Will the internet survive energy contraction?

Dancing David said:
Um, scarcity is not collapse.
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It can eventually lead to collapse.

Think about this, to make the Internet work you need to maintain and power thousands of server farms, each of which use as much electricity as a midsized city, not to mention all the other costly and energy-intensive infrastructure that keeps the net running. Now..how is pen and paper *less* energy intensive?

Are the things everyone in this thread proposing technically feasible? Sure. Does it offer enough in the way of benefits to be worth the considerable cost in resources, when every scrap of energy and material has six serious needs begging for it, and communication on the scale you're discussing can be done just as well by a cheaper and less resource-intensive approach that does without computers? Hardly.

Everything you guys mentioned in your example could be done just as effectively without having to devote resources to building and maintaining computers. Your email to a distant friend? The message could be sent just as easily by radio using Morse Code. A local wiki, for heaven's sake, in a small rural community? Face to face communication, backed up by a notebook or two (of the paper kind), works at least as well and is vastly cheaper. This is the point that I'm trying to make here: it doesn't matter if a technology is really nifty; if there's another way to meet its actual needs that's cheaper in terms of scarce resources, that cheaper way will be more viable.

First, I'm typing this on my junkyard Dell laptop made from the parts of about 6 machines and maybe 3 models, running Linux. I've got quite a few old and obsolete machines running on my home network. Under good conditions they may soldier on for quite some time - in fact they are more reliable then newer machines, as they were made before the switch to lead free solder and before the age of outsourcing went totally viral. But they will not last indefinitely. The idea that electronic devices last forever is a fallacy. Even semiconductors change characteristics over time, and other pasts like capacitors fail more quickly. Anything that spins is suspect. CDs and DVDs degrade. At some point you hit diminishing returns and it's just not worth it anymore - then you switch to simpler methods such as what the Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer describes.

There are no simple CPUs - even the simplest is the result of a planet wide industrial chain that could not be duplicated on a small scale. That's true for so much of the things we use every day and think of as "simple".

Industry is cumulative in nature, always supported by the excess energy of fossil fuels. Once that begins to break down, a large number of things will no longer be producible for want of just a few key parts or materials.

I expect to get a flurry of responses that simply ignore the argument Grand Archdruid John Michael Greer makes about economic viability and insist that since (insert the technology of your choice) is nifty, and technically possible, of course we can have it in the deindustrial future.
 
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Mark6 said:
His approach is fundamentally defeatist. And it does not have to be. Put it this way -- amount of solar energy hitting Earth is 10,000 times what our civilization currently uses. Total amount of energy Sun puts out is 2 billion times that. Someone who really wants what is best for humanity ought to think how to harness this bounty, rather than how to survive the "inevitable contraction".
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Your comments are very nearly the perfect example of the logic of abundance, the kind of thinking Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer criticizes. I don't think you've grasped yet that the future ahead of us is one in which there will be urgent, bare-survival needs clamoring for every watt of electricity, every scrap of salvage, and every hour of labor time. For a village to devote the electrical output of a waterwheel to a repeater could mean that the electricity won't be there to power a couple of refrigerators, so that children don't die of diarrhea from spoiled food, the way they used to do, every summer, in the pre-refrigeration US. The hours of labor needed to keep your computer system running is time that could be spent growing and harvesting more food, so the risk of going hungry before the next harvest will be a little less. That's the way life works when you don't have a fantastic abundance of cheap energy flooding through a society -- and it's a reality that most people these days seem unable to grasp.

Those things the Internet does that can't be replaced by simpler methods -- for example, the ability to look up a diagram for a foxhole radio in seconds, as I just did -- are precisely those things that require the huge server farms and other unsustainable technologies.
 
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TFian said:
Think about this, to make the Internet work you need to maintain and power thousands of server farms, each of which use as much electricity as a midsized city, not to mention all the other costly and energy-intensive infrastructure that keeps the net running. Now..how is pen and paper *less* energy intensive?
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I have pen and paper right here, but to get what I write from me to you is a lot more energy-intensive than sending it this way. And that's without having to use horses.

In an energy-squeezed world information will still have to flow, and commuting to the same office will not be an efficient means. The future of the internet (and the future of a lot of work) is in replacing the office. And (to some extent) replacing the city, and normal human interaction.
 
