Will the internet survive energy contraction?

[ben m]

Let me add one more comment about things being "too expensive". I want to highlight the Erie Canal. Prior to the Erie Canal---remember, this is all pre-industrial, pre-fertilizer, pre-fossil-fuel---people in the Midwest grew corn and grain, and people in East Coast cities wanted to buy corn and grain. The only way to get corn from Ohio to (say) Yonkers was by horse-drawn wagon.

TFian's view would be: "Surely the Ohioans and New Yorkers would give up on this unsustainable nonsense. The Ohioans established a self-sufficient agrarian society. The New Yorkers couldn't afford grain imports so they all moved west to live off the land." Uh, no they didn't. The Ohioans shipped the darn grain on the wagons, would you believe it, and the New Yorkers paid for it, amazingly. Why? Because not everyone wants to live on a farm; because shipping isn't all that expensive even under muscle power; because price increases don't mean everyone gives up and becomes hunter-gatherers.

Of course it would be cheaper and more efficient to have a canal connecting (say) the Mohawk River to Lake Erie. "This is the problem with post-fossil societies", TFian might say, "Even if you want a big efficiency-booster (like a wind farm, a cable network, a chip-fab) you can't BUILD these things without fossil fuels. Everyone would give up on building new things and decide to become agrarians or hunter-gatherers instead."

Is that what happened? No. The Erie Canal was dug by hand, with shovels and wheelbarrows and sometimes donkeys. They put in this huge, huge, huge startup cost of manual labor---to cut the wheat shipping cost from "wagon" to "donkey-drawn-barge". (Remember, TFian, "donkey-drawn-barge" is a level of difficulty and expense that you seem to think should also drive people to desperate agrarianism.)

You are wrong. "All shipping is by sail and wagon-train" was not too expensive to put a halt to commerce in valuable items. "All shipping is by mule-drawn barge" was not too expensive to put a halt to commerce in cheap bulk commodities like wheat. And "digging the Erie Canal by hand" was not too big a capital investment to put a stop to people who wanted a more efficient way to do business.

Imagine if you had gone back to the Erie Canal builders and told them how to build an Internet from scratch, without fossil fuels: "Dear Governor DeWitt: there *is* a way to get instant communications from Yonkers to Chicago. But to use it you need to mine 10,000 kg of copper with pickaxes. You need to smelt it using waterwheel-powered furnaces. Then you need hand-crews to install 1,000,000 vertical poles in a line from here to Chicago, and 10 repeater stations manned 24/7 by men on generator bicycles."

Would DeWitt have done it? TFian, you're obviously going to say No. But you also said No to "would there have been a wagon trade", "would there have been barge trade", and most of all to "would people have been able to build infrastructure without fossil fuels". And you'd have been wrong about everything. I think he would have done it.

 

[excaza]

Another thread where the flaws in your reasoning are pointed out and you just ignore it. Wonderful, I predict it will end up just like this one.

 

[ben m]

Of course, just out of reach for the common man.

(As usual, you've back-calculated the cost by looking at your desired outcome. "I KNOW that this is an agrarian and internet-less society. Therefore, the cost MUST BE ... well, it obviously must be high enough to be out of reach of agrarians!")

 

[TFian]

(As usual, you've back-calculated the cost by looking at your desired outcome. "I KNOW that this is an agrarian and internet-less society. Therefore, the cost MUST BE ... well, it obviously must be high enough to be out of reach of agrarians!")

Sure, it will be available, for the aristocracy Or do you think energy being more expensive won't drastically reduce our living standard for the common man?

 

[ben m]

Or do you think energy being more expensive won't drastically reduce our living standard for the common man?

I wonder if maybe I said something like that. Golly, I recall saying it ten or fifteen times. Maybe I imagined it? Is there some way to find out?

(HINT: what I mean is, "Go back and read my posts for a change.")

Yes, energy costs will reduce our living standard, especially on personal travel, housing, and refrigeration and AC. I think that computing, especially basic networked computing, uses a comparatively tiny amount of energy in exchange for a very large impact on quality of life. Therefore, I think computing is one of the last things to go. And since the renewables situation isn't as bad as you make out, I don't think this will "go" at all.

 

[TFian]

I wonder if maybe I said something like that. Golly, I recall saying it ten or fifteen times. Maybe I imagined it? Is there some way to find out?

(HINT: what I mean is, "Go back and read my posts for a change.")

Yes, energy costs will reduce our living standard, especially on personal travel, housing, and refrigeration and AC. I think that computing, especially basic networked computing, uses a comparatively tiny amount of energy in exchange for a very large impact on quality of life. Therefore, I think computing is one of the last things to go. And since the renewables situation isn't as bad as you make out, I don't think this will "go" at all.

