kenneal - lagger wrote:The problem will be that we will only have recycled metals to work with and that the energy source will have to be forests again. Let's just hope that the forest/people ratio allows sustainable management of those forests.
Why would you not do your metal recycling using electric furnaces powered by hydro power or wind? Canadian hydro power has been used for decades to smelt aluminum from bauxite ore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project
Why do people assume that when there is large scale die off and a collapse of the economic system that everything will carry on regardless as before? Things need people to run and maintain them. Maintenance requires spare parts and people to make and supply them. Spares and the materials needed to make them require transport and that transport requires fuel. The fuel requires all the above to get to where it's needed. And the whole lot needs a monetary and banking system to pay for it. All these people need food and that requires all the above to grow and distribute and it all needs to be replenished every seven days.
Knock even a few people out of that circle and the whole thing grinds to a halt in a very short time. Ask the people of New Orleans what happens when TSHTF. And that was before any body died.
kenneal - lagger wrote:The problem will be that we will only have recycled metals to work with and that the energy source will have to be forests again. Let's just hope that the forest/people ratio allows sustainable management of those forests.
Why would you not do your metal recycling using electric furnaces powered by hydro power or wind? Canadian hydro power has been used for decades to smelt aluminum from bauxite ore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project
Why do people assume that when there is large scale die off and a collapse of the economic system that everything will carry on regardless as before? Things need people to run and maintain them. Maintenance requires spare parts and people to make and supply them. Spares and the materials needed to make them require transport and that transport requires fuel. The fuel requires all the above to get to where it's needed. And the whole lot needs a monetary and banking system to pay for it. All these people need food and that requires all the above to grow and distribute and it all needs to be replenished every seven days.
Knock even a few people out of that circle and the whole thing grinds to a halt in a very short time. Ask the people of New Orleans what happens when TSHTF. And that was before any body died.
Why do you assume that a die off would be randomly distributed leaving gaps in every supply chain? The far more likely event will have some regions totally depopulated due to drought-famine-war while other areas remain unscathed except for having to seek substitutes for raw materials they had been importing from the stricken areas. Would the world end or even notice if there were no more people living in all of Africa?
vtsnowedin wrote: Why do you assume that a die off would be randomly distributed leaving gaps in every supply chain?
Because that's a bit like what's happening in the Middle East right now owing to (resource) war? It's also what happens with infectious disease: it's why (for example) feudalism collapsed here in England in the wake of the Black Death. 1/3 of the population was lost, but it never 'depopulated whole regions'.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
