Systemic Collapse: The Basics

[Falcon]

No i haven't worked it out.

Your 5 million ships are in fact 10,000 by the way.

It's not even that. It's 5,000. I had container units in my head, and it's not even THAT - it's increased to 16 million! Apologies for the confusion.

And there isn't a single one of them that is going to get powered by a solar panel, or solar powered fuel cell. Sails, maybe, in which case not only will our power supply be dependent on whether the wind is blowing, but so will the global supply chain supporting it.

 

[Falcon]

I'd anticipate quite a bit more of this kind of thing - homes of the future will contain fewer physical 'things' but a great deal of digitally stored 'things'. Indeed, that's already happening.

And you accuse me of assuming things will look the same. Our hydrocarbon powered industrial food system is at the early stages of rapid hydrocarbon withdrawal. Our homes won't be storing digital anything - they will be storing root vegetables. The digital infrastructure is as baroque an expression of extravagant fuel surplus as can be imagined. Whatever private boutique solar capacity has been created for server farms will be appropriated by the government under emergency powers to support higher value activities. Such as - real farms.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

My example of epublishing is a perfectly reasonable example. A kindle currently holds a few thousand books. You download the book once and store it using not that much electricity. Compared to the production, transport and storage of physical books, that's an energy saving.

 

[Falcon]

My example of epublishing is a perfectly reasonable example. A kindle currently holds a few thousand books. You download the book once and store it using not that much electricity. Compared to the production, transport and storage of physical books, that's an energy saving.

We are on different pages, if you will excuse the metaphor. You are solving a rich man's problems. We are heading for a poor man's world.

 

[elbows]

We are on different pages, if you will excuse the metaphor. You are solving a rich man's problems. We are heading for a poor man's world.

That point may end up being very relevant to things like electric cars, less so for digital goods, internet etc.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

We are on different pages, if you will excuse the metaphor. You are solving a rich man's problems. We are heading for a poor man's world.

You think access to books is a rich man's problem? I respectfully disagree. Access to information is going to be (is already) an enormous issue for poorer people.

I don't think you understand the scale of this. Digital technology will be able to deliver unprecedented quantities of information to schools across the world. This can revolutionise education and who can afford access to it. This is utterly integral to everything - if we are to solve the coming problems, we need as many people as possible educated as much as possible.

 

[Falcon]

You think access to books is a rich man's problem? I respectfully disagree. Access to information is going to be (is already) an enormous issue for poorer people.

I don't think you understand the scale of this.

I think I do. The energy source underpinning the system by which we feed and heat ourselves, and powers the sanitation services that mitigate the hazards of mass disease outbreak, and maintains the integrity of the financial system upon which any economic activity at a scale larger than the household will depend, will lose half its productive capacity in the next 7 years. By the time the average child you give a Kindle to today can read it, we will have lost 80% of current capacity.

I don't think access to information is a priority, in the time scale imposed by physical reality. I think preparing for energy rationing, food rationing, military conflict, and civil disorder are. I don't see much application for books, apart from learning how to grow food, and kindling. There is a fire breaking out in our sky scraper. You are thinking about the quality of the signage.

 

[Dr Jon]

...
if we are to solve the coming problems, we need as many people as possible educated as much as possible.

Yes, education will be essential to helping folks manage the crash.

Though we may have the internet, proprietary technology like Kindle ensure that (access to) information remains controlled and copy-protected by the crapitalist system and not shared in the way that is needed.

The internet should be an information utility available to all.

ETA
Just seen your post Falcon.
Yes, like Thorium energy, there are some great ideas, but I fear we are out of energy and out of time.

 

[Falcon]

No i haven't worked it out.

It's too wet to go out, so I took the liberty of doing so.

Assume 1 kWh/m2 raw solar power at midday at the equator, and therefore 100 W/m2 net of 20% conversion efficiency, diurnal variation, and cloud cover. That's 0.5 kWh/m2 of ship deck area.

225 tonnes/day fuel oil is 2,616,750 kWh power demand, or 5,451,563 m2 of solar panel requirement.

A typical container ship is 400m long and 60m wide, or around 22,000 m2 deck area.

So you need about 245 container vessel surface areas of solar panels to power a single container vessel.

