Prediction is a difficult business at the best of times, but the difficulties seem to change from one era to another. Just now, at least for me, the biggest challenge is staying in front of the headlines. So far, the crash of 2015 is running precisely to spec. Smaller companies in the energy sector are being hammered by the plunging price of oil, while the banking industry insists that it’s not in trouble—those of my readers who recall identical expressions of misplaced confidence on the part of bankers in news stories just before the 2008 real estate crash will know just how seriously to take such claims.
The shiny new distractions disguised as energy breakthroughs I mentioned here two weeks ago have also started to show up. A glossy puff piece touting oceanic thermal energy conversion (OTEC), a white-elephant technology which was tested back in the 1970s and shown to be hopelessly uneconomical, shared space in the cornucopian end of the blogosphere over the last week with an equally disingenuous puff piece touting yet another rehash of nuclear fission as the answer to our energy woes. (Like every fission technology, of course, this one will be safe, clean, and affordable until someone actually tries to build it.)
No doubt there will shortly be other promoters scrambling for whatever government subsidies and private investment funds might be available for whatever revolutionary new energy breakthrough (ahem) will take the place of hydrofractured shales as America’s favorite reason to do nothing. I admit to a certain feeling of disappointment, though, in the sheer lack of imagination displayed so far in that competition. OTEC and molten-salt fission reactors were already being lauded as America’s energy salvation back when I was in high school: my junior year, I think it was, energy was the topic du jour for the local high school debate league, and we discussed those technologies at length. So did plenty of more qualified people, which is why both of them—and quite a few other superficially plausible technologies—never made it off the drawing board.
Something else came in for discussion that same year, and it’s a story with more than a little relevance to the current situation. A team from another school in the south Seattle suburbs had a brainstorm, did some frantic research right before a big debate tournament, and showed up with data claiming to prove that legions of squirrels running in squirrel cages, powering little generators, could produce America’s electricity. Since no one else happened to have thought of that gimmick, none of the other teams had evidence to refute them, and they swept the tournament. By the next tournament, of course, everyone else had crunched the numbers and proceeded to stomp the squirrel promoters, but for years to come the phrase “squirrel case” saw use in local debate circles as the standard term for a crackpot proposal backed with seemingly plausible data.
The OTEC plants and molten-salt reactors currently being hawked via the media are squirrel cases in exactly the same sense; they sound plausible as long as you don’t actually crunch the numbers and see whether they’re economically and thermodynamically viable. The same thing was true of the fracking bubble that’s messily imploding around us right now, not to mention the ethanol and biodiesel projects, the hydrogen economy, and the various other glittery excuses that have occupied so much useless space in the collective conversation of our time. So, it has to be said, do the more enthusiastic claims being made for renewable energy just now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of renewable energy. When extracting fossil carbon from the earth stops being economically viable—a point that may arrive a good deal sooner than many people expect—renewables are what we’ll have left, and the modest but real energy inputs that can be gotten from renewable sources when they don’t receive energy subsidies from fossil fuels could make things significantly better for our descendants. The fact remains that in the absence of subsidies from fossil fuels, renewables won’t support the absurdly extravagant energy consumption that props up what passes for an ordinary middle class lifestyle in the industrial world these days.
That’s the pterodactyl in the ointment, the awkward detail that most people even in the greenest of green circles don’t want to discuss. Force the issue into a conversation, and one of the more common responses you’ll get is the exasperated outburst “But there has to be something.” Now of course this simply isn’t true; no law of nature, no special providence, no parade of marching squirrels assures us that we can go ahead and use as much energy as we want in the serene assurance that more will always be waiting for us. It’s hard to think of a more absurd delusion, and the fact that a great many people making such claims insist on their superior rationality and pragmatism just adds icing to the cake.
Let’s go ahead and say it in so many words: there doesn’t have to be a replacement for fossil fuels. In point of fact, there’s good reason to think that no such replacement exists anywhere in the small corner of the universe accessible to us, and once fossil fuels are gone, the rest of human history will be spent in a world that doesn’t have the kind of lavish energy resources we’re used to having. Concentrations of energy, like all other natural resources, follow what’s known as the power law, the rule—applicable across an astonishingly broad spectrum of phenomena—that whatever’s ten times as concentrated is approximately ten times as rare. At the dawn of the industrial age, the reserves of fossil fuel in the Earth’s crust were the richest trove of stored energy on the planet, and of course fossil fuel extraction focused on the richest and most easily accessible prizes first, just as quickly as they could be found.
Those are gone now. Since 2005, when conventional petroleum production peaked worldwide, the industrial world has been engaged in what amounts to a frantic game of make-believe, pretending that scraping the bottom of the oil barrel proves that the barrel is still full. Every half-baked scheme for producing liquid fuels got flooded with as much cheap credit as its promoters could squander. Some of those—biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol come to mind—turned out to be money pits so abysmal that even a tide of freshly printed money couldn’t do much more than gurgle on the way down; others—above all, shale fracking and tar sand mining—were able to maintain a pretense of profitability for a while, with government subsidies, junk bonds, loans from clueless banks, and round after round of economic stimulus from central banks over much of the world serving to prop up industries that, in the final analysis, were never economically viable in the first place.
The collapse in the price of oil that began this June put paid to that era of make-believe. The causes of the oil crash are complex, but back of them all, I suggest, is a straightforward bit of economics that almost everyone’s been trying to avoid for a decade now. To maintain economic production at any given level, the global economy has to produce enough real wealth—not, please note, enough money, but enough actual goods and services—to cover resource extraction, the manufacture and replacement of the whole stock of nonfinancial capital goods, and whatever level of economic waste is considered socially and politically necessary. If the amount of real wealth needed to keep extracting resources at a given rate goes up steeply, the rest of the economy won’t escape the consequences: somewhere or other, something has to give.
The economic history of the last decade is precisely the story of what gave in what order, or to put it another way, how the industrial world threw everything in sight under the bus to keep liquid fuel production around its 2005 peak. Infrastructure was abandoned to malign neglect, the last of the industrial world’s factory jobs got offshored to Third World sweatshops, standards of living for most people dropped steadily—well, you can fill in the blanks as well as I can. Consumption remained relatively high only because central banks flooded the global economy with limitless cheap credit, while the US government filled the gap between soaring government expenditures and flat or shrinking tax receipts by the simple equivalent of having the Fed print enough money each month to cover the federal deficit. All these things were justified by the presupposition that the global economy was just going through a temporary rough patch, and normal growth would return any day now.
But normal growth has not returned. It’s not going to return, either, because it was only “normal” in an era when cheap abundant fossil fuels greased the wheels of every kind of economic activity. As I noted in a blog post here back in 2007, the inevitable consequence of soaring oil prices is what economists call demand destruction: less formally, the process by which people who can’t afford oil stop using it, bringing the price back down. Since what’s driving the price of oil up isn’t merely market factors, but the hard geological realities of depletion, not everyone who got forced out of the market when the price was high can get back into it when the price is low—gas at $2 a gallon doesn’t matter if your job scavenging abandoned houses doesn’t pay enough for you to cover the costs of a car, and let’s not even talk about how much longer the local government can afford to maintain streets in driveable condition.
Demand destruction sounds very abstract. In practice, though, it’s all too brutally concrete: a rising tide of job losses, business failures, slumping standards of living, cutbacks to every kind of government service at every level, and so on down the litany of decline that’s become part of everyday life in the industrial world over the last decade—leaving aside, that is, the privileged few who have been sheltered from those changes so far. Unless I miss my guess, we’re going to see those same changes shift into overdrive in the months and years ahead. The attempt to boost the world out of its deepening slump by flooding the planet with cheap credit has failed; the global economy is choking on a supersized meal of unpayable IOUs and failed investments; stock markets and other venues for the exchange of paper wealth are so thoroughly gimmicked that they’ve become completely detached from the real economy of goods and services, and the real economy is headed south in a hurry.
Those unwelcome realities are going to constrain any attempt by the readers of this blog to follow up on the proposal I made in last week’s post, and take constructive action in the face of the crisis that’s now upon us. The energy situation here in the US could have been helped substantially if conservation measures and homescale renewables had received any kind of significant support from the oh-so-allegedly-green Democratic party, back when it still had enough clout in Congress to matter; the economic situation would be nowhere near as dire if governments and central banks had bitten the bullet and dealt with the crisis of our time in 2008 or thereafter, rather than papering things over with economic policies that assumed that enough money could negate the laws of physics and geology. At this point, it’s much too late for any sort of collective action on either of those fronts—and of course the political will needed to do anything meaningful about either one went missing in action at the end of the 1970s and hasn’t been seen since.
Thus all of us will have to cope with a world in which the cost of energy suffers from drastic and economically devastating swings, and the sort of localized infrastructure that could cushion the impact of those swings wasn’t built in time. All of us will also have to cope with a global economy in disarray, in which bank failures, currency crises, credit shortages, and crisis measures imposed by government fiat will take the place of the familiar workings of a market economy. Those are baked into the cake at this point, and what individuals, families, and community groups will be able to do in the years ahead will be constrained by the limits those transformations impose.
Those of my readers who still have a steady income and a home they expect to be able to keep would still be well advised to doublecheck their insulation and weatherstripping, install solar water heating and other homescale renewable energy technologies, and turn the back lawn into a vegetable garden with room for a chicken coop, if by any chance they haven’t taken these sensible steps already. A great many of my readers don’t have such options, and at this point, it may be a long time before such options are readily available again. This is crunch time, folks; unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re on the brink of a historical inflection point like the ones in 1789 and 1914, one of the watersheds of time after which nothing will ever be the same again.
There’s still much that can be done in other spheres, and I’ll be discussing some of those things in upcoming posts. In terms of energy and the economy, though, I suspect that for a lot of us, the preparations we’re going to be able to make are the ones we’ve already made, and a great many people whose plans depend on having a stable income and its associated perks and privileges may find themselves scrambling for options when the unraveling of the economy leaves them without one. Those of my readers who have been putting off the big changes that might make them more secure in hard times may be facing the hard decision of making those changes now, in a hurry, or facing the crisis of our age in the location and situation they’re in right now. Those who’ve gone ahead and made the changes—well, you know as well as I do that it’s time to review your plans, doublecheck the details, batten down the hatches and get ready to weather the storm.
One of the entertainments to be expected as the year draws on and the crisis bears down on us all, though, is a profusion of squirrel cases of the sort discussed toward the beginning of this essay. It’s an interesting regularity of history that the closer to disaster a society in decline becomes, the more grandiose, triumphalist, and detached from the grubby realities its fantasies generally get. I’m thinking here of the essay on military affairs from the last years of the Roman world that’s crammed full of hopelessly unworkable war machines, and of the final, gargantuan round of Mayan pyramids built on the eve of the lowland classic collapse. The habit of doubling down in the face of self-induced catastrophe seems to be deeply engrained in the human psyche, and I don’t doubt for a moment that we’ll see some world-class examples of the phenomenon in the years immediately ahead.
That said, the squirrel cases mentioned earlier—the OTEC and molten-salt fission proposals—suffer from a disappointing lack of imagination. If our society is going to indulge in delusional daydreams as it topples over the edge of crisis, couldn’t we at least see some proposals that haven’t been rehashed since I was in high school? I can only think of one such daydream that has the hallucinatory quality our current circumstances deserve; yes, that would be the proposal, being made quite seriously in the future-oriented media just now, that we can solve all our energy problems by mining helium-3 on the Moon and ship it to Earth to fuel fusion power plants we have absolutely no idea how to build yet. As faith-based cheerleading for vaporware, which is of course what those claims are, they set a very high standard—but it’s a standard that will doubtless be reached and exceeded in due time.
That said, I think the media may need some help launching the march of the squirrels just mentioned, and the readers of this blog proved a good long time ago that they have more than enough imagination to meet that pressing need.
Therefore I’m delighted to announce a new contest here on
The Archdruid Report, the Great Squirrel Case Challenge of 2015. The goal is to come up with the most absurd new energy technology you can think of, and write either the giddily dishonest corporate press release or the absurdly sycophantic media article announcing it to the world. If you or a friend can Photoshop an image or two of your proposed nonsolution to the world’s energy needs, that’s all the better. Post your press release or media article on your blog if you have one; if you don’t, you can get one for free from Blogspot or
Wordpress. Post a link to your piece in the comments section of this blog.
Entries must be posted here by February 28, 2012. Two winners—one picked by me, the other by vote of the registered members of the Green Wizards forum—will receive signed complimentary copies of my forthcoming book After Progress. I can’t speak for the forum, which will doubtless have its own criteria, but I’ll be looking for a winsome combination of sheer absurdity with the sort of glossy corporate presentation that frames so many absurd statements these days. (Hint: it’s not against the rules to imitate real press releases and media articles.)
As for the wonderful new energy breakthrough you’ll be lauding so uncritically, why, that’s up to you. Biodiesel plants using investment bankers as their primary feedstock? A vast crank hooked to the Moon, running a global system of belts and pulleys? An undertaking of great energy profit, to misquite the famous ad from the South Sea Bubble, but no one to know what it is? Let your imagination run wild; no matter how giddy you get, as the failure of the fracking bubble becomes impossible to ignore, the mass media and a great many of our fellow hominids are go much further along the track of the marching squirrels than you will.
********************
323 comments:
1/14/15, 4:35 PM
MindfulEcologist said...
As a prophylactic against mental infection by squirrel cases your grounding in history has been very useful. I take a probabilistic approach to assessing evidence and have found adding history to my store of knowledge has made a big difference. It sits well beside the bit of physics and ecology I have picked up.
The inanity of the desperate is everywhere today. Thank you for that image of thousands of squirrels all dedicated to keeping the lights on. Here comes a calculator, slide rule in your case, banishing the whole mess of them with a flick of the slip stick…
I will be warming up my Photoshop but mostly can hardly wait to see what this very creative and engaged group of readers comes up with. Brightens up my whole outlook on the year…
1/14/15, 4:41 PM
William Knight said...
But I do have a serious though equally fantastical thought experiment to pose to you instead.
Suppose we had the ability to do things differently at the start of the industrial revolution - to specify and regulate the use of cheap energy however we wanted. Suppose further that the growth of the human population could likewise be regulated however we liked.
Given those assumptions, what sort of industrialized civilization could have been developed that would be completely sustainable? It would of course be much smaller that what we have today, but presumably above some minimum size in terms of population. It would have to recycle all resources and use only sustainable amounts of energy from forests, hydro power, wind, solar, etc.
Could such a civilization have been developed that would have provided many or most of the comforts and technologies of our times, but for a much smaller population?
Note that I'm not implying such a civilization is actually desirable because our current one has all sorts of pathologies resulting from our disconnection from the natural world. Instead, I'm asking this with a goal of determining what kinds of industrial civilizations are theoretically possible within the thermodynamic limits of our planet.
1/14/15, 4:48 PM
Alex said...
1/14/15, 4:49 PM
GHung said...
"Those of my readers who still have a steady income and a home they expect to be able to keep would still be well advised to doublecheck their insulation and weatherstripping, install solar water heating and other homescale renewable energy technologies.."
Just a note that those of you in the US who plan to do this and have the ability and desire to take tax credits for such installations, many credits are set to expire in 2016, and, considering the current make-up of Congress (and many state legislatures), I wouldn't count on many incentives going forward. The water heating system we added last year qualifies for 65% of total costs in state and federal tax credits which can be claimed over 5 years. For a breakdown of current state/federal credits see: www.dsireusa.org
1/14/15, 5:00 PM
Kutamun said...
For me this week the Charlie Hebdo attacks resonated in the same vein as the Assassination of A Buffoonish Austrian Archduke in 1914 in that the first casualty of these events has been truth. For me what has been misrepresented as an attack by radical islam on a furry froggy peace loving egalitarian critter is in all probability the latest stirrings of serious uprising by the internal proletariat of a notoriously imperialistic country whose middle class elites seem completely oblivious to the carnage that modern consumer middle class lifestyles wreak on the imperial periphery as well as its own internal periphery . 10000 troops now deployed domestically , for heavens sake .
(One million dead Algerians , anyone ?? )
Writers such as Mark Levine on Al Jazeera opinion section and chris hedges on truthdig have calmly deconstructed the most likely nature of these attacks , quite apart from the war drums against "Islam" which are now beating loudly to distract the harried and anxious endangered species middle class from the unsavoury prospects of impending financial collapse and the excesses of the transnational stateless ruling class ...Of course the shining white light of radical islam is bound to become an irresistible beacon to draw moths of all disaffected stripes to its flame , but to fall for this obvious chimaera is a disaster for all thinking people who hope to not be used as cannon fodder in the collapse .
Down here in fuzzy cute egalitarian god save the queen nirvana , we are sitting on two thirds of the worlds known uranium deposits , and if my hunch is correct we will soon be having the mother of all debates about nuclear power in this country , as the indigenous people at the maralina nuclear test sites have finally started glowing a slightly less luminous shade of green !
I have noticed various companies quietly moving chess pieces in to south australia in advance of the Olympic Dam uranium project firing up , though the attempt to install a neo con state government earlier this year has failed . I get the sense they are waiting for the coming economic purge before ramping this project up , as once we are all sitting among the smoking ruins of the world economy the debate over nuclear will be that much easier to prosecute with the shell shocked public who by then will mostly be curled up in the foetal position whimpering " mummy
".
South australia is also the site of significant naval sub building facilities as well as the home of the arckaringa shale oil deposits near coober peedy ( as well as the cooper basin geothermal projects ) asx listing "GDY " a there you are , my crazy energy projects for Skippy Ozland !
Halliburton went within an ace last time the neocons were in power down under of gaining the contract to ship nuclear waste from all around the world from SA spencer gulf up the railway line to alice springs ( pine gap ) and then up to remote Mukaty Station near tennant creek , againt the wishes of the already slightly radioactive locals .( waste from the reactors of u.s nuclear warships , anyone ??) . My guess is that this project is still very much alive
Our next green wizard magical project should be to re- manifest the ageing bards of Midnight Oil for some serious Dead Heart Diesel and Dust , against the backdrop of some hard core Blue Sky Mining .
Interesting that Richard Heinberg points out in his book that there is only 80 odd years of uranium left in the world at current rates of usage , though breeder reactors such as the one at Fuka- sashimi in Japan have been constructed to try and string this out by burning the much more unstable and dangerous Plutonium ....
Happy Days ...now to water the veges !
1/14/15, 5:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ecologist, "the inanity of the desperate" is a keeper, for that matter. I'll look forward to your Photoshopped entry!
William, not only do I think that something of the sort is possible, I'm quite confident that in five or six millennia, that's going to be a very common way for human beings to live. Every brand new human ecology has been an ecological disaster when it first appeared on the scene -- no reason why technic societies should be any exception. (My book The Ecotechnic Future covers this in some detail.)
Alex, that sounds like a promising start. I'll look forward to your press release or sycophantic news story!
GHung, thanks for the reminder.
Kutamun, I'm sorry to say it wouldn't surprise me to see your continent turned into a dumping ground for other people's nuclear waste. No doubt the wombats will do the sensible thing and apply for refugee status in Patagonia.
1/14/15, 5:17 PM
redmachus said...
The current fad of special pleading for energy breakthroughs that will save us the trouble of having to take any meaningful action about our current lifestyles strikes me as eerily similar to the way the faithful continue to insist that the Messiah (or the Great Pumpkin, for that matter) is really, truly coming this time around. I know you've commented on it before, but it fits nicely with your idea that the myth of progress fills unacknowledged emotional needs, and is a faith that won't easily be shaken.
1/14/15, 5:19 PM
Violet Cabra said...
The structure of the prayers and the awe I feel towards the Divine helps immensely with the otherwise insoluble anxiety and stress of knowing that we're likely on the precipice of very, very ugly times
It is interesting and heartening to note that my rabbi is also a homesteader and the conservative temple in Northampton has an ecuminical community garden.
I feel thankful that I've lived most of my adult life in relative poverty, have a reasonably good skill set for a lower energy future and a good group of friends who are more prepared than most. After I'm done writing this comment I'm going to make a few tinctures and settle down with my stack of herb books and take notes. It may be too late to do much, but it isn't too late to add to a prior knowledge bases and make some sensible preparations. Even now, and even as things unfold there are and will continue to be things we can do to ameliorate our situations, but I can already feel the effects of the winnowing opportunities.
Unrelated: I've been trying to join the green wizards site to no avail, can someone point me in the right direction?
1/14/15, 5:21 PM
Gunnar Rundgren said...
1/14/15, 5:32 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Violet, that's a common and a highly constructive response in hard times -- as long as you don't fall into the trap of letting yourself believe that the god you worship will bail you out of the consequences of our collective bad decisions. A good close study of just how gently the God of Israel has treated his chosen people over the centuries makes a useful corrective to that notion, granted.
Gunnar, I've seen and heard the equivalent. The phrase "faith-based handwaving" comes forcefully to mind!
1/14/15, 5:38 PM
Will Randolph said...
Any investment in physical infrastructure would be guaranteed to decay over time, so any society that depended on physical infrastructure which depended on non-renewable energy would be non-sustainable, though perhaps lasting far longer than the current industrial civ.
Since we're assuming magically competent and cooperative humans, I could imagine using the energy to invest in knowledge and wisdom that could be passed on indefinitely: how to deal with diseases more effectively, how to store food much longer or indefinitely, how to become more resilient to ecological or climatic changes, how to better enrich the biosphere to make human life on earth more resilient, etc.
The only 'sustainable' investment in physical infrastructure I can imagine would be an effort at interplanetary colonization. The infrastructure itself and act of colonizing would be non-sustainable, but after the one-time expenditure of energy, we could hope to have colonies independent of what goes on on earth, making the the human species (and those we depend on) more resilient.
1/14/15, 5:53 PM
Nathaniel Ott said...