But you, and others, keep making the argument such as "Well we shipped in past times without fossil fuels, so we can do it again!" Newsflash, all that "shipping" back then pre fossil fuels was for select goods for a tiny sliver of the population (The aristocracy). To suggest we can have mass goods for the common person because shipping can be done without fossil fuels, well, maybe you need to get some historic perspective.

Since we can't ship computer parts to the people en mass, very few (less than 1%) will be able to access this "Internet".

 

[TFian]

And since the renewables situation isn't as bad as you make out, I don't think this will "go" at all.

They can only provide a tiny sliver of power that fossil fuels can deliver. I'd read the Grand Archdruid on this topic.

 

[Myriad]

Yes, yes you are. It's true ships moved around and carried cargo in the middle ages, with goods and foods shipped from far ends to one another, for the aristocracy. The vast majority of people though, produced and consumed everything locally, and lived only a tiny fraction of the living standard of the aristocracy, which is likely to return once we re enter the age of feudalism.

Was there 4000 mile Caesar salads in 1400? Sure, but only available to the aristocracy.

So what? We're not talking about salads, remember? The context of the discussion was your insistence that the computers and cable modems needed to provide communications services for a town would have to be locally produced. Now you're admitting that an aristocracy would have access to non locally produced goods. But, providing communications for a town would be just the kind of thing that the Lord of the Manor would be expected to handle, right after the community food irradiator (so we don't need refrigeration). Were all those clocks installed in towers in Europe during the Renaissance built by the local farmers on their days off?

Interesting, though, that you are going back to medieval times (1400) as an example. How much fossil fuel use was going on in, say, 1770? Some (coal), but apparently less than available renewable power sources today. Yet that's when many American colonists in the established towns, none of them real aristocrats and most of them farmers and tradesmen, were, as a matter of documented historical fact, drinking tea or coffee.

For most things besides food and clothing, centralized production wins. It won even back in the Stone Age when the highest technology was hand-knapped flint tools. Iron and steel production and fabrication have been practiced by centralized specialists for as long as they've existed. As it has always been in the past for glass, ceramics, medicines, paper, knives, guns, motors, it will continue to be, and also for dynamos, LEDs, solar panels, and electronics. Chainsaws win, tractors win, LEDs win. Some things have shifted in the past between local and centralized production, and may shift again more than once. Baked goods, potable water, liquor, ice, cloth, leather, laundry, bathing, schooling, dairy products. But not electronics, because centralized manufacture is so much more efficient, and not vacuum tubes because they're more expensive and more difficult to make and to use than semiconductors so they have no advantages whatsoever -- except they're more old fashioned so somehow that makes them superior in your eyes.

The shame here is that there are many reasonable predictions that could be made and argued on this subject. The possibility of a trend of returning to extended households, and other community planning issues. The future of rail transport. Food supply solutions (e.g.: irradiated foods don't need refrigeration, duh!). Whether or not Mel Gibson should drive the tanker truck to decoy the motorcycle gangs. If you could remedy your glaring oversights, biases and blind spots, you'd have more to offer.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[excaza]

They can only provide a tiny sliver of power that fossil fuels can deliver. I'd read the Grand Archdruid on this topic.

Well, since it's my job, I've read people who know what they're talking about. I'll stick with their work.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Here TFian, you want to see examples of locally produced core aspects of "Industrial Civilization"?

http://vimeo.com/16106427

Their work is very interesting. At least they're trying to do something. What is the GrandArchLeadPoisoning doing? Oh yeah, writing obnoxiously condescending blogposts while being a "stay at home husband" and some "organic gardening" in his spare time. What a hell of a role model...

 

[Garrison0fMars]

TFian, think we're going to have to go back to man and horse powered agriculture? Think again.

http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/LifeTrac

Take a very close look at the power sources. I think you might be in for a surprise...

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Actually it did. It fell because it's energy base was experiencing diminishing EROEI, and it fell victim to catabolic collapse. See thread http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189281

You know, I know peak oil doomers often make that claim (Roman Empire collapsed from declining energy supplies), but after double checking it, I can't find any solid historical basis for it. The fact is though, there are many many different theories as to why the Romans collapsed, and I believe in the 80s it was numbered at about 251 "viable" theories. In that list though, I don't even see that whole "declining resources" in it, it seems to in fact be a very fringe theory to their collapse. So given there isn't even a strong consensus as to why they collapsed, or even if they did (some argue it was a downsize, not a collapse), it's rather preposterous for you to be claiming that Greer or whatever has the correct definite answer to why they collapsed, without any real evidence (or even fake evidence) to show for it.