TFian said:
Your comments are very nearly the perfect example of the logic of abundance, the kind of thinking Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer criticizes. I don't think you've grasped yet that the future ahead of us is one in which there will be urgent, bare-survival needs clamoring for every watt of electricity, every scrap of salvage, and every hour of labor time.
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Abundance and paucity are a false dichotomy. Goods remain available even after they're abundant. All that changes is the terms of trade (in a broad sense).
 
TFian said:
I expect to get a flurry of responses that simply ignore the argument Grand Archdruid John Michael Greer makes about economic viability and insist that since (insert the technology of your choice) is nifty, and technically possible, of course we can have it in the deindustrial future.
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Nice bit of well-poisoning and preemptive stuffing of straw there.

Listen, we're not ignoring Greer's argument, we're saying it's wrong. The case is not that some form of global, computerized communications network is "nifty", the case is that it's a) the least resource intensive method of doing all the things you apparently want carrier pigeons and cross-country bicycle messengers to do, and b) so essential in a scenario such as you envision that it'll be the very last thing to be turned off.

Basically, if we get to that point then we're alerady living in Fallout 3 and all bets are off.
 
Roboramma said:
Given that the link I presented gave you the numbers to work with, I think drkitten's post is a better response than I could offer. I'd appreciate it if you responded to that. :)

Edit: Or perhaps you are disputing those numbers themselves? Could you be clear as to whether your issue is with the total amount of uranium in sea water or with how efficiently that uranium could be acquired and used?
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Dancing David said:
3.3mg/m3 of uranium in seawater, then let us say that you can only extract 30%, so 1.1mg/m3, 1000 m.3=1 gram of uranium, so 1,000,0000 m3 of seawater equals 1 kg. of uranium. So 1 km.3=1 kg of uranium

If the oceans have 1.37 billion cubic kilometers of seawater then you could get 1.37 billion kg. of uranium.


I don't know how much that is compared to six times the current uranium electricty usage.
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TFian, perhaps your "I'm disputing that uranium found in sea water would be enough to power industrial civilization." is simply incredulity on your part, but I had thought you would be able to back it up.
 
TFian said:
It can eventually lead to collapse.

Think about this, to make the Internet work you need to maintain and power thousands of server farms, each of which use as much electricity as a midsized city, not to mention all the other costly and energy-intensive infrastructure that keeps the net running. Now..how is pen and paper *less* energy intensive?
Click to expand...
Maybe you should look at actual energy budgets before you focus on the internet?

What is spent to keep corporate offices at a temperatures appropriate for wearing three piece suits?
Are the things everyone in this thread proposing technically feasible? Sure. Does it offer enough in the way of benefits to be worth the considerable cost in resources, when every scrap of energy and material has six serious needs begging for it, and communication on the scale you're discussing can be done just as well by a cheaper and less resource-intensive approach that does without computers? Hardly.
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How do you make paper and pencils, what sort of energy budget is there, and then transport?
Everything you guys mentioned in your example could be done just as effectively without having to devote resources to building and maintaining computers. Your email to a distant friend? The message could be sent just as easily by radio using Morse Code. A local wiki, for heaven's sake, in a small rural community? Face to face communication, backed up by a notebook or two (of the paper kind), works at least as well and is vastly cheaper. This is the point that I'm trying to make here: it doesn't matter if a technology is really nifty; if there's another way to meet its actual needs that's cheaper in terms of scarce resources, that cheaper way will be more viable.
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So how much energy to make paper for newspapers and letters?
And then the pencils and pens?
And then the transport?
First, I'm typing this on my junkyard Dell laptop made from the parts of about 6 machines and maybe 3 models, running Linux.
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That great, my machine is old.
I've got quite a few old and obsolete machines running on my home network. Under good conditions they may soldier on for quite some time - in fact they are more reliable then newer machines, as they were made before the switch to lead free solder and before the age of outsourcing went totally viral. But they will not last indefinitely. The idea that electronic devices last forever is a fallacy.
Click to expand...
I never said it, straw attacks are wonderful.
Even semiconductors change characteristics over time, and other pasts like capacitors fail more quickly. Anything that spins is suspect. CDs and DVDs degrade. At some point you hit diminishing returns and it's just not worth it anymore - then you switch to simpler methods such as what the Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer describes.
Click to expand...
Like what, how is paper made, what energy and especially water requirement is needed?
Are we running out of fossil fuels BTW?
There are no simple CPUs - even the simplest is the result of a planet wide industrial chain that could not be duplicated on a small scale. That's true for so much of the things we use every day and think of as "simple".
Click to expand...
That is true of all products, where did your clothes come from?
Industry is cumulative in nature, always supported by the excess energy of fossil fuels. Once that begins to break down, a large number of things will no longer be producible for want of just a few key parts or materials.
Click to expand...
You haven't established the scarcity resources. Which are you focusing on?
I expect to get a flurry of responses that simply ignore the argument Grand Archdruid John Michael Greer makes about economic viability and insist that since (insert the technology of your choice) is nifty, and technically possible, of course we can have it in the deindustrial future.
Click to expand...

