[duff_beer_dragon]

The ancient Greeks? They learned at Egypt ; Egyptian view of the universe and life in general is nothing like that at all.

I heard Decartes saw an Angel and some of his ideas came from that. Maybe it was the same Angel that saved Hitler in WW1 so he wasn't bombed. (apparently he got a warning in a dream)

We're in this current mess because about 100 years ago those 'in charge' chose fossil fuels instead of vegetable diesel for cars, and instead of blah blah the usual for electricity generation.

It's as simple as that. All that needed to be done was have the other fuels / methods of generating power as-availible ; now it is harder to do that because it is a case of replacing existing stuff. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. Needs work is all.

If it had been done right from then on, we'd have a permaculture garden type of scene going now, meaning this : if you plant such a garden, you need to give it about 10 years of work to get it up and running, thereafter it requires minimal input of work.

If we had used - example - renewables to be the electricty generating and delivery standard ( yeah I could mention Wardenclyff, just to say you don't need to accept that kind of wireless would work to accept that renewables would work ) then by now all we would need to work on as-regards the global power 'grid' (or however the delivery of the power would work) is maintenance of the existing structures in place.

See, if we'd done it that way, by now we could be concentrating on things like space travel - and it wouldn't be while most of the population are extremely poor and don't have standard of living anywhere near what it should be.

[MrGresham]

From high philosophy to low economics --

MonteQuest, gg3, MrBean, all -- it's great to have a thread that challenges my simple everyday thought processes. I try to reduce my cause-effect thinking to the shortest distance from here to there when I feel myself geting lost in "high concepts". I usually feel like I spent enough years thinking that way, and ended up mostly unemployed and misunderstood.

Even as an economist, the study of which is supposedly grounded upon people's everyday work activities, I can see how theorists can lose themselves in abstractions, so I try to cut through and simplify things and tie together the stuff most of us already know.

But that's not to say I don't love a good mental challenge in the morning (think I'll go brew a pot of coffee) and you guys are going to be some great companions in that regard. I really appreciate it.

What is also inspiring is your generosity in putting the effort into being here and speaking your thoughts. For me, this Election Year's theme is "The Quest for Intelligent Life on Earth" and I think I've just found some of it...

[bentstrider]

Yeah, mechanical world view, I get the point.
All I'm saying is this fool did everything in his power to convince everyone petroleum was the only way to go.
I f we started out with the aforementioned agriculturally based fuels, people would've had more jobs to go with.
With the advent of greenhouse technology, there would've been a steady supply of fuel to keep things going.
And another thing about the building of massive greenhouses, everything would've become more localized.
Meaning less commuting to other places for future generations.

[MonteQuest]

We're in this current mess because about 100 years ago those 'in charge' chose fossil fuels instead of vegetable diesel for cars, and instead of blah blah the usual for electricity generation.

It's as simple as that. All that needed to be done was have the other fuels / methods of generating power as-availible ; now it is harder to do that because it is a case of replacing existing stuff. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. Needs work is all.

This isn't about the choice of energy or even if it is renewable or not, and it's not about who's in charge. It's about how we think the world works. Even if we had entered into a renewable energy world, the same problems would arise, it would just have taken longer. You can't have a switch to a renewable energy base that is sustainable without a change in the world view. And no, it has never been possible. Second law tells us so. Cheap oil has allowed us to put off that reality until now. A technology fix will just hasten our demise.

[MonteQuest]

Yeah, mechanical world view, I get the point.
All I'm saying is this fool did everything in his power to convince everyone petroleum was the only way to go.
I f we started out with the aforementioned agriculturally based fuels, people would've had more jobs to go with.
With the advent of greenhouse technology, there would've been a steady supply of fuel to keep things going.
And another thing about the building of massive greenhouses, everything would've become more localized.
Meaning less commuting to other places for future generations.

Everything you just suggested is still the mechanical world view. You have to abandon that view. Think, "the more I try to improve on nature, the worse I make it." "The more technology I throw at the problem the worse it gets." "The more I build, the more I tear down." "I can't win."

[MonteQuest]

[quote="MrBean

What is the intended audience? You have a lot of preacher in you, which I think is an admirable trait, but sometimes that gets in the way of dialogue. We all share the conviction in the extremely important broad imperative you mention, and the "esoteric prose" is not intended to question the validity of that generalisation, certainly not to suggest a free lunch.

Those who wish to understand the issues, but don't have the grasp we have. I feel that we need to try to keep it simple and understandable to the most amount of people.

