Will the internet survive energy contraction?

TFian said:
So, you don't think our culture teaches us the only way is up when it comes to "progress"?
Click to expand...
What culture? Which culture? Whose culture? What progress? What is "up"?

May I ask, if you believe there's never going to be a return to accelerating technological "progress"?
Click to expand...
Accelerating technological change hasn't stopped since it kicked off again in the 14th century (having mouldered for a thousand years thanks, pretty much, to a bunch of druids).

And it just keeps getting faster.

I expect it will slow down again at some point. That's fine too.
 
TFian said:
How could it go on forever though?
Click to expand...
Simple:

You don't devalue knowledge, throw up your hands, and drop out of the species.

You keep going.

We've made tremendous progress yes, but all good things come to an end.
Click to expand...
In a hundred trillion years the last stars will gutter out. Until then, though, no such future is set.

All civilizations rise and fall.
Click to expand...
Our civilisation is completely unlike any other. It is all-encompassing: Everyone on the planet is part of it, like it or not. It knows of all past civilisations, and knows more than any of them. We have left the cradle of the Earth, grasped the majesty of the cosmos and the strange reality of the atom, transcended the limitations of the human mind.

And you want to raise goats in your backyard.

This progress can't go on forever, or do you believe it can?
Click to expand...
Forever is a long time. I'll settle for a hundred trillion years. That's enough to be getting on with.
 
TFian said:
Cool? :cool:

(note - I've cited plenty of other sources, not just the Grand Archdruid)
Click to expand...
Most of them also wrong.

Pixy's Laws of Not Making a Fool of Yourself on the Internet

1. Anyone who styles himself the "Grand ArchDruid" or suchlike is not to be considered a reliable source of information on any subject. Except maybe roleplaying games. No, on second thought, not even that.

2. If you are predicting that an event will happen next year, that other people have been predicting will happen within the next n years for the past 2n years - whether it be artificial intelligence, sustained fusion reactions, the collapse of civilisation or the second coming of Joseph Smith - you might want to reconsider your assumptions.

3. Look it up on Wikipedia first, then post. Or, if you are extremely lazy, post first, then edit the outraged corrections from your readers back into the original article and delete their comments. Beware of archive.org and feed readers.
 
TFian said:
How could it go on forever though? We've made tremendous progress yes, but all good things come to an end. All civilizations rise and fall. This progress can't go on forever, or do you believe it can?
Click to expand...

This progress has been going on for more than a million years as our ancestors developed better and better tools. It was pretty slow in the beginning, but it's been accelerating exponentially. A trend that's maintained itself for over a million years isn't something that I expect to end tomorrow.
 
TFian said:
What's the problem? I gave detailed reasons why you can't.
Click to expand...

No you didn't, you gave detailed reasons why, if you can't transition from oil to other energy technologies, you won't be able to transition to other energy technologies. But you didn't give any reason to support that first assumption. Anyway, DrKitten and PixyMisa said it much better than I can.
 
TFian said:
1 - How many breeder reactors are out there and working right now?
Click to expand...
Pixy said two, and I'm happy to accept that number. Which means it works. So, what do you think will stop it from working on a larger scale, particularly as the cost of energy and the cost of uranium increase and make it more profitable?

2 - What are the environmental consequences of mining this uranium?
Click to expand...
Pretty much the same as for other types of mining - not meaningless but manageable: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf25.html

3 - While there's enough to power civilization when it comes to earth, we've only had very meager success harvesting it for practical applications. Sunshine is dilute, not concentrated, it doesn't have very much usable energy in, and therefore cannot power civilization http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/02/energy-follows-its-bliss.html
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but that logic simply doesn't follow. Sunlight basically powered civilization until recently. As we've developed more efficient ways of using it, I don't see what's to stop it doing so again in the future.
Be clear: the energy is there, how does it's being dilute make it inaccessible?

4 - Wind, Geothermal, and Hydro make out pretty minuscule energy returns.
Click to expand...
Worldwide hydroelectricity installed capacity reached 816 GW in 2005, consisting of 750 GW of large plants, and 66 GW of small hydro installations
Click to expand...

