Yearning and Longing

[skeptik]

Don?t we? I have an idea where I would like the lifeboat to head. A land of networked communities where each community is in balance with the ecosystem and cooperates with other communities so we maintain the highest standard of living for the longest time possible.

my only problem with this is the thought that if the current global technological civilistation collapses, the survivors on their lifeboats end up back in the stone age with no conceivable way of ever getting out of the stone age - all the high quality natural resources which are workable with stone age technology were used up a very long time ago. Scavenging the ruins and rubbish dumps would be possible, but for how long?

Personally I'm not all that interested in the die-off/collapse/lifeboats scenario. If the world's coming to an end , I'm going with it. Scratching a living in the dust with a pointy stick and no access to modern dentistry or an Odeon multiplex does not appeal. Not that I think collapse is likely, just possible. Several decades of quite unpleasant re-adjustment is I think more likely as global oil production ramps down at 2% per annum on the other side of a decade long bumpy plateau that we may just be approaching... (just a guess - most oil is onshore so it wont be a steep decline like the North Sea, and there will be a high effort to slurp up what is left. I imagine most of the worlds oilfields will be covered in the same density of stripper wells as Texas in 30-50 years time. There are hundreds of thousands of wells in the USA (the worlds most mature oil province), many of course now defunct, and only 5000 or so in Saudi Arabia )

A large slice of the industrialised worlds disposable income will of neccesity have to be redirected into lifestyle change, efficiency improvements, and alternative energy. The future is going to be part nuclear, part coal, part windmill and part living locally using more energy efficient technology - no more budget airlines or holidays on the Costa Blanca! ( I have a feeling that the British coastal resorts that fortunately can mostly still be reached by train are going to see a resurgence this century)

Look at the enormous numbers the IEA is talking about as neccessary investment to meet anticipated demand for oil... (not that it will ever happen!) That order of investment and more will be required by the alternatives. People are not going to like it one little bit as a lot of it will have to be forcibly removed from their pocket by the govt. This I think will need a lot of govt intervention. The playing field will have to be severly tilted in favour of alternative energy, efficiency technology and conservation in order to 'prime the pump' I dont think the markets are up to the job of thinking far into the future. What this will involve politically, god only knows, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Carreers advice: General mechanical or electrical engineering. Alternative energy in all its forms is (allowing for the normal ups and downs) obviously a longterm growth area. Anybody who can install and maintain these systems will be in high demand. ( You think its hard to get a plumber now? Try getting somebody in to repair your solar water heating panels in 20 years time) Bicycle repair man (obviously!) . Specialist market gardener - If you can manage to grow locally some of the exotics that will not in future be coming in from New Zealand or Zimbabwe, you'll be quids in. The rich, like the poor, are with us always.

Exactly how the future will pan out, I've no idea. Nobody ever gets it right. Biotech will undoubtedly have a huge unpredictable influence in both food and energy production. If a resource or technology is available, people will use it when the going gets tough, no matter how much environmentalists might rant. People will avoid dieing of cold by burning coal if they have no alternative (no matter how much the head of Greenpeace might wish them not to) , even if at the same time it is giving them respiratory disease and killing their forests with acid rain. So theres the problem - how to minimise the inevitable effects af fossil fuel usage, and in the long term phase in relacements... My only regret is that I'm unlikely to be around in 50 years time to see how things turned out.

I'm sort of pessimistically optimistic. Humans are very ingenious, technological development will continue, and its amazing how little people can survive on. Just look at some parts of Africa.

Hopefully I will not be reduced to the lifestyle of the average Eritrean - losing a portion of my familly every few years in a famine is the bit I would really not like - and will still be Googling ( or its equivalent) in 20 years time.

[isenhand]

<<my only problem with this is the thought that if the current global technological civilistation collapses, the survivors on their lifeboats end up back in the stone age with no conceivable way of ever getting out of the stone age>>

Hence the need to network! What you say is always possible but I think we can go beyond that if we plan and network together we can maintain a high standard of living. Not like it is today with a constant need to produce new things to keep selling I think it will be more making things to last.

If you have small communities they can produce food and shelter. Put a few communities together and they can produce something more. Analyse the life cycles of products and you can produce things that are easy to maintain and recycle. It may not be luxurious but it will do the job. What it takes to avoid a new stone age is thinking, planning and networking.

