True. I think what happens is this; you tend to become what you study. Over the longer term, many people on here tend to adopt the same views, into a 'common view' if you like. That builds certain beliefs. Your viewpoint could be absolutely dead wrong in reality, but the sum of all parts tends to make you believe you're right.

Of course, I still predict a peak oil in 2005-2008; and I tend to be more of a hard hit than a soft landing.

Mark

The ultimate way to prevent flight from the cities- prozac in the water.

[quote
3. A minor problem that technology and the market will solve as easily as aSpeaking of which, don't even get me started on the recent hurricanes. Again, a big-ass myth propagated by a bunch of fear mongering book-selling eco-fascists liberals who couldn't get real jobs.

I live in southern california and I didn't notice no hurricane! What does that tell you?! Exactly, something is fishy here . . . for all we know, there weren't any hurricanes. Really, have any of you bothered to double check the credentials of those claiming there were hurricanes? For all we know, there working for the insurance companies who want you to believe the hurricanes happened so they can drive up the price of insurance!


VOR[/quote]

I know alot of people in Florida that beg too differ on your views, I'm sure they would just LOVE too give you personal insight.......

LOL!

I thought the same thing.

Read the New Scientist article, and you will see the "could place a fundamental limit on miniaturisation, because it suggests that the micro-scale devices "
http://www.newscientist.com/news/print. ... ns99992572

Actualy it bodes very poorly for "Technology" and shows how little we know about our World we live in.

Think about "Nano-tech "Solar that R. Heindenburg suggests we invest in. Nope it is not actual, and may or may not ever be so...

VOR is extreemly satirical, nintendo and 50" plasma screens?


As for geusts, I'm mixed on the issue. I think it helps build the boards, but does add to some "troll" like behavior....

actually I think you're wrong

As kiddiekorral said, it's just sattire

See vor's first thread.....specifically the post where he describes who he is and where he's coming from

Also in that thread you will notice that I am one of those getting most annoyed with him......

go here : http://peakoil.com/fortopic1708-0-asc-45.html

to learn more about VOR

heheheh I busted a rhyme y'all

Despite my limited understanding of the matter of living within entropy's imperatives, I hope that the following outline of some practical problems and their resolution might be useful as an illustration of dealing with those imperatives.

Suppose I have a problem with cold northerly winds in spring hitting my home and suppressing growth in the veg garden, and another with paying for unsatisfactory loads of firewood, and one autumn I decide to do something about these problems.

To optimize their resolution I need to achieve all the carbon efficiency I can (that is I need to minimize the carbon emissions that the changes cause) in order to minimize the disorder (entropy) generated, while maximizing benign effects (neg-entropy) such as supporting local trades to help counter the age-old urban money-drain from the country.

Integrating the Problems' Resolution
Having thought about the options, I visit a friend who's a charcoal maker (who works coppice woodland and mostly supplies bagged charcoal for barbeques) and buy quarter of a tonne from him (for about $40 equivalent).

This he delivers to a good local blacksmith (who's won prizes for his wrought iron gates), whom I ask to make the blade and straps of a strong spade and also a light double bitted axehead, using the charcoal as fuel for his forge, with the surplus being part-payment for his work.

When they're done I split a billet of ash firewood to blanks and work them by hand shaping one to fit the axehead and another the spade, and set heavy rivets to fasten the latter after morticing a topbar onto it. The axehead is fastened onto its handle with an oaken wedge that is then sealed with pitch from the house's woodstove. Both handles are well-rubbed with sheep fleece from a neighbour's barn to coat them with lanolin as a preservative and polish.

Since it is late autumn the sap in the trees of a local woodland has now fallen. After getting skilled advice on the subject, I carefully dig up a few hundred saplings from the thousands in the woods (that are going to be shaded out and die if left where they are) and fell enough poles to make light stakes for them.

Once they've been hauled home, the task of planting up a small woodlot to the north of the house and garden can begin.

When the saplings are planted they start giving wind-shelter across about 12 times their height, and begin sheltering the house and the veg garden and increasing the latter's yields. Once they've have grown for at least 5 years (and preferably 12 to 15 years) they'll start to yield a small sustainable fuelwood supply each year.