I don't think I'll be participating in your contest but I would like to propose a question(inspired by Williams post). I've been thinking of late: what if fossil fuels did not exist and never had? What if from the very beginning all we had was the annual supply of renewables. Would the Industrial Revolution still have occurred only with renewables or would it have been impossible without our first coming upon the vast and easily accessible FF first? I think about how much knowledge has been gained(including in renewable energy) since we started using FF full stop and wonder if we would still have that knowledge without all those (FF created) inventions. Also how will future civilizations even know how to to make things like solar panels or just general electricity through some other means if that knowledge is lost? Obviously there are ways to do it I'm just curious HOW they'll do it and how they're know how to do it.
Would be a great idea for science fiction novel seeing what kind of civilization would develop without FF's and how.
Nate
1/14/15, 6:00 PM
Five8Charlie said...
Did you see that Lockheed's new fusion breakthrough will save us?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-lockheed-fusion-idUSKCN0I41EM20141015
This is the same Lockheed that is responsible for the F-35 fighter, of course. The 'fighter' that doesn't seem to have a gun that will work for another two years.
Thank you for the voice of sanity every week.
1/14/15, 6:03 PM
Chester said...
I'm surprised! This is as close to a concrete prediction about the immediate future as I've read on this blog in the last several years. Are we really that far along?
I'm hoping the wife and I can hold on to the middle class incomes for a little while longer until we're in a place to buy a house with room for a garden.
Hard to come by where we want to be near our parents in South Florida, but I'll see what we can do.
I'll have to give the squirrel cage contest some thought. I think I concerned some middle school teachers with my plans for a power plant powered by the bodies of aging baby boomers. It's a natural talent!
1/14/15, 6:04 PM
Pongo said...
Now granted, the entertainment industry here in Hollywood is full of Canadians who have every right to return home, but still, one wishes them luck fighting the traffic jam that's sure to show up at the border, since even full-blooded Americans with no claim to Canadian residency espouse this as their plan. Then again, maybe this ambition of getting up and moving to Canada en masse is not really a delusion after all, maybe it's just a really stupid idea. When you consider how long and unguarded the Canadian-American border is, and how many people live on the southern side compared to the northern, it's hard to see how the Canadian authorities could do more than intercept a handful of asylum seekers if there was ever a mass movement to cross that border. Still though, people espousing that hope seem to imagine that they would have universal healthcare and house in the Vancouver suburbs. The reality of it would probably be more like people crammed like sardines into tents and trailers at a frigid refugee camp in the boondocks of Alberta.
1/14/15, 6:10 PM
latheChuck said...
http://www.climate-one.org/transcripts/deepak-chopra-and-rinaldo-brutoco-changing-energy-changing-consciousness
So, there you have it. Change equals progress equals more wealth than we'll know what to do with.
I almost posted this last week, but it seems even more relevant today!
1/14/15, 6:15 PM
Marinhomelander said...
She was correct when she hinted that our local family run nursery would go out of business after 75 years, in spite of selling fruit trees and edibles. In addition the big high end gift shop is gone and so is one bookstore. Next up in this small town will be the preponderance of businesses that cater to women's “needs” such as waxing, lingerie, nails, accessory clothing and other things.
And this is already occurring in the wealthiest, best-educated and healthiest county west of the Mississippi; the Whitetopia of Marin County, California.
Thankfully, there are laws that allow solar installations over and above zoning. Permaculture has been in the forefront and practiced for decades in the county and, you can get money back from the water district for buying compost and other water saving measures.
However, in one last gasp of easy money and tax-credit harvesting, the big developers, accountants and the captive class of professional consultants, public and private, and commissioners, are surfing on all the hard work and activism of generations of real environmentalists.
They are busy co-opting the local politicians into letting them build large (up to 180 units) new energy intensive buildings around dubious new transit projects. This in the name of “stopping” global warming, “doing our fair share” and “creating equity housing”.
Locals are mad and are fighting back with surprisingly effective results in a non-partisan manner. I predict that out of all the spiritualism, (Rahm Das, EST, Synanon, Transidental Meditation, and Alan Watts got their start here and make it a more interesting place), out of all that, real environmentalism and the civic engagement above, there may come a populist and practical philosophy to partially alleviate what’s being discussed.
http://www.savemarinwood.org/
I would like to meet up with any other readers of this locally.
1/14/15, 6:15 PM
9anda1f said...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/next-generation/lockheed-martins-plan-to-make-fusion-a-reality-17337914
While there are some science-types questioning this, Lock-Mart carries significant influence in the political world and coupled with Helium-3 from the moon (and LM's booster/launch capabilities)the company stands to "catapult us forward into the age of free energy!"
Might be a good time to pick up some Lock-Mart stocks! ; )
1/14/15, 6:22 PM
dfr2010 said...
1/14/15, 6:27 PM
latheChuck said...
Another useful figure, for comparison, is that a coal stoker can shovel 2 ton per hour, for 8 hours a day.
The ratio of energy released is 132,000 (if I've slid my rule properly). Some times, the new thing is just a little better than the old thing, like a better breed of wheat. Other times, it's hard to imagine the magnitude (like digital computers vs. slide rules).
Even so, I sharpened a plane blade yesterday with a hand-cranked grinding wheel, and drilled holes for dowels with a hand-cranked drill.
1/14/15, 6:28 PM
Marinhomelander said...
www.savemarinwood.org illustrate the local battle, but a few panels down there are some spectacular illustrations of the future envisioned by past cornucopians.
Why did they have better artists then?
1/14/15, 6:30 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Well, I believe that I have discussed with you before the subject of renewable energy and taken it to the inevitable ending of that matter. It's good stuff, but makes for unpleasant reading for expectational folk.
Anyway, I was using solar electric energy today to bake a loaf of bread in an electric oven and thought up a useful (?) concept for the readers to get a feel for how much energy is available in a 4.2kW solar electric off grid system - in the real world.
It's called the loafometer (cool, huh?)! To bake a loaf of bread uses up about 0.8kWh of electrical energy. So 0.8kWh is equal to 1 loaf as measured by the loafometer (should that be a TM?).
So, on the very worst day of energy production here, the 4.2kW of photovoltaic electrical panels produce 0.5 loaves (note the use of the plural) for an entire day.
On the very best day that I've recorded here over many years, the 4.2kW of photovoltaic electrical panels produce 14.3 loaves for an entire day.
As a comparison, the loafometer is quite flexible and it can be used to measure the average households daily electrical usage for a house down under to give approximately: 30.8 loaves.
Those loaves are available whether the sun shines or the wind blows or not as may well be the case. It is an unrealistic expectation of future performance.
It is quite frightening really. Personally I'm happy with far fewer loaves.
PS: I've just thought up a very amusing and dodgy cornucopian premise for the competition.
I also assume that the first person that posts a dodgy media release, gets the credit for it and the idea and can't be copied or modified by later entries?
Cheers
Chris
PS: There is a new blog post up discussing: hot weather; bees; flowers; fruit harvests; native grasses; electric chipping; mulch in quantity; and unexpected tropical monsoons. All good stuff with lots of cool photos: Courting trouble
1/14/15, 7:00 PM
Kylie said...
That manor house on the hill is a lot less likely to be burned by an angry mob if the gardens are filled with community garden plots, communal orchards and free herbs, if the house employs a dozen young apprentices from local families, and if there's a bicycle mechanic working out of the shed on-site.
Your neighbours can be your support network and your early warning system, or they can be your local vandals and dispossessed enemies.
I would suggest that those of us with greater access to resources have a duty to use them for the benefit of our neighbours. Far better to be a big local employer than an absentee landlord, particularly in the absence of formal security.
1/14/15, 7:17 PM
pyrrhus said...
1/14/15, 7:20 PM
pyrrhus said...
1/14/15, 7:22 PM
Eric S. said...
I’ve been thinking a lot about that process of doubling down, and how easy it is to use progress to mask decline. I overhear people talking about the Self Driving Cars that are working their way through the prototyping phase, for instance. Since they rely on Google maps, they would only be able to drive in areas that are programmed into the maps and have reliable wi-fi. The same is true of electric cars that are only viable near an industrial power grid. I can easily imagine a world in which all maintenance and repair is reserved for a few major arteries and a few decaying urban centers but google cars, virtual reality games, and household “robots” that are little more than glorified i-phones make it impossible to notice what’s actually going on until it’s far too late. I think about the “inducer” from the first story in the latest After Oil collection, which was the center of people’s lives in a few urban centers with internet, but was rubbish for a little girl’s odds and ends connections just a few hundred miles away. That ability of technology to provide shiny distractions from the surrounding decay presents a powerful case for less stimulation.
The “as the torch held downward regains fresh strength, so from lowly fortune will Rome soar even more radiantly aloft” language in Rutilius Namatianus’ “A Voyage Home to Gaul” is a constant reminder to me that people will continue to believe in the return of prosperity even long after the world has moved on. But I do wonder if there’ll ever be a day in the foreseeable future when people who value the pursuit of a simpler, handmade life and put spiritual fulfillment before mindless entertainment are more than a scattered fringe.
1/14/15, 7:22 PM
Glenn said...
I've found it applicable to a good number of thing in my life, including _amazing_ energy technology claims.
In other energy news; bucked 3 truck loads (small truck) of firewood from a blowdown in the State Park (permit $25, the hard part is waiting to get to the head of the Park Manager's list) and brought it home. By the close of the week we should have next winter's firewood in.
Glenn
in the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
1/14/15, 7:28 PM
Toro Loki said...
Its called squirrel-ka-bob.
Bon appetite.
1/14/15, 7:28 PM
thepublicpast said...
Still, the comment section on one of the Chinese Helium-3 articles I saw this morning were interesting. Few hallelujahs, a good number of complaints about NASA falling behind (Is the Space Race making a comeback?) and a surprisingly large number of folks who pointed out that we've no fusion reactors to speak of.
Nobody mentioned that to send a bulldozer to the moon, let alone a fleet of them (plus regular shipments of supplies and fuel one way, and Helium-3 the other) would blow so much energy so as to make the whole scheme utterly unworkable.
1/14/15, 7:30 PM
Gardener Green said...
Now the Kicker was that by feeding energy to this material it would glow with light. Paint the ceiling in your house, attach a few wires and wham, instant illumination.
Wish I could remember the name of the book or the Author but it all a distant memory now.
Anyone who wants to use this and work it up feel free. Probably not whacky enough though.
Great Post though
1/14/15, 8:00 PM
Carl said...
" This is crunch time, folks; unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re on the brink of a historical inflection point like the ones in 1789 and 1914, one of the watersheds of time after which nothing will ever be the same again."
I'm sure I won't be the only one that got a chill run down my spine after reading that. Looks like it is past Time to buy my son that chicken coop he wants for his 11th birthday (people call him the chicken whisper). Also brewing 5 gallons of pale ale this weekend (started brewing about five years ago after you suggested it. Last weekend I put in a bare root Asian pear and dwarf nectarine. Now if Nor Cal would just get some more rain.
Carl
1/14/15, 8:02 PM
jean-vivien said...
the media are starting to ask the hard questions now. Why is freedom of speech heralded as a Holy Standard when it comes to defending one of the best cultural legacies from the 70s, a time when prosperity was not just for the White upper-class... and why is that same Standard lowered when the French government blindly takes a black (dishonest, law-despising, mediocre, used to vile provocation) humor comedian into custody because he published one edgy Facebook comment ?
This double standard, enforced by our Heads Of State, is going to add more resent to an already strained society. Said crappy comedian's pique was actually a covert antisemitic pique, referring to the Cosher store part of the attacks. By stupidly advertising that guy with taxpayer money (custody can only make him more popular, AND it is paid by our taxes), the government is at risk of adding antisemitism to the building up of social strains. The elites are truly blind here. Having Israel's Head Of State march to defend peace and the freedom of caricaturing Islam's Prophet last Sunday is certainly going to help ease the growing discontent with our Middle-East policy after last summer's slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
I hope the unity of last Sunday's march is not a horribly realistic illusion, or that it will stand the test of economic hardships facing us.
The worldwide context is also pretty grim. No one knows how Saudi Arabia is going to rule itself, which will add to the US's home energy problems. So I agree with you or JMG that 2015 is standing at the threshold of vastly disruptive events. And yet here people still have trouble grasping simple economic realities, for example that low oil prices are not due to abundance but to a global deflation.
A really useful step on a social level would to find a way of applying the Green Wizardry paradigm to our suburbs. The French suburbs, in terms of landscape and social structure, is our social equivalent of a giant pile of nuclear waste waiting by the roadside. If any other French reader/commenter of this blog has any practical idea in that direction, I would be very interested to hear it. The question for France is not as much going to be How without oil ? as it is going to be What to do with the suburbs and peripheries ?
1/14/15, 8:13 PM
John D. Wheeler said...
On the other end of the spectrum, I think http://coolplanet.com/ has one of those systems that would have been great if it had just come a little earlier. It has the potential to do a lot of good, but is going to have some hard times in a deflationary economy.
My personal favorite squirrel cage is to build massive chimneys in the desert that create their own updraft and run windmills off them.
Another exotic idea is to use strings to convert wind to sound waves and convert the audio energy to electricity.
One more conventional idea I expect to see tried is geothermal energy conversion, basically the land equivalent of OTEC, but you can use idle fracking equipment to set it up.
Of course, if we could capture the hot air from politicians, we would have an inexhaustible supply of energy.
1/14/15, 8:14 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Charlie, clearly Lockheed Martin has gotten used to getting vast amounts of government money by making easy promises that don't have to be kept, and decided -- quite sensibly, all things considered -- that fusion was the best place to get more of it.
Chester, I'm certainly capable of being wrong, but with commodities and stocks both lurching downward worldwide, I think we're in for a thumping crisis in the fairly near future. I'll look forward to your squirrel case!
Pongo, maybe you should do a squirrel case that involves generating energy via revolving doors at the Canadian border, which are powered by Americans trying to flee the country!
LatheChuck, yes, that's going to be par for the course -- and the deeper in economic crisis we get, the more strident the voices will be insisting that Utopia will arrive next Wednesday. An explosive mixture, no question.
Homelander, it'll be interesting to see what happens when the money runs out entirely and Marin County begins its inevitable descent into rust belt status.
9andalf, no argument there -- but I'd be careful about the stocks. A lot of paper wealth is due for a drastic revaluation in the years ahead.
Dfr, in your place I'd get hopping. How on earth can you kill mint? Have you considered a job as an invasive planet exterminator? ;-)
LatheChuck, ssssh! Don't disturb the blissful dream of cornucopian excess with the cold harsh light of reality...
Cherokee, get a trademark on "loafometer"! As for the contest, the first entry to use a given gimmick will take precedence over any copycat entries -- yes, you may consider that an incentive.
Kylie, if members of the 1% did that, and didn't demand exorbitant privileges in return, that might help. I remain highly skeptical about whether many of them, or any of them, will actually go so far as to do that, though.
Pyrrhus, I can point you to plenty of cities and states not run by leftists that have just as bad a time paving their streets. As for the laws of thermodynamics, sssssssh! Don't wake the dreamers...
1/14/15, 8:25 PM
Kutamun said...
Now i dont want to open the Pandoras box which the Archdruid has already dealt with in great depth in the recent series of posts on fascism ; but it does appear that these types of attacks have produced some elements of "Fasces "
Ie the sticks bundled together with the axe protruding , carried by the Roman Lictors to signify summary power and juristiction .. If these attacks have been engineered as false flags or not is irrelevant , they are producing effects which are the opposite of individual liberty , ie causing people to huddle together like a frightened easily militarised bundle of sticks ( in a country which likes to think of itself as the very epitome of liberal democracy - France ) .....curious
For some reason i am thinking of Ethiopia ( Abyssinia ) , the Abyss between what is ideal and what is actual , and the Athenian Tarot card "The Emperor " which in some systems corresponds with "Aries " .., i see similarities with the Fasces axe and Athena springing fairly formed from the head of her father , Zeus ...the maternal doesnt get a run ..
Anyway , as my mate Cherokee would say " just sayin '!"
From wikipedia " propaganda of fascist italy " - wikipedia entry
" National and social unity was symbolized by the fascesthemselves, the bound sticks being stronger together than individually.[48] This drew on military themes from World War I, where Italians were called to pull together into a unity.[49] Similarly, he declared that the State did not weaken the individual, any more than a soldier was weakened by the rest of the regiment.[51]
This was part of an explicit rejection of liberal individualism; the punitive aspect of the fasces, containing an ax, not being omitted.[52] Furthermore, Fascism was to be a totalitarian, that is total experience, since it was impossible to a Fascist only in politics, and therefore overtly rejected liberalism's private and public spheres.[53] Fascism was not a party but a way of life.[54] The corporatist state was offered as a unifying form of politics, as opposed to liberal democracy.[55] Fascism and the state were identified, and everything was to be encompassed in the state.[56]
Work was presented as a social duty, because Italy was greater than any individual purpose.[57] Beehives were presented as a model of industry and harmony.[58]
Furthermore, this unity would allow the entire nation to throw itself into support of military necessity.[59] The sanctions imposed by the League of Nations when Italy attacked Ethiopia were used to unite the country against this "aggression."[60]"
1/14/15, 8:26 PM
John D. Wheeler said...
Also, regarding Helium-3, one of the books advocating mining the moon over a decade ago estimated that the EROEI was about 2-to-1; most sources I have seen suggest an EROEI of 10-to-1 is required to maintain a civilized society. Or, once we spend more than 10% of our energy on gathering energy, activities we associate with civilization get cut out.
1/14/15, 8:30 PM
Cathy McGuire said...
Another wonderful post, and yes, it’s increasingly odd to read the news these days – I keep wondering if the Onion has taken over… on the homefront, I keep looking over what I’ve got and trying to guess where my own personal bottleneck might be… the one or two things needed that might make the other parts less useful. Hard to predict when you don’t know what’s gonna be in short supply.
If our society is going to indulge in delusional daydreams as it topples over the edge of crisis, couldn’t we at least see some proposals that haven’t been rehashed since I was in high school?
I got one!! (hand raised and waving): http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/features/ (click on Oil Today, Algae Tomorrow) But it might be on the level of squirrel cases… ;-)
@Violet: The sign up for Green Wizards is complex in order to avoid the intense mountains of spam we were getting. Start with http://teresamcguffey.com/greenwizards.org/?q=user/register and sign up then email me at c a th y@ cat hym cguir e.co m (take out the spaces) telling me your user name and I’ll upgrade you to “trusted user” – then you can post on the forum (that goes for anyone else who wants to join up).
1/14/15, 8:38 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Glenn, I'll have to go looking for a photo of one of those flyers. It's a concept worth reviving.
Toro Loki, no doubt. That won't prop up the fantasy of entitlement among the privileged classes, though.
Thepublicpast, well, of course. Try mentioning those perfectly sound points, though, and see what sort of reaction you get!
Gardener, hmm! I managed to miss that one. If you ever remember what the book was, I'd be delighted to find out.
Carl, if your son wants a chicken coop for his birthday, you've raised an uncommonly sensible kid. In your place I'd get that bought and gift-wrapped sooner rather than later.
John, oh, come on -- I'm sure you can come up with a wowser of a submission to the contest!
Kutamun, do you remember my discussion of fascism as the authoritarianism of the center? To borrow Cherokee's line, "just sayin'..."
1/14/15, 8:41 PM
I R Orchard said...
1/14/15, 8:48 PM
Chris G said...
In the Lincoln-Douglas, or values/philosophical debates, the topic in the Spring 2014 was the balance of environmental impact vs. economic benefit in the pursuit of natural resource extraction. I was fortunate to judge some semi-final rounds in the state championship, so the debaters were quite polished. In a memorable debate, the affirmative side presented a case in which the central value was "Pantheism" with a criterion of social justice. Her opponent - so, affirming the economic benefit of natural resource extraction - countered with the obvious and indefatigable position that development makes people's lives better.
Neither mentioned the possibility of an absence of the fuels required for their either grandiose or destructive plans. It reminded me of a line from, I think, somewhere in the Mahabharata, in which Dharma (as a god) is questioning Yuddhistira (who is his son), and among the questions was, "What is the most wondrous thing?" to which Yuddhistira replied, "Every day we die, yet we go on living as though we are immortal. That is the greatest wonder."
I was reading through the projections, both the realistic projections by Post-Carbon Institute (which when considering that PCI cannot factor in capex, and political/environmental concerns, their realistic estimates are really optimistic!) and the EIA projections. The trouble is that to what extent plans are being made, they are being made based on overzealous estimates - and ones that are terribly front-loaded. That is the trouble for a consumer as well - consider someone contemplating buying a car, thinking gas prices are low. Because fracked wells tail off production by about 80-90% after three years - think about the nature of the process of extraction here, not just drawing off a reservoir, but pulverizing sediments - so the prices of the commodity will bounce up considerably by 2018 or 2019 at the outside.
You have discussed "demand destruction". I imagine that by the above time frame or sooner, there will begin to be mounting reasons for us to either get involved, or arm somebody, in overseas conflicts, which yet again get to play their favorite role of demand creation. And there will be incredibly good reasons, of course.
1/14/15, 8:48 PM
Dustin Hamman said...
I give you Exhibit A: U.S. fusion program must have energy mission
A co-worker sent me this link today. (He and I had an interesting conversation after.) Apparently it was a leading story on today's 'Nuclear Energy Institute SmartBrief'. I thought regular readers might enjoy it as a prime squirrel case study. It appears they are just getting warmed up!
Fantastic post, as usual, John. I also truly appreciate the call to action. (garden, solar heat, etc.) I found it direct and highly motivating.
Thank you,
Dustin
p.s. As this fusion program idea is really not terribly creative, I thought I'd also share this slightly more imaginative 'vintage' squirrel case (born out of the last energy crisis and fueled by the promise of 'free' federal money) to get everyone's gears turning for the new contest. Complete with fancy graphics!