I know I get accused of not being optimistic enough, but that's a wacky boat. Your post is a great example of the sort of absurdities that are generated when people can't distinguish adequately between technology and magic.

Now. What was that about Malthusian economics, and the holes that technology drives through it?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't think access to information is a priority, in the time scale imposed by physical reality. I think preparing for energy rationing, food rationing, military conflict, and civil disorder are. I don't see much application for books, apart from learning how to grow food, and kindling. There is a fire breaking out in our sky scraper. You are thinking about the quality of the signage.

This is alarmist rubbish, sorry. And no, access to information is a live issue right now. With a growing world population, how do we ensure a far wider access to education? How do we maximise the potential for this enormous resource - the people. There will be global problems and local problems to be solved. All of this requires access to knowledge at local and global levels. People like the Khan Academy are tackling this kind of thing. Now the Khan Academy has a rather dubious wider agenda, but the core point - extending access to education - is sound. This is the kind of thing that can be done, and that is integral to the possibilities for solving current and future challenges.

 

[elbows]

I certainly do not rule out a future that involves rationing, conflict etc, but this dribble about books being unimportant is a great demonstration of Falcons fallacies. I've always been critical of you, but this is now underlined with a deep contempt. You are not part of any sane solution or coping with the problem if thats the direction this stuff drives you towards, seems just as dangerous to me as blind ignorance of the scale of the problems, as inhumane and helpless as the least sustainable parts of the system. Like the worst of the free market libertarians, you do a disservice to humanity and evoke images of a world that is entirely incompatible with the human spirit, at its best or worst.

 

[elbows]

Or to put it another way, with those attitudes it is completely unclear to me what role you will play in the struggle, a struggle that will last decades and where, contrary to the images of hopelessness, there will be much to play for.

 

[junglevip]

We’re done

Watch later

 

[ayatollah]

Or to put it another way, with those attitudes it is completely unclear to me what role you will play in the struggle, a struggle that will last decades and where, contrary to the images of hopelessness, there will be much to play for.

Falcon is really starting to gibber the endtimer message now... "the world is too far gone down the road to total energy (OIL that is ) exhaustion for books (ebooks particularly) to be relevant" , and "Our homes won't be storing digital anything - they will be storing root vegetables. " He's lost it ... "Mothership to Falcon... reengage with the real world.. you are doing yourself no good in that underground chicken farm bunker" !

 

[Dr Jon]

I think that books are unimportant, in the sense that Shakespeare or Darwin are not much use if your plane has crashed in the desert and you need to survive. Even reading a book on desert survival techniques will likely take too long to read before you die from dehydration.

This doesn't mean that swotting up and being as prepared as possible are futile. It just depends how much time we have left.

 

[Falcon]

I certainly do not rule out a future that involves rationing, conflict etc, but this dribble about books being unimportant is a great demonstration of Falcons fallacies. I've always been critical of you, but this is now underlined with a deep contempt. You are not part of any sane solution or coping with the problem if thats the direction this stuff drives you towards, seems just as dangerous to me as blind ignorance of the scale of the problems, as inhumane and helpless as the least sustainable parts of the system. Like the worst of the free market libertarians, you do a disservice to humanity and evoke images of a world that is entirely incompatible with the human spirit, at its best or worst.

Bravo. I've talked about the need for steady state economics. I've talked about the need for radical demand reduction. I've talked about the need to recognise real physical limitations in the responses we devise. But you reduce this to a strawman argument about eBooks.

What's the first rule of aviation safety - fit your own mask, then help others. Why? So you don't become a burden, and so you can help others. You? You don't even want to fit a mask to others. You want to talk about what the mask should look like, or speculate about the possibility that the aircraft will spontaneously repressurise thus relieving you of the need for a mask at all, while grandiosing about your contempt for me because I don't share your enthusiasm for ebooks.

I'm teaching a permaculture course this evening for my community. What the fuck are YOU doing tonight - reading an eBook? Stuff your contempt up your arse.

 

[elbows]

If it was a straw man then it was one you constructed yourself, asshole. I asked you in the past to dwell more on the useful stuff you say you are involved with, but you don't, you are fucking obsessed with taking about the most hopeless stuff here. Never fucking mind what you do with the rest of your life, I judge you here by what you say here, and its not my fault if you've created the wrong impression through your choice of words and emphasis on this forum.

