Will the internet survive energy contraction?

[W.D.Clinger]

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?

1. If you'll take a few minutes to to look into the Bigfoot advocates over in the "General Skepticism and the Paranormal" subforum, you'll find that many of them have been writing about it for years.
2. Yes, "the great Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer" is college-educated. He holds a bachelor's degree in a non-technical field. Most of the people who have responded to you in this thread have a better technical education than does John Michael Greer. Several of the people with whom you are arguing have earned doctoral degrees in technical subjects.
3. John Michael Greer won the COVR award from the Coalition of Visionary Resources. COVR is a "not-for-profit trade association" "made up of members who are usually either vendors or retailers" of "spirituality and New Age products". COVR is not known for its promotion of skeptical thinking, nor is it an organization that possesses any credibility on matters of science and technology.
4. As has been amply documented within this thread, much of what "the great Grand ArchDruid John Michael Greer" has written does not actually make sense.
5. Greer's books on the supernatural and the occult establish that he has chosen to earn his living by writing works of fiction disguised as non-fiction.

You're free to fall under Greer's spell, but you shouldn't expect your admiration of the great Grand ArchDruid to convince the technologically literate people with whom you are arguing in this thread.

 

[drkitten]

Local blacksmith?

Seriously, this is down to 18th century technology (I know they did not make generators back then, but they certainly could). If you can't obtain pipes, turbine and generator, you are in Mad Max scenario again, and your talk of Morse, radio and notebooks is moot.

Yeah, I must admit that I find it hard to imagine that he could get vacuum tubes for his radio and batteries for his Morse code transmitter,... but not metal pipes.

Or even more directly, how he can get a generator to power his transmitter, but I can't get a generator to be powered by my solar turbine. I guess I'm shopping in the wrong post-apocalyptic stores.

 

[TFian]

Where is this blog? You haven't quoted much directly from it so we have no idea what he is actually saying in his blog. It may be that you have misinterpreted what he was trying to say.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ If you need any direct references, I'd be happy to give them.

 

[drkitten]

Because he's been writing about it for years, is college educated, an award winning author, and makes sense.

Well, three out of four, anyway.

But I'd also like to point out that J.R.R. Tolkien is also someone who has been writing about stuff for years, is college educated, and an award-winning author.

But that doesn't mean that I'm going to take seriously the idea of a Palantir-based communications system.

 

[TFian]

Well, three out of four, anyway.

But I'd also like to point out that J.R.R. Tolkien is also someone who has been writing about stuff for years, is college educated, and an award-winning author.

But that doesn't mean that I'm going to take seriously the idea of a Palantir-based communications system.

J.R.R. Tolkien is dead...

 

[Weak Kitten]

Well, I have several options. I could buy them now. I could salvage them from a scrap pile when civillization has collapsed. I could rig up a windmill in my back yard to power the foundry. Or I could simply use a wood-fired stove to forge them on. I admit to being out of practice as a whitesmith, so I'd probably call in some friends to help me with that last option if it were necessary.

But, of course, once we've got one set of solar-based generators running, I can use them to run a solar-based generator fab line and power acres and acres of manufacturing happiness.

Dr Kitten, please take me with you when the apocalypse comes! I'm intelligent, hard working, and a fast learner!

Seriously though, that sounds like the sort of plan many people I know would put into effect if there was a sudden collapse of society. Since the whole "peak oil" thing will be a long process over several decades I expect many of us to have pooled our resources and built our solar powered compounds by the time anything really terrible has happened.

 

[excaza]

J.R.R. Tolkien is dead...

So is Pasteur. Still using his stuff.

 

[TFian]

So is Pasteur. Still using his stuff.

Yeah but he/she said he's been writing for years, which isn't true. He hasn't been writing at all for a long time, since he's dead.

 

[Mark6]

Dr Kitten, please take me with you when the apocalypse comes! I'm intelligent, hard working, and a fast learner!

Seriously though, that sounds like the sort of plan many people I know would put into effect if there was a sudden collapse of society. Since the whole "peak oil" thing will be a long process over several decades I expect many of us to have pooled our resources and built our solar powered compounds by the time anything really terrible has happened.

Count me in -- I am very good at soldering!

 

[Weak Kitten]

Wow, I just lost all respect for this so-called "Arch Druid". He doesn't even know that the best way to get rid of slugs is a deep dish with beer in the bottom? I thought every gardener knew that one!

 

[drkitten]

J.R.R. Tolkien is dead...

... and despite this, is still a better authority on world energy collapse.

He's not, to the best of my knowledge, written anything actively wrong in the past twenty-five years. I don't think that the 16th Level Ninja-Druid can make that statement about the past twenty-five months.

 

[drkitten]

Dr Kitten, please take me with you when the apocalypse comes! I'm intelligent, hard working, and a fast learner!

Seriously though, that sounds like the sort of plan many people I know would put into effect if there was a sudden collapse of society. Since the whole "peak oil" thing will be a long process over several decades I expect many of us to have pooled our resources and built our solar powered compounds by the time anything really terrible has happened.