Doomed Dome: The Future That Never Was
“The biggest issue, he believes, would be the public taking of land via eminent domain to secure the area around the edges” The biggest issue. Ha ha.
1/14/15, 8:51 PM
Mark Sebela said...
A small handful of Canadian doomer folk are aware that, for one reason or another, Americans will be showing up sooner or later. Mexicans and people from Central America too.
Canadian writer and social critic, Giles Slade wrote a book about it.
American Exodus -- Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival.
Here is an interview he did on Greg Moffitt's, LegalizeFreedom podcast.
John has done a number of interviews on that show too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmb1nFdRS8Q
P.S. Tell your coworkers they'll never get past the receptionists at the Dr's office without a government issued provincial health card ;)
1/14/15, 8:55 PM
I R Orchard said...
"One more conventional idea I expect to see tried is geothermal energy conversion, basically the land equivalent of OTEC, but you can use idle fracking equipment to set it up."
We're ahead of you on that one John. Geothermal has been running for years in NZ, Iceland and ?Italy, and the scientists drilling into our Great Alpine Fault commented they had incidentally found an promising source of underground heat that isn't sitting on top of a magma chamber. Of course, as a resource it could never produce the amounts of energy that we need to sustain our profligate lifestyles, but that is one of the big problems, changes are going to happen.
1/14/15, 8:58 PM
Kutamun said...
Something about the response to these attacks brought this conversation back
Ffascism’s popularity—and it’s the reason why an outbreak of full-blown fascism is a real and frightening possibility as America stumbles blindly into an unwelcome future. We’ll talk about that next week."
1/14/15, 9:04 PM
escapefromwisconsin said...
Er, then it's probably not a good sign that a record number of skyscrapers were built last year:
http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/54b552d6f92ea17ee6004ad0/sky000.jpg
P.S. I doubt I can top the latest idea that the future will be powered by volcanoes:
http://qz.com/172642/why-volcanoes-are-the-energy-source-of-the-future/
1/14/15, 9:15 PM
Joel Caris said...
On the other hand, I purposely declined to apply for the job as a full time position and instead teamed with another person in the organization to co-apply, with each of us working part time. Why? Well, so I would still have time to grow and raise food. I'm keeping a bit of side work with the two farms I've been working for over the last three years and will continue to garden and grow food for myself. I still have my flock of chickens. I'm still making yogurt, both for myself and for trade. My hand crank, Wondermill grain grinder just arrived today. I'll use it to grind the flour corn I grew last year. I just joined a local work party group and will get my work party in April, which will be the building and installation of a batch solar water heater. I'm the Treasurer of the local Grange. I have a whole lot of community members who seem to like and respect me. Even though I've given some of my farm work to my new roommate, I've kept some and still know of two local farmers who are looking for extra help, and both of whom expressed interest in me specifically.
My new position's funded for at least one year and probably two, though I can't guarantee a haywire economy won't derail that second year. I'm very purposefully not investing my ego in this new position. I've taken it on, but I'm remaining cautious and not expecting anything permanent from it. I've already accepted that it could end abruptly, and that I could find myself largely or mostly out of work. Obviously, I don't want that to happen--but if it does, it won't shatter my mental and emotional world, and I have some idea of what I'll do to get by (though I also know I'll have to figure much of that out on the fly.)
No, I don't imagine my timing was good on this work change. But I still think there's a good chance I'll manage to scrape by, whatever happens.
We'll see, though. Interesting times, right? I suppose my biggest hope is that I'll find my way and help others find theirs. That I'll be able to offer something to my community. I know I'm doing that now and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to continue doing it in some capacity, whatever happens.
I have to say, I'm nervous to see what this year brings. But I'm fascinated, too. I suppose having a foot in both worlds will just make it all the more fascinating.
1/14/15, 9:45 PM
notliz said...
Credit to Alex who said "First I'll need a time machine to get back to February of 2012..." but it seems you missed the point of his comment.
This is my first post but I've been reading here for a while. Thanks for all your thought-provoking words, JMG!
1/14/15, 10:26 PM
Tony Rasmussen said...
Here's the gist, link to the full spiel is below:
"... the galaxy is full of billions and gazillions of stars, and the science of astronomy has established that most of them make our own sun look piffling by comparison. Yet the ramifications of this fact seem to have escaped us. Billions of suns, every one of them way bigger than Sol! These are the true 'alternative energy sources' we should be focusing on.
Though the amount of energy that can be harvested from any one star is admittedly infinitesimal, the number of stars is so large that we can, as they say, make it up in volume. Do not let anyone, whether some hotshot professor or your dear old mum, convince you otherwise. If they even try, do what must be done to silence them and let your conscience be quiet about it.
…
We therefore call for a national-level 10 trillion dollar Stellar Energy Harvesting Initiative that aims to bring the percentage of our energy harvested from the non-Sol stars up to 5% of GDP by 2035, or your money back.
…
This Initiative will eventually pay for itself a thousand times over, but up front it will require us to bite the bullet and raise taxes on DVD rentals, lane changes, and kettle corn..."
Stellar Energy Harvesting Key to Energy Independence
1/14/15, 10:43 PM
steve said...
1/14/15, 10:44 PM
Wizard of Tas said...
Mars might be a little more interesting, but it does nothing for us down here.
And a spaceship carrying a hundred tonnes of ore... great... should work out to $ten million a ton.
1/14/15, 11:30 PM
Bogatyr said...
Breaking news: all Russian gas exports to the EU via Ukraine are to stop. Russia will export as far as the Turkish border with Greece; if the EU wants the gas to go any further that that, it will have to build its own pipeline.
The best the EU can do so far is to bluster about damage to Russia's reputation... The gloves are off, now.
1/14/15, 11:38 PM
Spanish fly said...
(...)
and see the children are starving
and their houses were destroyed
don't think they could forgive you
hey, when seas will cover lands
and when men will be no more
don't think you can forgive you
yeah, when there'll just be silence
and when life will be over
don't think you will forgive you
ya, you never said a word
you didn't send me no letter
don't think i could forgive you
see, our world is slowly dying
i'm not wasting no more time
don't think i could believe you
ya, you never said a word
you didn't send me no letter
don't think i could forgive you
(prayer in C, of course)
1/15/15, 12:04 AM
James Mishler said...
And here's another case where History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-14/skyscraper-index-goes-global
1/15/15, 12:16 AM
Scotlyn said...
Balancing the "weather warning" to batten down with a bit of drollery and entertainment to avert worry seems a sensible approach, JMG. Worry is probably the least useful thing to be doing just now. Thanks!
1/15/15, 12:24 AM
Repent said...
http://b4tea.com/news/a-man-alive-without-food-water-since-70-years/
While I would love to tap directly into source energy myself to reduce or eliminate my grocery bills, on a practical basis- what is the exact method? I further doubt that this source energy will power the tools and vehicles of industrial civilization. The proof is of course in the pudding.
I also feel an inflection point arriving. I think the 1789, or 1914 reference is very valid for the state of world affairs right now. Every article I've read about the collapse of the petro dollar, ignores the obvious question of collapse against what? All of the other currencies are just as much faith based as is the value of the US dollar, why wouldn't they all collapse in tandem maintaining the relative value of the US dollar indefinitely? Still this could be a few years in the unfolding process.
I wonder what your take is about traditional methods people have taken in times of crisis, such as joining unions, illegal strikes and so forth? I was considering joining a union as a hedge against reckless pressure at work to increase productivity forever. Strikes and collective action have traditionally produced some bargaining power and results against the elites.
1/15/15, 12:25 AM
Scotlyn said...
1/15/15, 12:35 AM
Jason Heppenstall said...
As I read those words a storm is an Atlantic howling outside the house. There is lightening and deep rolls of thunder - very unusual for winter - and the electric lights keep flickering on and off.
How do you do that?
1/15/15, 12:57 AM
YCS said...
You give a stark warning, and I hope won't be ignored by whoever reads it (including me). The last time a 1914 type scenario happened, large parts of the world went to war. With the drums of war beating against Russia, I'm mentally preparing myself to deal with the idea of being drafted for a war I would principally oppose in every way (including sympathy with the 'enemy').
To lighten my mood I'll try and rise to your challenge - I always had an amusing thought about making convicts generate power on stationary bicycles in return for slightly reduced sentence times.
On another note, I thought you'd be interested to know that nowadays international debating has another meaning for the word 'squirrel'. A squirrel is an case set up with truisms or bad definitions so that it can't be proven false. As an example, I adjudicated a high school debate last year about banning religious symbols in schools. The affirmative team decided to define religious symbols as 'expression of faith' but not physical symbols like crosses and veils (did they think that I wouldn't know English?), to basically 'squirrel' away from the real argument.
Obviously the modern 'squirrel' is just as common as the 'squirrel' of your time.
YCS
1/15/15, 12:59 AM
Gloucon X said...
I have to admit that what is going on in the world may be beyond the ability of my meager brain to process. The price of said rapidly depleting substance just went down again by nearly 2% today to $47. At that rate it will be free by Easter. Every day on this planet a billion vehicles that need that substance are switched on and move, more or less, happily along streets. I can’t explain how this happens, but apparently it does happen. If we again have a glut of energy, and gas is $2 a gallon, who needs squirrels? In fact, if this keeps up we may soon see squirrels driving cars.
1/15/15, 1:14 AM
streamfortyseven said...
1/15/15, 1:45 AM
Spanish fly said...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1106382/Europe-plunged-energy-crisis-Russia-cuts-gas-supply-Ukraine.html
1/15/15, 1:49 AM
nyatnagarl said...
What if from the very beginning all we had was the annual supply of renewables. Would the Industrial Revolution still have occurred only with renewables or would it have been impossible without our first coming upon the vast and easily accessible FF first? ...
Would be a great idea for science fiction novel seeing what kind of civilization would develop without FF's and how.
There would have been evolution not revolution. Direct mechanical energy (windmills, water mills) can be used for manufacturing. Most all scientific advances before early-mid 18th century are by definition attainable without an FF-based system. Many medical, scientific or methodical insights (like vaccination) are completely independent of that. So in terms of devices off the bat there can be decent clocks, printing presses, telescopes, microscopes, global navigation & cartography etc.
A simple electrical generator can be built without FF input but will be expensive in terms of input (lots of copper wire). However it can last for generations. Its energy will not be squandered on heating, transportation, lighting etc. A good application would be telegraphy, which requires very little energy. No intercontinental undersea cables as we had in the 1860s though, but regional telecommunication. Radio should also be doable.
Roads will have to be built mostly like the Romans did. No cars, bicycles will be only a curiosity because there will not be sufficient paths to make them really useful. Heavy and long-distance transport will be by waterway. Railways with animal-drawn rolling stock as on-site/local transport enhancement (friction reduction) but locomotives will also remain a curiosity if they can only be fueled with wood.
Hot air balloons, gliders, sailplanes are attainable but no motorized aviation or zeppelins - flying will also be a curiosity or local reconnaissance only.
As hinted at, good general medical practice, proper obstetrics, vaccination, antiseptic surgery routines, diagnosis and discovery of major bacterial pathogens, discovery and production of antibiotics will remain principally possible. It is more a question of knowledge than energy.
Therefore life expectancy may be comparable to what FF-based society reaches today - edge cases of terminal disease or extreme trauma will not be treatable but there will be far less civilizational disease.
No internet, definitely.
Make your own guess about the possible quality of life ;)
1/15/15, 1:51 AM
Maxime Richard said...
I concur with your statement about the surburbs.
I just read a piece about a social worker whose knew the Kouachi brothers when they were just kids. (look for reporterre website) It is an interesting read written by someone that doesn't fall into the emotional trap we see everywhere this days. As a matter of fact, it is a story about neighborhoods falling into Dark Age ahead of the curve just a few metro stations from Paris shiny districts.
I don't have a practical ideas to apply to the peripheric areas. On a more abstract I personally think they should have imposed green civic service for young adults as replacement of the military service. Many places to get young people busy, environmentally and socially aware. I can point the neighborhoods your were talking about, but also national forest (management problems there too!), old abandoned industrial areas in desperate need of human work force to transition/save them for the future needs.
1/15/15, 2:06 AM
rapier said...
Of course if my plans for cold fusion are successful, details later, everyone will be rich forever.
1/15/15, 2:14 AM
streamfortyseven said...
As we all know, at least here in Kansas, cattle produce a lot of methane - and vent it into the atmosphere. Not only is it a greenhouse gas, it's also a waste of energy, of both acoustic and chemical kinds. The proposal is simple - rig us a collector on wheels to be towed behind each cow (or bull, if you can get close enough). Imagine a Victrola horn situated about six inches behind said cow or methane generator. The horn concentrates the sound waves produced by the gaseous blast and produces a small electric current, which runs a fan, which propels the methane into the collection chamber. The collection chamber is separated from the horn collection unit by a one way flapper valve, and in the collection chamber is an aluminum sponge which bonds to the methane by electrostatic force, provided by the aforementioned gaseous blast. Every night eah collection unit is pocked up and exchanged with a fresh one, and the methane saturated sponge is freed from the methane and returned to its fresh state, the methane collected being used for various things.
The name? The B---S--- Generator
The motto? "It's all BS, folks!"
Robert Crumb could do the illustrating, if I could just find him...
1/15/15, 4:00 AM
gregorach said...
1/15/15, 4:13 AM
Marc L Bernstein said...
Geologist Art Berman was interviewed by Chris Martenson a little while ago. During their conversation, Martenson wondered out loud whether various tight oil firms, which rely on fracking, would fail and file for bankruptcy as a result of the recent severe drop in oil prices. Berman assured Martenson that it was more likely that such firms would be bought out by bigger ones before they filed for bankruptcy. As soon as I heard that it dawned on me that petroleum geologist Art Berman has been spending too much time talking to conservative investors, stockbrokers, hedge fund managers, etc. As a result, Berman has developed an artificial sense of the stability of the present financial system.
A recent interview of Art Berman --- http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-07/real-cause-low-oil-prices-interview-arthur-berman
Gail Tverberg has no such illusions. She's one of my facebook friends, and has even lapsed into faith-based rhetoric to counter what she sees as a hopeless situation for US society in particular and for industrial civilization in general. She has even said something to the effect that "there is a basic order to the universe" and perhaps something, someone, some entity or some mysterious force would possibly intervene on behalf of humanity in the midst of such darkness. I thought to myself how a certain Archdruid might react at the pollyanna-ish nature of Tverberg's musings.
Tverberg is friends with Ozzie Zehner, whose work "Green Illusions" you might know about. Zehner is quite pessimistic about what would happen to society if it made a massive commitment to renewables in an effort to maintain our current set of living arrangements. According to Zehner, a collapse of industrial civilization would result from such an effort. Of course such a collapse is nearly inevitable anyway but Zehner doesn't go into that matter.
It's quite rare even among public intellectuals to find someone with an appropriate sense of urgency and foreboding but without apocalyptic tendencies. Scientists tend to be focused narrowly on their particular discipline. Public intellectuals such as Morris Berman, Henry Giroux and Chris Hedges don't have the background in ecology (they probably never read much William Catton or Garret Hardin)
to have an appropriate level of alarm and poignancy with regard to the future not only of civilization but also of humanity and the biosphere.
Creative thinker Derrick Jensen cannot bear to ponder the thought that humanity is itself flawed and that humanity's destructive impulses might even be inherent to our nature. Instead, Jensen speaks derisively of the "dominant culture" to which all blame for humanity's destructiveness can be leveled.
Ugo Bardi has been writing about the Seneca cliff, and has developed the mathematics to justify it. If you understand what Bardi is saying, it's not at all reassuring. It means that Richard C. Duncan's "Olduvai theory" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory]
could be realized in just a few decades.
Guy McPherson's near-term extinction might not be so far-fetched after all, but "near term" more appropriately is referring to a few hundred years, not a few decades. An enormous global human die-off within a few decades seems plausible though and quite catastrophic.
1/15/15, 4:16 AM
Dagnarus said...
In related news
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-14/russia-cuts-ukraine-gas-supply-6-european-countries
I doubt this is going to be a positive for the European economy and thus the unfolding financial crisis. Also some which I had a bit of a chuckle over,
http://www.businessinsider.sg/russia-losing-european-gas-2015-1/
Which it looks like it came out just as Russia made the decision to cut off gas through Ukraine. I guess we will see just how dependent Europe is on Russian gas.
1/15/15, 4:18 AM
Jon from Virginia said...
1/15/15, 4:19 AM
Mean Mr Mustard said...
My innovative startup venture is currently offering an exciting unpaid internship vacancy to the right candidate actually able to set up a blog and draft inspirational writing and art copy. As a Thought Leader. I don’t bother working too hard with all that technology myself.
The successful candidate must also be able to interact with my fellow Leading Thought Leaders and engage a wide range of stakeholders throughout the global finance, aerospace engineering, and energy sectors to fine-tune my ambitious visionary business plan and secure the required significant levels of investment.
Our aim is to construct two proof of concept prototypes, leading to a fleet of twenty space-borne dirigible craft, each ten times the size, and thus a vastly increased volume over the Hindenburg. (Though the PR copy won’t make that direct comparison for obvious reasons, mainly to do with attracting investors.) These behemoths would be assembled in space by robots and then launched from near Earth orbit in waves (as the planetary alignments allow), to reach Saturn’s moon, Titan. (This has already been achieved with the Cassini probe…) There, the dirigibles would park in geostationary orbit and drop a hose through Titan’s atmosphere to syphon off just a fraction of the vast hydrocarbons from the liquid methane lakes, before making the return journey, powered by some of that payload, and emptying the remaining contents from near Earth orbit through the ‘space hose’ to a processing plant and storage in a depleted North Sea gas field, awaiting the optimum price to sell.
Our Chancellor actually said yesterday that Britain could be the world’s richest economy once more by the 2030s! He didn’t say how that abundant GDP per capita would be shared mind, and as an entrepreneurial Thought Leader, I’ll obviously be lots more deserving than most people are here. The Chancellor will be needing substantial energy supplies to underpin his bold vision though, and the untapped British engineering talent emerging from our universities, currently serving coffee in shopping malls, could be put to proper use once more. Echoing our glorious past, the first dirigible will be called Britannic, and its sister ship will celebrate our partnership with Saturn’s moon, and thus be named Titanic.
Yours,
Mustard
CEO, Spacebat Consultancy
1/15/15, 4:25 AM
Edward said...
1/15/15, 4:36 AM
Don Plummer said...
Oh, the parallels!, from climate change to feckless leadership to incessant and needless war-making. Despite the cultural and technological differences, it almost reads like current news.
1/15/15, 4:37 AM
Nathaniel Ott said...
1/15/15, 4:56 AM
Don Plummer said...
1/15/15, 5:04 AM
KidCharlemagne said...
Players can be upgraded for dvd use so that while you are playing heat, you can also watch a video of a roaring blaze in a fireplace.
I'm taking it a step further and digitizing food from it's Platonic Ideal Forms into Nutrition players that also emit digital flavor and aroma and high resolution images of the ideal nourishment.
Lastly, fuel will be encoded onto cd's that can be popped into after market players installed at your local big box retailer. Renewable energy simply press to play. Of course you will want to keep these cd's in their jewel boxes to prevent scratches, and I needn't remind you that the content on these is protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, so please purchase these from the legal owners and do not share your files or download illegally. Someone has to make money from this you know. There may be free samples of digital cake available.
1/15/15, 5:07 AM
megpie71 said...
It's right up there with the agricultural thought-bubbles floating about for "developing" the northern part of Australia (the bits above the Tropic of Capricorn) into a "food bowl". Really, all you need for these kinds of ideas is a complete lack of knowledge about your chosen subject, and the practicality of a chocolate teakettle.
1/15/15, 5:23 AM
Andrew said...
One zinger: "For decades the big question about energy was whether the world could produce enough of it, in any form and at any cost. Now, suddenly, the challenge should be one of managing abundance." After that, their proposal is to deregulate and stop subsidising energy markets and then there will enough energy for everyone! Hurrah! This is their prescription for absolutely everything, mind.
For what its worth, I think that its this kind of ideological capture of governments and business by the magical thinking school of free market economics that is as much to blame for our current situation as anything else.
1/15/15, 5:37 AM
August Johnson said...
Caesars Unit Files For Bankruptcy Protection In Bid To Trim Debt
"A cash-strapped division of casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. said early Thursday that it filed for bankruptcy protection in Chicago, hoping the court agrees to its plan to get out from under $18.4 billion of debt."
1/15/15, 5:46 AM
Adrian Skilling said...
1/15/15, 5:58 AM
Leo Knight said...
One thing that struck me was all the dead technologies I encountered while going through our stuff. VHS tapes, cassette tapes. All were delaminated, warped, etc. completely unusable. I thought of all the time, money and resources used in making those artifacts. Now, useless. Very sad. Paper is also quite vulnerable. Aside from the mice, mildew, mustiness, bookworms have made many of our books unreadable. Cathy has asthma. Just opening one of these little time bombs can send her into an attack.
Gunnar mentioned the "Flight to Mars" fantasy. If you want a laugh, Google "manned Mars mission" and read of all the abandoned projects through the years. I immediately thought of this as our culture's great Mayan pyramid.
I wish I could participate in the squirrel case competition, but life just got very urgent here. However, I find knowing for certain what challenges lie ahead, and taking direct, concrete action, has reduced my anxiety.
1/15/15, 6:05 AM
Mister Roboto said...
Meanwhile here in The Badgered State (AKA "The Koch Industries Subsidiary FKA The State of Wisconsin"), the plutocratic reactionaries our white, small-town working class so wisely put into absolute power are doing their level best to meet the oncoming crises by being as retrograde as humanly possible. When Republicans in various Internet comment-sections gloat about their victory here, I have taken to trotting out one of my favorite aphorisms: "Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is people are stupid and make very bad decisions."