So how many trees do you have to burn for winter heat?

Where are they?

I see your GrandArchdruid, I raise you two High Priests, two High Priestesses and a Witch King. (and that is a flush as well.)

So you have an obsession, maybe you should see what it takes to make a sheet of paper?
How much water?
 
TFian said:
Your comments are very nearly the perfect example of the logic of abundance, the kind of thinking Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer criticizes. I don't think you've grasped yet that the future ahead of us is one in which there will be urgent, bare-survival needs clamoring for every watt of electricity, every scrap of salvage, and every hour of labor time. For a village to devote the electrical output of a waterwheel to a repeater could mean that the electricity won't be there to power a couple of refrigerators, so that children don't die of diarrhea from spoiled food, the way they used to do, every summer, in the pre-refrigeration US. The hours of labor needed to keep your computer system running is time that could be spent growing and harvesting more food, so the risk of going hungry before the next harvest will be a little less. That's the way life works when you don't have a fantastic abundance of cheap energy flooding through a society -- and it's a reality that most people these days seem unable to grasp.

Those things the Internet does that can't be replaced by simpler methods -- for example, the ability to look up a diagram for a foxhole radio in seconds, as I just did -- are precisely those things that require the huge server farms and other unsustainable technologies.
Click to expand...

And tell me what is the energy consumption for paper and home heating?
 
Given that about 55% of our produced energy is used up by generation and distribution losses, I think we have issues more pertinent than how much energy the internet is using.
 
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TFian said:
Your comments are very nearly the perfect example of the logic of abundance, the kind of thinking Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer criticizes. I don't think you've grasped yet that the future ahead of us is one in which there will be urgent, bare-survival needs clamoring for every watt of electricity, every scrap of salvage, and every hour of labor time.
Click to expand...

A completely hypothetical future you have yet to show will happen.
 
TFian said:
Your comments are very nearly the perfect example of the logic of abundance, the kind of thinking Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer criticizes.
Click to expand...

Yes. And the Grand ArchWingNut has been shown on this thread alone to be so off-base that his criticisms are totally valueless.

My favorite sock puppet, the Screaming Lord High Vestial Virgin Ludwig the Mad, says that we will never have an energy crisis because scientists have already discovered the secret stash where the underwear gnomes have been hiding all the mismatched socks they've been stealing out of the dryer, and there's enough static electricity in those to power civilization for 10^(867,5309) years, give or take a week.

The difference is that Ludwig has a better grasp of the facts than the Grand ArchLunatic. At least mismatched socks actually exist.

I don't think you've grasped yet that the future ahead of us is one in which there will be urgent, bare-survival needs clamoring for every watt of electricity, every scrap of salvage, and every hour of labor time.
Click to expand...

There's a reason we've not grasped it yet. It's not true. The uranium in the ocean alone sees to that. The amount of solar power available from orbital sources alone sees to that. Even mined thorium reserves will see to that.
 
TFian said:
Think about this, to make the Internet work you need to maintain and power thousands of server farms, each of which use as much electricity as a midsized city, not to mention all the other costly and energy-intensive infrastructure that keeps the net running. Now..how is pen and paper *less* energy intensive?
Click to expand...

How much energy does it take to make a pencil?

How much energy does it take to make a ream of paper?

How much energy does it take to transport a piece of paper from New York City to Seattle?
 
I wanted to ask you all, how many of you have experience, and authority when it comes to hardware matters? From my experience, everyone optimistic about the energy usage of the internet usually comes from a software background, and NOT a hardware background. When I meet people with a hardware background, they tend to agree more with the Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer. I'm going to respond to the previous posts later, but I just wanted to ask this.
 
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