Equally seriously,... we're not going to need to "pool our resources," precisely because ExxonMobil already has more resources than we could possible pool and a hell of an incentive to deal with it. If "solar powered compounds" look like a possible market, XOM could buy a fab line tomorrow and have it turning out solid-state solar cells by the hectare by the end of next month -- and they'd be a lot cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable than the victorian waterworks I could MacGyver up.

Of course, they'd have to get from that fab line to me. But among the first customers of the solar cells would probably be the cargo trucks, precisely because the shipping companies want to avoid rising fuel prices and stay in business themselves.

 

[Myriad]

Yeah, I must admit that I find it hard to imagine that he could get vacuum tubes for his radio and batteries for his Morse code transmitter,... but not metal pipes.

Or even more directly, how he can get a generator to power his transmitter, but I can't get a generator to be powered by my solar turbine. I guess I'm shopping in the wrong post-apocalyptic stores.

If there's no more petroleum, won't there be millions of automobile generators, gas-powered backup generators, diesel generators in trains and ships and office buildings, generators from oil-fired power plants -- generators of all sizes and capacities, all sitting idle, ready to be reused?

If we run out of generators to use, it will be because we're already using them all, duplicating our currently existing generating capacity. Or because axe-wielding luddite druids decided to go running around destroying them.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[Dancing David]

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

How is fission used now?

Nuclear power!

Really, you didn't know that?
Splitting teh atom is fission, first done by Enrico Fermi at University of Chicago
Chicago Pile-1^WP, now done to heat water and turn turbines.

 

[Dancing David]

Oh well I've already addressed uranium.

Hand waving is not critical thinking, nor is quoting one source all the time.

There is thorium as well.

 

[Mark6]

If there's no more petroleum, won't there be millions of automobile generators, gas-powered backup generators, diesel generators in trains and ships and office buildings, generators from oil-fired power plants -- generators of all sizes and capacities, all sitting idle, ready to be reused?

If we run out of generators to use, it will be because we're already using them all, duplicating our currently existing generating capacity.

Very true.

And the fact that TFian even needs to ask this question:

But how would you make the pipes, turbine and generator?

indicates utter intellectual laziness. Just like he did not bother checking the links on uranium in seawater (which ALONE blows the whole "energy contraction" nonsense out of water), he did not bother to think how to solve a very simple problem, because solving it would destroy his agrarian vision.

As someone here already said, TFian and Greer concentrate on what people cannot do. Of course they come up with apocalyptic scenarios. And are easily shown to be wrong.

 

[drkitten]

If there's no more petroleum, won't there be millions of automobile generators, gas-powered backup generators, diesel generators in trains and ships and office buildings, generators from oil-fired power plants -- generators of all sizes and capacities, all sitting idle, ready to be reused?

Well, yes, but do you know how hard it is to convert a gas-powered generator into a turbine-powered one?

It takes.... a coupling.

And perhaps a handle if you want a muscle-powered generator.

Obviously, couplings and handles will be in extremely short supply.

 

[drkitten]

If we run out of generators to use, it will be because we're already using them all, duplicating our currently existing generating capacity. Or because axe-wielding luddite druids decided to go running around destroying them.

Druids aren't allowed to use axes. "Club, dagger, dart, quarterstaff, scimitar, sickle, shortspear, sling, and spear."

 

[Mark6]

Just like he did not bother checking the links on uranium in seawater (which ALONE blows the whole "energy contraction" nonsense out of water), he did not bother to think how to solve a very simple problem, because solving it would destroy his agrarian vision.

As someone here already said, TFian and Greer concentrate on what people cannot do. Of course they come up with apocalyptic scenarios. And are easily shown to be wrong.

This actually reflects on my earlier post where I speculated that Archdruid Greer wants civilization to fail -- and TFian was so indignant about. Now I have to reiterate -- he must want civilization to fail.

This thread alone provided so many solutions, most of them very simple, to "insurmountable problems of peak oil" TFian has been parroting from Greer who supposedly has been thinking about these problems for decades, that my only possible conclusion is: Greer (and TFian) do not want these problems solved. If they did, they would have thought of at least half the solutions brought up here themselves.

 

[drkitten]

This actually reflects on my earlier post where I speculated that Archdruid Greer wants civilization to fail -- and TFian was so indignant about. Now I have to reiterate -- he must want civilization to fail.

This thread alone provided so many solutions, most of them very simple, to "insurmountable problems of peak oil" TFian has been parroting from Greer who supposedly has been thinking about these problems for decades, that my only possible conclusion is: Greer (and TFian) do not want these problems solved. If they did, they would have thought of at least half the solutions brought up here themselves.

To be fair, it's quite possible that TFian lacks the practical technical skills to solve these issues. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that a New York apartment dweller had no idea how electricity got into his walls, just as that same apartment dweller probably has no idea what part of the cow is the "Porterhouse steak."

My thesis advisor, back when I was in grad school, was surprised to learn that apples when unripe, are green. He grew up in Brooklyn, and the only apples he'd seen were on the vendors' shelves.

I'm less charitable towards the ArchFool; if he's really been thinking about this for decades, he should have been able to pick up a book on survivalism somewhere along the way.