This saying also applies to our state Democratic Party hacks, who imposed on the party's voters the weakest possible candidate in this crucial election against Governor Scott Walker without any discussion or any real choice in the primary. I have given up on the Democratic Party. I am now a non-voter. Whatever will happen in the political sphere is simply going to happen, and I pity anyone too beholden to their threadbare codependent fantasies to realize that.
1/15/15, 6:10 AM
Yupped said...
As for life in the physical world, the fact that oil and commodities are crashing is going to be interesting to watch. In the short-term, it's probably going to encourage continued faith in the system ("gas is cheap, prices are down, let's buy a big truck"!). But what happens in the mid to long-term depends on what people do next.
So, we'll watch and wait the twists and turns. Good season to do it. Beer's brewed, wood is stacked. Meanwhile we just sold our house and for the first time in a long while have a little money in the bank, are renting a home and have an open road. After your post I'm trying to figure out if I feel good or bad about that! It's a weird time not to own a gardening space.
1/15/15, 6:16 AM
latefall said...
Oh... where to start?
Maybe with a preface: Talking as a transplant person there are many aspects that come to mind. However there are loads of (material and immaterial) things France does very well. Significantly better than many other places I have seen, and they should not be gambled away lightly by adopting a putative top down fix that may seem to work in some other place.
Also the time scales for improvements may vary wildly.
In the shortest term a change in police behavior and role models other than gangsters and soccer players would be helpful. The police issue need not be restricted to the heavier cases of special counter drug units being "turned around" almost completely. It can be seen in police bicycle patrols (very positive) riding in locations and ways which are forbidden (to the best of my knowledge) - while 2 of 3 browse their smart phone for good measure. Change the laws (if you feel it is necessary) and stick to them! But arbitrary enforcement is not a good idea now.
There is (was?) a FR/DE joint research program on this topic of why there were 2005 riots in France and not in Germany: https://www.mpicc.de/en/forschung/forschungsarbeit/kriminologie/polis.html
This largely gives correlations and not causation of course. Here's a summary, have a look at page 8. It shows violence and disrespect perceived by natives/migrants(largest group)/small minorities
http://www.esc-eurocrim.org/newsletter/Dec13ESCnewsletter.pdf
Also, obvious for the short term would be to engage to people in the mosques. Mostly to listen to them and to bounce ideas off of their heads.
1/15/15, 6:21 AM
latefall said...
Here's a statement from the competition:
"Most of all, the concept of putting one of these on the back of a truck amuses me greatly. Very greatly. Even if the fusion core could be made to work (which it likely cannot), the amount of hardware you need to inject the beams, do the neutron screening and tritium breeding plus separation and recirculation would fill a football field. At least with today’s technology."
If you want (4+ h) more on fusion have a look at the links I posted last week.
1/15/15, 6:33 AM
Strovenovus said...
I kid you not: the guy leading the Lockheed fusion team wrote his thesis on the use of fusion reactors for the "fast, manned exploration of the solar system." http://ssl.mit.edu/publications/theses/PhD-2007-McGuireThomas.html
I have no doubt that he is a true believer.
JMG,
Your economic prognosis is compelling when viewed broadly, but I continue to have my doubts about your diagnosis that the recent collapse in the price of oil is being driven by demand destruction.
Yet there is no question that the failure of frack mining operations and the resulting loan defaults could lead to some serious financial carnage. How bad the fallout will be remains to be seen.
The collapse in the price of oil will also stop the fracking treadmill and therefore obscure, at least for at time, whether a peak in frack oil has been reached. There will be plenty of room for continued denial, and claims that unlimited resources remain on tap-- if oil becomes more expensive again.
Cheap oil also acts as a tax cut to an economy primarily driven by consumption. To many, 2015 may feel like the good old days, at least for a while ...
1/15/15, 7:03 AM
Efraim Grosse said...
Why use little uneducated rodents when we can use big (half)civilized bipeds?
Envision every sheltered wide building turned into a huge non-stop spinning class; every cyclette wired to the system; every contributor to the national energy production spinning his/her butt out for a few cents per watt. We certainly won't be in shortage of people living on 1$ per day. They (we) will be so many that control over access to social utility work-out will be picked up by local mafia.
(More likely than a national Big Brother, truly Orwell style)
1/15/15, 7:08 AM
Paulo said...
re: US exodus to Canada.
You can find my comment to this idea in last weeks post, so I won't repeat it.
I envision drones and steel fences to keep the 'exceptional ones' home. At the very least, there will be drastic currency controls. And like I keep saying, unless you bring more to the table than you wish to consume, the great white northern store of Canada is closed unless you have a certified and required trade, or lots and lots of money. And as for money, this year immigration laws changed and the rich take their place in the line 'first come first served'. "No soup for you"!
Seriously, better start preps for relocation, now. Last year would have been better.
regards
1/15/15, 7:26 AM
Pinku-Sensei said...
That's a good idea, although one should be careful not to tick off local governments where they are still powerful. When she lived in Oak Park, Michigan, a friend of mine made the mistake of planting a vegetable garden in her front yard. The result was Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects, which ended up becoming a legal battle that lasted all summer. She and her family have since moved to Seattle, where she hasn't had any run-ins with the authorities over her chickens and garden.
Speaking of backyard chickens, that's another project that should wait until either local government weakens or the zoning regulations change. People find them even more objectionable than replacing lawns with vegetable gardens. Fortunately, some municipalities are starting to see the wisdom of allowing them. I hope your readers live in some of those.
1/15/15, 7:32 AM
Nastarana said...
If I had huge amounts of money, I would be buying some of the empty storefronts mentioned by the Archdruid in an earlier post, and renting them out on easy terms to craftspeople and skilled tradesmen. The difficulty there would be to persuade the local govt. to be reasonable in its demands for tax revenue. I would certainly expect to pay no more than the previous absentee landlord, nor would I be willing to make up his or her arrears.
My favorite crazy energy scheme--please feel free to use it, anyone--is the notion that oil simply wells up from deep in the earth, where it is continuously created by a benevolent Providence. Naturally, those evil oil companies have suppressed this knowledge for their own profit.
1/15/15, 7:37 AM
rakesprogress said...
We attach a long arm to the earth, with a very heavy mass on the other end—maybe we can use the moon—to capture additional gravitational pull from the sun. Then a complex mechanism of some kind (patent pending) converts that force into electricity.
The project's FAQ should address the concern that such a system would destabilize the earth's orbit and end all terrestrial life. This is easily addressed by calculations showing that by the time it becomes a problem we will be able to use the immense surplus of energy to adjust the orbit, or move us to a new home in the universe.
The simplicity of the plan pretty much proves it will work, right?
1/15/15, 7:42 AM
Cathy McGuire said...
1/15/15, 7:49 AM
Robert Carran said...
I drove north for thanksgiving and was joking to my friend about future technologies for travel. Came up with the idea of Travel by Trebuchet. Each trebuchet would be cranked up by wind, solar or water power and people would be launched in pods to be bounced by huge trampolines and caught in huge nets at the end. Of course, as with all brilliant revolutionary ideas, she was not convinced and shot all kinds of holes in my idea. So I then came up with the idea of travel by vacuum tube, like the ones they have at bank drive throughs. She did every thing she could to shoot that idea down too. Funny thing is, I just found out that Elon Musk is ACTUALLY designing and planning to build such a system for travel. Truth is more ridiculous than fiction.
On a more realistic note: I built some solar lumber kilns in Asheville and am drying furniture wood from urban harvested trees. When things get bad, I figure they'll make good food dryers and green houses. I am also getting chip from local arborists (it is free, a "waste product") an mixing it with dirt to create the new black gold, soil.
I'm really curious about other ideas that can double function both as economically viable in the present and viable as future low tech options.
1/15/15, 7:54 AM
Joe Roberts said...
I do envy Europeans in the years ahead. While they've become somewhat car-focused and just as technology-reliant as we Americans, they'll have their largely human-scale towns to rebuild again and settle into. What will we Americans do, in our sprawling grotesqueries built for cars, impossible distances between communities, and lack of viable transportation in the vast majority of the country? It's going to be a real mess.
1/15/15, 7:58 AM
Clay Dennis said...
Your debate story brings back another one that my wife told me some time ago. She was on a high school debate team in Hawaii in the late 70's and had a similer energy debate topic. Her team came up with ,what seemed at the time to be, an equaly outrageous concept to the Squirrel legions that they hoped would catch the other teams unprepared. Their debate concept was for the U.S. to invade Iraq and take their oil. Boy I wish someone had really penciled that one out.
1/15/15, 8:44 AM
John Roth said...
While I realize that the focus is primarily on the U.S., here’s an interesting article about what might be the wave of the future - or possibly just a flash in a far-left pan. From the middle of the article: “Stereotypes about the Middle East being nationalist, even xenophobic, have left Americans unprepared to hear about an inclusive, egalitarian platform from someone named “Abdullah.” ” Especially one that is handing ISIL their donkey. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/ts/why-is-america-ignoring-kurdish-freedom-movement .
1/15/15, 8:50 AM
Adrienne Adams said...
In the early 70s, when I first became aware of what was then called Alternative energy movement, what was being built were homegrown, low tech solutions. Soon the geeks got involved, bringing solar cell technology developed for the space program into the mix. Then, inevitably, the fossil fuel industry got interested and entered the market hoping to cash in on this new wave: few remember that Arco was a manufacturer of solar panels for a while. BP invested in solar up until quite recently. But the end of the energy crisis kicked the money out of the burgeoning industrial renewable energy, until its resurgence with high oil prices of the early part of this century.
These modern industrial "renewable" power plants are 100% dependent on fossil fuels for materials, construction, maintenance, and their ultimate delivery of electricity. Take wind turbines, for example: they actually require external energy when idle. Land based wind turbines draw from the grid to keep transformers charged. Off shore turbines in cold areas need diesel generators or grid power to keep the gearboxes from freezing. Wind turbines require oil for gearboxes, replacements for bearings and controllers, and the use of huge cranes or ships to accomplish these maintenance tasks. Solar power plants are a bit less maintenance hungry as they aren't enormous generators perched atop 400 ft steel masts, anchored in hundreds of tons of concrete. But solar power plants require sophisticated electronic controllers, and the manufacture of solar cells is a highly technical industrial manufacturing process--both of which depend upon fossil fuel mining and a complex global supply chain.
The future Renewable energy of which the Archdruid speaks is more likely to resemble 18th century energy sources, such as run of the river water wheels. Twentieth century tech such as insulated walls and passive solar design will enable the wealthier future humans to live more comfortably in the absence of central heating. Simple solar thermal setups of water filled pipes covered with glass will also be effective low tech energy sources. Solar ovens, likewise.
But the vast majority of what we now think of as "renewable" energy sources will not exist with the loss of cheap fossil fuels. We should start now and distinguish in our language the difference between industrial renewables and low tech renewables. Helping others understand this difference is crucial to responding to the limits of our energy future.
1/15/15, 9:07 AM
Avery said...
Gail Tverberg, who normally takes a sober tone, warning that "More reading of religious scriptures might be in order";
Tom Lewis observing that Dow volatility and copper prices, two traditional signs of incoming economic shock, are both on red alert as of this week;
and now your post that "This is crunch time."
I hope readers with retirement plans, or who have a managing role in their or someone else's investments, are taking notice. Hard assets, close to the ground, are likely to outperform the dollar in the long term, and there's a good chance that a winterized house will be more valuable than 100 shares of Google in 15 years' time (they're currently equally expensive). There's a reason real estate is called "real".
By the way, a commentator last week asked for advice on what the "1%" should do, and I would second that, with a slightly larger scope: what should people with a little spare cash do to help their communities transition?
1/15/15, 9:36 AM
AngelusCruentus said...
I live in Santa Cruz, though... not terrible far from this country's agricultural foundation. A horse-drawn wagon could get fresh food into town in a day. Plus, the population of Santa Cruz is not so high that I think it outstrips the agricultural resources within walking distance. So I'm still with gold and silver, due to no means of moving to the country and my faith that money will always be part of life.
1/15/15, 9:39 AM
Cathy McGuire said...
1/15/15, 9:51 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
In a recent article over at Resilience.org, Arthur Berman makes the revealing connection between the end of QE in the US and the slide in the price of oil. Very interesting stuff!
On a personal note, I think I will start looking into the decontamination of soil for my back yard. I'm just a tenant, but what the heck... I certainly hope to stay put for the long run. And I've been composting for years!
Cheers!
1/15/15, 9:53 AM
Greg Belvedere said...
Ex. If we could put a series of solar satellites in orbit, it could provide us will all our energy.
I feel like every vaporware article I have seen recently has an entertaining use of the word "could". It also seems like when some people read "could" their brains register something more akin to an inevitable outcome as opposed to the highly speculative nature (this is incredibly generous) of these articles.
If I could train a monkey to write it could be my personal assistant.
Anyway, I think it will be hard for contest entries to beat some of the real life examples. But I look forward to seeing them and might submit one if I feel inspired and have some time.
1/15/15, 9:58 AM
Janet D said...
As someone who has practiced winter survival skills in Northern Idaho, I can assure you that your Hollywood friends with the Canadian fantasies wouldn't last one winter. The growing season is amazingly short there and the food forests the Natives once relied on are long gone.
I won't waste time preaching to the choir here, but suffice it to say that hubby & I decided that N. Idaho was not for us as a homestead place, for multiple reasons, but one of them was how hard it would be to truly be sustainable there (the "survivalists" that abound in N. Idaho would disagree with me, but the vast majority of 'em are still regularly shopping at the grocery store with 90% of the food trucked in from far away). I can't imagine trying to survive off the cuff 100 miles further north.
IMHO, Canada doesn't need to protect many of it's borders; most of the interlopers will perish before they last long enough to trouble anyone.
1/15/15, 10:00 AM
Dennis D said...
1/15/15, 10:02 AM
Eric S. said...
1/15/15, 10:02 AM
jonathan said...
on another topic, major events in the financial markets today, especially the swiss national bank allowing the franc to float freely. the dominoes are clearly toppling.
a great essay. i can easily see events playing out exactly as you describe. meanwhile: humming a few bars of "running on empty".
1/15/15, 10:08 AM
Stephanie Geeze said...
My own observation lately is that anyone who takes what you say seriously will know that one can't afford to put off learning valuable skills like food production etc. but the double bind for young people is that many of us live in places where learning that trade is not so easily possible at the moment. For example, if one lives in a major urban center where farmbale land is extremely expensive and often miles from where one lives anyway. Or people who live where there is just not enough rainfall to make it work without water rights or an enormous amount of money. The other problem is that many of us young people just don't have access to jobs that pay enough to finance trying to buy enough land to start working on this skill, if they even have a job at all. I know I shouldn't ask for your "advice," but do you think that heading out of urban centers etc. sooner rather than later and learning the trade of food production is something that can't be put off to 15 or 20 years from now, given current economic decline? I mean, its easy to fall into thinking that making a modest amount of money flipping burgers this year is gonna be more important than starting that process. Thanks for your time.
1/15/15, 10:15 AM
Robo said...
1/15/15, 10:17 AM
william fairchild said...
On squirrel cages, how about reviving the good ole' reduction plant? The last ones went out of business in the fifties I think. Rather than worrying about mundane products, such as glue (some incremental revenue could be derived from it) the fats from uneaten garbage, livestock, and deceased pets would be processed into liquid fuels. If you took it to the next level, you could take the pressure off local municipalities having to fund potters fields for the indigent, ensuring political support. And surely, one could encourage irritating green types concerned about fouling the environment through cremation or embalming to donate their corpse. Just imagine, your body "fueling the future." Of course, the owners of the remains, or their families, could be recompensed with a nice tax credit, based on the BMI. The more Frito pies you ate, the more your spouse gets in her widow's credit.
I actually think the squirrel cages may tone down for a bit, depending on how long the slump in oil prices lasts. Apparently sales on large pickup trucks and SUVs are going through the roof with gas prices down. Surely good times are here again. Ack! The US public never seems to learn...
1/15/15, 10:29 AM
Carolyn said...
1/15/15, 10:39 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
Is global economic contraction really going to be more disruptive and chaotic than global economic expansion has been?
Because, in reality, our centuries of expansion have been enormously disruptive and chaotic. From the individual experience of entire ways of living being overhauled and rebuilt from scratch every generation or two... to the global wars of imperial conquest and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. True we have had developments in medicine... and a whole new generation of global pandemics. I remind you, HIV continues killing more people around the world every week than Ebola has killed in all of recorded history. And let's not even start on the ongoing disruption of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere or the global mass extinction event that is now entering its third century. And growth does not seem to have done much to get rid of famine and poverty outside of the rich nations.
All these horrors we have acclimated to, yet we dread the unknown horrors of a global contraction. But... will they really be worse? Will the upheavals of the coming centuries really be more dramatic than those of the previous centuries?
I wonder if it is just a case of the devil we know versus the devil we don't.
1/15/15, 10:51 AM
Vilko said...
The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly lived crappy lives, without any realistic hope of improvement. They never had a single good job, and they had lost all hope of ever having one. Radical Islam made them feel like the warriors they wanted to be, not the pathetic, unemployable failures they were in the real world. There are many of them here in France, because it's more and more difficult to be employable. If they were not Muslims, they would be violent anarchists or communists.
The economic collapse will be accompanied by social collapse. We know how it happens: Egypt in 2011, Argentina in 2001, the USSR in 1991. Crime explodes, and the police, whose salaries are not paid anymore, leave their jobs or, worse, turn into criminals themselves.
I live in a flat in a crappy low income town east of Paris, with a black and muslim majority. Hardly the place to be when the economy goes south, but for several reasons it wouldn't be convenient for me to sell my flat and settle elsewhere, although I am retired. Like many of us, I live in a state of quiet schizophrenia: I know that it's high time to batten the hatches, but I do as if it will be business as usual forever.
What can save us? Well, let me be very un-PC here. Who is able to keep relative peace among impoverished, mutually hostile groups? Men like Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al-Assad, who protected minorities and imposed relative secularism. After, say, 2030, I don't know who will rule France (if France still exists as a unified entity) but I guess that democracy as we know it will be dead.
There will still be elections, of course. They have elections in Syria, too. Bashar Al-Assad was recently re-elected. The election was rigged, but Al-Assad certainly has the support of the majority, at least in western Syria, where the Alawites and the Christians live.
It's a sure sign of times to come in France that a half-Cameroonian humorist, a guy who is just a stand-up comedian, can be arrested at 7 a.m. by a dozen police officiers for a tweet which was just a crappy joke. He had written "Je suis Charlie Coulibaly." He rapidly realized he had written something stupid and deleted the tweet. Too late. In France, you can be arrested for posting that on the Internet.
I know, the families of Coulibaly's victims were offended. But Charlie-Hebdo's business was to offend, and that's what they did it for 50 years. They showed drawings of Jesus having anal sex with the bishop of Paris (I can provide the link), etc. For which they were not prosecuted. They even got government funding for their newspaper.
1/15/15, 10:54 AM
onething said...
What is the point of having an account setup that doesn't work?
1/15/15, 11:07 AM
Agent Provocateur said...
Thank you for another great essay.
I'd like to offer a minor correction and some elaboration with respect to the application of the power law for oil deposits.
“Concentrations of energy, like all other natural resources, follow what’s known as the power law, the rule—applicable across an astonishingly broad spectrum of phenomena—that whatever’s ten times as concentrated is approximately ten times as rare.”
Your basic point is correct; however the ratio need not be a one for one inverse relationship. If we take oil as an example, the “size of oil deposit” versus “number of such deposits” is typically plotted on a base ten log-log plot. Such a plot, as for any power law phenomena, typically shows up as a more or less straight line sloping down to the right.
Needless to say, straight lines in nature are cool;)
The basic equation is of the form:
log(Size of Oil Field) = - k1 * log(Number of Fields per Size Category) + k2
i.e. a straight line with a negative slope on a log-log plot; where the “k”s are positive valued constants
One increment drop in number on this plot (meaning 10 times as rare) does not necessarily yield a 10 fold increase in size (meaning concentration) unless k1 = 1 (and it rarely is).
One can also represent the relationship between size and number if one raises 10 to the power of each side of the equation above to get
Size of Oil Field = (10^k2) * (Number of Fields per Size Category)^-k1
In the case of oil, what this curve above tells us (when fitted to the data we have to date) is roughly how much ultimate recoverable oil there is on the earth (i.e. the area under this curve – the “integral” of the curve). Thus we can know this amount despite not having discovered all the recoverable oil there is. And so arguments that “We just discovered a big new oil field” are largely irrelevant to peak oil.
Further, the basic shape of Hubbert's curve for the world can be derived from the curve above. As the larger oil fields are typically discovered first, these are developed and produce first. Now one has a time dimension by assuming that (for the most part) one is gradually working one's way to the right on the size versus number curve (i.e. picking the (big) low hanging fruit first). Basically one just plots the integral of the curve above but replaces the horizontal “number of deposits” with “time” and bingo: one has the humped shaped Hubbert's curve that peaks more or less in the middle. The hump in middle is from the act that the midranged number of midsized oil fields have more oil than either the few big fields or the many really small fields (the two tails of the integral curve).
So yes, the power law for oil is a very powerful law (excuse the pun). It tells us roughly how much ultimate recoverable oil there is and roughly when oil production will peak (about half way through production of the total).
I am very certain you know these conclusions; but its fun to see how relatively simple it is to obtain them from the power law.
Thank you for your indulgence. Now you can go back to comments more relevant to your post.
1/15/15, 11:07 AM
onething said...
1/15/15, 11:10 AM
onething said...
I really don't relate to the loafometer. I don't know a lot about how much electric energy it takes to heat your oven or whether the oven is inefficient. I am using a toaster oven more often now as I realized what a waste it is to fire up the big oven unless I'm going to fill it up. Did you say you have 4 panels? I'd like some info on what that really translates to, say to running a fridge, electric lights, and so on.
