Will the internet survive energy contraction?

[TFian]

I am both, I work with hardware all the time.

And anecdotes, appeal to authority,

How much energy to make paper, how much water?

Depends on what paper, and how it's made. It takes the equivalent of about 17 Watt-hours (Wh) of electricity to make a sheet of paper from wood (and about 12 Wh for 100% recycled paper). I'm not sure how much water is used.

 

[TFian]

How ill you heat a hous ewith wood?
Or will you go back to coal?

Uh, a fireplace?

 

[TFian]

Wow, this greer guy really is a total kook isn't he?

There isn't going to be any energy contraction. We have many many sources of energy that we haven't even bothered to tap yet because it's not cost effective at the moment. As technology improves and fossil fuels become more expensive to extract we will slowly shift to these other sources. For example space based solar, fission, fusion etc. There's really no reason we have to worry about running out of energy.

Also for those who are extra short sighted remember that almost our entire fossil fuel infrastructure is only 150 years old and most of it is much newer than that. Over the next century we could easily transition to a different infrastructure.

Things like fusion, fission and space based solar are fantasies, that have no basis in reality.

 

[TFian]

TFian, no disrespect but you really need to bring some actual facts to the table here. Basically electronics are vast multipliers of human effort and therefore are worth the small energy cost in almost any scenario you can paint.

Also why are you so hardcore about following this guy? Is this some sort of cult or something?

No, it's not a cult, he's the leader of a legitimate religion. And he's not the only one I listen to anyway.

 

[TFian]

"Grand Archdruid"? "Green Wizards"? Seriously. That's got "kook" written all over it.

Why? What's "kooky" about it?

 

[TFian]

Cool, perhaps you could start by responding to the numbers on the available uranium in the oceans and explaining why that doesn't nullify your entire argument?

I've not seen any evidence that suggest Uranium in the oceans can be used for practical energy usage.

 

[TFian]

Yes. The hand-cranked OLPC does email just as well as my destop computer here. It does it over WiFi, a radio technology, and can mesh network in that it doesn't need any infrastructure beyond the machines. Network data will bunny-hop through the devices in range. You'd probably want to add some backbone anyway, optics or radio, but that's the idea.

The kind of work it takes to keep a couple of ponies fed, and build and maintain a road to put the Express on dwarfs the email any day.

But how are these OLPC laptops made? My guess it needs a fossil fuel heavy globalized system to make and distribute.

Sure. If you look at the internet infrastructure today, and set that as your baseline of what network infrastructure costs, you're going to get a wrong number. The servers alone that online video necessitates could be switched off right now, and all you'd miss is online video.

What I'm saying is that it's a fallacy to compare the internet today to any other potential method. Before you'd even consider those other methods, you'd optimize the net.

Maybe for a while, but that suggests humans are adaptable to crisis scenarios.

 

[TFian]

Um...does this "Green Wizard" thing just mean someone who knows pre-mechanized agricultural techniques? Personally, if I need to know about that sort of thing I'll go talk to the Amish. They've been doing it for generations and I know they won't give me any BS...other than the type that actually comes out of the cow.

And what "BS" is Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer going to give you?

TFian, what exactly are you looking for on this forum? Everyone here has read your arguments and given rather well reasoned responses to all of them. It's been a fun bull session but until you provide some sort of solid evidence we're just discussing different views about the direction civilization will go in the future.

I have, and am going to continue to give evidence. I'm continuing to work on posts that show that every other energy source that's been suggested to replace petroleum has a very weak EROEI compared to Petroleum, and won't replace it.

Personally, I don't like your view of the future. I refuse to write off billions of people as necessary deaths. So without a really good argument as to why I should accept your vision of the future I'm going to go with those who have a more optimistic view and are as horrified as I am at the idea of mass starvation and death.

That's fair enough...

 

[TFian]

Instead of basing his ideas on what humans will be able to do, Greer bases his ideas on what we humans will not be able to do. Such people are inevitably wrong.

Why's that?

 

[TFian]

I have some hardware training and experience, although I have much more knowledge and experience with software than with hardware.


Several of the people who have disagreed with you in this thread are more reliable and more accomplished than "the great Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer". Why are you so ready to believe everything the Grand ArchDruid has written?

Because he's been writing about it for years, is college educated, an award winning author, and makes sense. Also, what does it matter if he's also written about super natural creatures?

 

[TFian]

The internet worked twenty years ago without the server farms of Google and Amazon and wherever the porn and spam comes from. There was no free streaming video, admittedly, but that's hardly vital to the internet.

Yeah, and that's when the internet was strictly available to corporations and the government. Which John Greer says will happen once it becomes too expensive.

 

[Dancing David]

Uh, a fireplace?

So we will denude the landscape, wonderful or use coal? Soot and CO₂

 

[TFian]

So we will denude the landscape, wonderful or use coal? Soot and CO₂

I'm not sure what you mean by denude the landscape?

And yes, we'll still be emitting CO2. I'm not sure where I said otherwise..?

 

[Dancing David]

Things like fusion, fission and space based solar are fantasies, that have no basis in reality.

Boom, there it is 1/6 of current generation.

 

[excaza]

Things like fusion, fission and space based solar are fantasies, that have no basis in reality.

Fusion is being developed, fission has been around since the 40s, and space based solar currently isn't practical.

 

[TFian]

Fusion is being developed, fission has been around since the 40s, and space based solar currently isn't practical.

Being developed doesn't make it a practical reality. Yes space based solar is stupid.

How is fission used now?

 

[excaza]

Are you aware of how a nuclear power plant works?

 

[TFian]

Are you aware of how a nuclear power plant works?

Oh well I've already addressed uranium.

 

[excaza]

If by "addressed" you mean this:

I've not seen any evidence that suggest Uranium in the oceans can be used for practical energy usage.

I'm not sure how you can make that statement and not know how a nuclear power plant works. I think you need to go back to the books. Nice attempt though.

 

[TFian]

If by "addressed" you mean this:


I think you need to go back to the books. Nice attempt though.

Show me practical extraction then. What if's don't impress me. After all, I could say we could practically extract our energy sources from hygroelectricity (from clouds), but that doesn't mean it's a reality.