 

[ben m]

But you, and others, keep making the argument such as "Well we shipped in past times without fossil fuels, so we can do it again!" Newsflash, all that "shipping" back then pre fossil fuels was for select goods for a tiny sliver of the population (The aristocracy). To suggest we can have mass goods for the common person because shipping can be done without fossil fuels, well, maybe you need to get some historic perspective.

Since we can't ship computer parts to the people en mass, very few (less than 1%) will be able to access this "Internet".

Right now, huge numbers of people are willing to pay $600 for an iPad, or $200 for an iPhone, and $80 a month to run it.

Let's say, hypothetically, that the only way to get an iPhone from the factory (Asia) to the US (West Coast ports) was by luxury sailboat. Such a yacht can be rented (and crewed!) for under $3000/week, and can cross the Pacific in 6 weeks. So the cost of a Pacific yacht delivery voyage is $18,000. You could easily (i.e. without thinking twice or retrofitting the boat or anything) carry 1000 iPads and 1000 iPhones on such a boat; the street value of this cargo is about $800,000.

The shipping problem---which you said was impossible, which you said makes computers inferior to horses---only added 18/800, or 2%, to the cost of an iPhone or iPad.

Then let's deliver these iPhones and iPads cross country by horse. Let's value a horse at $3000/yr and pay the rider $100/day; we'll let the horse go from LA to Albuquerque (800mi) at an easy 40 miles/day, so that's a $2100 delivery job. Maybe the horse can carry 60 lbs of cargo---that's 460 iPhones, worth about $100,000, or 38 iPads, worth $22,000.

So horseback delivery of iPads to the middle of nowhere, with no optimization at all, adds about 10% to their cost. Add that to the 2% we paid (overpaid!) for the yacht and ... well, I'm not seeing where 99% of the world is shut out of computer ownership by this 12% delivery fee.

I repeat: computers are small, inexpensive to make and deliver, and valuable.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Since we're on the topic of sea shipping...

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/sailing-ships-large-crew-automated-control.html

Seems computers make this non fossil fuel form of transportation and shipping goods incredibly cheaper.

Makes you think eh TFian?

Oh yeah, and this http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/06/ocean-liners.html

Switching back to ocean liners would surely lower long distance passenger travel and change life as we know it, but it would not be the end of modern civilization, nor the end of tourism or business.

Seems this source of yours disagrees with you on the "end times".

 

[TFian]

I wonder if maybe I said something like that. Golly, I recall saying it ten or fifteen times. Maybe I imagined it? Is there some way to find out?

(HINT: what I mean is, "Go back and read my posts for a change.")

Yes, energy costs will reduce our living standard, especially on personal travel, housing, and refrigeration and AC. I think that computing, especially basic networked computing, uses a comparatively tiny amount of energy in exchange for a very large impact on quality of life. Therefore, I think computing is one of the last things to go. And since the renewables situation isn't as bad as you make out, I don't think this will "go" at all.

Something else I forgot to add. Even if it turns out to be possible to power something like an industrial society on renewable resources, the huge energy, labor, and materials costs needed to develop renewable energy and replace most of the infrastructure of today’s society with new systems geared to new energy sources will have to be paid out of existing supplies; thus everything else would have to be cut to the bone, or beyond. Exactly how big the price tag would be is anybody’s guess just now, but it’s probably not far from the mark to suggest that the population of the industrial world would have to accept a Third World standard of living, and the population of the Third World would have to give up aspirations for a better life for the foreseeable future, for such a gargantuan project to have any chance of working. For that matter, I’m sure there must be climate change zealots who have given up their McMansions, sold their cars, and now live in one-room apartments in rat-infested tenements with six other activists so all their spare money can go to building a renewable economy, but I don’t happen to know any who have done so, while I long ago lost track of the number of global warming bumper stickers I’ve seen on the rear ends of SUVs.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

I’m sure there must be climate change zealots who have given up their McMansions, sold their cars, and now live in one-room apartments in rat-infested tenements with six other activists .

Why exactly would living in an one room apartment entail it being dirty and infested with pests? You know there is a such thing as a nice studio apartment? If we had to move into smaller dwellings to conserve energy, why would it have to inevitably be dirty and grimy? If that's the case, I might as well move into an RV, which would probably use even less energy, and could easily be kept clean and pest free.

By the way, I've lived and can again in one room apartments that were clean and comfortable, and far above the lifestyle of someone typically in the third world.

 

[soylent]

There's a fairly obvious point that nonetheless deserves to be reiterated; the first watt of electricity is much more important than the 1000th watt. With 1 watt of electricity I can charge a smart phone(among other useful things capable of phone calls, GPS, taking photographs, looking up important information and news from far away places), listen to radio, charge a small flash light/reading light among many other things.