My sister and her husband have a solar system with just 4 panels, but most people have about 16. She does not have a hot water heater, and does not have a washing machine. They do not feel deprived but I would.
1/15/15, 11:14 AM
LewisLucanBooks said...
JMG - Can Peak Squirrels be far behind :-).
I'll pass on the contest. Spring is coming and there's just too much to do around the place. A big push this year. I have a friend who has hitched his wagon to methane hydrates to "save us all." He has latched onto this idea with such religious fervor that there's just no talking to him. So I don't, on that subject.
1/15/15, 11:23 AM
bcwoodcarver said...
1/15/15, 11:52 AM
Erik Buitenhuis said...
a human hamster wheel, solar panels on the moon, or a wavepower machine:
http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/10/10/human-hampster-wheel-for-energy/
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/stuff-to-change-the-world/why-not-turn-the-moon-into-a-solar-power-plant.htm
http://greenupgrader.com/4638/fish-movements-inspire-a-new-idea-in-energy/
1/15/15, 12:02 PM
Eric S. said...
A father of a friend used to suggest that we respond to oil shortages by just taking our lawn clippings and putting them under heat and pressure until they turned into fossil fuels using the same process that we use to create artificial diamonds. Questions about marginal costs never entered the equation.
By far the worst piece of squirrelware I've ever been exposed to actually came from a prominent figure in the local Druid community in the town I used to live in (sorry JMG, as I'm sure you too well know, Druids aren't immune). He was a friend and someone I respected for a time which made it even more painful to hear. He used to suggest that once we got far enough with 3D printing technology, we'd be able to print hydrocarbons and other concentrated energy resources by fusing hydrogen gas into the required atoms and compounds. I didn't even know where to start picking that mess apart so the whole subject was pretty much a no-go area. I dare anyone making up squirrelware to come up with something as outrageous as that one though.
1/15/15, 12:15 PM
Jason Heppenstall said...
"Chickens?" she said.
I replied in the affirmative, expecting the worst.
"How exciting!" she replied.
I said there was a possibility at least one of them was a cock (rooster) and apologised in advance.
"Don't worry, I love the sound of them crowing, it reminds me of the way things used to be when I was younger," she enthused.
Looks like I struck lucky in the neighbour lottery.
ps Shameless promotion of my latest blog relates to a discussion here on the ADR a few months back about the stoics and how we might face our predicament in a sane manner.
1/15/15, 12:30 PM
latefall said...
I just ran into this interesting paper. I haven't worked through it in depth, but it seems obvious that it is rather pertinent to the discussion of "crunch time". It deals with peak (appropriation) rate of various resources and finds them to be highly synchronized. It also has the phrase "limits to growth" in its key word list... Here is a bit from the abstract:
"To test the hypothesis that peak-rate years are synchronized, i.e., occur at approximately the same time, we analyzed 20 statistically independent time series of resources, of which 16 presented a peak-rate year centered on 2006 (1989-2008). We discuss potential causal mechanisms including change in demand, innovation and adaptation, interdependent use of resources, physical limitation, and simultaneous scarcity."
It is available here: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol19/iss4/art50/
1/15/15, 12:43 PM
Steve Morgan said...
http://spaceoilenergy.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-energy-venture-to-mine-oil-in-space.html
This one's in the vein of "absurdly sycophantic media article announcing it to the world."
Am I correct in assuming that, like your other contests, interested people are not limited to only one entry?
1/15/15, 12:53 PM
Brian Weber said...
I would like to offer an alternative opinion (still dark, but not black) if I may. Yes, it looks like a recession is coming, likely this year. But I don't think we'll see a real down-step of free energy available to society just yet. Yes fracking activity will decline, but the tight oil resource is not spent yet, and things will remain in place for it to start up again if favorable conditions return, which they could.
At the moment it looks like we'll see a drop of business investment to the tune of 15-20% and a bond market disruption, followed by the usual knock-on effects (local government spending contraction, a pulse of unemployment, weak, maybe declining personal spending). But I do not expect to see the forces of actual *depression*, a la the 2008 banking crisis, this time around. The reason is that the government (together with the banks) have, since 2008, put in place all of the machinery to transfer the losses onto the government essentially in real time. The 2008 panic took policy makers by surprise: systems had to be improvised, laws carefully circumvented, etc. This time around, the response systems are in place, and the laws have been changed.
Plus there are tools yet. Major opinion makers (NYTimes etc) are openly talking about direct central bank transfers to the people. A quarter trillion of this per month will cure a depression fast, though not the deeper problems.
So here's the alternative view: the new trouble will inaugurate a 5+ year period of even crappier growth (by gov measures), maybe an averaged 1-2% rate plus in-and-out of recession, instead of the 2-3% since 2009. After ~5 years of this, even the incredibly dense mainstream economists will start toying with the idea that we're facing deeper problems, and that will scare them. At that point it will be interesting to see which way policy-makers will take us. No way to predict.
1/15/15, 1:18 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Now, on to such comments as time allows...
Cathy, by all means do the votes publicly if that works. Yes, I'd noticed that it does seem as though the Onion and the regular news media had switched places these days.
Dustin, many thanks for both those links. The dome is particularly choice.
Joel, quite the contrary, your timing was great -- you have a part time income for the near term, and you know perfectly well that it'll go away down the road a bit, so you're not tempted to treat your current income as though you were entitled to it. Many other people are in the same situation, but don't know it yet.
Tony, good. I'm willing to consider that an entry!
Bogatyr, I'm having trouble confirming that story outside the Daily Fail -- er, Mail. Have you found other sources for it?
Repent, if your union is reasonably honest, it's probably worth your while. Look into the fine print, though.
Jason, heh heh heh...
Stream47, there ought to be someone willing to help you out with the graphics. It's a good concept -- by all means work it up and get it in!
Mustard, excellent. I look forward to your illustrated and utterly meretricious press release.
Nathaniel, delighted to hear it! Writing a book may seem like an overwhelming job; just remember that if you can write just one page a day, it'll be done within a year.
1/15/15, 1:57 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Wish I had time to join the contest but too much going on, looking forward to reading the entries though.
I've been meaning to ask. How long will the international transit system stay up and running?
Regards,
Varun
1/15/15, 2:03 PM
SunsetSu said...
I live in Seattle, which is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and being destroyed by the resident billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz, Paul Allen, etc. The Amazon Effect is pushing up rents high enough to displace many working people to the burbs.
Like my grandmother, I derive a big chunk of my income from renting out extra rooms in my house. That's how my dad's family made it through the Depression in Milwaukee. I'm having my bedroom painted and carpeted to make it easier to rent out while I retreat to the finished room in the basement.
I like the notion that empires build big monuments just before they crash. Maybe we can look forward to the end of the useless Highway 99 Tunnel, in which Big Bertha the Drill has been stuck for so long.
1/15/15, 2:11 PM
Mean Mr Mustard said...
Looks like I found the unpaid intern, (Steve Morgan) thinking along exactly the same lines and all ready with the press release too..! Unfortunately he's assumed all those hydrocarbons are American. I imagine we can come to some kind of Antarctic carve up arrangement, there's plenty to go round without resorting to fisticuffs. :-)
1/15/15, 2:29 PM
donalfagan said...
https://www.facebook.com/groups/c.realm/permalink/10153374532771777/
I'm curious if anything like it is happening this year.
1/15/15, 2:38 PM
MawKernewek said...
A series of dikes and offshore wind farms would drain part of the North Sea which could then be planted with biofuel crops.
1/15/15, 2:47 PM
Kylie said...
The WWOOF movement (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) is a network of farmers willing to provide room, board and instruction in exchange for 4 - 6 hours of labour per day. The quality of instruction and board varies, but it seems like a good low-cost way to get some experience in the field for someone with few ties to their local area. You would need a way to travel from one farm to another, particularly in Australia where they're quite spread out. They've got a website at www.wwoof.com with more detail.
JMG,
I'm sure that most children of the privileged wouldn't dream of pitching in. I'm trying to think of ways to shift the target off my back that my grandparents' foresight is likely to put there in the next decade or so. Their refusal to believe in any form of wealth you couldn't hold in your hand looks like it's about to be vindicated again. Any ideas?
1/15/15, 2:49 PM
Brian Weber said...
I still think a 1 or a 2 is a minimum of 10 years away, and probably more like 20. No one can predict a 3, but I don't think the tinder is dry enough quite yet for a black swan to bring a general crisis---for all the issues (terrorism, racism, right-wing retrenchment, proliferating but poorly thought-out leftist ideologies) that everyone is concerned about now, things have been much, much worse at times in the past. And we're still too comfortable in our lives to risk the really big die-throws.
Bottom line: the hour is late but the bell isn't tolling yet: there's still a little time. Let's make the best of the precious minutes (the next few years) that we still have.
1/15/15, 2:49 PM
Kaitain said...
Payback sucks, doesn’t it? Perhaps the clueless morons who run the EU should have considered how the Russians might react to their latest attempt to put the screws to Russia via the latest Color Revolution/rent-a-coup in the Ukraine. Sounds like Europe could be in for some very cold winters in the years to come, especially since the Russians have made it clear that they intend to shift the bulk of their gas exports to Asia and talk of US natural gas exports to Europe are likely to remain vaporware with the fracking bubble visibly deflating. Anyone who has lived in the countryside can tell you that it’s generally a bad idea to provoke an angry bear…
1/15/15, 3:15 PM
Moshe Braner said...
- against the petro, of course! In other words, we'll eventually find out that you can print dollars but you can't print oil. When that knowledge spreads, the dollar (and the pound and the euro and the yen etc) will start buying a lot less of anything that is real.
Regarding squirrel cases, I find it amusing that a huge portion of the stories on the mainstream media about clever energy-generating devices, from pedal power to jiggling bras, are said to be a great way to recharge your i-junk. This to me discloses a rather innumerate (energy-illiterate) society, since these dreamers never notice that just their light bulbs, for example, require orders of magnitude more power than their i-devices. A complete lack of perspective. I guess they may end up freezing and hungry in the dark, but they'll be able to tweet about it.
1/15/15, 3:20 PM
Kaitain said...
In Spengler’s theory of history, Culture represents the earlier, organic stage of development in the lifecycle of a civilization and is based on a religious worldview. Civilization by contrast is materialistic, irreverent and irreligious by nature and this is the stage the West is currently in. Islam represents an ancient civilization that has returned to its spiritual roots, a phenomenon Spengler called the Second Religiousness, one which lacks the vitality and dynamism of the earlier Cultural phase but is based on a sense of deep piety and reverence for one’s spiritual heritage.
As I listened to Ebert’s discussion of the difference between Culture and Civilization in Spenglerian philosophy, it occurred to me that the clash between French secularism and Islam is another classic example of a clash between Culture and Civilization. Here we have a nation within a decadent civilization that has allowed millions of Muslim immigrants in and then condones and protects a newspaper that routinely engages in racist hate speech against Muslims and insults their deepest beliefs, what in Russian is known as “spitting in someone’s soul”. Charlie Hebdo has been spitting in the souls of 1.6 billion Muslims as well as those of Christians for years. But whereas Western Christianity is a weak and spent force, Muslims have repeated demonstrated a willingness to defend their religion by force if necessary. It was only a matter of time before an act of retribution like the one in Paris occurred.
Given the vast numbers of Muslim immigrants that France has allowed in over the last several decades, the sort of Islam bashing that Charlie Hebdo has been engaging in is an act of rank stupidity. If this continues, it will fuel the fires of Islamic rage and since France seems bent on continuing its multiculturalist policies, this guarantees that when Islam takes over due to a combination of mass immigration and the differential in birth rates, there will be terrible consequences that follow. It seems likely to me that Jean Raspail’s nightmare is virtually inevitable at this point and that the antics of Charlie Hebdo and the folly of the French government is going to make a great tragedy even bloodier. As I said, bear baiting is usually a bad idea. It’s even worse when you invited the bear in the first place and then allow a bunch of irresponsible, juvenile bigots and hate mongers to keep baiting the bear until it finally gets fed up and decides to bite back.
1/15/15, 3:30 PM
Ursachi Alexandru said...
"Shares of Hydrocarbons Imported from Titan" - gold!
1/15/15, 3:43 PM
William Knight said...
Very good. Been meaning to read it, looks like now is the time.
1/15/15, 3:56 PM
Radu Visan said...
The first one is simple and builds upon your own squirrels example and a topic from last week's comments. Imagine the squirrel power plant, with rows upon rows of the furry creatures in their little wheels chasing suspended acorns. But what if there was something chasing the squirrels themselves? You could double your energy output! This is where the feral dogs come in. Import a few shiploads of them from Eastern Europe and all our problems are solved. The US fulfills its energy needs and the EU has a strong economy again. Plus, I don't know how many squirrels you have, but we probably have more dogs.
The second idea is the greenest I can think of. It uses gravity and could be better than solar power. Instead of large, fragile glass panels destroying the aesthetic of your house, you could simply connect all your roof tiles to pressure sensors, which would use the impact of rain drops, snowflakes and assorted bird droppings to make your home independent from the grid. Granted, a more large-scale approach could be implemented by using the pavements of financial districts, like Wall Street, but that's not really a renewable source, only recurring.
For the third one I'm going to get a bit darker. There are ideas to use movement or residual body heat to charge smartphones, but that's thinking small, since is a concentrated energy source just beneath the surface and we have a time-tested means of extracting it. I'm talking, of course, about blood and leeches, respectively. About 30 or so of them attached every day and you can fill a barrel by the end of the month, which is then taken to a power plant to be either converted to biofuel or burned directly. I even have a title for this one: "The new fashion craze that could save the planet: renewable, organic accessories that give free energy".
1/15/15, 3:57 PM
Kaitain said...
1/15/15, 4:05 PM
jean-vivien said...
there is plenty of affordable projects in terms of space and money, even in that specific situation. Here are a few (this is actually my project list, but I am very bad at accomplishing any project) :
- growing crickets in a cage (and make pâté out of it :))
- growing snails in a box (in the countryside they are a pest like grass, but in an urban context, a good source of protein, no ?)
- making an incubator out of an aquarium resistor and plastic boxes. Use it (at 25ºC) to learn the basics of cheesemaking. I know, raw milk is illegal in the US, because it is more dangerous than guns...
- mycology, using a lot of the same hardware as for cheesemaking.
- leatherwork is not very practical, since skins take up space. Then just basic knitting...
- preparing and canning food. Meat, for example, does not require that much space for preparation. Learning to macerate it, and macerate stuff in general with oil.
- learning to make leavain out of organic flour and water. Very difficult actually.
- learning to make vinegar (wine culture required in your country)
- a bike repair club / community is also an option if it does not require you to keep tools at home.
All these are vertically stackable options (since you only need plastic boxes or a regular kitchen).
The big problem with urban environments is the lack of sunlight. All options listed can be reasonably helped within that constraint, so long as we get electricity in our homes.
Most of the options would not produce enough to feed you, unlike what countryside living offers (a chicken coop). But they can help you develop unique skills that still deal with living systems. It is very far away from the Green Wizard Glamour of a tender orchard, and less physically demanding.
Even using a pen and notebooks for personal writing projects would be a good option. Like, try to collect family anecdotes or personal memories.
1/15/15, 4:13 PM
William Knight said...
... Any investment in physical infrastructure would be guaranteed to decay over time, so any society that depended on physical infrastructure which depended on non-renewable energy would be non-sustainable, though perhaps lasting far longer than the current industrial civ..."
Agreed. But I'm curious about the details as to what kind of industrial technology could be developed with fossil fuels and then subsequently be maintained indefinitely by sustainable energy resources.
For example, will sustainable forestry be done with hand axes, hand saws, wool-alcohol-powered chain saws, or even more advanced technologies like hydraulic machinery and vehicles?
What is the limit of industrialization that is possible? Why couldn't it include a limited number of roads, electrical power grids, computers, etc., as long as the total energy required is below the threshold of available renewable energy?
I don't know if these limits are considered either quantitatively or qualitatively in "The Ecotechnic Future", but I look forward to finding out.
1/15/15, 4:13 PM
Paul said...
http://thewholedamnworld.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-great-squirrel-case-challenge-of.html
No need to thank me. The nobel prize will suffice.
1/15/15, 4:17 PM
Laylah said...
I had to explain, as gently as I could, why there was really no need for BP & co. to feel threatened by the miracle. Even though the idea of chicken poop saving "civilization" was bizarrely charming to contemplate.
1/15/15, 4:24 PM
gildone84 said...
Evidence that the fracking bubble contagion is spreading. US Steel's Lorain Tubular plant in Lorain, Ohio, which supplies pipe to the fracking industry, is laying off 614 workers. They are laying off another 142 at the Houston plant. I live in NE Ohio where the Lorain plant is. Things had been booming there for quite some time. The slowdown was sudden:
http://www.post-gazette.com/business/pittsburgh-company-news/2015/01/06/Falling-oil-prices-to-blame-for-more-than-700-U-S-Steel-layoffs/stories/201501060158
1/15/15, 4:29 PM
Violet Cabra said...
Knowing a good amount of Jewish history, I'm in full agreement that my faith won't save me from collective reality. An example from my family history: my great-great grandfather was the only one of his shtetle who survived the pogrom that lead him to come to America. He survived by spending that night in an open grave. I highly doubt he lived when everyone else perished because of the strength of his piety.
More broadly I've meditated on your response to my post and came to see clearly that the vaporware that you mention in this post and others; AI, metastatic interplanetary colonizaton, fusion reactors etc etc represent the idols of the Western Cargo Cult. Aliens are the mysterious angels carrying the voice of the god, scientists the priests, consumers the laity and of course perpetual motion is the holy grail. Faith in alternative energy vaporware is the faith that Progress will save us from our collective choices.
What struck me with this realization is that the rites of the Cargo Cult aren't waiting to be performed in the future. They are happening right now. When scientist-priests suggest whatever implausible techno-fix that will save us, they are are reciting the millenarian liturgy of progress. With energy declining, it appears to me that collectively we are increasingly like the Melanesian left on their island, suddenly cut off from the stream of manufactured goods. I can only imagine that such displays will only grow louder and more popular in the months and years ahead.
1/15/15, 4:50 PM
August Johnson said...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-14/russia-to-shift-ukraine-gas-transit-to-turkey-as-eu-cries-foul.html
"Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey, a surprise move that the European Union’s energy chief said would hurt its reputation as a supplier."
[...]
"Gazprom plans to deliver the fuel to Turkey’s border with Greece and “it’s up to the EU to decide what to do” with it further, according to Sefcovic."
1/15/15, 5:21 PM
latheChuck said...
The Ancient Hamster Wheel didn't generate electricity, of course; the torque was mostly used to pump water and operate hoists. (Wind and water wheels would have been used for stationary applications.)
The Modern Hamster Wheel (MHW) output analysis is consistent with what I mentioned earlier: ~100W output power times (maybe) 10 hours per day; 1 kWh of energy. The factor that's missing from the MHW paper is a comparison of the capital cost of the MHW (~$1000?) versus the cash value of the electricity it generates: $~o0.15 per day. So, it breaks even after 18 years of daily operation (with no maintenance expense).
The Ancient Hamster Wheel, on the other hand, can be built with renewable and/or recycled material, and could be used to run machine tools, grain mills, water pumps, etc. "on demand", when you need slow torque and have an excess of unskilled labor. You could even design a wheel to be turned by water, when you have it, and labor when the water is scarce.
1/15/15, 6:40 PM
Ellen He said...
I won't submit anything for the Squirrelware contest for lack of time, but here's a link to an essay with a desperate-enough 'the doomers were wrong' rantery that could qualify as squirrelcase rhetoric.
This is off-topic, but here's an interesting essay on the relationship between Aspergers and (ir)religiosity:
http://palm.mindmodeling.org/cogsci2011/papers/0782/paper0782.pdf
I wonder if beings with different '-olds' may lack what humans consider to be religious belief or have some completely alien means of viewing life besides (ir)religion, philosophy etc.
1/15/15, 6:42 PM
SweaterMan said...
Check out Arthur C. Clarkes "Imperial Earth". He had that Titan-as-a-gas-station thing thought out long ago...
Sounds great in a sci-fi novel though
1/15/15, 6:58 PM
Cathy McGuire said...
@Chris G: to which Yuddhistira replied, "Every day we die, yet we go on living as though we are immortal. That is the greatest wonder."
Actually it was, “Everyday people die all around us, and yet we…” I love that play! Brooks did an amazing job making it into a mythological sagathat European/Americans could understand – I even got the 3-volume original (translated) books to read.
@Joel: Congrats on the new job, no matter your fears – you’ll likely do some good work in the community and maybe meet new contacts that will be helpful later. And sounds like your reputation would allow you to get back to other work if the office job falls through. Grants are always iffy (I used to make a living writing them, along with my other careers) – gotta write 5-6 at least to get one. Just don’t forget to give them their status reports! They really penalize a group for forgetting those! And I’ll include you in the call when we convene a green wizards confab in Portland! Hope you can make it (we’ll try to give a lot of advance notice).
@Stephanie Geeze: I’m not sure what JMG would advise, but I might suggest at least locating farms or local food groups nearby, and if you can volunteer for a weekend task or something, you’d get a start. And then if things get scary fast, you might be able to go there and apprentice… just a thought.
@onething: don’t give up hope! I’m very sorry that you have had such a hard time signing on. I just sent you an email with password info, so I hope you can get on now.
1/15/15, 7:24 PM
Kyoto Motors said...
But anyway, that's not what happened.
Oh well...
1/15/15, 7:56 PM
Andrew Vines said...
https://courantefarm.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/an-unrelated-push/
On the topic of todays blog, I think the solar roadways project is very relevant. There are some good youtube videos debunking the concept.
One thing to ask is what happens culturally when most people no longer want to believe in the next big breakthrough. I definitely get the sense that it is getting close to a tipping point where attitudes will turn more pessimistic about technology saving the day.