 

[Falcon]

If it was a straw man then it was one you constructed yourself, asshole. I asked you in the past to dwell more on the useful stuff you say you are involved with, but you don't, you are fucking obsessed with taking about the most hopeless stuff here. Never fucking mind what you do with the rest of your life, I judge you here by what you say here, and its not my fault if you've created the wrong impression through your choice of words and emphasis on this forum.

If I have confined myself to data, and to reasonable interpretations that such data supports, and reasonable responses to such interpretations, then any impression I may have made on you is irrelevant. If someone makes a statement that is contradicted by data then I will say so - the "hopelessness" of that situation is also irrelevant.

 

[elbows]

I means seriously, I don't get it. If you are equipped to teach others about permaculture then why the fuck do you so rarely get beyond the word itself when posting here? I'd love to hear more about that, but no, you'd rather give the doom lecture here. Why?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm teaching a permaculture course this evening for my community. What the fuck are YOU doing tonight - reading an eBook? Stuff your contempt up your arse.

Don't start down that road. You don't personally know the people you talk to on these forums. You have no idea what they may or may not do.

btw you have utterly missed the point with the possibilities of digital publishing. Villages in remote areas of poor countries can have access to whole libraries. You're not just myopic, you're blind if you can't see the possibilities in this. I see parallels with mobile phone technology - developed originally as a new toy for the rich world, it is in the poor world that they have had the most profound impact, widening access to telephones for billions of people.

 

[Falcon]

I means seriously, I don't get it. If you are equipped to teach others about permaculture then why the fuck do you so rarely get beyond the word itself when posting here? I'd love to hear more about that, but no, you'd rather give the doom lecture here. Why?

Because people keep churning out the same old unexamined platitudes. "There's plenty of oil left". "We can run a container vessel on solar panels". "We can power the global industrial manufacturing system on sunbeams".

You and I absolutely agree on one thing - there can be no progress without public education. But the content, target audience, and timescales we envisage are very different. I'm targeting adults, about the harsh realities of our present situation, now. If it sounds like end timer gibber, then I don't give a shit. Go and invest in a gas fracking company and ignore me, it makes no difference to me. But without that most fundamental understanding regarding the "why", "what", and "by when", then there is simply no point in talking about responses.

 

[Falcon]

Don't start down that road. You don't personally know the people you talk to on these forums. You have no idea what they may or may not do.

I know with absolute certainty that the person I had addressed that point to had just accused me of not being part of any sane solution, or of coping with the problem, of doing a disservice to humanity, and evoking a vision of the world that was incompatible with the human spirit. I'm pretty comfortable with the road I started down, thanks.

Meanwhile I am often startled by the freedom some people seem to feel they have to speculate about what I may or may not do or believe, despite their total lack of knowledge of me.

 

[elbows]

Because people keep churning out the same old unexamined platitudes. "There's plenty of oil left". "We can run a container vessel on solar panels". "We can power the global industrial manufacturing system on sunbeams".

You and I absolutely agree on one thing - there can be no progress without public education. But the content, target audience, and timescales we envisage are very different. I'm targeting adults, about the harsh realities of our present situation, now. If that sounds like end timer gibber then I don't give a shit. But without that most fundamental understanding regarding the "why", "what", and "by when", then there is simply no point in talking about responses.

I can see the point of that, where we diverge is over the exact detail, and the point of talking about responses. The detail clearly matters as it dictates what responses are appropriate, but we'll never all agree completely about this detail until after its actually happened. There exist a range of possibilities. I've been convinced we are in deep shit for a decade, but if anything this makes me less than keen to put a date on things. You can't either, despite your best attempts to bring a sense of immediacy to the problem, and in the past this is where we have tended to end up falling out over the details.

When it comes to responses, I would really really like to know more about where you stand. How much of your lecture to you dedicate to that side of things rather than trying to get people to understand the magnitude of the challenge?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I hope you don't come out with the untruthful rhetoric in your classes that you come out with on here.

There are examples throughout these threads of grand sweeping statements by you of things that others have patiently demolished. Such as:

Our hydrocarbon powered industrial food system is at the early stages of rapid hydrocarbon withdrawal. Our homes won't be storing digital anything - they will be storing root vegetables.

