Will the internet survive energy contraction?

Tony said:
^This.

"Energy contraction" won't be a concern until our grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's time. Even then, it is not unrealistic to assume that some other energy source or technology will be available. If "energy contraction" does become an issue in the foreseeable future, it will be because of political and societal ineptitude.
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"Ambiotic" oil theory has been thoroughly disproven.

ZirconBlue said:
I don't think you understand what "peak" means. That's the point of maximum production, not the point at which we run out.
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Yes I know what "peak" means in energy terms, I was simply shoving the evidence coal is peaking (thus becoming more scarce and expensive), in response to the claims it's not peaking.
 
Tony said:
^This.

"Energy contraction" won't be a concern until our grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren's time. Even then, it is not unrealistic to assume that some other energy source or technology will be available. If "energy contraction" does become an issue in the foreseeable future, it will be because of political and societal ineptitude.
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In the big picture that's true; in the small, though, it's not. The Earth is not producing oil faster than we can find it. On the other hand, Peak Oil is not going to mean the end of Civilisation, much less the Internet.

There's a thousand times more Uranium in the oceans than in established mineral reserves, and the cost of extracting it would increase electricity prices by 10-20%. If we use it to run fast breeder reactors, we're set for at least the next half-million years. Based on present-day technology.
 
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TFian said:
So I'm guessing you were around during the USENET days? (or at least when it was prevalent). I'm not sure how it worked by then. How was the network interconnected? Did they just use phone lines?
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I was using the predecessors of today's Internet before UUCPWP and UsenetWP were invented. I still hang out on Usenet.

The InternetWP has always been constructed of heterogenous physical technologies. The main connections have been dedicated since the early days. Secondary sites and local connections have used voice-quality phone lines, but that connection technology is now obsolete.

For more information, see the current Wikipedia article on the history of the InternetWP.
 
TFian said:
How are vaccines low tech?
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I think in Dr. Kitten's use of vaccination vs. care of the infected as an example of high-tech and low-tech methods, vaccination was intended to be the high-tech method.

On the other hand, smallpox inoculations have been used in China and India as far back as 200 BC, and the development of modern vaccination in the western world began around the end of the 18th century, so vaccination itself is not necessarily high-tech.

TFian said:
Why would we need trucks to deliver such newspapers? Couldn't we do it circa pre-industrial ways via an agrarian civilization?
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Because it would be insane and absurd. For example, I live 130km (80 miles) from Melbourne. How would you get 100,000 newspapers from Melbourne to my area every day by ox-cart?

How would you transport enough trees to the paper-mill, and all the paper from the mill to the printers in order to print millions of newspapers every day without using trucks?

If your argument is based on the assumption that we're going drastically reduce the number of newspapers printed and the frequency at which newspapers are printed, then you're not making a fair comparison. You could vastly reduce the power consumption of the internet by drastically reducing bandwidth too.

For example, my first internet experience was with a UNIX shell account using a dial-up 2400bps modem. 2400bps connected to an ISP via a dial-up connection is far more than enough to download a text-based newspaper. If everyone were to go back to dial-up connections at that speed or slower, the power consumption of the internet would drop to a tiny fraction of what it is today.

Hell, if it comes to distributing daily news, AM radio would be the most efficient method. You don't even need a power source for the receiver for a crystal-set radio. (But crystal set radio receivers are pretty crappy. However solar-powered radios and clockwork radios are also available.)

TFian said:
Also what doghouse said. How are we going to maintain the ways/infastructure needed to maintain the internet without abudant fossil fuels? Why wouldn't we go back to the more feasible agrarian civilization model?
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We couldn't go back to the "more feasible" agrarian civilization model because of population density. Billions of people in industrial societies would starve to death if we tried.

And why would we?

Even if fossil fuels ran out, that would be no reason to abandon technology. Energy would be vastly more expensive, and so high-tech devices would in turn become far more expensive, but that wouldn't make abandoning technology altogether a sensible option.