1/15/15, 8:54 PM
Bogatyr said...
I did some more digging around in the few stories that were coming up in fringe stories, and what I found is:
- Russia has confirmed that the South Stream project, the pipeline to the EU that would pass through Bulgaria rather than Ukraine, has definitively been cancelled as a response to meddling from the European Commission; this was announced in December, but the EC thought they would be able to face the Russians down. In this, they have completely failed.
- Instead of Bulgaria/South Stream, Russian gas will now go to Europe via Turkey/Turk Stream. This pipeline will be completed two years from now.
- South Stream would have travelled into the EU via pipelines constructed and then owned by Gazprom. The EC, in the name of 'competition', was trying to force Gazprom to give up ownership of the infrastructure. In response, Gazprom has announced that under the Turk Stream, they will build their own pipeline as far as the border between Turkey and Greece, and it will be up to the EU to continue it from there under whatever rules they choose.
Those are the certain facts. The confusion is over what happens when Turk Stream goes live. Will it be a complement to the Ukrainian pipelines, or will it replace it entirely? I've seen statements that could support either view. This is incredibly important. If the second statement is true, then the EU has only two years in which to build an entirely new trans-European pipeline network connecting to Turkey before the supply of gas through Ukraine goes dead. If they can't get it built, they freeze in the following winter.
Much of the ambiguity and confusion is likely to be deliberate. Nevertheless:
- the clock is now ticking for the EU. They are going to have to find the political leadership, and financial resources, to get the pipelines built in short order. Is this possible?
- Germany and Poland already have separate pipelines to Russia via the Baltic, France has nuclear, and the UK has the North Sea. Will they want to contribute? The countries really threatened by this are Greece and other Southern-EU countries, the ones already hurting from EU-imposed austerity. This move will massively increase existing intra-EU tensions.
- Turkey has consistently been left waiting at the altar in its efforts to join the EU, and appears to be losing interest. At the same time, it's been trying - so far unsuccessfully - to join the Sino-Russian led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It could be that Turkey will also 'pivot to the East' and pursue a less Western-oriented policy. It may join Russia's Eurasian Union rather than the EU, for example; it could even, possibly, leave NATO. What is certain is that it's going to have a financial bonanza from the transit fees for all that Russian gas, so inevitably it will join Iran in moving into Russia's orbit.
So, this news really is a bombshell, but it'll take some time for the consequences to become clear.
1/15/15, 10:24 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Megpie, "the practicality of a chocolate teakettle" had me chuckling -- is that a common saying in Oz? Either way, many thanks.
Andrew, the Economist is a bubbling fount of squirrel cases. I'd encourage anyone at a loss for prose for an entry to copy their patented tone of burbling gullibility.
Leo, best wishes for a quick move to a comfortable new place. I know how harrowing that sort of thing can be.
Nastarana, since oil comes bubbling up from the center of the earth, and that's traditionally Beelzebub's territory, doesn't that mean that devil worship is the best way to get more? Those GOP Satanists ought to get working on it...
Adrienne, good. I'll be addressing that in an upcoming post.
Dennis, I look forward to your delusional press release or sycophantic media story!
Eric, excellent. Exactly; I'll be discussing that, too, in an upcoming post.
Stephanie, learning food production in a rural setting is only one of many options. I suppose I should schedule a post reviewing that as we proceed.
Bill, excellent! That reflection gets you tonight's gold star. You're quite right; contraction will be about as disruptive as expansion -- but the disruptions will tend to fall in a very different pattern, and a lot of people who think they're entitled to a free pass from disruption are going to find out otherwise. More on this soon.
Agent, thanks for the math. Yes, I know that I was being sloppy.
Latefall, thanks for the link.
1/15/15, 10:26 PM
Bogatyr said...
Aspiring Green Wizards with more humble, craft-based, aspirations may find some interest, perhaps even inspiration, in this RBTH photo-essay: Russian Peasants And Their Craft Jobs. (Hint: looks like the wooden-spoon market might be big).
1/15/15, 10:35 PM
Kutamun said...
To prevent 500 Highlanders escaping from under their Lords to Canada to seek the elusive "Liberty"
Perhaps they were after Abiotic Oil !
Long life, my Lord, an' health be yours,
Unskaithed by hunger'd Highland boors;
Lord grant me nae duddie, desperate beggar,
Wi' dirk, claymore, and rusty trigger,
May twin auld Scotland o' a life
She likes-as butchers like a knife.
Faith you and Applecross were right
To keep the Highland hounds in sight:
I doubt na! they wad bid nae better,
Than let them ance out owre the water,
Then up among thae lakes and seas,
They'll mak what rules and laws they please:
Some daring Hancocke, or a Franklin,
May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin;
Some Washington again may head them,
Or some Montgomery, fearless, lead them,
Till God knows what may be effected
When by such heads and hearts directed,
Poor dunghill sons of dirt and mire
May to Patrician rights aspire!
Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville,
To watch and premier o'er the pack vile, -
An' whare will ye get Howes and Clintons
To bring them to a right repentance-
To cowe the rebel generation,
An' save the honour o' the nation?
They, an' be d-d! what right hae they
To meat, or sleep, or light o' day?
Far less-to riches, pow'r, or freedom,
But what your lordship likes to gie them?
But hear, my lord! Glengarry, hear!
Your hand's owre light to them, I fear;
Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies,
I canna say but they do gaylies;
They lay aside a' tender mercies,
An' tirl the hallions to the birses;
Yet while they're only poind't and herriet,
They'll keep their stubborn Highland spirit:
But smash them! crash them a' to spails,
An' rot the dyvors i' the jails!
The young dogs, swinge them to the labour;
Let wark an' hunger mak them sober!
The hizzies, if they're aughtlins fawsont,
Let them in Drury-lane be lesson'd!
An' if the wives an' dirty brats
Come thiggin at your doors an' yetts,
Flaffin wi' duds, an' grey wi' beas',
Frightin away your ducks an' geese;
Get out a horsewhip or a jowler,
The langest thong, the fiercest growler,
An' gar the tatter'd gypsies pack
Wi' a' their bastards on their back!
Go on, my Lord! I lang to meet you,
An' in my house at hame to greet you;
Wi' common lords ye shanna mingle,
The benmost neuk beside the ingle,
At my right han' assigned your seat,
'Tween Herod's hip an' Polycrate:
Or if you on your station tarrow,
Between Almagro and Pizarro,
A seat, I'm sure ye're well deservin't;
An' till ye come-your humble servant,
Beelzebub.
June 1st, Anno Mundi,
1/15/15, 10:40 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Brian, fair enough; you've made your prediction, I've made mine. Now we'll see who's right.
Varun, good question. There isn't one international transit system, there's a tangled network involving many different modalities, and so it almost certainly won't have a single stop date.
SunsetSu, those are of the many good reasons why my spouse and I fled Seattle ten years ago and have never looked back. The hideous new public library downtown, probably the worst design for a library I've ever encountered anywhere, was another -- I take my libraries very seriously!
MawKernewek, now that's hubris. Nice; you're in the contest. Any chance, given your residence, that you can drain Lyonesse while you're at it?
Kylie, hmm. I'll think about that and see what I come up with.
Kaitain, I've seen it in those four sources, and it appears to be two different claims -- the Daily Mail claiming that Russia's cut trans-Ukraine natural gas flows now, Bloomberg saying that they're going to cut flows via the Ukrained once they finish building the pipeline through Turkey. The other two sources simply quote those. Why are the other financial and energy media saying nothing about either story? I'm not arguing that it's possible, or even likely; Russia has the means, motive, and opportunity -- but I'd like to see confirmation that this is actually what's happening.
Paul, excellent. You're in the contest.
Gildone, yes, I saw that! When steel companies start laying off hundreds of workers, that's good evidence that something's up.
Violet, good. I've encountered all too many people who somehow have the notion that God or the gods or somebody will surely bail us out of the consequences of our own greed and stupidity; it's not as though we've paid the least attention to them during the time of our absurd prosperity, but hey, they should come scurrying up to save us from having to pay the penalties every one of the world's scriptures say we ought to get for our behavior...
Andrew, good! You're in the contest.
1/15/15, 10:42 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Kutamun, no doubt!
1/15/15, 10:48 PM
Dan the Farmer said...
1/15/15, 10:59 PM
steve pearson said...
To Kutamon et al,on the subject of Australian fascism, Have you read D.H. Lawrence's Kangaroo? It was set in the 1930s, but an interesting take on an indigenous Australian fascism.
Regards, Steve
1/15/15, 11:33 PM
mikerobertsblog said...
1/15/15, 11:36 PM
MawKernewek said...
I did make a little visualisation of the likely coastlines based on a published paper about post-glacial rebound since the end of the last glacial period:
http://skrifennow.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-lost-land-of-lyonesse.html
The five inhabited islands of the Scilly Isles were a single larger island until maybe 3000 years ago, and fairly significant lowland areas north of the north coast would have existed in the early Holocene, but you would have to go all the way back to the glacial period itself to walk from Cornwall to Scilly
Cantre'r Gwaelod off the Welsh coast may be a better bet for reclaimation since there is a larger area that is relatively shallow and a dike from Pembrokehire to the tip of Llŷn would enable drainage of a substantial area:
http://skrifennow.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-disappearence-of-cantrer-gwaelod.html
1/16/15, 12:24 AM
Bogatyr said...
As for "planet destroyer", yes, it made me smile: it brought to mind Dark Star and sentient bombs...
1/16/15, 1:07 AM
ed boyle said...
re human hamster wheel. Actually docks loading in europe used that sort of contraption preindustrial.
1/16/15, 1:17 AM
Unknown said...
@Marinhomelander--I think the nail salons of San Anselmo are safe for awhile longer. Hairdressers and cosmetics companies do well during depressions. A decade or so ago, one of the big growth areas for the Avon company was the Amazon basin, indigenous women traveling up and down the river selling beauty products to other indigenous women. In the poorest tribal villages throughout the world, you will see young women arrayed in facial tattoos and jewelry; sometimes the men, too. Attracting a mate is not frivolity.
1/16/15, 1:18 AM
Bruno B. L. said...
PS: my entry is going to involve time traveling expeditions to the resource and oil-rich past as a new form of providing energy for the present (I call dibs on that), led by a distant relative of Cecil Rhodes...does that seems too far-fetched for you?
1/16/15, 1:46 AM
ed boyle said...
Prana, various quantum particles, like solar(photons) collectible.
Micro black holes made by cern for energy production.
Collect thought and feel quanta.
Become energy positive, not an energy sink, i.e. entropic. Use this energy for telekinesis, telepathy, levitation, body heating to replace transport, telecoms, heating,clothes. No need to freeze in dark. With yogic tecchniques keep warm, light a light bulb through touch.
Make ki ball factory using kung fu millions in china. Export to world as energy source.
1/16/15, 3:06 AM
Jason Heppenstall said...
King Solomon's Diamonds
A robotic army of subterranean AI miners armed with 3D printers is all we need to solve the world's problems, IMHO.
1/16/15, 3:30 AM
Diana Haugh said...
1/16/15, 5:31 AM
Stephanie Geeze said...
1/16/15, 6:43 AM
Violet Cabra said...
Stephanie, I don't want to overwhelm you with suggestions, as you've gotten so many really excellent ones already. What I do want to say though, is that food growing isn't the only critical skill. If you're in an apartment in a high rise you can still learn to use a sewing machine, take a week long intensive in wilderness first aid, or even make delicious food on the cheap from bulk grains and legumes. These are just a few ideas, others have been suggested which are just as good.
I imagine the skillsets as basically two pronged: there are skills you use to meet your own needs directly and there are skills you can use to make yourself useful to others and meet your needs through exchange. So even if, hypothetically, your situation precludes you from learning about growing food you can develop the second prong of skills.
Along with this I'd like to offer two other suggestions. The first is seek out community that shares your values and that you can trust. Trust takes time and community is of similar valuation to skills, methinks. If you're close with someone skilled in horticulture you can, potentially, have a relationship with them where you exchange your skill for theirs. If this is someone you like and can trust all the better.
Second, if you accept that there are things you can learn that will better your life given any circumstance, the only thing that separates you from mastering those skills is DISCIPLINE. If you set aside two hours a day to mastering anything, you will rapidly improve. It's that simple. Choose something that catches your fancy, and obsess about it until it gets in your blood. Read books about it, take notes, find others with the same interest to talk about it with, and then practice, practice, practice like your very life depends on it because it very well might.
Hope this is of some help. Best wishes!
1/16/15, 6:58 AM
Steve Morgan said...
Sorry for claiming the Titan oil & gas as American. I only saw the comments from the first batch last night before I wrote it up, otherwise I would've known that you'd already claimed them. I'm sure there's no need for fisticuffs, though.
Let's divvy it up this way: you put out the contract for your dirigibles (or have an intern do it), and I'll get SpaceX working on my space-tankers. Whoever gets there first can name the seas after their favorite cultural icons. Second place can have the South Pole.
@Ursachi
I thought that might get a chuckle. Still, I wouldn't put it past GS traders to knowingly sell clients something with such an acronym...
1/16/15, 7:14 AM
Marty said...
Big oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are finding their business models challenged, he added, "because the days of finding cheap oil is over."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102343976
And now that the SNB has decide to unpeg the Franc from the Euro it appears that the Euro project is unwinding, already two FX brokers have failed,
1/16/15, 8:20 AM
Marty said...
"Be Prepared For An Oil Price Spike"
Explaining why "the longer the price stays below $60/bbl the more dramatically the price will spike when events eventually turn the tide."
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Be-Prepared-For-An-Oil-Price-Spike.html
1/16/15, 8:30 AM
David said...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/alex-malarkey-heaven-book-fake
I feel for the boy (who, per the story, received no money from the book). He was a only six at the time, then tried to stop the book when he saw what was happening. He is learning a hard lession that many "christian businesses" are ultimately just businesses and when truth goes up against mammon, mammon usually wins. I suspect the only reason the publisher is pulling the book is because he went public.
(It is usually suspicious when reported experiences of this nature mesh in great detail to the particulars of a certain theology. That should be a flag for people.)
The core socio-economic gospel of Yeshua bar Yosef has much to speak for it, if only we can get past the layers of crap that we have buried it under over the past 20 centuries. That is the focus of my personal search.
1/16/15, 9:02 AM
Nastarana said...
Dear Bogatyr, Thank you for the photo essay. I cannot cook without wooden spoons. And, lapti look like the perfect summer garden shoes.
People with adequate space maybe should consider planting lindens and pawlanias along with their orchards. Linden has so many uses, one could almost call it the Northern Hemisphere version of coconut palms.
Will Randolph, how long do you think your infrastructure should stand. I believe the lighthouse at Alexandria was still standing at the time of the first crusade. It was destroyed by an earthquake sometime during the European Middle Ages. The inhabitants of Seville were still using their Roman acquaduct well into the Middle Ages. Were it not for the depredations of Turkish settlers and Lord Elgin, the Parthenon might well still be in nearly its original condition, minus the paint. Civil engineering projects, built by ancient techniques of piling rock on rock, and strengthened by structural steel, available in copious quantities from uninhabitable skyscrapers, might last a very long time indeed.
1/16/15, 9:02 AM
Wolfgang Brinck said...
So if we look at a given human culture as a scheme for running down a reservoir of stored energy, let's say fossil fuels, then the society that runs it down the fastest is the one most favored by nature. Nature favors industrial societies over non-industrial societies because industrial societies run down the fossil fuel reservoirs while non-industrial societies leave them in place.
Conversely we should also point out that it is free energy which powers industrial civilizations and not civilizations that create the free energy. Fortunately or unfortunately, once the reservoir of free energy has been exhausted, nature no longer has any need for the industrial civilization that ran it down. It is nature's policy to turn its back on a civilization once that civilization has finished its job. There is no retirement program that keeps a civilization around after having so valiantly worked at running down energy reserves and increasing entropy.
We also need to keep in mind that although nature does not necessarily plan its future except of course to dictate that the future shall have more entropy than the present, it was nature that provided industrial civilizations with oxygen in the atmosphere which made the burning of fossil fuels possible. The creation of an oxygen containing atmosphere was nature's first detour from entropy creation and the accumulation of fossil fuels the second which of course nature corrected by allowing the creation of industrialized civilizations which combined free oxygen with fossil fuels to increase the pool of entropy.
So I think we should look ahead to a time of greater ease where there is no longer this mandate of running down the fossil fuel reserves and maintaining a complex culture.
1/16/15, 9:06 AM
Ed-M said...
Great inspirational article this time. Now I have two squirrel cases bouncing around in my head. One involves Titan, the other, highway bridges and overpasses. Oh, I am sure both will be utterly absurd!!!
158 comments already! Wow.
1/16/15, 9:23 AM
Ed-M said...
The increased chatter over AI? I am only speaking for myself, not the AD: that's just the reaction to the elites' delusional desire to do away with labor as part of the economic equation. That it dovetails nicely with the materialist Christian heresy known as the Religion of Progress is just icing on the cake, and the hook with which to sell it to the technicians assigned to develop it, the technogeeks following the story, the "news media," and of course, to we the masses.
Just let them try to implement it, HAHAHA!
1/16/15, 9:29 AM
Janet D said...
"Because, in reality, our centuries of expansion have been enormously disruptive and chaotic...."
Amen.
For some reason, I woke last night and lay awake, pondering the mindset of the conqueror, which is the mindset of our culture, and, really, most of the dominant cultures in the world today. We're the ones who are left after millennia of conquering, and we've brought with us all of the assumptions, mental habits, and assumed rights of conquerors.
I recently read that the Maori of New Zealand - originally warlike in their own way, but still much more earth-centric & respectful than ours ever has been - had originally conquered New Zealand from a very peaceful, enlightened (supposedly) people who were pretty much wiped out after that event.
It seems we've gotten rid of (or sufficiently marginalized) anyone or any group that knows how to live in balance with the earth or in any type of peaceful co-existence with other people.
The only problem is that we're out of places to conquer (not that we've quit trying). And in order to survive (in any numbers) in the future, we have to give up/change many of the habits & assumptions of the conqueror mindset. That won't happen, but it is interesting to notice/reflect on just how much of the way we go about things come from a deep-seated belief of Ultimate Right.
Don't know if this makes any sense to anyone. Deep internal ponderings, I guess.
1/16/15, 9:34 AM
Shane Wilson said...
Is this something to be concerned with, in light of the fracking bust? With the bubble burst before this gets off the ground, or could they still cause mischief? I know the people involved, and there's a lot of activism against this among people I know. Oddly enough, one" green" friend opposed seems to be in denial that fracking is a bubble that is imploding.
Back to the Canada thing, if there was a humanitarian/political crisis that DID overwhelm our neighbor to the north and create a crisis, they could certainly appeal to China/India/Russia, or all of the above for help containing it. I see no reason why, with assistance, they couldn't put up as much a deterrent as exists on the southern U.S. border, and I'm not certain that it wouldn't be in China/India/Russia's interest to help them in a crisis situation.
Kaitain
I don't think a Muslim takeover of Western Europe is a given. I think there's enough residual pushback among Europeans. It's certainly possible that Western Europe, with the assistance of law and order Christian Russia, could repel Islamist terrorism. Not that we're to that point yet, but I don't think you can underestimate terrorism pushing Europe into Putin's hands, especially in a crisis. Putin's already found it useful to financially support right wing, law and order, anti Muslim parties, and they've returned the favor.
1/16/15, 10:16 AM
Thomas Daulton said...
I may make my own formal submission later, but let me contribute to the readership two previously-written fiction stories which may help people set the mood.
One is an audio podcast which I did _NOT_ write and have no ownership of. But if you'd like to hear a humorous sci-fi story about a _really_ unusual source of alternative energy, check out:
"Flying High on My Hatred of My Neighbor's Dog"
The story appears as text on that page as well as audio. The download link appears at the very bottom of the page, after the story text (look for "Podcast: Download")
That is about a half-hour story on the Drabblecast, which usually specializes in very short stories. I wrote a "drabble", which is a story strictly limited to 100 words (no more no less), on their forum board four years ago. It also seems appropriate.
This is not written as a press release, so it probably doesn't qualify for the contest. But JMG, if you feel like bending those rules and entering this 100-word story into the contest, I wouldn't protest.
"One Treadmill for Another"
1/16/15, 10:20 AM
Joel Caris said...
Thank you for the vote of confidence! You know, I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but that does work out to be pretty good timing.
While the new job has increased a few costs for me, I've kept those increases minimal and made sure I'm not locked into them. I should be able to reverse course easily, if need be. In the meantime, I'll both save the extra money and use it toward useful tools, seeds, projects, etc.
As for expecting the income to go away--exactly. I'll say, aside from all the external preparations I've made for decline over the last number of years, I think the most important thing I've done is adjusting my internal expectations. In other words, I've slowly moved away from expecting good things to happen to me--or thinking they should happen to me as a matter of necessity--to not taking anything for granted. That doesn't mean I expect bad things to happen to me--it's just that I recognize they very much can, regardless of if I've done anything to deserve it. (And sometimes I earn it!)
I've actually had people comment on this attitude in recent years when something rough has happened to me that I didn't really bring on myself. That helps confirm I'm doing something right.
It's a lot easier to get to work making the best of bad situations if you aren't too busy feeling sorry for yourself and raging at the universe. Not to say I never feel sorry for myself, but I make certain I don't wallow in it. That attitude I've managed to cultivate in more recent times is a big part of why I think I'll manage to make my way through the coming hard times--assuming a good bit of luck and providence!
It also, by the way, is very empowering and leads to much more happiness. I can't recommend this sort of attitude highly enough. It's greatly improved my life, getting away from ideas of entitlement.
1/16/15, 11:14 AM
Joel Caris said...
