Will the internet survive energy contraction?

[TFian]

All words are cultural labels, so peak oil is just a cultural label. And if you think that living with untreated psychosis is functional, then you are sadly mistaken. Sociopaths do not follow social mores.

And that's all a sociopath really is, someone who doesn't follow social mores, which was kind of my point. It's all relative, and rather meaningless really.

 

[Dancing David]

Death is an important part of the cycle of life. Every once in a while a good cleanings of sorts needs to happen.

Your statement is more muddle headed anthropomorphism. I would make a suggestion but don't want to be charged with advocating self harm.

 

[TFian]

Your statement is more muddle headed anthropomorphism. I would make a suggestion but don't want to be charged with advocating self harm.

What, you're going to suggest I kill myself?

No thanks.

 

[TFian]

Also, population cleanings happen throughout history, and I'd imagine are a necessary cyclical event.

 

[JihadJane]

We've covered that already, thanks. If you want to look beyond the next million years, fine, but perhaps in a different thread?

Have you shared your analysis and projection of how petro-agriculture is going to convert to nuclear electricity in time to offset the projected decline in oil production?

That's a a half-good point. A changing climate doesn't make it impossible, but it makes it more difficult. Change complicates things; you can't pick up farmland and move it to follow the rainfall.

It does more than "complicate things".


Corn Jumps to Two-Year High on Signs U.S. Supplies to Trail Use


Global Food Crisis Sweeps Commodity Markets

~~~~~~~~~~~

Most people feel that peak oil will not effect the supply for decades.

You are the only one waving the tin foil flag of 2013. So you can also use the non-intermittent sources as well.

Since when was what "most people feel" considered to be valid scientific data?



PEAK OIL: Going Mainstream


~~~~~~

Maybe Mike Ruppert a bit? He's a known sexual harasser and been known to consort with pedophiles.

Rubbish

 

[TFian]

Again, this is simply untrue. Cities, with people clustered closely together and consequently drastically reduced travel requirements, are far more energy efficient than rural areas of equivalent population.

At first glance, what you say about cities would seem a reasonable statement, but when you take into account the amount of people driving to cities for work from the suburbs, all of the goods that must be delivered into the cities, the enormous amount of electricity and water that is used... your argument falls apart.

 

[TFian]

Rubbish

Not rubbish

State fines conspiracy writer in harassment case

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090925/NEWS/909250330

Delmart "Mike" Vreeland -- a primary source for Ruppert's conspiracy theory screed Crossing the Rubicon -- has been sentenced to 336 years in prison for pedophilia

http://www.kdvr.com/kdvr-douglascomangets336years-7716585,0,1532614.story

 

[Mashuna]

Again, this is simply untrue. Cities, with people clustered closely together and consequently drastically reduced travel requirements, are far more energy efficient than rural areas of equivalent population.


Bulk transport of resources to a single densely-packed population is far cheaper and more efficient than sharing it across a widely distributed population.


Quite the opposite. The megacities can be tricky to handle, but up to a million or two they are the most efficient, least resource intensive, most planet-friendly way for us to live.

At first glance, what you say about cities would seem a reasonable statement, but when you take into account the amount of people driving to cities for work from the suburbs, all of the goods that must be delivered into the cities, the enormous amount of electricity and water that is used... your argument falls apart.

Would either of you be able to provide any sources/numbers for these claims? Pixy's claim looks reasonable to me, but I'd appreciate some evidence either way.

 

[PixyMisa]

At first glance, what you say about cities would seem a reasonable statement, but when you take into account the amount of people driving to cities for work from the suburbs, all of the goods that must be delivered into the cities, the enormous amount of electricity and water that is used... your argument falls apart.

Nope!

Only about 8% of water use is residential anyway, and there's no difference there between urban and rural populations.

Electricity use is more efficient in cities, because again, distances are smaller and electrical losses are lower.

As for driving, people in rural communities have to drive significantly further than those in cities. There are no corner stores within walking distance, schools may be several miles away, and jobs are often further away than for suburb or even "exurb" dwellers. In recent decades it's the rural communities that have been hit hardest by the oil shocks. In the densest cities like Manhattan, no-one owns a car anyway.

 

[PixyMisa]

Have you shared your analysis and projection of how petro-agriculture is going to convert to nuclear electricity in time to offset the projected decline in oil production?

Yes.

In fact, it requires a combination of approaches, and is unlikely to be particularly comfortable. But that's not my point; I'm not arguing that things aren't going to change or that food isn't going to get more expensive.

I'm arguing that the world isn't going to collapse in a screaming heap as TFian and his gurus believe.

In 20 years I might not be able to eat steak every day. On the other hand, I'll have a gigabit internet connection and a petaflop computer.

That works for me. We adapt.

It does more than "complicate things".

Corn Jumps to Two-Year High on Signs U.S. Supplies to Trail Use

Which has what to do with climate change? It's an interesting datapoint, and relevant to the broader discussion, but not an argument.

Global Food Crisis Sweeps Commodity Markets

Unfortunately, that site is inhabited exclusively by bedbugs.

 

[PixyMisa]

Also, population cleanings happen throughout history

Really?

Name three.

and I'd imagine are a necessary cyclical event.

What cycle?

 

[PixyMisa]

Would either of you be able to provide any sources/numbers for these claims? Pixy's claim looks reasonable to me, but I'd appreciate some evidence either way.

I'd like to find a site that gathers all this stuff together. There's a lot of information out there, but you have go hunting for it.

This report, for example, explains that driving to the supermarket adds far more to the cost of getting your groceries than does importing them by ship in the first place, and that indeed importing fresh produce by air can sometimes be more energy-efficient than producing it locally.