Considerations.
The tasks above entail very little money having to be earned compared to a conventional approach, primarily because the saplings are got for labour alone. What money is spent goes to local trades, with an intentional encouragement of future trading between them. Wherever possible, actions are designed to achieve multiple benefits.

For all it will be years before the woodlot can displace much bought-in firewood, outlay to provide a sustainable supply has been minimized, two fine and highly durable tools have been acquired and the required wind-shelter has been started.

Pollution has been minimized by trading locally and so avoiding transport emissions, as well as by supplying the smith with charcoal to make the tools, and by making the tool handles rather than buying machine-made ones.

As the woodlot grows it will take many tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere (that would otherwise have stayed there) of which a fraction will be cycled through the woodstove chimney each year into the trees' regrowth, (that is the same tonnage of carbon is cycled if not the same atoms). Over the years the trees' leaves will help to build soil by contributing carbon and trace elements to it. The woodlot's carbon banking is a major part of the project's overall neg-entropy.

Overview
The actions above are perhaps to modern eyes a long-winded approach to dealing with the problems posed at the outset. An email to Holland could get me the cheapest trees, delivered by truck, sea-ferry and truck, while a Chinese spade I can get cheap in the county town along with softwood stakes. But the trees will not be native varieties and having been intensively raised may not be hardy enough to do well, the stakes will have been grown in unsustainable plantations and the spade will be trash, and I'd have to spend a deal of time earning money to pay for for these things.

In reality the careful actions outlined above reflect an efficient long-term investment approach, and one which not only minimizes as far as feasible the generation of counter-productive disorder (entropy) but also actively develops both social and ecological resources (neg-entropy) to avoid having to generate entropy in the future.

It is worth noting that the urban money-drain mentioned above has impoverished rural communities worldwide, and has eroded peoples' freedom of choice to live within their resources' capacities. It has to be plugged if sustainable rural culture is to be restored. (Be it clearly understood, like anyone else, in the last resort of poverty I'd fell scarce trees for firewood to keep dependants from fading out with frost).

This account may seem very remote from some readers' present way of life, (for instance I happen to live in an area where various skilled trades have endured) but I suggest that post peak those who want to learn a trade may find a rural way of life highly preferable and far more productive and fulfilling than that in the newly impoverished cities.

Moreover, in case it hadn't been noticed, the sustainability of those cities is wholly reliant, now as ever, on the sustainability of the countryside that supports them.

--

--

Hawkcreek - many thanks for your response.

I'd only point out that few people are so well set up as to be able to keep to the posted example's standard. I guess like yourself, I aspire to and work towards it.

I am interested greatly in the chances for young people to learn of the skills of good living. If you don't already know of somewhere in your state, maybe its worth passing the word round for people to get one started ? I'm putting out feelers over here, as it seems a seminal way to go.

Am I right in thinking that you're living in what is technically Hickory coppice ??

If so, I'd be very very envious if I weren't too old for such folly. Hickory is so fine and so rare here in Britain . . .

Even if it's another tree altogether, it sounds a great resource and yes, it certainly counts as sustainable coppice if treated with working respect.

regards,

Backstop

If the Law of Entropy were clearly understood, society would have to face up to the fact that every time we use some of the stockpile of available matter and energy, it means two things: First, that however it may happen, we end up paying more for the disorder created in making a product than the value derived from the use of the product; second, less energy is available to be used in the future. This reality flies in the face of the way we think the world works. Sounds like nonsense to most people.

Whenever energy is extracted from the environment and processed through society, part of it becomes dissipated or wasted at every stage, until all of it, including the part made into products, ends up as waste in the end. Economists cannot accept this simple truth. They are indoctrinated with this notion that human ingenuity plus nature's bounty creates greater value, not less. They don't understand that machines and people cannot create anything. All we can do is transform available energy from a usable state to an unusable state, while allowing us some "temporary utility" along the way.

A study was done on how much energy was required to build an automobile. The study concluded that many times more energy was actually used than was necessary. Why was all the extra energy used? To get the automobile off the assembly line faster. "Haste makes waste" is a well-know idiom attesting to the intuitive reality of entropy at work. We need to start building machines that last (quality vs quantity), and to pursue the development of technologies that will operate with efficiencies closer to the ideal limits set by nature and as defined by the Law of Entropy. Implementing this last and most crucial goal are at odds with current economic policies and the general perception of reality that most people have of the world around them.