I happen to think that the "fine points of quantum physics" are essential challenge to the current world view and will help to evolve to a new world view - subject of this discussion - where we see ourselves as integral, organic and dependent parts of the life on Earth and the whole universe, instead of the fragmented world view of separate individuals and tribes manipulating separate objects for the instant pleasure, happily forgetting how everything is interconnected on all levels and that some complicated dynamic causalities - or cycles and flows - we cannot or refuse to acknowledge, may turn out to be our doom.

Well, I cannot argue with that, but I think it is instructive to differentiate between an order of interconnectivity and an order of energy/matter and how it applies to our use of energy. Perhaps if we can get a handle on the latter, the former will be easy.

PS....I don't mean to pontificate--I wish to learn to teach, not preach.

[MrBean]

Yeah, mechanical world view, I get the point.
All I'm saying is this fool did everything in his power to convince everyone petroleum was the only way to go.
I f we started out with the aforementioned agriculturally based fuels, people would've had more jobs to go with.
With the advent of greenhouse technology, there would've been a steady supply of fuel to keep things going.
And another thing about the building of massive greenhouses, everything would've become more localized.
Meaning less commuting to other places for future generations.

Everything you just suggested is still the mechanical world view. You have to abandon that view. Think, "the more I try to improve on nature, the worse I make it." "The more technology I throw at the problem the worse it gets." "The more I build, the more I tear down." "I can't win."

I don't equal use of technology with mechanical world view, the question is rather what kind of technology we use and how, to what end. Mechanical world view to my means above all that we stay unconsciouss and slaves to those mechanical processes of our minds and our cultures that make us act in destructive ways, instead of acting creatively and in harmony with our surroundings.

So I don't share your pessimism about all technology; we are a tool using species, that we can't change. What we need is more wisdom to reign the potential destructivity of our enormous manipulative skill and patience to think ahead further than just the next step before acting.

[MrBean]

Well, I cannot argue with that, but I think it is instructive to differentiate between an order of interconnectivity and an order of energy/matter and how it applies to our use of energy. Perhaps if we can get a handle on the latter, the former will be easy.

Sustainable energy is mostly a technological question, and we are quite good at solving them. At this point it seems harder to get our society to change it's world view to accept that it needs to do so, respecting and valuing other forms of life equally to ours. I used to think very strictly that all change must start at personal level and consentrated on exploring spirituality. That was long time ago, however, where to begin the change is really an egg and chicken question, the change is going on at all levels all the time, and nobody is in control of it. Perhaps one of the keys is admitting this in our core, giving up seeking control and the falce sense of security the delusion of control provides, accepting that all we can do is push the odds - and finding our strength in that realization.

[MonteQuest]

quote="MrBean

I don't equal use of technology with mechanical world view, the question is rather what kind of technology we use and how, to what end. Mechanical world view to my means above all that we stay unconsciouss and slaves to those mechanical processes of our minds and our cultures that make us act in destructive ways, instead of acting creatively and in harmony with our surroundings.

So I don't share your pessimism about all technology; we are a tool using species, that we can't change. What we need is more wisdom to reign the potential destructivity of our enormous manipulative skill and patience to think ahead further than just the next step before acting.

No, the question is how complex a technology we use. The more complex the technology, the more energy transfers and the more entropic it becomes. In the future, we will have a daily allocation of energy from the sun as it rises. The complexity of our technology must reflect those limits, not only considering our needs, but the needs of those who follow. According to second law, you can only be pessimistic about technology since energy only flows one way towards chaos and unusability. We could be optimistic about technology, but it wouldn't make water flow up hill by itself. We can't win no matter how hard we try. Cheap oil merely let us hold our own for a short while. The question arises: How much technology can the earth's system that supports us stand?

[MrBean]

quote="MrBean

I don't equal use of technology with mechanical world view, the question is rather what kind of technology we use and how, to what end. Mechanical world view to my means above all that we stay unconsciouss and slaves to those mechanical processes of our minds and our cultures that make us act in destructive ways, instead of acting creatively and in harmony with our surroundings.

So I don't share your pessimism about all technology; we are a tool using species, that we can't change. What we need is more wisdom to reign the potential destructivity of our enormous manipulative skill and patience to think ahead further than just the next step before acting.