For example, you could have bio-diesel trucks deliver goods. Sure, it'd cost a hell of a lot more to deliver goods than it does now, but it'd still be far more practical than delivering goods by ox-cart given the population density of modern cities and distance the goods have to travel from agricultural regions.
 
TFian said:
No problem on the mistake.

So I'm guessing you were around during the USENET days? (or at least when it was prevalent). I'm not sure how it worked by then. How was the network interconnected? Did they just use phone lines?
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Pretty much but the phone company also used all sort of ways to get that data around. I was on PLATO before it became Novanet.
 
TFian said:
How was the network interconnected? Did they just use phone lines?
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Yes, and that's pretty much exactly how the network is interconnected today, except the "phone lines" are purpose-built, high-throughput, high-volume wires, including intercontinental cables running across the sea floor. These last are truly one of the greatest feats of engineering in the history of the world, and they beat satellites six ways from silly when it comes to volume and speed.

I'm curious to know what made you think satellites were an important component of the Internet backbone?

ETA: For example, Australia is famous (or notorious) for only having one link to the rest of the Internet. That link is not a satellite, but rather a single, high-volume undersea cable strung to the island-continent.
 
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Dancing David said:
Fiber optic cables are cheap to produce, carry huge amounts of information for much less energy than say a phone line?
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Can you make fiber optic cables with domestic parts? I mean, in areas like Australia, Canada, US, Europe, without having to outsource it's production with rare materials in areas like India and China?
 
Brian-M said:
I think in Dr. Kitten's use of vaccination vs. care of the infected as an example of high-tech and low-tech methods, vaccination was intended to be the high-tech method.

On the other hand, smallpox inoculations have been used in China and India as far back as 200 BC, and the development of modern vaccination in the western world began around the end of the 18th century, so vaccination itself is not necessarily high-tech.



Because it would be insane and absurd. For example, I live 130km (80 miles) from Melbourne. How would you get 100,000 newspapers from Melbourne to my area every day by ox-cart?

How would you transport enough trees to the paper-mill, and all the paper from the mill to the printers in order to print millions of newspapers every day without using trucks?

If your argument is based on the assumption that we're going drastically reduce the number of newspapers printed and the frequency at which newspapers are printed, then you're not making a fair comparison. You could vastly reduce the power consumption of the internet by drastically reducing bandwidth too.

For example, my first internet experience was with a UNIX shell account using a dial-up 2400bps modem. 2400bps connected to an ISP via a dial-up connection is far more than enough to download a text-based newspaper. If everyone were to go back to dial-up connections at that speed or slower, the power consumption of the internet would drop to a tiny fraction of what it is today.

Hell, if it comes to distributing daily news, AM radio would be the most efficient method. You don't even need a power source for the receiver for a crystal-set radio. (But crystal set radio receivers are pretty crappy. However solar-powered radios and clockwork radios are also available.)



We couldn't go back to the "more feasible" agrarian civilization model because of population density. Billions of people in industrial societies would starve to death if we tried.

And why would we?

Even if fossil fuels ran out, that would be no reason to abandon technology. Energy would be vastly more expensive, and so high-tech devices would in turn become far more expensive, but that wouldn't make abandoning technology altogether a sensible option.

For example, you could have bio-diesel trucks deliver goods. Sure, it'd cost a hell of a lot more to deliver goods than it does now, but it'd still be far more practical than delivering goods by ox-cart given the population density of modern cities and distance the goods have to travel from agricultural regions.
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Interesting on the vaccines, I didn't know that.

About the radios, in fact, the Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer thinks radio will be the only thing that survives out of the industrial age, because of how easy it is to create them. Cell phones, computers, modern medical technology though, he believes are going out the window, because all are dependent on petro chemicals.

About the population density, well, most Peak Oil Scenarios factor in a massive die off on a global level. Keep that in mind.
 
TFian said:
Can you make fiber optic cables with domestic parts? I mean, in areas like Australia, Canada, US, Europe, without having to outsource it's production with rare materials in areas like India and China?
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What's it matter? Ocean transport is the cheapest way we have of moving things, and Pixy has already pointed out how much energy we have in the form of uranium. Or heck, hoist a sail.