[skeptik]

<<my only problem with this is the thought that if the current global technological civilistation collapses, the survivors on their lifeboats end up back in the stone age with no conceivable way of ever getting out of the stone age>>

Hence the need to network! What you say is always possible but I think we can go beyond that if we plan and network together we can maintain a high standard of living.

Should the current global scientific / technological civilisation which we all depend on collapse, all a 'network of lifeboats' will be able to maintain is a stone age level society based on sticks, stones and animal sinews to bind them together. The network of lifeboats will never be able to acquire the wherewithal (excepting scavaging rubbish dumps) even to make a bronze axe.

Why? because all the copper and tin ore deposits which were workable with stone age technology were used up a long time ago. The networked lifeboats will never be able to use copper ore where the grade is measured in ppm. This is what copper mines now look like. The grade of copper mined here ranges from 0.6% to 1.3%

http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/escondida/

do you think a network of survivors would ever be able to create and operate a mine like that? In Chile? Obviously not. I think you'll have to settle for tallow and beeswax candles, sheepskin clothing and stone axes. My advice - learn flint knapping while you still have the benefit of the WWW to locate somebody who can teach you. Personally, I pass.

[snow hope]

wow - cynical form today skeptical

So what are you going to do when the SHTF? Lie down and die? Commit suicide?

I must admit I don't like this form of defeatism. I would rather survive than die.

Sorry if this post seems a bit ott, but one has to keep some positive view or we will all sink into depression..... chin up

Mind you I do accept what you say generally, it was just the last bit.

[MacG]

I think you'll have to settle for tallow and beeswax candles, sheepskin clothing and stone axes. My advice - learn flint knapping while you still have the benefit of the WWW to locate somebody who can teach you. Personally, I pass.

Ahh.. not so fast please! There is a hell of a lot of copper above ground today which will be recycled for a very long time to come. The amounts of iron and steel above ground are absolutely enormous. All that stuff wont just vaporize and disappear.

[skeptik]

wow - cynical form today skeptical

Nope, just realistic, I think. If the current system collapses (which is a possiblity, but which I doubt will happen) , there just doesnt seem to be anyway of getting it going again. we burnt all the rungs of the ladder on the way up.

It's the lifeboat scenario as some people envisage it that I'm having a go at. Collapse. Society at large goes down but the lifeboats continue with solar electric and handcranked radio, homegrown carrots. Not a realistic option. the lifeboats can't operate independently of wider society, they have to work with it. Even the Amish don't make their own nails and rely on natural gas for heating and power - though illogically, not electricity.

[skeptik]

[quote="skeptik
Ahh.. not so fast please! There is a hell of a lot of copper above ground today which will be recycled for a very long time to come. The amounts of iron and steel above ground are absolutely enormous. All that stuff wont just vaporize and disappear.

Nope, but it will just slowly rust away.

If there is a 'hell of a lot of copper' above ground it makes you wonder why they're going to the trouble of digging it up at Escondida, in rocks where it only forms 0.6%...

I take you point though. The higher energy costs go, the more attractive recycling copper, steel, and aluminium becomes. 3rd world countries already take recycling very seriously as a means of making a living. We only throw this stuff away because we can (currently!) afford to.

Come back Steptoe and Son, all is forgiven.

[RevdTess]

I must admit that when I first came across PO I was rather naively enamoured with the idea of a post-peak society more in harmony with the ability of the earth to sustainably supply our needs, but as time has gone on I've become less and less attracted to societal collapse, and more fearful of what might follow it. I think it comes from reading about all the other great civilisations that have come and gone in recent human history, and how transient our greatest-of-all civilisations now feels. I am now beginning to doubt the virtue of humbly accepting that humanity's destiny is that of a foraging hand-to-mouth society. I am starting to hope that we can in fact find ways to extract sufficient renewable energy from the sun, atmosphere and oceans to escape our current peril.

[Blue Peter]

I am starting to hope that we can in fact find ways to extract sufficient renewable energy from the sun, atmosphere and oceans to escape our current peril.

But, in your heart of hearts, you know that energy is only one of a number of limits which we're coming up against (food, water, soil, climate, other minerals). You can't keep growing for ever, and for a society based on growth, there's only one eventual outcome


Peter.

[skeptik]

and for a society based on growth, there's only one eventual outcome


Peter.

No, there are two. Either you transition (flatten the growth curve then let it sink down) to a society based on the exploitation of natural flows - steady state sustainablity - or you collapse, Easter Island style.

Some people see a high tech third option - perpetual growth off planet. initially the solar system, then the rest of the galaxy. That should keep us going for a hundred million years or so. Then ...Andromeda?