No, the question is how complex a technology we use. The more complex the technology, the more energy transfers and the more entropic it becomes. In the future, we will have a daily allocation of energy from the sun as it rises. The complexity of our technology must reflect those limits, not only considering our needs, but the needs of those who follow. According to second law, you can only be pessimistic about technology since energy only flows one way towards chaos and unusability. We could be optimistic about technology, but it wouldn't make water flow up hill by itself. We can't win no matter how hard we try. Cheap oil merely let us hold our own for a short while. The question arises: How much technology can the earth's system that supports us stand?

I don't think complexity is the issue. We are going in circles, I can only refer to Bohm's notion of entropy and scales of order and to Prigogine who showed that also 'order from chaos', and say that your notion of entropy is bit too simplistic and mechanistic.

If complexity in itself would be only "entropic", life itself would hard to explain, life that first fulfilled the atmosphere with oxygen and has evolved into increasingly complex organisms.

Let's take recycling as example. The closer we want to get 100% (which is impossible, but not required because of Sol) sustainable loops of matter and energy, the more complex the technology and the social planning involved gets. Most of all what is required is understanding of the complex and dynamic processes we need to adopt to, and complex tools like computers, study of complexity, non-linear math etc. to model those processes.

Your statement, that any complex, technological civilisation is doomed and impossible to sustain in the long run is simply too strong. We can't know if we don't try . It is actually because of of our increasing understanding of complex dynamic systems that we can make predictions about our own doom, which offer us a chance to form a self-corrective information feedback loop that may avert the doom predictions, if we take those predictions seriously and change our behaviour accordingly - which means change in our collective world view.

[bentstrider]

Well, I'm somewhat philosophically handicapped.
Only thing I can say now is this.
Due to all this mechanical view of technology as everyone talks about, yes.
We've literally screwed ourselves by encouraging more people to be born.
Letting people live longer.
Yet, in these Greek philosophy days, there weren't that many of us on the planet to begin with.
But all of you act as if technology should be abolished.
Its the source of all our problems.
Fine then.
You could all live wearing bearskins, I'll live as long as "I" have to on bio-fuels and blacksmithing my own engine/tranny parts.
And maybe find a way to blast off of this obviously doomed rock.
At least I'll be floating near Alpha Centaur when I long-dead.
The world will be roasted and toasted due to a cosmic cataclysm worse than an oil crash.
Due to the mentality of: "there's no more fossil fuels. lets all go live like cave whores."
All I'm saying is the optimism for any type of technological advancement sounds dead on this board.

[Falconoffury]

The challenge is developing a technology to direct flows of energy into usable forms.

Theoretically, we could maintain the same worldwide rate of electrical generation with a combination of wave/tidal and windmill generators. Technology could help us increase efficiency in those endeavors. Technology is not helping us when it's simply there to create more junk consumer goods such as ever faster processors and camera phones. Technology can help us harness new forms of energy such as cold fusion, He3 molecule fusion, or zero point energy. Technology can be good or bad, depending on how it's used, but it's still only one of many sciences. Science in general is not a way to define the limits of our world, it's a door to helping us understand our world better.

[bentstrider]

Well said Falcon.
As long as we got the lights and simple forms of mass communication.
As per your quote below, I'm afraid we could possibly start seeing things like Soylent Green and Logans Run in the near future.
Except combined in this sense.
You reach a certain age bracket, say 60-100.
It all works on a lottery system at this age, kind of like a draft.
When your number gets called off, your ass gets hauled off.
To where? The multiple materials processing center.
There, the selected old folks will be either made into food or a form of burnable fuel.
Sounds a little dehumanizing when you think about it.
But, with resources to humans ratio, I believe it could be the only way to keep numbers current.

[MonteQuest]

[quote="MrBean

I don't think complexity is the issue. We are going in circles, I can only refer to Bohm's notion of entropy and scales of order and to Prigogine who showed that also 'order from chaos', and say that your notion of entropy is bit too simplistic and mechanistic.

Of course complexity is the issue. The more complex a technology, the more energy transformations that take place. With each energy transformation, we have a loss of usable energy and an even greater increase in entropy. So, the goal is to use technology that will achieve the desired result with the least amount of energy transformations. The two criteria that will set that standard will be the available renewable energy to hold entropy at bay, and a decision as to how long we wish humanity to go on and what we wish to leave for future generations.

If complexity in itself would be only "entropic", life itself would hard to explain, life that first fulfilled the atmosphere with oxygen and has evolved into increasingly complex organisms.

