[Doly]

OK, let's clarify a few more things:

Are you saying the earth isn't cooling?

The centre of the Earth is cooling, but what happens to the surface (and that is what we really care about, by the way) depends on what happens to the sun. According to astronomers, there will be a day, millions of years in the future, when the surface of Earth will be too hot for life. Like I said, Earth isn't going towards thermodinamic equilibrium because of the sun.

This presumes that there is some magical positive balance between the quanta & forms of energy earth is receiving & emitting: is there any evidence for that? Why is the cooling of our rock not mentioned in your neat reality?

The Earth does receive more energy than it emits. It just happens to be so in this planet. Jupiter, on the other hand, emits more than it receives. It has to do with the distance to the sun.

Obviously, but nature doesn't require setting fire to quite so much stuff to maintain itself as technology does - thats the point.

Nature doesn't set fire to anything in the way we do. The combustions in living beings are done without fire, and they are called "breathing". They amount of carbon dioxide emmited by animals in their breathing used to be in equilibrium by the amout absorbed by plants. Then we started setting fire to fuels and broke that balance. We're not generating more carbon dioxide with our technology than animals, though. We are just generating too much to keep the current balance.
That doesn't mean that a different balance can't be achieved - the composition of the atmosphere of the Earth has changed quite a lot since its origins. Of course, a different balance might be a world that we would find quite uncomfortable. So it's much better to try to keep the current one.

So are you admitting tech is an energy sink?.

Energy can't be destroyed, only transformed. Technology does generate a certain amount of energy in the form of heat that can't be reutilised. That's a consequence of the 2nd Law of Thermodinamics, and it doesn't apply only to technology. It applies to anything that uses energy, like for example, living beings.

Nuclear fusion renewable & nonpollluting? excuse me, i must have wandered into a discussion from another planet...

I said nuclear fusion, not fission. Nuclear fusion isn't developed yet. It would be renewable, and it could be nonpolluting. (Of course, as it isn't developed yet, it may turn out that some part of the process is polluting).

Think also that our most complex technology, which is electronics, is actually a technology that uses very small amounts of energy compared with other industries.

sorry, wrong planet again...

Do you care to explain why you think that electronics uses as much energy as transport, steel making, or any other of our main technologies? Because the data I have says the opposite.

How was what you just quoted by me confusing? People confuse the terminology and it creates endless debate. Let me clarify once more:

Isolated system: No exchange of matter or energy. The universe is the only isolated system we know of. In this type of system, entropy always increases. 2nd Law.

Closed system: Energy is exchanged but not matter. The Earth is a closed system. It exchanges solar energy with the universe, but not matter, save the occasional meteorite. Entropy can be reduced and reversed, but only with an even greater increase of entropy somewhere else.

Open system: Both energy and matter are exchanged. Living organisms are open systems. Entropy can be reduced and reversed, but only with an even greater increase of entropy somewhere else--same as in the closed system.

Well, the terminology I learned had only closed and open systems, with "closed" meaning "isolated" in your terminology, and "open" meaning either "open" or "closed" in your terminology. Confusing, I know.

Anyway, we agree on the main point, which is that, thermodinamically speaking, the entropy on Earth doesn't have to increase.

It requires a huge expenditure of energy to maintain our society, our machinery, roads, infrastructure, peeling paint, and messy children’s rooms. This expenditure of energy holds entropy at bay; otherwise everything just falls apart, rots, deteriorates, and dies. So, if you find yourself running out of the energy base upon which all of this unfolds, does it make sense to accelerate your consumption of energy in an effort to keep it going?

Yes, our current technology is based on cheap energy and therefore wastes a lot of energy. But a technology based on conserving energy could be a lot more complex than our current one, and still be much more efficient, energy-wise.

Technology is an energy transformer. It accelerates the consumption of energy due to it’s inherent complex nature. Each transformation results in the loss of useable energy to waste heat. Now, remember, forget the waste heat—that is not the issue that concerns me— the issue is that using technology will hasten the emptying of the treasure chest and create more environmental entropy watersheds and global warming as a result.

If your "environmental entropy watersheds" aren't waste heat, what exactly are they? Pollution? Nonpolluting energy sources exist.

We will use up the remaining fossil fuels even faster using the same process that got us here, and create an even bigger environmental legacy to leave to future generations. Why? 2nd law, you cannot convert energy from one form to another without a loss of useable energy and an increase in disorder in the environment, not just waste heat as disorder, but physical disorder in the environment as pollution, loss of species and habitat, etc. This is what concerns me.

Again, the physical meaning of disorder isn't exactly the same as the intuitive meaning of disorder. Increasing entropy in the environment doesn't mean creating pollution or killing species. The only thing it means for certain is waste heat. Other consequences are avoidable.
The chemical reactions where entropy is increased are those where high-energy molecules (usually complex ones) convert into low-energy ones. For example, burning hydrocarbons. But also, burning hydrogen. Burning hydrogen gives water, which is nonpolluting.

This technological world we live in that is based upon infinite growth in a finite world is unsustainable, always has been, and always will be.

The world is finite, I agree, and there are clear limits to what we can do without getting in trouble. "Infinite growth" is a fuzzy concept. If it means that we can't grow infinite amounts of food, I agree. If it means that the Earth can't sustain infinite amounts of people, I agree. But I don't see that it means that technology can't advance to infinity, which is what you seem to be saying.

[quote="MonteQuest"]
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[Liamj]

The Earth does receive more energy than it emits. It just happens to be so in this planet. Jupiter, on the other hand, emits more than it receives. It has to do with the distance to the sun.