This is the kind of crap that only someone who lives in the countryside can come out with. It is a bunker-down mentality that simply refuses to engage with the real problems we face. There are approximately 4 billion people living in cities today. You see a mass dying off of these and other people in the near future. You must do if you think what you said above. For all your grand rhetoric, I don't think you have much of a clue about the scale of any of this.

 

[elbows]

I know with absolute certainty that the person I had addressed that point to had just accused me of not being part of any sane solution, or of coping with the problem, of doing a disservice to humanity, and evoking a vision of the world that was incompatible with the human spirit. I'm pretty comfortable with the road I started down.

Well let me narrow that down somewhat. I will change my accusation to one of you of not offering us the means to judge you fairly on this front. I can only judge you by what you say here, and when you make stupid claims about books and digital stuff then I feel quite justified in my stance.

Educate me otherwise, go on. I don't care if you don't care what I think, but don't you care if many others come to the same conclusion that I do? I should be one of the ones you can reach, since I don't believe in fantasy magic tech solutions and I am sold on energy & other resource woes of a grand scale being the story of the century.

What Im not going to do is take you seriously if you are just someone that has flipped from one extreme to the other - if you were an oil industry person who one day flipped to the other extreme that simply involves everyone having to revert overnight to the most primitive vegetable-growing lifestyle, operating in small isolated groups, suddenly without any of the tools that humanity has developed over recent centuries being available at all, then I say bullshit, that won't be how it turns out, it will be far messier than that.

 

[Falcon]

There exist a range of possibilities. I've been convinced we are in deep shit for a decade, but if anything this makes me less than keen to put a date on things. You can't either, despite your best attempts to bring a sense of immediacy to the problem, and in the past this is where we have tended to end up falling out over the details.

It is beyond me how you can be aware of data such as this and assert that there is some residual doubt about the immediacy of the problem. It contains everything thing you need to evaluate the magnitude and timing of the issue.

When it comes to responses, I would really really like to know more about where you stand. How much of your lecture to you dedicate to that side of things rather than trying to get people to understand the magnitude of the challenge?

I find it helpful to keep the two separate and relevant to the audience. I have a consultancy in which I provide energy literacy services to government, institutions and energy intensive businesses on energy fundamentals. It is too far to describe the other side (permaculture, etc.) as "lecturing" - I share what I've learned, and learn from others. We are mostly rediscovering a skill base that was acquired in the 1970's when people took this stuff seriously, then forgot it again.

 

[Falcon]

don't you care if many others come to the same conclusion that I do?

Not in the slightest, why should I? I'm not selling anything, I'm not representing some political party or view point, and it is of only the most marginal utility to me if you subscribe to my view. I share what I've learned and if it's useful or interesting, then well and good. If it isn't, then ignore it - I couldn't care less. You'll have plenty of time to reflect on the choice later.

I confine myself largely to discussion of data and physical laws (about which there is little scope for debate) not politics or philosophy (about which there is much scope). Meanwhile I hope to learn from others, and the only way I know of doing that effectively is to put my thoughts on display and offer them up for inspection and critique. I rarely, if ever, experience contempt for people with whom I disagree.

What do you do?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

One might for example, argue that reducing urban population density over a period of decades along the lines of Folke Gunther's 'ruralisation' proposals is a sensible step.

See e.g. http://www.unicamp.br/fea/ortega/energy/Folke.pdf

The trouble is, first you have to solve the political problem of proposals like that making e.g. property speculators with money to spend on political lobbying, deeply unhappy.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Living in cities is generally a pretty energy-efficient way to live, though. I think more or less the opposite to this. Population is growing and it is urbanising. And it is largely through that urbanisation that population will eventually level off. No good throwing all those people back into the countryside. No, the challenge will be to develop better cities, and that probably won't mean spreading those cities out even more. When there are, say, 9 billion people in the world, only a small proportion of those will be needed to grow food. Sure, more urban food growing may be desirable, but eco-friendly, energy-efficient apartment blocks will be the answer for many if not most of the people living in cities.

 

[Falcon]

Thanks Bernie - this looks interesting.