5 - Yeah but at what cost? Why do we need so many nifty gizmos? We did fine when we just used human power.
Click to expand...
The point is that the cost is negative, as Pixy pointed out. We can do things more efficiently with those nifty gizmos than without them. That means less environmental impact, less energy consumption, etc.
 
PixyMisa said:
Most of them also wrong.

Pixy's Laws of Not Making a Fool of Yourself on the Internet
Click to expand...
4. When all else fails, post Youtube videos of baby monkeys riding baby pigs or cute girls dancing in unusual locations and pretend the argument never happened.
 
PixyMisa said:
4. When all else fails, post Youtube videos of baby monkeys riding baby pigs or cute girls dancing in unusual locations and pretend the argument never happened.
Click to expand...

I dunno about the former, but the dancing is doable I suppose?
 
Videos of baby monkeys riding baby pigs.

In the grim, dark future there, will be only laundry.

For you, anyway. The rest of us will have gigabit fiber.
 
TFian said:
How could it go on forever though?
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone's claimed that it could go on "forever"; forever is a very long time. But you and the ArchLunatic aren't claiming that it won't last "forever." You claimed that my niece in high school will never attend college.

We know, roughly, how much oil there is in the ground and how long it will take us to burn through that. We know, roughly, how much coal there is in the ground and how long it would take us to burn through that if the price of oil rose to where coal cost less. We, know, roughly, how much uranium and thorium there is in the ground, and how long it would take us to burn through that if we couldn't afford coal and oil. We know roughly how much uranium there is in solution in the oceans, and how long it would take us to burn that -- as well as how much power would cost per kW if we were using that exclusively instead of oil and coal.

And finally, we have a (very) rough idea of how long the sun will continue to burn, and how much it would cost us to use solar power once we've run out of oceanic uranium.

We've made tremendous progress yes, but all good things come to an end.
Click to expand...

... possibly in hundreds of millions or billions of years. Civilization is more likely to collapse from a superbug, political unrest, or a war than from "energy contraction."

All civilizations rise and fall.
Click to expand...

... but not typically from resource depletion. Ask the Powatans about resource depletion. Ask the Stuart dynasty. Ask the Capetian kings of France....
 
PixyMisa said:
Our civilisation is completely unlike any other. It is all-encompassing: Everyone on the planet is part of it, like it or not. It knows of all past civilisations, and knows more than any of them. We have left the cradle of the Earth, grasped the majesty of the cosmos and the strange reality of the atom, transcended the limitations of the human mind.

And you want to raise goats in your backyard.
Click to expand...

lol, I shouldn't have read that while drinking my coffee
 
drkitten said:
... but not typically from resource depletion. Ask the Powatans about resource depletion. Ask the Stuart dynasty. Ask the Capetian kings of France....
Click to expand...
Whenever people throw around "all civilizations rise and fall -- why is ours any different?" I point out that with exception of few deliberate genocides, every "fall of civilization" meant simply ruling class and/or religion being replaced with some other ruling class and/or religion (like Stuart dynasty). Common people hardly noticed most "ends of civilization".
 
Mmm. Not always true. Easter Island is the most marked counter-example, of course. But there are others, like the Bronze Age collapse when the civilisations in and around the Mediterranean and the Near and Middle East went splat all at once around 1200 BC. No-one's entirely sure why; quite likely it was a combination of various factors. But it went far beyond a mere change of rulers; cities were depopulated right across the region and trade collapsed.
 
TFian said:
So, you don't think our culture teaches us the only way is up when it comes to "progress"? May I ask, if you believe there's never going to be a return to accelerating technological "progress"?
Click to expand...

I think culture teaches us much more than that. You are very narrow minded in tehse sort statements.

I can think of lots and lots of cultural messages that are not 'progess is good', you seem monomaniacal.

-Be nice
-Don't abuse children
-Listen to your parents
-Pick up after your dog

You know those cultural messages
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom