[sparky]

.
@Seagypsy , glass rock or obsidian was the object of a vigorous trade all over the Mediterranean ,
In Venice ,the dreaded council of ten , a secret security organ charged with stamping out threats to the Serenissime republic would send agents to kill any master glassmakers , escaping to foreign countries to sell the secrets .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Ten

@ Tanada , while a stable sustainable economy would look like something close to the middle ages around 1000
it would take a fair few centuries to coast down to this level ,
there is vast amount of metal and material available for recycling and a large body of accumulated knowledge which would slowly evaporate but still provide comfort and know how until its technological base disappearance make it virtual and useless .
for some application such as astronomical navigation and sailing ships technology , it would take centuries ,
the modern freeways concrete bridges and road layout would remain, even if the road surfacing itself is destroyed
by iron shod wheels as it was before rubber tires ,
the Roman network of roads was in use for centuries even after the gravel surface was worn away , leaving the underlay of flagstones exposed , it was not the material which was important but the tracing of it over the landscape
http://www.britannica.com/technology/Roman-road-system

I've though long and hard about the evolution of the human experience post peak and post fossil fuel
certainly the transition would bring big problems and , human nature being what it is , big turmoils
a managed glide down the population curve will probably bring massive conflicts ,

I suspect the insurgents with the lower technological level will, over the long run, have an advantage
those clinging to an expensive technology will soon enough not be able to afford or operate it
protecting the last oil fields for military use will in fact become a self fulfilling trap
during WW2 , while the red Army had an abundance of fuel and vehicles , there was still some very good use for cavalry for deep raiding , horses could be supplied by local ressources and could go where no vehicles would pass.

the population numbers are daunting ,
a very rough approximation is to take the population curve and mirror it downward ,
a loss of 5 billions in one hundred years then one billion the next century
in many places , internal recycling of human protein ( cannibalism ) will probably occur
http://www.roebuckclasses.com/105/human ... ncurve.htm

Nothing can be done about it ,no amount of preparation will suffice ,
the only comfort I can think of is that eventually ,life will go on
and wild earth, free from human pressure, will probably be the better for it .

[SeaGypsy]

Yes Sparky, I was abbreviating & you are exactly correct about the obsidian & the extremes gone to recover 'stolen' industrial/ artisan glass skills. The passion runs to this day, Lino was effectively on the run the last 20 years of his life, the first Murano master blower to break the sharing taboo in the 20th century & none have since. Unfortunately for Murano, Lino knew just about everything & thanks to him the information has become public domain. There is still extreme exclusivity to studio time. To make money requires at least a few hundred hours. Currently about a hundred bucks an hour for a studio & teacher. 100% chance you will study under a first or second generation apprentice of Lino.

(My father did 3 workshops with Lino Tagliapietra, many more with students of his from Pilchuck, the first modern art glass studio outside of Murano. I never met Lino, but studied under several of his students.)

[Ibon]

I was just visiting the daughters in drought stricken California and was encouraged to see how sensitized the local population is to saving water. Xeroscaping, short showers, restaurants that don't serve water unless asked. Some things real, some symbolic but you do see how cultural adaptation happens when constraints become real time events.

Reading through this very interesting thread it occurred to me we have these two boundaries being applied to modern civilization this century, and contrary to what many assume, these two trends are not mutually exclusive. On one side we have growing constraints unable to maintain the current level of infrastructure and we can expect a re calibration downward in the movement of goods and services. This is where the physical real time limits defines one boundary. You can add to this boundary all the climate change consequences which will affect agricultural output and migration of populations away from coastal areas. On the other hand we will prioritize efficiency through use of cyber technology. In the energy sector for example this translates to reduced total available energy, more costly and more efficiently distributed through a smart grid. This applied technology defines the other boundary.

The physical constraints drive the economic constraints which then embed in technology which then embeds itself in our culture. Technology being more and more reserved for efficiency gains instead of wanton consumption which wont be affordable anymore anyway.. So we can take Tanada's main point of how civilization follows the transport of goods and really imagine how we will be forced to strip away much of the current consumption culture of non essentials. Collateral damage are all the lost jobs and displacement but who said this was going to be a painless ride anyway? Isn't this just the very mechanics we always said we wanted anyway, a culture that would respond to efficiency and sustainability.

Wont this be imposed by the external physical infrastructure limitations and possibilities? In other words, cultural adaptation is lead by external extra human limitations that we will adapt to as we always have. We can see from Tanada's history lesson where we are headed aided by whatever technology can be applied towards efficiency.

Just to recap the chapter that is slowly ending; McMansions and hummers and hundreds of millions flying on vacations because the physical infrastructure permitted. We became jaded, obese, indolent, obscene in our consumption habits because the energy and physical infrastructure permitted this. It is a logical conclusion therefore that cultural values will follow with declining consumption that will match the physical infrastructure as it goes into decline this century. One key area will be conservation of resources. Go to California today and see how the average citizen has rapidly adapted to conserving water; again xeroscaping is all the rage, short showers.

This is just the beginning.

[Tanada]

John Greer of Archdruid fame likes to point out the infrastructure decay of the USA starting about 1973. Sadly I can see many examples of it myself because I have preferred to live in rural communities and I can tell you from personal experience many of the tertiary and quaternary roads in the rural areas have suffered a very large degradation. In many cases a bridge will be declared unsafe for vehicle traffic and a crash barrier or K-rail barricade will be put across each end 'pending repairs'. Occasionally enough people will complain to the local government that they will eventually effect repairs to the bridge and life will resume its former patterns. In a significant number of cases however the local government will simply ignore the problem until the bridge falls down completely.

Because the population density is low in these rural area's the government sees them as much more of a tax burden than as a revenue stream, so they do as little as they can get away with for these places. This is also the case for large decaying cities like Detroit, Michigan. The city itself has lost over half of its population between 1970-2010 and many residential sections have more abandoned homes and lots than occupied ones. As a consequences the city does not get much in the way of taxes from the remaining residents so when a heavy snow falls many of these neighborhoods are not plowed or salted. As a consequence the mostly elderly people who live in these neighborhoods can become snowbound, unable to leave their homes to buy foods or pick up prescription medication for days or even a couple weeks after a major snow storm. If they suffer a utility black out in the same period they are facing serious hardship or even death because sometimes repair trucks have a hard time getting to where the break is located.

This is the sign of a culture in decline. Like ancient Rome the situation did not collapse instantly, but the decline is real and has been going on for a long time. Energy and government determine how robust your infrastructure is. Because America was blessed with very cheap energy the government chose to use disposable infrastructure techniques in many places. In Michigan for example the majority of roadway bridges are rated for 40 years use after construction because when they were designed and built it was assumed they would just be replaced after 40 years. Roads and bridges built before cheap fossil fuel energy was developed were designed to last as long as the Engineers and Construction crews could make them last. There are bridges built by the Romans out of large pieces of stone and concrete that are still completely safe to use today. In the USA we have a few old bridges that are famous, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Mackinaw Bridge and the Golden Gate bridge for example, but each of them has a dedicated maintenance crew that that constantly does work removing corrosion, painting, repairing small problem before they become big problems. The Mackinaw crew for example starts at one end of the bridge and progresses along its length for five years doing this repair and maintain work until they reach the other end. When they get to the far end they return to the beginning and start all over again repeating this 5 year cycle endlessly because the bridge needs constant upkeep. If they ever stop doing this work for more than 20 or 30 years the damage will accumulate until it is no longer safe to use the bridge, and eventually at some time after that the bridge will weaken to the point that it will collapse.

Modern concrete is very different than Roman concrete in one crucial aspect. Modern concrete relies on steel reinforcing for strength. This makes modern concrete much lighter than Roman concrete, but also much less durable. There are quite large buildings in Detroit that were made several stories high of steel reinforced concrete that are now crumbling and collapsing under their own weight. Reinforced concrete requires constant up keep because water seeping through the mass will cause the steel inside to rust. When the steel rusts it expands putting pressure on the concrete that causes cracks. A self reinforcing feedback loop develops because the cracks allow even more water to seep into the concrete causing more rust, more expansion and more cracks. Eventually the concrete is crumbled enough it no longer supports the weight of the structure and a collapse ensues. When energy was extremely cheap this process was slowed or halted by coating the concrete with sealer or paint to stop water intrusion, but as time passes this needs to be renewed. Also any time flaws or cracks became visible with good maintenance they were patched and sealed. When buildings are abandoned these activities were halted and how decades later these buildings are literally falling down from decay of the reinforced concrete. It is the same as what happened to the bridges I talked about first, the more modern structures we built in the 1946-2015 period require constant upkeep. They were designed to be disposable in a culture obsessed with new instead of permanent.

This created the highest standard of living we could imagine by spreading the infrastructure incredibly thin but over the entire country. We did it all in a hurry with the assumption we would just repair or replace at need any time in the future. Now the cheapest energy period in human history is closed off and we are approaching a period of high energy cost like that of the 200,000 ybp-1840 AD. Our infrastructure is wholly designed and almost entirely built in the 1946-2015 period when disposable was the meme instead of durable. We are not ready for this transition and we have done virtually nothing as a culture to prepare for it.

[Ibon]

Great follow up post Tanada. You can foresee the future of rural lands being increasingly left to fend for themselves as roads and bridges are unable to be maintained. Do you think we can therefore predict a trend that population in the future will concentrate with higher densities in urban areas where declining resources will still be sufficient to maintain and replace aging infrastructure. That agricultural lands will also have to come in closer to core areas of population since remote agricultural lands wont have the viable infrastructure for transportation of crops etc.

All of this does have a silver lining for folks like myself who advocate reducing the footprint of humans on the planet and advocate the returning of artificial human landscapes back over to native ecosystems. These outlying areas, the cities no longer economically viable to sustain are prime areas for conversion back to native habitat. This truly does give one hope if you are an advocate for biodiversity on the planet over Kudzu Ape monoculture.

[yellowcanoe]

The problem of reinforced concrete bridges and parking garages crumbling is also related to the tremendous increase in the use of salt on roads in the winter months. Construction standards have adapted to this new reality so newer structures should have a much longer lifespan than those built decades ago. New bridges should have some type of sealant to prevent water from seeping into the concrete deck and the steel rebar will be corrosion resistant.

[Newfie]

Think about NJ for a moment. They are crying poor mouth because their transportation trust fund is broke. So they have a large number of roads and bridges in very poor shape.

Yet they just completed a major widening of a portion of the NJ Expressway.

If you don't have enough money to maintain what you have....why build more?

Defies Logic, like so much else in life.

[Tanada]

Think about NJ for a moment. They are crying poor mouth because their transportation trust fund is broke. So they have a large number of roads and bridges in very poor shape.

Yet they just completed a major widening of a portion of the NJ Expressway.

If you don't have enough money to maintain what you have....why build more?

Defies Logic, like so much else in life.

It is IMO the difference between thinking like a Statesman and thinking like a Politician. The former looks to the next generation, the latter looks to the next election. If you can claim you fixed X Y and Z problems that sounds OK but if you can claim I built this new Expressway that will get you a lot more headlines and votes.

[hvacman]

re: CA water reductions and enforcement mechanisms.
Nothing efficiently enforces change like local peer-pressure and tribal shame. In most water districts around here in northern CA, people who are willing to "pay the water penalty" charge can "legally" use more than their allocated water and keep their grass green. Yet few do. Those people stick out like sore thumbs these days. In our area, the penalties aren't that stiff. It would be much cheaper to pay the penalty than to plan to completely re-landscape next fall with a more drought-tolerant scheme. But to be the only one on the block who doesn't voluntarily sacrifice your lawn in the name of water efficiency? It's worse the the Scarlet Letter. The peer-pressure to conform in most of California regarding water efficiency is huge. Photos of green lawns or overspraying sprinklers, with location, pop up on Facebook - it's amazing how fast things change.

We don't know exactly what will "tip the scales" on gas hogs, etc. to create the informal but powerful "no longer cool" societal vibe, but when it does, things will happen quickly.

[yellowcanoe]

Think about NJ for a moment. They are crying poor mouth because their transportation trust fund is broke. So they have a large number of roads and bridges in very poor shape.

Yet they just completed a major widening of a portion of the NJ Expressway.

If you don't have enough money to maintain what you have....why build more?

It's for the votes -- people are more interested in hearing that a congested highway has been widened than that existing infrastructure has been refurbished.

NJ is also where they have drastically cut back on government funding of their commuter rail system, thus pushing more people into driving to work! I wonder where they will find more money for more road widening?

[Newfie]

Well maybe it is for the votes, but maybe it is something deeper.

The events outlined above took place over many centuries, until the advent of the oil age which Tanda puts at around 1840.

Going out on a limb here to see how it sounds.........

Earlier things were constructed with the future in mind. Not everything, there were terrible hovels that soon returned to the dirt, but there were also the Roman roads, via ducts, cathedrals, etc that were built to stand the test of time. Folks had a sense of continuity. Things will be tomorrow as they are today. What I build today will be useful for a long time. People will remember I built this.

That sense of permanence is gone now. One wonders how long a stick built McMansion will last. I've been watching a 1960's era complex be razed, many acres of offices, to build a new complex. My home town is essentially gone, the name exists but it is otherwise unrecogniable

Among the things that have changed for us, including our anatomy and sheer physical strength, is our sense of time and permanence. We have adapted to a new pace, a new sense of inpermanence, things change, we move, family comes and goes.

But this also means we no longer have a sense of place or future. The 18th century peasant, as noted, was not mobile and had many generations behind him to reflect upon. He had no reason to believe that his great grandson would lead a different life than he.

A 21st century person looks to a different future with no certainty. Or worse with the certainty of change, for better or worse. Why SHOULD we build great roads and buildings if they will be inundated with water? Why should we worry how history will treat us if the future is likely to be one of mass depopulation and retrenchment?

Are we truly as stupid as we seem, or do we have some common unspoken understanding of the coming dark ages and wish to dissociate ourselves from it?

I don't know the answers. I do have a sense that many common folk have a good sense that things are seriously amiss, but are completely flummoxed about what to do.
......
Anyway, many years ago I worked at Amtrak after it was broken away from Conrail, and got to see first hand the devistation of deferred maintenance. Then again at SEPTA when we took the Regional Rail network from Conrail. In the mid 80's we still had crank phones. One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy, etc.

[Plantagenet]

Think about NJ for a moment. They are crying poor mouth because their transportation trust fund is broke. So they have a large number of roads and bridges in very poor shape.

Yet they just completed a major widening of a portion of the NJ Expressway.

If you don't have enough money to maintain what you have....why build more?

Highway construction and repair for major roads in the USA is mainly funded by federal government with money from the federal gas tax. The feds typically pick up as much as 90% of highway projects on expressways and major highways, with the state putting in only 10%.

This provides an incentive for states to spend their infrastructure money on expressways and major highways, while ignoring railroads, local roads and bridges and other infrastructure which isn't subsidized by the feds in the same way. Over time some states have diverted almost all of their infrastructure money to major highway construction, because that yields the biggest bang for the buck in terms of leveraging state dollars to attract maximum federal funds and the concomitant creation of the maximum number of local construction jobs.

[yellowcanoe]

I don't think deferred maintenance and poor quality construction is the norm -- it certainly isn't the norm where I live. We expect that roads will repaired (potholes are a big problem due to the freeze/thaw cycle) and resurfaced once they have degraded too much. Many of the 50 year old bridges on the expressway through our city have been replaced in recent years, mostly using rapid bridge replacement technology. Older sewer and water lines are being replaced at an accelerated rate -- until recently there were still some of the original brick sewer lines in the older part of the city. On our residential street, batteries were connected to the 50 year old water lines to extend their live by reducing the rate at which they corrode. Of course this costs money -- we've had significant increases in water and sewer rates and our municipal taxes go up every year.

As Canada is a cold country, building standards have been changed to improve energy efficiency. A newly constructed house should be more energy efficient than our 50 year old house. New institutional buildings would generally be LEED certified. Personally, I think new construction should be even more energy efficient than it is now -- for office and institutional construction architects use way too much glass on outer walls.

Cost is certainly a major obstacle in getting infrastructure replaced. The cost of replacing the Champlain bridge in Montreal is estimated to be between $3 and $5 billion dollars and its replacement has been postponed with a series of (not cheap) repair jobs. The bridge structure has suffered from the extensive use of road salt in the winter months -- something that likely wasn't foreseen when the bridge was built in 1955. I expect the replacement bridge will be much better protected from salt damage.