Complex technology, to give us a short-term "utility," or "time-saver," requires many energy transfers which means a much larger increase in entropy somewhere else. Living things are able to move in a direction opposite to that of the entropy process by absorbing free energy from the surrounding environment. Each succeeding species, through the process of random genetic mutation, becomes better equiped as a transformer of energy, but the more complex the organism, the greater the energy flow-through and the greater the disorder created in the overall environment. Classic second law, the difference being that living things are able maintain a non-equilibrium state until death.

Let's take recycling as example. The closer we want to get 100% (which is impossible, but not required because of Sol) sustainable loops of matter and energy, the more complex the technology and the social planning involved gets. Most of all what is required is understanding of the complex and dynamic processes we need to adopt to, and complex tools like computers, study of complexity, non-linear math etc. to model those processes.

Yes, instead of recycling aluminum cans and bottles, we should ban aluminum cans and reuse the bottles. Stop the throwaway production altogether.

Your statement, that any complex, technological civilisation is doomed and impossible to sustain in the long run is simply too strong. We can't know if we don't try .

I never said that any complex technological civilization is doomed. How complex a technological society we can have is dependent upon available energy and our willingness to accept and pay the true cost of it's production. We have never been willing to pay the true cost of burning hydocarbons. Look at how polluted the world is. Wind and solar are not too expensive, oil is too cheap! Sure we can know. Try? Does eating your food faster prevent you from starving? If you have a limited amount of energy, the last thing you would do is throw energy intensive and entropy producing technology at it. Try all you want, the laws of thermodynamics tells us we can never win no matter how hard we try. We need to learn to adapt and cope, not try and find a way around that fact. Water will never flow up hill. We have to pump it, or wait for it to rain.

[MonteQuest]

Due to all this mechanical view of technology as everyone talks about, yes.

It is not a mechanical view of technology, it is a mechanical view of the way the world works. The world works exactly opposite of the way we think. Our efforts to make things more ordered in our mind, makes things even more disordered in the world. We cannot improve upon nature, we can only make it worse. Our new world must be to try and live in harmony with our environment and leave as few footprints as possible. This is not some esoteric philosophy I am talking about, this is the hard rule of the second law of thermodynamics which has never been disproved. Cheap oil has just allowed us to ignore it, until now.

But all of you act as if technology should be abolished. Its the source of all our problems.

How could you abolish the ability of thinking minds to devise complex machines? Technology is merely one of the tools we use to further our Newtonian mechanics world view. If our world view changed to what it needs to, we wouldn't use much technology in the way most people think.

And maybe find a way to blast off of this obviously doomed rock.

Second law applies everywhere, not just on earth. There is no escape.

Due to the mentality of: "there's no more fossil fuels. lets all go live like cave whores." All I'm saying is the optimism for any type of technological advancement sounds dead on this board.

I certainly haven't advocated a return to the caves, nor have I seen anyone else suggest such a course of action. Technological advancement requires energy, and lots of it--something we won't soon have as much of as we are accustomed to. We may never have as much as we do now, certainly not as a stock supply to meet demand. And even if we someday do find a new source of energy, we can't use it without changing our world view. We would just hasten our demise. What I have been saying is we need to downsize our lifestyle and our use of technology to a level that is sustainable and that leaves something for those who will follow.

[somethingtosay]

The challenge is developing a technology to direct flows of energy into usable forms.

Theoretically, we could maintain the same worldwide rate of electrical generation with a combination of wave/tidal and windmill generators. Technology could help us increase efficiency in those endeavors. Technology is not helping us when it's simply there to create more junk consumer goods such as ever faster processors and camera phones. Technology can help us harness new forms of energy such as cold fusion, He3 molecule fusion, or zero point energy. Technology can be good or bad, depending on how it's used, but it's still only one of many sciences. Science in general is not a way to define the limits of our world, it's a door to helping us understand our world better.

My First Post.

I'm with MonteQuest on this. A technological solution is an elusion as all technology has a life cycle ("nothing lasts forever") requiring a continious maintenance/repair and replacement process. When energy becomes scarce, all manmade systems will becomes difficult or impossible to maintain.

Brief History of how I have come to this conclusion. BMechEng in '86, where PO and the consequences of the Laws of Thermodynamics where never discussed, Ex Naval Engineer, Ex Computer and Systems Admin during the Dot com rise and bust. In Feb 2000 read Jay Hansens Energy Synopsis when diesel prices suddenly rose for no apparent reason. I accepted Jays logic. Became OTR Truck driver in 2002 to Experience North America while fuel was still cheap; Every day I drive I reflect on the wastage and the impending collapse and how clueless the public is about how world really works. The whole economic model functions because of the ability to move material and people. When transportation fails, all systems will decay into uselessness, as upkeep of technology will not be possible.