Thank you! It is going to be a lot of grant writing and office work--I can already tell that I'm going to have to come up with good habits for managing my time and health. You would think farm labor would be tiring, but it's actually quite invigorating compared to office work! Yikes.
I do think I'll do some good, though, and I hope it will help get a bit more infrastructure in place that will be helpful in the decline. That's my main goal with the work.
As for the Portland GW gathering--definitely keep me in the loop! I absolutely want to make that.
P.S. Made my first cornbread from homegrown flour corn yesterday, freshly milled on my new handcrank Wondermill. It was delightful, delicious, with a deeper and more complex taste than the cornbread made from store bought cornmeal.
Maybe I should do a GW post on the mill . . .
1/16/15, 11:20 AM
Bogatyr said...
It's not hard to imagine this all going very badly wrong, and the Nigerian petro-state failing. The consequences would include massively increased regional instability, the loss of a major source of oil, and a vast increase in EU-bound refugees, with all that that would mean for European politics. Background reading.
1/16/15, 12:07 PM
Elizabeth Kennett said...
I think the cheap solar power short story you are looking for is Robert Heinlein's "Let There Be Light". And it would be nice if someone could figure it out.
Elizabeth Kennett
1/16/15, 1:00 PM
Violet Cabra said...
WWOOFing was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. I highly, highly recommend it.
1/16/15, 1:10 PM
. josé . said...
Really? That's fantastic!
Is that written up anywhere? If it's on the Green Wizards site, that alone would give me the incentive to try to join up.
I've been fantasizing about doing something similar here (rural SE Brazil), and have even shown some sketches to local builders, but it would be great to know of one that's actually working.
1/16/15, 1:29 PM
Eric S. said...
@Stephanie, Violet, and everyone else: There are also methods of food production that are quite suitable for a small scale apartment setting. I spent the year making starting forays into edible insects and mushroom growing and am getting ready to get more serious and slightly bigger scale with it this year. Both of those are clean, space efficient, simple entertaining ways to do agriculture in even the smallest apartment.
Another niche that I think apartment dwellers are well suited for is turning raw materials into products. Violet and others already mentioned craft skills like sewing or leather crafting. There are also ways to do things with food if that's your interest. I know some apartment dwelling friends who brew fermented foods and beverages. Canning is also a good option, especially if you know people who garden, since a jar of jam, relish or canned vegetables make really good barter for raw produce from someone's garden.
1/16/15, 1:43 PM
daelach said...
Not because of "I'm Charlie", but because I like France anyway. And if the time should come when baguettes, red vine and Gauloises are not around anymore, I still have my basque beret. C'est ça!
1/16/15, 2:09 PM
Mean Mr Mustard said...
There's already two of us working away on Titan now. North and South Poles (the methane lake districts) are now spoken for by way of a Gentleman's Agreement, just like in the Colonial days. Will you be doing the fracking at the equator?
With all this healthy competition, the hydrocarbon quantities being landed to Earth (in gluts dependent on favourable planetary alignments to allow the gravity assist thing) who knows- it might even permit the continuation of Happy Motoring.
I think we might need a peak oil aware astrologist to help us get these transportation cycles scheduled...
1/16/15, 2:14 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Fair enough. As a suggestion, have a look at your previous electricity bill and find where it provides your total electricity consumption in kWh for that period. Then divide that number by the number of days (usually 30, 60 or 90 days) and that will provide and average daily electricity usage. Let me know what that number is and we can talk more about what it actually means.
Not to stress as I've seen all sorts of numbers from 3.5kWh / day to 55kWh / day. The only way you'll ever understand the process is to look at the numbers and get a feel for them. Otherwise it is really just the dollar cost that you notice!
Cheers
Chris
1/16/15, 2:34 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
It was pretty funny! I've been busily thinking up a dodgy storyline and hopefully will get it onto the net over the next few days. Good fun and also very silly - this is my kind of contest. hehe! No need to reply.
Hi Kutamun,
Hey, that's my line! ;-)!
Cheers
Chris
1/16/15, 2:37 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Congrats on managing to keep feet firmly planted on both paths. It is a juggling act is it not? Plus you're building local contacts and networks whilst making an impression. Well done.
Cheers
Chris
1/16/15, 2:42 PM
exiledbear said...
Cool a working fluid at the poles and heat it at the equator with coils and a long-ass insulated pipeline. Run a bunch of stirling engines turning dynamos in the middle.
Not exactly power generation and has been mentioned before - use gravity to create a transcontinental transport system, by digging into the earth and letting a railcar slide downwards and then at the middle turns back up.
If I were forced to use nuclear power, I would dig deep into the base of a mountain and stick a bunch of RTGs in there, run the power cables back up to the surface and then seal it all up with a lot of concrete. It runs until it doesn't and then when it doesn't, it's all already buried so deep it won't affect anyone.
1/16/15, 4:05 PM
chrome_fox said...
Several economists whom I follow have made similarly depressing predictions as you for 2015:
Steve Keen: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52c4c212e4b019e1bba20f52/t/54b4ed4ee4b0b491c39819b8/1421143374162/Final+Outlook+0115+x.pdf
John Aziz on UK economy:
http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/the_risk_of_deflation_in_2015
RAGHURAM RAJAN
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/outlook-for-global-economic-growth-by-raghuram-rajan-2015-01
I have noted the many fancy (Orwellian) terms coined by the economic elites: "secular stagnation", "new mediocre", etc and the lack of mention regarding energy or Peak Energy. Regardless, the elites are starting to admit that things are not looking too good out there.
Steve Keen also produced an economic model with energy as the factor of production before. You rarely see economists confessing about the insanity of infinite growth on a finite planet. Links here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14vVhhNvWX0.
In fact, my journey to this blog started with my curiosity with regards to the 2007/2008 global financial fiasco when I was in high school. Can't overstate how much NakedCapitalism blog and their daily links (your blog is often featured these days, by the way) have changed my perspective about society and finance. All roads do lead to Rome, apparently.
Currently reading Energy and Wealth of Nations by Charles A.S. Hall and Kent Klitgaard to help me deepen my understanding on the dynamics between energy and economies.
As for your contest, several ideas on bio-engineering and nanotechnology are floating in my head. I might actually submit a piece in the weeks ahead.
1/16/15, 5:34 PM
Paul said...
"Another exotic idea is to use strings to convert wind to sound waves and convert the audio energy to electricity."
Sci fi got there first!
An author called Colin Capp did a series of short stories about "The unorthodox engineers", and one of his stories, "The Subways of Tazoo" had precisely this idea as it's central theme.
1/16/15, 5:51 PM
Paul said...
oops.
1/16/15, 5:52 PM
oilman2 said...
Things always go in cycles - just hard to see when your lifetime isn't at the beginning or end.
I think in the end, things will settle down to something resembling pre-Oil - waterworks, power mills, river and ocean transport, etc. I think our kids are nervous and excited, those intelligent and imaginative enough to see through the clutter. As always, some cannot see.
I think time, which is the only thing any of us have to trade, will be more wisely spent. I think civility and thoughtfulness may make a comeback. Greed will never go away, but maybe it can be viewed as unpleasant and frowned upon, rather than glorified.
Something in the communal psyche needs to change gears - energies need to be redirected to quality from quantity, to beauty from flashy - many things need to change in perspective or else we just repeat various civilizations seen in our pre-Oil history, in an altered environment.
We need a new way - we have enough history already to know what did not work and why.
I think our children are up for the change - they smell it coming and want something better and more humane.
I still loved Mary Shelley collecting lightning for powering her monster - let's just build giant capacitors and collect static charges....
1/16/15, 7:08 PM
FLwolverine said...
And maybe the worst part will be the recognition that there's no hope, there's no way out, that things are going to get a lot worse before they start to get better. My mother could dream of becoming a teacher ( which she did), my father could leave home to seek a job "up north". All of which resulted in a nice middle class home and college educations for my sister and me. Not a likely outcome for a child born this decade, I think.
Sorry to be such a downer, but that's the future I see. I'm trying to figure out how to prepare my grandkids for the decline, but I grieve for them and what awaits them.
And whoever says they consider this future an exciting challenge or an improvement over today's situation, I say: more power to you! whatever attitude works for you to get through the coming long descent! But take a good hard look at the reality ahead before you decide to inflict it on generations yet unborn.
1/16/15, 7:45 PM
Kaitain said...
The Archdruid has said repeatedly that he expects that Europe will end up divided into Russian and Islamic sphere's of influence. I am inclined to agree that is the most likely scenario.
So will France end up in the Russian or the Islamic sphere of influence once the frontier begins to stabilize in a century or two? Sadly, Europe is likely to become a battleground between a resurgent Russia and a resurgent Islam, especially if another of Greer's predictions pans out and Russia loses control of most of Siberia to China. In that case, Russia will likely expand to the west instead, drawn in by the ongoing wars between Islam and what's left of European civilization.
Spengler also predicted that Russia would form the basis for the next great civilization, which I tend to agree is also very likely. Spengler pointed out that one of the more common catalysts for the formation of a new Culture is a major war with religious overtones. The role of the Crusades in the emergence of Western civilization is a case in point. I suspect that the coming wars between Russia and Islam for control of Europe and Russian attempts to liberate Europe from the coming Islamic invasions and conquests will play a similar role in the flowering of the nascent Russian Culture, in much the same way that the Crusades to liberate Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land from the Saracens helped bring about the flowering of the Faustian Culture that underlies Western civilization. Things are going to get very interesting indeed in western Eurasia over next few centuries…
1/16/15, 8:44 PM
steve pearson said...
Steve
1/16/15, 9:34 PM
Grebulocities said...
You had a positive trend in comments-per-post throughout the late 2009-late 2014 bumpy plateau in economic growth, energy production, commodity prices, and the like. Now we're rapidly spiraling into the Panic of 2015, and you're one of the sanest voices there is on the Internet, with an extremely long track record of reasonable thought and action. As the vision of perpetual growth fades from our collective mind as the coming downturn accelerates, your popularity is going to increase rapidly among an even broader base of people. It's not an accident that you've developed a following among people with a science/engineering background, for instance.
My questions to you have to do with this: are you ready? Do you think you'll be able to respond to 600-1000+ comments, or will you have to respond only to selected ones, or not at all? How might this affect your future books? Have you thought about what you would say if you become one of the not-so-tame intellectuals that occasionally pop up in the media when the tame ones aren't able to explain what's going on?
1/16/15, 10:15 PM
Unknown said...
@Bruno B.L.
http://xkcd.com/1191/
I'm surprised no one else posted this first.
1/16/15, 10:22 PM
ed boyle said...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvesting_lightning_energy
Doesn't work.
prana collection works for yogis, martial artists but frying an egg in your hand after heating it up bysuper concentration and techniques would kill you.
1/17/15, 12:12 AM
KL Cooke said...
"So I then came up with the idea of travel by vacuum tube, like the ones they have at bank drive throughs. She did every thing she could to shoot that idea down too. Funny thing is, I just found out that Elon Musk is ACTUALLY designing and planning to build such a system for travel. Truth is more ridiculous than fiction."
See This:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit
1/17/15, 1:16 AM
KL Cooke said...
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-wacky-inventions-of-rube-goldberg/
1/17/15, 1:51 AM
KL Cooke said...
"Every time I pass by the windows of one of those giant fitness gyms and see rows of sweaty figures plodding on electric treadmills, I wonder why the process cannot be reversed in order to inject all that plod-power into the national grid. Who needs squirrels? It's a win-win solution. Exercise and renewable energy!"
Now couple that with a government mandated fitness program to reduce the cost of similarly mandated "universal health care," and you have a triple win.
Especially for the guy making the treadmills.
1/17/15, 2:04 AM
KL Cooke said...
"And babies are expensive, but they may end up being the only retirement resource we have"
I had two. I'm pushing 70 and still keeping them going.
1/17/15, 2:13 AM
Andrew H said...
An entry in the Great Squirrel Case Challenge of 2015. I hope you enjoy it.
Ice Power
Cheers
Andrew
1/17/15, 3:05 AM
Kutamun said...
In other news , just had a beer with a Chevron Oil engineer who assures me that there is much oil in the Great Australian Bight not far from Adelaide at 3000 m deep...waiting for the purge and whipsaw to boot up this project at $80-$100/ barrel ( hail mary ) .. gorgon and wheatsheaf LNG projects about to go into production in western australia to supply American LNG to Europe ( yes ozzies , we are a vassal ) ..
the high ups in oil and gas are probably reading this blog and agrreeing with it ....,
1/17/15, 4:49 AM
oilman2 said...
Everyone scoffs at relevancy, but in this case it is important. A pre-WW1 life is an amazing thing in and of itself. The hardships you speak of were 'normal' before the Age of Oil and through much of the short Age of Coal. There will always be "new normals" for humans who survive change - they are the adaptive ones, the flexible ones, the ones who love living.
People find a way to happiness, especially if they are encouraged with love and laughter in the face of ugliness. Children are fine with the world they are born into - they know nothing else unless they are taught, but even then it is not their memory.
Children are born with happiness - why do 2 year-olds prefer playing with an old refrigerator box rather than a smartphone? Simplicity and imagination and creativity and FUN! Most want to laugh.
If things do revert to supremely harder working conditions (doubtful IMHO, as civilization retains more with each resurrection), then this will simply be the new reality. Only the boomers and those from the Age of Oil will even realize there was something else. This is why boomers had to be taught about the Great Depression - we did not live it.
I am not preaching to you - rather encouraging you to try to embrace the coming change in lieu of lamenting loss of 'stuff'. Be the guy who teaches grandkids the simpler and smarter way. Excite them to choose differently. It is an opportunity to lose the bad parts and hang on to the smart and better parts.
I look at my own offspring and then wonder how I could imagine denying them life because of my own fears for them...
1/17/15, 5:20 AM
daelach said...
Now while Laulhere needs annual sales in the order of magnitude of a million pieces, Guedon makes about 3500 per year. He doesn't even try to beat the Chinese competition in price, as one of his berets costs around 35 Euros for the end customer (that's 17.5 times the Chinese price). But there's still a market for people who want the real, hand-made thing and who don't mind that good work costs good money.
With the cheap fossil fuel (and thus, industrialisation) gone, things like clothes will cost more than now anyway. We will have less of everything. While we will lack the resources for e.g. ten crappy things, we will have the work force to make one good thing that's built to last. So we will have to compensate the decrease in numbers by increasing the quality.
Denis Guedon said that the companies that need big sales volumes in order to be economically viable are about to disappear, that's why he went down in scale. Actually, that's the point relevant to this blog.
The other advantage is that he can make these berets in the traditional, pre-industrial manner - which dropped out of use because it isn't suitable for industrial production. He makes them adjustable, i.e. not fixed to a certain head size. I think that's how it once was since you could not stock a large number of pieces in all sizes back then.
1/17/15, 6:16 AM
Jim Irwin said...
1/17/15, 8:38 AM
Myriad said...
"Deep beneath the equatorial oceans, two gargantuan worms made of stone and metal glide in darkness and eerie silence through a mile-wide steel tunnel. Thousands of miles long, weighing trillions of tons, they hurtle ever westward at a thousand miles an hour, circling the earth every day. One of them chases the moon but never catches up to it, and the other flees ahead of the moon but never gains ground.
They sound like nightmare creatures from ancient mythology, but if the future envisioned by Professor Anton Myriad of the Developmental Origination Research Center (DORC) comes to pass, these gargantuan high-tech machines dubbed 'Midgard Serpents' will not only become reality, they will provide all the energy needed for all human uses for thousands of years into the future... "
Get the full story here. Enjoy! Comments welcome. I'll say this in advance: though it sounds bizarre, the principle is sound. Various practical aspects, of course, render it less than workable.
1/17/15, 11:13 AM
fosforos said...
1. The input of solar energy every day is much, much more than is needed to support a far larger (not desirable, though, for other reasons) human population,
2. Energy-conversion technologies are a very immature technology that is progressing and cheapening very fast, driven in large part by the dynamic, unstoppable, improvement in information processing and materials technology.
Druidic pessimism is as relevant today as the Gallic oak forests that Caesar felled and the Druidic human sacrifices that he ended.
1/17/15, 11:18 AM
Stuart said...
FlexPiles, I call them. It's important not to fall into easy pessimism about the power of the FlexPile to replace fossil fuels in our modern technological society.
1/17/15, 11:36 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Dan, graphics aren't required -- a sufficiently delusional press release would be fine.
Steve, I've heard it discussed, but never in the US media.
Mike, sheesh. It's getting really hard to parody the real world these days...
MawKernewek, true enough! Now all you have to do is work out a corporate conglomerate whose acronym works out to BRAN to dike and pump the drowned cantref!
Bogatyr, I've been watching that situation.
Bruno, it sounds like a first-rate squirrel case to me!
Jason, excellent. You're in the contest!
Diana, I had to read that twice to be sure I wasn't imagining things. I could readily believe that in California, but in Northumberland? Hmm...
Marty, thanks for the links! One way or another, it's going to be colorful.
David, fascinating. If they'd just given the kid a share in the royalties, they'd have had a cash cow for years to come! ;-)
Wolfgang, good. Now factor in the phenomenon of ecological succession, in which species that maximize entropy gradually lose out to species that minimize it, and you've got one of the core points of my book The Ecotechnic Future.
Ed-M, get 'em in. I foresee a mighty army of marching squirrels before this is over!
1/17/15, 11:48 AM
Morgenfrue said...
If someone tells you they can guarantee your child a life free of failure, hardship, grief, and pain, they are lying to you or trying to sell you something, or both. The idea that you need to live in a (fossil-fuel-powered) bubble to have a life worth living is unfortunate - especially considering where we are headed.
It's also easy to tell other people they shouldn't have kids. Especially if you already have yours.
This is not to say that everyone should or must have kids, or that practicing discernment with regards to timing is unnecessary. But every child is a leap of faith.
(Full disclosure: I have two (small, very underage!) eggs in this basket.)
1/17/15, 11:51 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Thomas, thank you for the stories! Very funny. I'd certainly encourage you to come up with a contest submission, too.
Joel, you're welcome.
Bogatyr, well, we'll see. Sooner or later, no doubt, but the imminent collapse of Nigeria has been predicted for a good long while now.
Elizabeth, thank you!
Daelach, sounds like the most sensible thing you could do just now.
Exiledbear, I'll look forward to your formal contest submissions. Those ideas are certainly competitive...
Chrome_fox, thanks for the links. Please do come up with a contest submission -- the more the merrier.
Oilman, your prediction is not too far from mine; I'll be expanding on that in upcoming posts.
1/17/15, 11:54 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Ed, all the more reason to use it as the keynote of a squirrel case!
KL, I do indeed. Might be a good source for ideas...
Andrew, excellent. You're in!
Daelach, that's very good to hear. I'll look 'em up when I'm next in the market for a beret.
Jim, it's a typo, but I found it amusing enough to leave in place.
Myriad, excellent! What makes a squirrel case work is precisely that in the abstract, it could work -- it's just the annoying details that get in the way. You and DORC are in the contest.
Fosforos, and where would we be without the blind faith of the true believer? As long as you insist to yourself that those are the only two fact(oid)s that matter, you're going to be perpetually blindsided by a reality that fails to conform to your fantasies, because you're quite simply wrong: those aren't the only two things that matter. The laws of thermodynamics matter; so do the laws of economics; and it really doesn't matter how energetically you wave around fact-free adjectives such as "dynamic" and "unstoppable," those laws determine whether an energy source is going to be able to supply the needs of an industrial civilization, or not.
1/17/15, 12:04 PM
markbc.net said...
Regarding nuclear, I have heard that the reason uranium reactors were favoured over thorium ones decades ago was because they can provide feedstock for warheads which the thorium reactors do not, despite thorium being a better and safer design. Regardless, the thing that really gets me chuckling is the insistence by nuclear proponents that we are somehow short of electricity, when we aren't. We have a liquid fuels problem and that will cause social decay long before we run out of electricity. Furthermore, Alberta alone claims to have over 6 centuries of recoverable coal at today's N American consumption rates so I see no shortage of electricity on the horizon. And beyond this, coal can be turned into oil... for a price. I imagine that $200 oil will bring this out as well. Of course it will be slow, which again plays into peak oil.
1/17/15, 12:13 PM
Morgenfrue said...
Personally if someone gave me a farm tomorrow I would starve to death or die in the process. I can't farm, tend livestock, and I never saw a potato come out of the ground before last summer. My carpentry skills amount to putting in an ikea kitchen really crooked. Also, my husband is office fauna with ten thumbs - basically a brain in a jar.
So I guess I can either keep dreaming of the country life (which basically being unattainable right now is the ideal dream, since it will never have to stand up to reality testing). Or I can accept being paralyzed by fear and just wither away where I am. Or I can do what I can. Maybe we wage slaving urbanites can start a You've got to start somewhere club.
Here's what I can do now, in or from my apartment, which does not even have a balcony: I cook, I bake, I make our soap, I knit, I sew (garment sewing, approx intermediate), I read. Last year I shamelessly used my toddler to get one of the leftover plots at the local school garden, which they distribute among the under 6 set. This year I managed to get my hands on a real allotment, which admittedly will take half an hour's travel by bike and train to access. This list sounds more impressive than the reality because we both work full time and have two small children so our time is very limited, but the skills are there or in progress - and some of it can be done as a family activity if I'm not too picky about the results. Like the gardening, which is my priority right now - there are so many good reasons to learn that, crisis or not.
1/17/15, 12:18 PM
markbc.net said...
In a nutshell, it ain't gonna happen. Energy conversion technologies have barely advanced in 50 years and are near the limits. And IT can't do anything to provide the necessities of life, other than allow us to find otherwise too deep and inaccessible FF reserves, which merely adds a few decades onto the timeline and makes the inevitable collapse even worse.
http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/90662/keep-your-eyes-prize?page=1#comments
1/17/15, 12:19 PM
Merle Langlois said...