Of course it would be a different story if people elected politicians who promised to freeze taxes. Any idiot can freeze taxes if they defer maintenance on infrastructure. You get what you pay for and refusing to properly maintain infrastructure will cost more in the long run.

[Newfie]

Think about NJ for a moment. They are crying poor mouth because their transportation trust fund is broke. So they have a large number of roads and bridges in very poor shape.

Yet they just completed a major widening of a portion of the NJ Expressway.

If you don't have enough money to maintain what you have....why build more?

Highway construction and repair for major roads in the USA is mainly funded by federal government with money from the federal gas tax. The feds typically pick up as much as 90% of highway projects on expressways and major highways, with the state putting in only 10%.

This provides an incentive for states to spend their infrastructure money on expressways and major highways, while ignoring railroads, local roads and bridges and other infrastructure which isn't subsidized by the feds in the same way. Over time some states have diverted almost all of their infrastructure money to major highway construction, because that yields the biggest bang for the buck in terms of leveraging state dollars to attract maximum federal funds and the concomitant creation of the maximum number of local construction jobs.

Yes,I understand that, very true.

Why? Why Is it so?

Is this kind of thinking an artifact of our new high energy, fast change culture or were we always so immune to future consequences?

[Newfie]

Yellow,

Deferred maintenance occurs when you don't have enough free cash to do the necessary. So you run down the infrastructure hoping you will have an influx of cash in the future. Or you dump the responsibility.

To some extent it has been ingrained into the U.S. system. I know I'd at least one major transport system that seeks and receives federal grants for "capital maintenance" projects. Of course this just helps them justify not doing routine maintenance as they will eventually get a grant to do wholesale replacement.

[Subjectivist]

Tanada, there is a component of agriculture you seem to want to miss. Agriculture enclosed the commons, destroyed the hunter/gatherer/shepherd life human species was adapted to over millions of years of evolution. The original human energy account, BTU's-input/BTU's-expended allowed for a surplus in the form of fecundity and born children. This was the standard of living we enjoyed with all its hardships, horror, and freedom.

Grain agriculture ultimately created the feudal nation state, allocated the germ/lipids to the Master's livestock and the lowly starches to his Peasants. He got the manor house and they got diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dental caries, hypertension and organ death. Grain agriculture allows surplus BTU's not for the individual for the Masters of the grain. Grain agriculture closed the commons, built the Master's armies and turned former free nomads into combat grunts (tasked with encircling more common lands and enslaving other nomads) and domesticated former free woman turning them into soldier-breeding stock.

Tanada, I think you are correct that it is the modern transportation network that has made this modern post-industrial world. It gives the Masters the opportunity to further segment and specialize industrial processes, and segment and divide industrial workers. Every job and every worker will be converted into an atomized repetitive task free from human need or desire. People intuitively understand this. They also intuitively understand this is the final outcome.

I think you over emphasize grain, which I grant were key crops in China/Persia/Egypt/Rome, however in Indonesia, subsaharan Africa and South America it was root crops, specifically Yams, Plantain and White Potato. Meanwhile the plains natives of North America were much more oriented to buffalo based Pemmican and Maize didn't arrive east of the Mississippi until shortly before the Europeans showed up bringing wheat and oats and rhy from Europe. I believe the real key was not grain per se, it was food storage technology. Drying or salting meat, grain storage, dried or smoked fish, root cellars for tuber type crops. Each kind of crop had a different preferred storage technology.

[Subjectivist]

I see what you mean about dried/salted meat. I wonder if animal husbandry evolved at the same time as grain agriculture? Both can be hoarded almost forever, and dispensed or withheld for favors. This grants the owners power to consolidate wealth and control, even starve the peasants. This has so many implications for empire, corruption, and slavery.

I would have to look it up, as I recall first came dogs for hunting, then goats and sheep for herding. Pigs and cattle came later because they were harder to tame and cats for rodent control came relatively late when the Fertile Crescent people started storing grain in big piles instead of in rodent proof clay pots with lids.

[Newfie]

Does no good to grow and hoard if you can't eventually deliver.

I think that's where Tanda is going.