Thus our economy is dependent for its maintenance, growth and development on the acquisition of low entropy energy/matter and on the waste assimilation capacity of the environment. This means that beyond a certain point, the continuous growth of the economy (i.e., the increase in human populations and the accumulation of manufactured capital) can be had only at the expense of increasing disorder (entropy). This occurs when consumption by the economy exceeds production in nature and is seen through the accelerating depletion of natural capital, reduced biodiversity, air/water/land pollution, and climate change.

Our current economic production is utterly dependent on the availability of low-entropy inputs like oil. We basically have two sources of low entropy: the solar and fossil fuels. Solar is relatively infinite, but is strictly limited in its flow rate of arrival to earth. Fossil fuels are finite, but can be used at a flow rate of our own choosing. Industrialism and technology represents a shift away from the use of abundant solar energy toward major dependence on the scarce fossil fuels in order to take advantage of the controllable rate of flow at which we can use it.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we should be fueling our cars with alcohol from food crops that gather current sunshine. This approach is different in practice from the money-based "least cost" method of optimizing production, so it is important to stress the differences between economic and thermodynamic analysis. Economic analysis is based upon perceptions of present value and scarcity as expressed in the marketplace, where the supply and demand framework is modeled on an instantaneous evaluation of the popular perception of shortages.

The late M. King Hubbert put it quite succinctly:

The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the past four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.

To put it simply: The knowledge of matter and energy + monetary policy=peak-oil.

Since the current monetary system wants growth, we need a system that wants stability. Would it be a monetary system based upon EROEI, rather than matter wealth? Instead of correcting inflation, we would correct a decrease in EROEI, or slow down entropy. A money system triggered, not by scarcity (supply/demand) but by thermodynamic flow-through efficiency. If entropy increased, you would curb the money supply. If people conserved more, you would free the money supply. The reverse of what we have now.

Money would be created based upon available renewable energy, while fossil fuels would be for key, non-profit energy use, and energy emergencies. The less energy you use, the cheaper it becomes. Bulk cost more than small amounts. The faster you drive, the more it costs you for fuel when you stop to fill up. Conservation would pay you a dividend. Perhaps we could have a carbon tax on hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) making the use of renewables more attractive.

Each person receives wages according to the amount of order they add to the system as a whole and pays fees/taxes for how much 'stuff' they turn into useless chaotic energy. Like reverse depreciation. No way to make anyone accept such a system of course, people are not intelligent enough to contemplate such a thing, and in addition you would have to have a great deal of control over people's private lives. But it is in the general direction I feel we should go governed by our decision, and not by the ruthless laws of nature over which we cannot escape.

Much of my mindset is corroborated and influenced by the writings and teachings of Howard T. Odum. http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy_ecol ... t_1973.htm

And isn't that a bitch? The worlds going to hell in a handbasket, and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

I'm beginning to think that a crash is not just imminent, but necessary.

What other hope do we have of living with each other? Everyone just seems to want to kill everyone else for one reason or another. Under our current system, is it even possible to change that?
I doubt it.

Here in N.America we need a serious kick in the ass to get it through our heads that things need to change. This garbage about "the market will give signals and save us all" is practically all-pervasive on this continent.

It's sad, but it'll be a lot sadder when they start stringing up folks like Monte just because he was right and they can't accept it. *sigh*

How Big Should A Small Farm Be?
John Ikerd
(Or “Entropy and Industrial Agriculture”)

“This dissolution of boundaries, this industrialization of agriculture, has resulted in tremendous gains in agricultural productivity and economic efficiency. As with industrialization in general, it has released tremendous stocks of stored energy that were constrained by the boundaries that once defined different fields, family functions, enterprises, farms, and even farming communities. The boundaries have been removed and the energy has been released. But, once the stored energy has been used up, where will these industrial farming operations get new energy?”

http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jik ... owBig.html

Luckily, your views are the minority and your mindset prohibits your accession to any positions of authority.
I wonder what most moms and dads would think of your thoughts son?