Well thats interesting, admit i didn't know that.

Obviously, but nature doesn't require setting fire to quite so much stuff to maintain itself as technology does - thats the point.

Nature doesn't set fire to anything in the way we do.

exactly.

The combustions in living beings are done without fire, and they are called "breathing". They amount of carbon dioxide emmited by animals in their breathing used to be in equilibrium by the amout absorbed by plants. Then we started setting fire to fuels and broke that balance.

Respiration (the intracellular combustion of sugars, starches etc) is more broadly useful term than breathing.

We're not generating more carbon dioxide with our technology than animals, though.

Nonsense. Show me a wombat towing his jet ski 500km in his 4x4 for a weekend at his country house.

So are you admitting tech is an energy sink?.

Energy can't be destroyed, only transformed. Technology does generate a certain amount of energy in the form of heat that can't be reutilised. That's a consequence of the 2nd Law of Thermodinamics, and it doesn't apply only to technology. It applies to anything that uses energy, like for example, living beings.

Yes, thankyou for the obvious, but diff forms of energy have different utility to us humans, As far as a-form-we-can-store&use goes, technology consumes useful energy resources, hence 'sink'.

Think also that our most complex technology, which is electronics, is actually a technology that uses very small amounts of energy compared with other industries.

So can you show me the iPod tree please? What about the PC spawning grounds? Solar panel plantation?
No, all 'high' technology requires highly complex production chains that req minerals, energy, capital, & skills that are often continents apart, which in turn demands cheap transport.

sorry, wrong planet again...

Do you care to explain why you think that electronics uses as much energy as transport, steel making, or any other of our main technologies? Because the data I have says the opposite.

because it is dependent upon all those other industries. there'd be no 'information revolution' without ubiquitous copper or cable networks, satellites, or tertiary education. there'd be no mobiles withhout constant maintainence of repeater towers, mining of rare earths, and mass user base. There'd be no digital cameras without clean room production facilities, ubiquitous hardcopy printers, or mass specialised battery production. Why is complexity so incomprehensible?

[tmazanec1]

It does not depend on distance. Earth emits less than it receives because in the geologically recent past we enhanced its greenhouse effect and it has not yet reached an equibibrium (besides, we are still doing it). Jupiter radiates more because of gravitational compression and dropping of helium into its core as the hydrogen rises.

[Tanada]

People simply don't understand that in the modern world there are no 'islands'.

Any kind of soft landing will prolong energy consumption and earth destruction.

In my opinion, half of the world population will die within a half-year time period. Whatever happens after that is anybody's guess.

Soft Landing, which will let most of the consumers live, will finish off the earth probably for millions of years by giving them enough time to polish off the earth's remaining resources.

Human nature does not call for conservation, etc. If a tribe conserves an environment, there will always be another tribe which want to come in and take everything for little cost.

In its own way the Fracking Revolution has behaved as a type of soft landing IMO by extending the plateau out to the point where people forgot Peak Oil is a real phenomenon.

Had my annual meeting with my family financial advisors. As far as he is concerned Fracking has proven there is no peak oil and the world can go on happy motoring for long past the date of my retirement or his own.

This of course ignores completely that fracking was just the cherry on top of the sundae. All those existing conventional oil fields have continued to deplete at say 2% per year so to maintain world supply fracking will have to make up an ever growing wedge of total world oil supply.

That soft landing cushion is rapidly eroding and nobody with authority wants to admit it.

[onlooker]

Yes, again have to concede what Ibon has said across different threads only the Consequences of our collective actions will finally compel us to at least somewhat alter course. In fact, we can go further and say that only via a large human die off and a cessation of our toxic worldwide industrial civilization will our tremendously negative impact on the Biosphere finally abate. So yes, I fully agree at this point we will continue doing what we do, overpopulate and overconsume until we cannot so no Soft Landing is possible or desirable.

[ROCKMAN]

T - Speaking on behalf of the economies of the major oil consuming nations I would not characterize the frac'ng surge as a "soft land". Remember it only developed because of a huge increase in oil prices. And increase that has caused those economies to transfer several $TRILLIONS extra to the oil producers. Not a soft landing but a crash landing. And even though prices fallen consumers are still transferring about an extra $700 MILLION/year to producers then they were prior to the shale boom.

And let's not forget the off books cost to defend the ME oil production: $TRILLIONS is US et al tax dollars and thousands of our military's lives.

[KaiserJeep]

Damn, things really are getting Apocalyptically Doomerish around PeakOil.com.

For the record, I'm a believer in the form of Doom that happens when we run out of FF's we can afford to burn. But we just peaked about a decade ago, and there are three to five decades of affordable FF's remaining.

All of you sense that something is approaching. Well that something is the price of oil (trading at US$54/barrel this week) gradually busting through 60/70/80/90/100 US$ per barrel. There will be the usual oscillations caused by speculators, futures traders, and the like. But over the next few decades, prices go up. As they go up, more and more existing but idle petroleum sources, not profitable before this point, come online and prices stabilize, even dip slightly.

The overall oil expense trend will cause grumbling in the Western or 1st World, and widespread starvation in the 3rd World. Best we finish Trump's wall quickly, and supplement it with armed drones in the sky, delivering quick death to those attempting to cross our border without visas.

It is the latest act in a civilization that peaked some decades ago and is presently in steady decline. But it's no surprise to any Forum members who have been paying attention, and who actually believe in a concept called Peak Oil.