There are a number of studies that have shown that buying locally-produced food from farmers' markets is also less energy efficient than getting it from your supermarket.

City apartment buildings are more energy-efficient, more water-efficient, and, of course, vastly more land-efficient than individual houses.

So it goes.

And, of course, the proportion of people employed in agriculture in the US has declined from over 40% to around 2% in just a few decades. Where are you going to put the 98% of people who aren't involved in farming? You don't want them cluttering up good farmland with new houses and roads. No, you want them in a densely-populated city that occupies as little land as possible.

I've yet to see TFian cite anything that wasn't easily-refuted nonsense. Good thing for us, considering the direness of his predictions.

 

[PixyMisa]

Death is an important part of the cycle of life. Every once in a while a good cleanings of sorts needs to happen.

I have Mike Godwin on standby.

 

[Mashuna]

I'd like to find a site that gathers all this stuff together. There's a lot of information out there, but you have go hunting for it.

This report, for example, explains that driving to the supermarket adds far more to the cost of getting your groceries than does importing them by ship in the first place, and that indeed importing fresh produce by air can sometimes be more energy-efficient than producing it locally.

There are a number of studies that have shown that buying locally-produced food from farmers' markets is also less energy efficient than getting it from your supermarket.

City apartment buildings are more energy-efficient, more water-efficient, and, of course, vastly more land-efficient than individual houses.

So it goes.

And, of course, the proportion of people employed in agriculture in the US has declined from over 40% to around 2% in just a few decades. Where are you going to put the 98% of people who aren't involved in farming? You don't want them cluttering up good farmland with new houses and roads. No, you want them in a densely-populated city that occupies as little land as possible.

Interesting - thank you for the links. Some of those were counter-intuitive for me, although having read them now I'm happy that I'm still energy efficient when I buy local produce, as I cycle to the shops.

I've yet to see TFian cite anything that wasn't easily-refuted nonsense. Good thing for us, considering the direness of his predictions.

He does seem to take a perverse pleasure in foretelling the deaths of billions, doesn't he?

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

30,000 people die a day of starvation because of our civilization. This could be avoided by giving them their land back so they can plant food for themselves instead of for global trade. Our civilization requires several forms of direct slavery for cheap products to be made in other countries. There is some really awful **** that happens, and there are things we can do to help stop those things, but ultimately these things MUST happen for us to live this way.

(My bolding. ) That's nothing compared to how many would starve without civilization. The shaky foundations of the rest of your statement there are immediately apparent ("giving them their land back", really).

But my point with quoting this is that you've lost all right to appeal to human suffering and death, given that you want most people to die anyway.

And that's all a sociopath really is, someone who doesn't follow social mores, which was kind of my point. It's all relative, and rather meaningless really.

You seem to call on the meaninglessness of words whenever you've said something particularly egregious. I.e., words are meaningless where it's convenient for you, otherwise you're happy to use them as though they have meaning. What a cowardly tactic.

You come in here and say: "I wish you would all die." Then, when called on this, all words are suddenly so relative that we can't fault you?

Your scenario is not only demonstrably false, and only held by someone intellectually lazy enough to not care about the facts. Wishing for such a violent fantasy to happen is downright evil.

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

It might not be OK, but Sheri Tepper can write some remarkably good novels based on exactly such fantasies. They're so entertaining that you hardly even notice that the moral viewpoint they express, if acted upon, would be as evil as anything humanity has seen in recorded history.

Sounds like skillfully constructed and delightfully irreverent literature. I take it Tepper's not seriously arguing that her scenarios are a goal to pursue as written, though.

 

[TFian]

Really?

Name three.

Black Death, 1918 flu pandemic, wiping out the indigenous people of the America's, Kosovo, Bosnia. Countless more in human and animal populations

What cycle?

Rise and fall of civilizations, and populations.

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

Black Death, 1918 flu pandemic, wiping out the indigenous people of the America's, Kosovo, Bosnia. Countless more in human and animal populations

Are you of the opinion that those each wiped out 70% of the global population? Which is what you were claiming we'd see in cycles?

Are you also claiming that we can't help commiting genocide and that this is a good thing?

 

[TFian]

Are you of the opinion that those each wiped out 70% of the global population? Which is what you were claiming we'd see in cycles?

No, but they did take out large chunks of populations, and allowed certain objectives to be fulfilled.

Are you also claiming that we can't help commiting genocide and that this is a good thing?

I think it's inevitable, no matter what the force is. Whether it's a plague, famine, nuclear war, or constructed genocide, it's going to happen anyway sometime in the future, so it doesn't really bother me. Either they'll be an agricultural die off, or we'll do what William Stanton suggests, and start killing off the elderly and retarded, and other drains of resources.

But no, I don't believe we can help stop committing genocide, I think it comes natural to humans, and it has it's benefits.

 

[PixyMisa]

Black Death

One, yes. The Black Death really was a civilisation-altering event. Civilisation didn't collapse, but it did change.

1918 flu pandemic

Worst pandemic of modern times, killed more people than the Great War, hardly cause civilisation to bobble,

wiping out the indigenous people of the America's

The indigenous people weren't wiped out. Their society was drastically altered by an encounter with a far more technologically advanced civilisation. Which is outside the context of this discussion, really.

Rise and fall of civilizations, and populations.

What cycle?

The Bronze Age Collapse was the single largest civilisational failure in history. Most of the advanced cultures around the Mediterranean and the Near- and Middle-East keeled over and died.

There has been no repeat of that event, and China (for example) had a stable civilisation the entire time.

Rome fell, and Western Europe was shrouded in darkness, but Byzantium endured, and India and China barely noticed, while the Arab world grew and flourished.

It's not a cycle. Stuff happens, in different places and different times.