The alternative is what? Shipping heavy printing plates from place to place so people can print books? Shipping containers full of pre-printed books? Shipping one book and having somebody create printing plates locally? If you are fretting about how to get a cable to somebody that can transmit millions of books a day electronically, you should be fretting a lot more about how to get physical books to them instead.
 
roger said:
What's it matter? Ocean transport is the cheapest way we have of moving things, and Pixy has already pointed out how much energy we have in the form of uranium. Or heck, hoist a sail.

The alternative is what? Shipping heavy printing plates from place to place so people can print books? Shipping containers full of pre-printed books? Shipping one book and having somebody create printing plates locally? If you are fretting about how to get a cable to somebody that can transmit millions of books a day electronically, you should be fretting a lot more about how to get physical books to them instead.
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We're peaking on Uranium, copper, coal, and many other resources. That's why I'm skeptical of the ability to make new fiber optic cables, if they rely on rare materials.

Why would everyone have to have books? Most people didn't read back in the agrarian days. Most people were either illiterate farmers or slaves.
 
TFian said:
Why would everyone have to have books? Most people didn't read back in the agrarian days. Most people were either illiterate farmers or slaves.
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My bolding. Sounds lovely. I can hardly wait for those times to reappear. :rolleyes:
 
TFian said:
I'm certainly not...:eye-poppi
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Well, that is why we will want books and information! Even if you are reduced to farming with your oxen, you will want access to information for a wide variety of reasons (dealing with your sick infant, better ways to grow your plots, getting a different seed strain from somebody far away when your and your neighbors' crops are hit by a blight, etc)
 
roger said:
Well, that is why we will want books and information! Even if you are reduced to farming with your oxen, you will want access to information for a wide variety of reasons (dealing with your sick infant, better ways to grow your plots, getting a different seed strain from somebody far away when your and your neighbors' crops are hit by a blight, etc)
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I agree. I'm not making an argument against information transfer, I'm just saying it's possible we'll devolve to an oppressive poor agrarian feudal state.
 
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/news/2009/10/peakcoalforecast.html

"Research forecasts world coal production could peak as soon as 2010"

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Report_Coal_10-07-2007ms.pdf

"Global coal reserve data is generally of poor quality and is often biased towards the high side."

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2006/03/02/peak_copper/index.html

"Forget about oil. Copper is getting pretty pricey, too. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jun/07/guardiansocietysupplement2

"Michael Meacher, the former environment minister of the UK 1997-2003, and UK Member of Parliament, reports that peak uranium happened in 1981. He also predicts a major shortage of uranium sooner than 2013 accompanied with hoarding and its value pushed up to the levels of precious metals."
 
theprestige said:
Yes, and that's pretty much exactly how the network is interconnected today, except the "phone lines" are purpose-built, high-throughput, high-volume wires, including intercontinental cables running across the sea floor. These last are truly one of the greatest feats of engineering in the history of the world, and they beat satellites six ways from silly when it comes to volume and speed.

I'm curious to know what made you think satellites were an important component of the Internet backbone?

ETA: For example, Australia is famous (or notorious) for only having one link to the rest of the Internet. That link is not a satellite, but rather a single, high-volume undersea cable strung to the island-continent.
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Well, I figured satellite communications were a backbone of the Internet. I thought cable Internet provides relied on satellites?
 
TFian said:
We're peaking on Uranium, copper, coal, and many other resources. That's why I'm skeptical of the ability to make new fiber optic cables, if they rely on rare materials.
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Glass. It's made from sand.

Anyway, we've got Uranium for half a million years at least. Copper is running low, but we're replacing huge amounts of installed copper cable with optical fiber. Which is glass. Made from sand.

Why would everyone have to have books? Most people didn't read back in the agrarian days. Most people were either illiterate farmers or slaves.
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And, with the current world population, if we reverted to "the agrarian days" most people would be corpses.
 
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