There is a reason why all factory's and businesses are full at the moment. There is a reason why there are so many trucks/ships/trains/planes going everywhere.

To me, the transportation question is the trigger. I see no solution to transportation, beyond oil, that can feed the chain that the economy and politics is built upon.

Thanks MonteQuest I really enjoy your posts. You are very well written and studdied and have a clarity of thought.

I've been lurking here for a while now and have finally found a home where intelligent thought exists

[Fatherof4]

From my point of view it's really quite simple. The universe is always attempting to move toward a more disordered state. That is the natural order of things. In order to move from a less ordered state to a more ordered state (against the flow of nature) we must add energy to the system. It just so happens that in the last 150 years, we've managed to tap into a TREMENDOUS energy source, and we've applied that energy to our environment and produced a remarkably complex geopolitical/economic/industrial/agricultural/technological society.

However, in order to maintain this order and complexity, a continuous flow of cheap energy (actually an ever increasing amount due to energy loss as "waste") must continually be pumped into the system.

Without oil, we will not be able to fight entropy. Chaos will ensue until we reach some new state of equilibrium where we can meet our needs for order and complexity with the non-oil energy sources. To reach this new equilibrium, we will have to abandon the energy intensive activities which define our way of life and learn to be satisfied with lives that are governed by renewable energy resources. 7 billion people cannot survive on this planet under those conditions.

Analogy:
All day long my wife runs behind our four small children picking up after them just to maintain some semblance of order in the house. The other day, she wasn't feeling well and could not keep up. The house was a wreck when I returned home from work. (that was the oil shocks of the 70's). What we are about to experience is what happens when Mom goes away and check into a mental institution and kids have the run of the place indefinitely. This is actually more likely that I would like to admit around here.

[MonteQuest]

[quote="somethingtosay

Thanks MonteQuest I really enjoy your posts. You are very well written and studdied and have a clarity of thought.

I've been lurking here for a while now and have finally found a home where intelligent thought exists

Thank you. And a very good first post. Welcome to peakoil.com. We will soon have a Conservation & Energy Efficiency forum. I look forward to your future contributions.

MQ

[MonteQuest]

Analogy:
All day long my wife runs behind our four small children picking up after them just to maintain some semblance of order in the house. The other day, she wasn't feeling well and could not keep up. The house was a wreck when I returned home from work. (that was the oil shocks of the 70's). What we are about to experience is what happens when Mom goes away and check into a mental institution and kids have the run of the place indefinitely. This is actually more likely that I would like to admit around here.

Another great post! This is the definition of entropy at work in laymen's terms. We are going to run out of Mom. Who is going to pick up after the kids? It costs a lot more to hire a maid.

[MrBean]

Of course complexity is the issue. The more complex a technology, the more energy transformations that take place. With each energy transformation, we have a loss of usable energy and an even greater increase in entropy. So, the goal is to use technology that will achieve the desired result with the least amount of energy transformations.

Then we have different notions of complexity. I'm thinking dynamic systems, including the society and the biosphere, and system planning, you seem to be thinking only energy using machines, utilities.

So, while I mostly agree with your stated goal for the use of technology, what the are the desired results and how they are desired are parts of the complexity.

And surely you agree that at least some of the innovative technologies to harvest renewable energy and put that in use as efficiently as possible, need to be quite complex on all levels?

Yes, instead of recycling aluminum cans and bottles, we should ban aluminum cans and reuse the bottles. Stop the throwaway production altogether.

Well yes, but even in that case you need quite complex social system for efficiently recollecting those bottles and delivering them for refilling or other uses, so they don't end up as glass shards or plastic waste in the nature.

(we have such system in Finland, BTW, with 90% efficiensy IIRC, aluminum cans are taxed so heavily that they have low market share, but even they are recycled)

But I was thinking on grander scale, complexities that take into consideration the whole lifespan of products. First of all they should be made as durable as possible instead of programming them to break down the next day after the guarantee ends, what seems to be the rule, and all parts should be replaceable and recycleable as efficiently as possibly. Needles to say all this requires very complex planning, quite different from the complexities involved when the planning is made on premises of quick profit for capital invested. So ultimately we end up with social complexities, and the complexities of human nature, what kind of social order would and could put more weight on ecological interests instead of interests of quick profit making?