Will the internet survive energy contraction?

excaza said:
Flywheels, supercapacitors, pumped hydro, SMES, CAES, molten salts, hydrogen storage, fuel cells, solar ponds, etc.

Or, to put it simply since I'm assuming you're too lazy to look any of those up. Smart grid.
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I wonder how well they work in practice.

Smart grids aren't practical yet, and probably won't be for a long time.
 
TFian said:
Yeah but some of the sources you indicated are intermittent, and even used in conjunction, only provide a tiny sliver of what we get out of oil.
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Yes. "Some". Also, they are not all intermittent in the same way.

Kill us all? Nah, though it'll probably be good if there's a die off in the works.
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You are either an idiot or a sociopath. Which is it?

excaza said:
Is it really necessary to spoon feed you everything? Are you completely incapable of independent research?
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Hey! What did I do?! :p
 
What?

Not that it matters (for this argument, that is). What matters is what they say, and what evidence they have to back it up.

I've shown that McPherson says a lot of things that simply aren't true. Don't know that much about Mike Ruppert, though I've certainly heard of him.
 
PixyMisa said:
What?

Not that it matters (for this argument, that is). What matters is what they say, and what evidence they have to back it up.

I've shown that McPherson says a lot of things that simply aren't true. Don't know that much about Mike Ruppert, though I've certainly heard of him.
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Yes I know, being a sociopath doesn't invalidate anyone's arguments.

Ruppert is one of the more extreme doomers, also a 9-11 truther, and general conspiracy theorist, also is apparently mentally unstable. He's completely insane, but I find his works entertaining.
 
ThatSoundAgain said:
That's right, but sometimes an argument itself can be sociopathic, which is surely a point against it. Like, say, "a die off would be good".
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I'm not really sure that's true. It's not like reality cares if something is "sociopathic" or "psychopathic", or what not. Those are essentially cultural labels anyway.
 
Here's the thing, TFian. We've already established that we are not facing any immediate absolute crisis, that no sudden collapse of civilisation is impending, and that there is no likelihood of 90% of the world's population dying any time soon. In other words, all your predictions are wrong.

Then you say:

TFian said:
Kill us all? Nah, though it'll probably be good if there's a die off in the works.
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In what way can this be regarded as good?

If you say, based on this evidence, it's likely to happen, that is simply an argument about facts. You might be right. You might be wrong.

What you just said, though, is a value judgement, not about facts at all. Now, I'd rather argue about facts, but we've pretty much wrapped that up; you don't have a case.

So, where does this value judgement come from?
 
TFian said:
I'm not really sure that's true. It's not like reality cares if something is "sociopathic" or "psychopathic", or what not.
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I'm not talking about what "reality" cares about, but of the character and qualities of a person who nonchalantly wishes most of humanity dead.

Those are essentially cultural labels anyway.
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Culture is, I assure you, very much a part of reality.
 
ThatSoundAgain said:
Culture is, I assure you, very much a part of reality.
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Sure, I wasn't suggesting otherwise, I was simply stating it's nebulous, and changes with time. As you probably already know, some of what is "morally" wrong now, was a ok at some other time period, IE, pedophilia for example.
 
TFian said:
Sure, I wasn't suggesting otherwise, I was simply stating it's nebulous, and changes with time. As you probably already know, some of what is "morally" wrong now, was a ok at some other time period, IE, pedophilia for example.
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Yes, that's trivially true.

What I can't think of off-hand, though, is any system of morals (current or past) where it's OK for someone to casually wish that their romantic fantasy of being a "green wizard" would come true at the cost of billions of deaths.
 
ThatSoundAgain said:
Yes, that's trivially true.

What I can't think of off-hand, though, is any system of morals (current or past) where it's OK for someone to casually wish that their romantic fantasy of being a "green wizard" would come true at the cost of billions of deaths.
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I can, but the problem is that it requires so many counter-factuals that one has to wonder if it's possible that TFian is really so wrong about so many things that he really does want a die-off because he thinks its really for the best, or if he's just dreaming about how he's going to be one of the survivors and thinks it would be cool.

If, for instance, he thought that there were two possible future outcomes: one with a die-off of 90% of the population in the near future, but in which the 10% could live indefinitely after that, and one in which homo sapiens goes extinct in the slightly more distant future, I can understand preferring the former to that latter.

The problem, of course, is that there's no reasonable way to believe either the former or the latter to be likely, and the evidence presented in this thread should have been enough to convince him of that.

I can actually imagine other scenarios in which his wish for a die-off may be justified, but again, they are all so far from reality that its hard to believe TFian is working from that sort of framework.
 
TFian said:
I wonder how well they work in practice.

Smart grids aren't practical yet, and probably won't be for a long time.
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They may not work as well as simply burning oil, but what will stop any of those things from working well enough to get things done if necessary?
 
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