. We can no longer afford to build new subways and fund the operation of the old systems for example. Future growth is dependent on the proper maintenance of the current infrastructure. Do you for example have any idea what it costs to maintain deep sea fiber-optic cables? Lots of money of course but also a large global fleet of cable laying and repair vessels. The maintenance of which requires a global shipping and port infrastructure and the training and support of a skilled labour force. Also factories for the manufacture of the cable and factories for the processing of raw materials etc.
You may be right that the fixed cost of producing computer infrastructure is cheaper than that of producing cars. I don't know...but to produce the computer infrastructure we need the whole of the car producing infrastructure.
My point is this. Our civilisation is extremely complex and complexity requires energy consumption to maintain let alone expand. Diminishing ERoEI will put a halt to all this. Sending email seems relatively simple and energy efficient. However, It does not happen without massive energy consuming infrastructure and support enabling it. Putting a letter on a pony may take longer but the animal can eat grass.
Even without peak oil...our civilisation is reaching a complexity peak. It is becoming harder and harder to solve our problems by introducing technology and increasing complexity.
Well, Burn and Mincan, we seem to enjoy similar reading material. I've read Twilight in the Desert and The Long Emergency and regularly visit Kunstler's website for his weekly updates. Another recommended read is David Goodstein's Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil which examines the science of energy use and oil depletion from a physicist's point of view. I used to be a fan of the FTW website, but I'm a bit burned out on Ruppert now. I also spent a bit of time over at Jay Hanson's dieoff.org for some light reading. I recently downloaded and watched the documentary What a Way to Go which goes further than the classic The End of Suburbia in attempting to show how unsustainable our modern lives truly are. I try to remain as objective as possible, and while much of what I have read seems very plausible, I also try to remain skeptical and not buy into everything that some "expert" writes. The more you know, however, the more you can spot the bull caca.
On a more positive note, I've read a bit about Permaculture and have Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, a huge text book on sustainable agriculture and alternative economies. It is borderline utopist stuff, and I'm not a utopian or cornucopist. Even so, I've been reading Jared Diamond's Collapse, and there have been some human societies that have succeeded for thousands of years by adapting to their local environments and practicing permaculture techniques suited to their region along with adopting population control methods. Who knows what the future may bring, but we all need to share ideas. At this time I lack the resources to start growing my own food, but it is something I want to get into in the future.
Dave
Mincan,
I scanned your post and I am familiar with the argument. It makes perfect logical sense-in the current paradigm. However I say "never short the Family* in the long term". I guess it is an article of faith. The sun always comes up in the morning, it will come up again tommorrow. Bad things may happen yes, we've had our hundred years wars, plagues, Roman Imperial collapses etc, etc on and on ad infinitum. But in the long run the trend line is up and up and up ad astra. Call it an article of faith. For balance, have you ever read anything by Ray Kurzweil?
Burn
*"The Family" e.g. humanity.
Phew! PrimateDave! Where do I start?
Thanks for the link to WhatAWayToGo. I haven't seen it. I have the End of Suburbia ripped off the net around here somewheres.
As for Permaculture, I just moved onto almost 3 acres. I am busy hand clearing it. It is almost impenetrable so I will be busy for a long time. I want to have it chock full of fruit trees. Florida is a shoe-in for citrus and I can get a lot of nice tropical fruit to grow here and you can almost live off of platanos. Throw in some mango and aguacate and you are all set! ;-)
Cheers,
Burn