An interesting mind game. I doubt there would much recognisably human at the end of that process. Individual species dont last that long. it also rather begs the question - whay hasnt it already happened? If that sort of star spanning exponential growth is possible , why hasn't it already happenned? The solar system should have been colonised by an expanding alien species long ago. Using concievable slower than light technology it should only take about 25 million years or so to colonise the whole galaxy. A mere blip in the geological time scale of billions of years. But as far as we can tell, we evolved here, and theres no obvious evidence for visitors from elsewhere.

[RevdTess]

But, in your heart of hearts, you know that energy is only one of a number of limits which we're coming up against (food, water, soil, climate, other minerals). You can't keep growing for ever, and for a society based on growth, there's only one eventual outcome

True. It's not an expectation, just a switch of preference. I'd rather our civilisation was the one that didn't complexify itself out of existence like all the rest. Unfortunately right now the only way out I see is for something like fusion to come along and give us at least one huge fuel source for the future. No doubt the attempts to GROW will continue for quite some time. The interstellar endgame is appealing but probably wishful thinking. Growth really would be sustainable in that sort of scenario.

[Blue Peter]

and for a society based on growth, there's only one eventual outcome


Peter.

No, there are two. Either you transition (flatten the growth curve then let it sink down) to a society based on the exploitation of natural flows - steady state sustainablity - or you collapse, Easter Island style.

But you could argue that if we go for the first option, it won't be "us", it will be a new society/civilization arising from the wreck of ours


Peter.

[skeptik]

and for a society based on growth, there's only one eventual outcome


Peter.

No, there are two. Either you transition (flatten the growth curve then let it sink down) to a society based on the exploitation of natural flows - steady state sustainablity - or you collapse, Easter Island style.

But you could argue that if we go for the first option, it won't be "us", it will be a new society/civilization arising from the wreck of ours


Peter.

Im trying to be optimistic!

I dont see 'wreck' as being synonymous with 'transition'

If a wreck happens I cant see how you can derive anything from it in terms of future society. That's the argument I've been trying to make. If the current technological base gets wrecked, we'll never be able to rebuild. Once we lose the ability to make a microchip or a fusion plant, that will be gone forever. to rebuild a technological society from the base up (the only way it can be done) will not be possible, as we used up the needed easy-to-ge-at, high quality resources the first time around.

[Blue Peter]

If a wreck happens I cant see how you can derive anything from it in terms of future society. That's the argument I've been trying to make. If the current technological base gets wrecked, we'll never be able to rebuild. Once we lose the ability to make a microchip or a fusion plant, that will be gone forever. to rebuild a technological society from the base up (the only way it can be done) will not be possible, as we used up the needed easy-to-ge-at, high quality resources the first time around.

I suspect that the things you mention never will be built again, because we never will have a concentrated enough source of energy to build a complicated enough civilization which can do such things.

On the other hand, as people (including yourself, I think) have pointed out, we have spent a lot of time concentrating very many valuable minerals (e.g. mining ppm bits of copper or whatever it was). At some stage, this will provide a valuable source of raw materials for others - interestingly, geology won't be much help in indicating where to do your mining.

And, anyway, you can do an awful lot with wood and stone - just look at all those past-civilizations we spend our hoilidays visiting,


Peter.

[skeptik]

I suspect that the things you mention never will be built again, because we never will have a concentrated enough source of energy to build a complicated enough civilization which can do such things.

Hmm... well, who knows?

"Spaceflight is utter bilge"
The Astronomer Royal, Richard Woolley, January 1956

Launch of Sputnik 1 by the USSR, October 1957.

which conforms nicely to Arthur C. CLarkes First Law

1 - When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

On the other hand, as people (including yourself, I think) have pointed out, we have spent a lot of time concentrating very many valuable minerals (e.g. mining ppm bits of copper or whatever it was). At some stage, this will provide a valuable source of raw materials for others - interestingly, geology won't be much help in indicating where to do your mining.

Hmm... scrabbling about in 20th century rubbish dumps for old brass bedsteads... my idea of fun, not. Which reminds me have you ever read Ridley Walker by Russel Hoban?

And, anyway, you can do an awful lot with wood and stone - just look at all those past-civilizations we spend our hoilidays visiting,

Like the pyramid of Cheops - fun to visit, but the thought of actually building the damn thing using only sand ramps, log rollers , rope and human muscle power is my idea of a Holiday in Hell..