When you have an average of 999 watts of electricity at your disposal; adding a 1000th watt is of very low value. You could increase the diagonal of your TV by a fraction of an inch; you could have your lighting turned on for a few percent longer, you can leave a couple of phone chargers and electric toothbrush chargers plugged in even while not using them, you can run your washing machine two more times per year. While there's surely a little bit of satisfaction to be gained from the 1000th watt, it's not nearly as much as going from nothing to having electricity at all.

No place is this dimishing return more evident than in desktop processors. Active power(as opposed to leakage, which is small) consumption of CMOS is proportional to the cube of frequency(because you have to increase voltage to remain stable). Instead of a 3 GHz processor operating at 100 W you could have a 1 GHz processor of the same sophistication operating at ~4 W. You could have 27 cores operating at 1 GHz, using the same amount of power as a 3 GHz core(graphics cards lean heavily towards this trade off, because the workload is embarrassingly parallel)

Every time you double the cache size you get roughly 10% more performance(in other words, an embarassingly bad use of die area); yet processor manufacturers have doubled the cache size repeatedly to eek out a little bit more single threaded performance rather than add more cores.

Every time you increase the width of the core you get a logarithmic improvement in performance(it gets harder and harder to find independent instructions in the same thread that can execute in paralell) for much worse than linear increase in die area used for execution units and the necessary machinery to try and keep them full.

This is why an iphone can do a decent job running unreal engine 3 or ID's rage. Having 1/100th the power consumption of a desktop computer still allows you to capture a good deal of the performance.

 

[TFian]

So what? We're not talking about salads, remember?

True, we're not talking about salads, but we are talking about International trade, since computers can't be locally produced (and no one has shown me otherwise).

Now you're admitting that an aristocracy would have access to non locally produced goods. But, providing communications for a town would be just the kind of thing that the Lord of the Manor would be expected to handle, right after the community food irradiator (so we don't need refrigeration).

But why would the aristocrat distribute such technology to his subjects? That flies right in the face of any study of feudal society. They'll naturally restrict knowledge to their surfs, not do their best to evenly distribute it. Consider this. The 1830s certainly had global trade, but the volume of trade, the physical tonnage of goods shipped from A to B, this was much smaller - even compared to the smaller population.

Global trade will never disappear due to peak fossil fuels. But there's every prospect for a significant contraction in trade volume.

Only the aristocracy had 1,500 mile salads in 1833, which wasn't that long ago.

 

[Myriad]

But why would the aristocrat distribute such technology to his subjects?

Because if he doesn't, they will suck at everything, even subsistence farming, and his lands will be taken over by some other aristocrat whose subjects are, by virtue of their access to information, more competent and less plague-ridden.

I'll also point out that by invoking feudalism, you are implicitly assuming your conclusion (that is, highly limited communications, to which the feudal system was an adaptation) in your argument. That is fallacious.

Only the aristocracy had 1,500 mile salads in 1833, which wasn't that long ago.

You keep trying to change the subject to salad. I don't need salad, and if I did, I can grow my own salad (and have done so). Try again, with commodities whose value is not so dependent on the speed of transport.

Around 1833, during that terrible "no salad" era, men would go to sea for voyages lasting years, often circumnavigating the world, to obtain oil for lamps. You think if energy gets expensive, no one will bother to manufacture and transport dynamos and LEDs instead?

Salt, coffee, tea, spices, sugar, paper, ink, guns, cloth, china, guns, wine, wood, rubber, rum, pig iron. Dynamos, LEDs, computers, servos, medicines, vitamins, bearings, optics, aluminum, machine tools. It's all about what's valuable and why. Communications has always been valuable, and it is only more so today now that accurate information about things like science and medicine, unlike in those feudal times, actually exists.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[ben m]

Global trade will never disappear due to peak fossil fuels. But there's every prospect for a significant contraction in trade volume.

Anything that gets you off of the infinitely-expensive argument is a win in my book.

OK, given that there's a "tiny amount of power", and a "tiny amount of global trade"---there's someone deciding what to do with that power, and deciding what to carry in that trade. What are they going to do? If you're in control of the Earth's only 20-megawatt hydro plant, you're not going to want to heat houses, run refrigerators, charge up electric cars, roast Portland cement, or smelt aluminum---those are all comparatively low-profit-margin activities. But you do have enough energy to manufacture solar panels and microcomputers, which lots of people are desperate for.

(Why are they desperate? Because the lack of a microcomputer means that one of your farmhands has to spend a day on horseback to get to the big-town library to look up crop-rotation data. Because the lack of rapid weather data meant you missed a chance to harvest your apples before the hailstorm. Because you'll miss the turnip-planting window unless you can get the farrier to send you special cotter-pin before the first frost hits. Because your brother moved out West, but ought to have day-to-day input on your dying mother's care.)