As someone who's been reading this blog since 2008 and is now far more interested in Galabes all I have to say about that is "thank God." Somehow, I have a feeling you'd be able to take the seven league step and in the course of less than a year, you'd be back up to two hundred comments with every punter in the commentariat talking about how they were loyally following along with your latest prescription. I used to get jealous in a petty way when everyone posts about how Green Wizard they are, now I just get bored. And don't even get me started on the posts about technology. My favourite posts are the ones where you just blow everyone's mind and almost no one responds except Bill Pulliam, Onething, and Chris ;) .
1/17/15, 12:22 PM
onething said...
My frugal sister was speaking about the gobs of energy used by the average American household, and what she uses, and then I went home and looked at my bill and never spoke of the topic with her again...
Looking at my last bill, they are saying I used twice as much last December as this one, which really does not compute at all.
Anyway, total year usage 6280 KWH comes out to 523 per month. That's about 17 per day.
1/17/15, 1:42 PM
George R Fehling said...
Long-time reader, first-time poster. Here is my contest entry:
Scientists plan mission to sun to “jump start” Earth-based fusion reactors
Scientists at an entrepreneurial NASA spinoff have announced a bold new program to seed nuclear fusion reactors here on Earth with plasma captured from deep within the sun. If all goes according to plan, the first spacecraft will begin harvesting small bits of solar fusion particles within the next five years.
http://underhillpress.com/
1/17/15, 1:52 PM
latheChuck said...
So, when a creative squirrel-cage scheme offers enough power "to charge a phone", it appears significant. Practically, it's just "a drop in the bucket".
It's like riding my bicycle 3 miles to church on Sunday, then driving 500 miles per week commuting. Obviously, getting a new bike with a lightweight frame is not going to improve the situation. (That's just an illustration, not what we're doing... this year.)
1/17/15, 2:05 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
I've got my boots on waiting to see where you lead us! Should be interesting at the very least. I have a great respect for the fact that you can reply to as many comments as you do.
Tonight is booked in to commence writing what will possibly be the silliest essay - for the competition - that I have written for quite a while. Although, now that I reflect on the matter I had an article on bubble baths published recently and that also had very high silly - yet subversively informative - quotient. It was surprisingly popular and also very fun to write. No need to reply.
Hi Morgenfrue,
You're cool. Life is full of uncertainty and risk.
Of late, I've been wondering if risk is an unspoken part of disenssus?
Cheers
Chris
1/17/15, 2:24 PM
The other Tom said...
I live in a very small, compact city where everyone is very connected. The street grid and buildings are largely unchanged since 1930. I don't need to drive unless I'm leaving the city. I think Kuntsler would approve of the apartments over storefronts, and the fact that you can live, work, and play I'm the same area. This just might be a viable post-collapse city.
I'm expecting a great demand for modifications of homes and apartments in the coming years, to smaller units that can be heated. That will be my niche, to use my experience for barter, I hope.
As a fallback option if life in a city is impossible I have established two primitive camps about five miles apart. I can walk to these camps in four days with a pack. (I did a rehearsal trip) I have been going to the camps to practice my skills for 25 years now, and have buried basic tools and supplies there on the woods. Since it is impossible to know how quickly or violently things will unwind it seems best to keep all options open.
I think it is interesting how there is no blueprint for riding this out. Depending on one's skills and physical ability, and especially on location, there are many paths to a new life. I often wonder what I have overlooked, if I could be wrong about everything, but knowing that others take decline seriously and are preparing the best they can for a meaningful future is a great inspiration for me.
1/17/15, 3:25 PM
latefall said...
1) Describing a state that may theoretically be physically possible, and bringing it about with a large bunch of pampered hairless monkeys yelling at each other are two very, very different things.
2) What may or may not be an immature technology is best judged in hindsight, no? And with regard to processing technologies - to the best of our knowledge there are physical limits. And before you ask, good silicon is one of those bottlenecks. If you have good ideas to fix that please tell me and I'll pass them on. Then we can concentrate on the next bottleneck - finding enough of the rare metals to make more crucibles. If you happen to have some iridium lying around in the garden (be sure to look hard - you'll have to go through about a billion other atoms to find one) you could send that to http://heraeus-pt-labware.com/en/products/standarizedcruciblesdishesandlids/cruciblessinglecrystalgrowing/crucibles-single-crystal-growing.aspx
I am sure they'd be happy to take it. Alternatively you could mine it from asteroids as seems to be en vogue. You might have to convince someone to kickstart your logistics part though. Shouldn't be too hard cause with a solid 40 times higher abundance (vs a generally expected payback time of 5 years) you can surely make a business plan they can't deny. If for one reason or another it does fail to convince (or work out) we just go back to point 1).
Notwithstanding there are things we can do, and there are things we should do (and there are loads of things we should not do). I know how it feels to be "almost there". When you see those curves intersecting and you want to shout: "Double or nothing!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t93PJlv3EgQ
And then you either get there (e.g. traveling close to mach 1) or you don't (traveling above mach 1). But even if you do, somehow you still have to go to work on Monday and your co-workers and boss suck just as much (if not more), you're not losing that weight, and coke is now sold in green bottles as well as red, and if you are lucky you find out why it wasn't such a good idea in the first place. If you are extremely lucky it might turn out to be a good idea after all. Then the question remains if this is the right time for the idea, or if you get shouted down.
Two more things to get you started with materials science and information processing:
The first law of materials science is: "Everything can be broken." It is not: "Everything can be made."
On information processing: please try very hard not to mix up "data processing" and "information processing".
That said, please don't let people get you down, and keep at it & keep some hope. I would be very happy to read another post of yours in a week, maybe after you read 2-3 more articles on the ADR or e.g. the "Do the math" blog if that style is more to your taste. If you can bring yourself to do another honest comment next week or the one after it would probably be much appreciated by the commentariat.
1/17/15, 4:37 PM
oilman2 said...
I so hate a tease. Out with it and take that 7-league-step, further if you like. Personally, I have limited patience for those suffering from a dearth of imagination. And, I really don't want to post another 70-odd comments to make you.
Imagination helps people cope and gain perspective, especially in a changing environment, It's the initial seedpod of creativity - everyone does not possess it, yet most truly believe they do. Strange quirk of human nature, that.
It would be quite refreshing in the face of galactic quantities of "Doom Porn" to stretch imagination in a positive direction. Good for the spirit, soul and mind to enervate new pathways rather than upping the ante in the old one...
1/17/15, 5:10 PM
JessicaYogini said...
1/17/15, 6:24 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Morgenfrue, you know, I've been saying for years, as loudly as I can, that getting a farm in the countryside is not the only option; for most people, it's not even the best option, and for many it's not viable. There are many other, better options, which I've gone over at vast length. I'm not sure what I have to do to get through the mental earwax on this subject...
Merle, all in good time. I have some things I still want to say about pedestrian topics like the survival of technology in deindustrial North America before we get really weird.
George, excellent. You're in the contest!
LatheChuck, that's an important issue. I'd say, though, that instead of "high-value" and "low-value," it's a matter of "used by individuals" and "used by infrastructure" -- the latter is frankly more valuable than the former, but less visible.
Cherokee, I'm looking forward to this. The bar for silliness has already been set pretty high by the entries already received, but I'm sure it can be exceeded!
Other Tom, well, yes. I don't live on a farm, either!
Oilman, as I noted to Merle, all in good time! Still, I've said just about everything that I think needs saying about the end of the industrial age -- I've been talking about that for getting on for nine years now, at no small length -- and though there are some details to fill in, it's time to broaden the focus a bit and head out into stranger territory.
Jessica, I'll look forward to your entry!
1/17/15, 6:50 PM
Matthew Heins said...
This statement is slightly inaccurate. Even before your discussions of the mid seventies, a test molten salt fission reactor had been operated at Oak Ridge for some years.
Not to argue for MSRs as a "solution" to our supposed "problem" that is really, as you stress, a predicament. But they are a whole different story from OTECs, which really have never "made it off the drawing board".
In my opinion, this sort of innacuracy allows unproductive counterarguments to linger in many energy and environmental debates. So best avoided even if it seems of little importance, I say.
1/17/15, 8:03 PM
Violet Cabra said...
http://winterstrickster.blogspot.com/2015/01/scientists-and-entrepeneurs-join-forces.html
1/17/15, 8:46 PM
team10tim said...
RE: "I'm not sure what I have to do to get through the mental earwax on this subject"
A series of primers might be useful. I've gone back to read your original posts, though only once, and you had very few comments in the early days. It's a pretty safe assumption that most of your readers have read far, far less than all of your writing.
SUB RE: "if I start getting more than 300 comments on posts on a regular basis, I've got at least two options. The first, which I've done more than once before, is to shift the focus of the blog even further into taboo territory than it's gone so far -- that reliably brings the comment load back down."
While this might cut down on number of comments, or act as a flake filter, it is only a temporary reprieve. As you doubtless know, the reward for good work is more work. As evidenced by the "which I've done more than once before" part above. While a football stadium of fans might be your personal limit for direct management, you should think about how to put the overflow to good use (with projects like the green wizards forum (after all, there is a lot of work to be done))
Thanks,
Tim
PS Outstanding work, as far as influences in my life go, you get the gold star. Thanks!
1/17/15, 10:13 PM
Morgenfrue said...
But I think you're one of the very very few not shrieking about secret forest hideaways and survival seeds in a can. That's going to cause a lot of waxy buildup.
@Chris, thanks! That means a lot coming from you!
1/17/15, 10:33 PM
steve pearson said...
I think it was definitely a dilemma in his own psyche, as you noted it was with many of his contemporaries.
Interesting that Yeats was never taken to task for his fascist sympathies.Then again neither was my father.
I can never think of the WWI vets without" And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" running through my head. Though he succeeded financially, etc, I don't think my father ever recovered from WWI.
Didn't know about the oil deposits in SA: Poor fella my country!
Regards, Steve
1/17/15, 10:38 PM
Bogatyr said...
The headline is misleading, since rather more fundamental tasks of government are also going to have to be performed by citizens.
"Communities will be forced to start fending for themselves in ways not seen for generations when cuts to frontline services leave councils relying on local people to cook for elderly neighbours, start volunteer library services and sort out their own transport for children."
At the same time, the government is proposing to ban all internet encryption - for our own safety, of course.
Welcome to Britain in collapse...
1/17/15, 10:41 PM
Derv said...
Here's my submission to the contest: "Many-worlds Theory Offers Tantalizing Possibilities," written as a hero-worship piece much like the ones you see in Slate, Rolling Stone, AP or Scientific American from time to time. Hope you all enjoy it!
https://mundicide.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/many-worlds-theory-offers-tantalizing-possibilities/
1/18/15, 12:50 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
I believe that I have taken it to 11 (rather than the usual 10 on the dial). Whatever, that's my opinion and it was a true pleasure writing such nonsense. Here is the entry:
GM zucchini feeds worlds growing demand for energy
I must apologise as I quoted you in it! I hope you have a sense of humour?
Hi Morgenfrue,
No worries! Seeds are the start of a long journey and not the end point. I heard a radio show about a prepper a few months back and they were full of big talk about this and that and then they happened to mention that they had only 60L of fuel stashed away with a small 2kVA generator. Now unfortunately having experienced one of those generator beasts, I know that 60L will last about - well not long - lets put it that way.
Cheers
Chris
1/18/15, 1:27 AM
gjemd said...
1/18/15, 5:33 AM
Walter Bazzini said...
It could work! And even if not, it would be a great way to incinerate the trash.
1/18/15, 6:14 AM
Myriad said...
A few highlights that could tie into stories:
- A wood crisis in the U.S. circa 1840. Cold hearths are in store from the Ohio Valley through New England. Plans are made for narrow-gauge mule-drawn rail lines to press into the remote arboreal forests of Canada, but can these projects really harvest more wood than they consume in transport, or are they nefarious investment scams that will make things worse?
- Sail ships haul South American timber to the Azores as a fueling station for the high-tech luxury trans-Atlantic steamship trade. But international conflict and native rebellion are stirring in the tropical forests.
- The study of synthetic hydrocarbons arising from the quest for "artificial whale oil" for lighting results in the invention of exotic chemicals like "butane" and "octane." With war brewing in Europe, it would be dangerous if those formulas were to fall into the wrong hands.
- So-called "daylight foundries" use concentrated solar heat for small-batch smelting. casting, and other applications. But they're limited by the difficulty and expense of making smooth shiny surfaces. (Silvered mirrors are as expensive as fine jewelry.) Newly-discovered solid hydrocarbons and the abundant yet elusive element aluminum seem to hold a solution, but the government, beholden to greedy grasping untermenschen, wants to seize the secret from its uncompromising square-jawed inventor. Then something about a gulch, and Apollo shrugs.
Okay, scratch that last one.
1/18/15, 7:09 AM
Derv said...
That idea has been proposed and refuted many times. Rockets have about a 1% failure rate. That means one out of every hundred launches or so would spread a fine cloud of nuclear waste over thousands of miles. Really, it's far, far worse than what we're doing now, which is quite terrible enough.
1/18/15, 11:37 AM
FLwolverine said...
@morganfrue & oilman2 -
I tried to choose my words carefully, but apparently there's some misunderstanding.
First, I'm not telling Carolyn or anyone else that they shouldn't have children, and I'm not accusing someone who has children of doing something wrong or bad. To do that would be both presumptuous and useless.
Second, I'm not lamenting the lack of "stuff" for your children and my grandchildren. What I listed were three things that I think most parents want to provide their children: health, safety, and hope.
- Despite the bashing that goes on around here of the modern medical system, modern medicine is by and large a wondrous thing. Childhood diseases - measles, whooping cough, polio - used to kill lots of kids; they still do in parts of the world that don't have vaccinations and sanitation. The arm injury I suffered in 1950 would have left me crippled if it happened in 1920. On the other hand,my mother lost her first child in childbirth in the 1940's in a situation that (as far as I can determine) 1990's medicine could have remedied. As we go bumping down the slope of collapse, those are the kinds of things we're going to lose. And as much as I respect traditional medicine, I would submit that it is not going to compensate for those losses on a one-for-one basis as they happen. As in many other areas, we're looking at a chaotic and dangerous future. I think potential parents should think long and hard about bringing children into that future and, if they do, how they are going to defend and protect those children.
- Safety: surely you've read the discussions here about warlords and other violence. Surely you've read about the likelihood of food shortages caused by changes in climate and disruptions of agriculture and distribution systems. Somehow this planet is going to get back to a sustainable number of inhabitants. The 6 or 7 or 8 billion deaths needed to accomplish that are not going to all be "somewhere else", and they are mostly, in my opinion, going to be fairly unpleasant. Again, I think potential parents should think long and hard about bringing children into that future and about how they will protect and defend them.
1/18/15, 11:58 AM
FLwolverine said...
OK, this started out as a response to morganfrue and oilman2, but may have veered off into something different.
If it is too much of a rant, or way to far off top, please feel free to delete is and the continuation. Also, I apologize if I mischaracterize or misinterpret something you have said. If I did that, it certainly wasn't intentional.
------------------
Oilman said "I look at my own offspring and then wonder how I could imagine denying them life because of my own fears for them..."
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "life", doesn't it?
Do not romanticize the pre-WWI or pre-oil or pre-coal life styles until you've lived one of them for awhile. Take a look at some of those programs that other people have referenced here. The one I remember most vividly was about people trying to reenact 19th century homesteading in Montana (or Wyoming, or some other place with dreadful winters). At the end of the summer, the experts judged that most of the families would have no chance of making it through the winter, based on the amount of food they had stockpiled. "Not making it through the winter" means that they and their livestock would have starved. And remember that these were people who (a) started off healthy and well nourished and probably with all their vaccinations; (b) had the benefit of experts and researchers to tell them how things could be done with the supplies they had available; (c) spent only one summer and KNEW that this was not really life and death for them and their kids; (d) knew that they could be rescued if there was a medical emergency (death by tetanus from stepping on a rusty nail is a really horrible way yo go).
Now put yourself (mentally) in that situation with young kids but without the expert advice and knowledge and without the escape route at the end. Add in the possibility that climate has become more unpredictable, the probability that the whole area is less safe (no US Cavalry to protect you from outlaws), and the near certainty that you are not dealing with pristine land or water. Sure, you can mitigate the situation to some extent by being part of a community and by acquiring some knowledge on your own. But without a surrounding civilization to provide resources (tools, cloth, seeds), how well are you really going to do? Are you really prepared to watch a child due of starvation or malnourishment or tetanus or the flu?
Here's another thought experiment: Imagine that you and your family have retreated to a location where you think you can ride out the coming collapse. (In my thought experiment, which may or may not become a novel, that location is in northern Michigan, near water and with relatively unpolluted soil.). Assume for the moment that you have acquired a house and a bit of land. Now imagine how you are going to provide food, clothing, health care, safety for your family.
Now carry that story along for several years or decades, as our civilization declines. Maybe you grow vegetables and raise chickens and a cow or two. Where do you get the flour for your bread? Who grows the the grain? Who grinds it? How do you pay for it? Where do you get the cloth for clothes and blankets, etc (assuming someone can sew)? Who grows the cotton, processes it, and produces the thread? Who weaves it? Who raises the sheep and processes the wool? How do you pay for it? How do you heat your house? How do you pay for it? Suppose your chickens are killed by a fox or a dog? Where do you get replacements?
Just think about getting through each day, moment by moment. I'm not saying it can't be done. Obviously millions of people have done it. But.......
1/18/15, 11:59 AM
FLwolverine said...
But remember that we're talking about you and your family - not someone who is the umpteenth generation of peasant or serf or farmer and who has inherited the knowledge and practices of countless ancestors. No, this is you, 21st century American, who has to learn all of this from scratch in a social, political, and natural environment that is continually deteriorating.
And hope? How much hope is there for the next dozen or three dozen generations? You might start from that 19th century lifestyle, but for the next few centuries, each generation will be going backward, as cheap fossil fuels and technology are more and more lost. What hope will you have to pass on to your children? Yeah, kids grow up mostly accepting what they have as "standard", but the likelihood is that they will have less and less as they grow older, and their kids will have less and less, and their kids, and so on. It's called the Dark Ages.
That's what the Archdruid saying, isn't it? This "preservation of knowledge" project isn't for your kids or grandkids; it's for people two or three or more centuries from now when things stabilize enough for some kind of new civilization to emerge. "Star's Reach" isn't set in the 22nd century, after all.
Now, when I posed similar concerns to JMG some time ago, his response (paraphrasing and my recollection, so I may have this not quite right ) was that he didn't/couldn't know what the future would actually bring, and his intention was to do what he thought might be helpful to future generations, ie, preserving knowledge that will help that new civilization emerge.
I think this is a wonderfully sane approach, so I keep working on it myself. But it does not change the very strong possibility that the future will be pretty awful for many who live through it. And I personally think that one should think long and hard before bringing children into it.
1/18/15, 12:00 PM
Ellen He said...
I'm really starting to wonder if I should continue believing in the Long Descent narrative, as there are many other narratives in between the extremes of Singularity/Progress/Cornucopianism and Apocalypse, and because some of them offer more hope than the Long Descent narrative that says we can only prepare for the Long Descent in which things will get a lot worse before they get better and not really do much to stop or reverse it. I was especially convinced by this article that argued that we could make a 'hackstable' future. The author defines this future as: "...a marginally stable future where the upward lift of diminishing-magnitude technological improvements and hacks just balances the downward pull of entropic gravity, resulting in an indefinite plateau..." The reason I want to choose this model/narrative is because it gives me some hope to change the future in the short-term by working on technology so that the improvements can just slightly balance entropy. As you know, the techno-environmentalists support this view.
1/18/15, 12:37 PM
Chester said...
I don't know how good a "retirement resource" a child can reasonably be expected to be. But assuming your motives for wanting to have children go deeper than securing your long-term financial stability, I don't see any reason why the long descent should be a deterrent for having children.
It just seems like bogus logic to me to say to oneself, "Oh, future generations won't enjoy the same standard of living as I do, so let's just pack up this whole humanity thing and call it a day." There's violence in every generation, political upheaval, exploitation, strife, you name it. Doesn't mean we should shut down.
To me, it speaks to the depression phase of coping with collapse that JMG describes in "Not The Future We Ordered."
Perhaps I am just defensive because my wife and I are facing a similar choice. We've put off the decision so far, but as she we tip over into our 30s, questions of fertility make the decision on whether to have kids a now or never prospect. At this point, it seems a question of timing more than anything, and things aren't exactly going to get easier than they are now.
As for the house question, that's probably specific to your particular financial situation, but I hope we're able to buy a house to have some kind of tangible asset and place to garden in the event things go willy-nilly. I will miss the freedom of movement that comes with renting though.
1/18/15, 1:31 PM
Dr. Simon A. Shakespeare said...
Sorry it's been a long time since I commented, but I've been very grateful for everything you've written over the many years. Sadly, as the following press release and media article point out, everything you've said about making your own reality (and about economists for that matter) might turn out to be wrong...
Economium - LSBE Press Release 18 January 2015
Economists Solve World Energy Crisis
I am, of course, joking; these are my entries to your squirrel case contest. Hopefully no-one will be fooled into thinking either of these are real outputs from respectable business schools or esteemed media outlets.
All the best,
Simon S.
1/18/15, 2:11 PM
August Johnson said...
First, I do not in any way find the subject of Green Wizardry boring at all. However, JMG has written a rather large amount on the subject and I imagine he doesn't really want to repeat it for newer readers. I'm very interested in wherever he takes this blog as well as The Well of Galabes. I read that too. I think that anyone who wants to see what JMG has written, do what I did since I discovered the ADR back in 2009 or so. I have gone back and read not only all of JMG's posts, but all the comments. There's more than a wealth of information there. JMG doesn't need to re-post his older writings, they are all there to read. (Now if somebody wanted to make up an index, that would be a great project.)
Read his books, Green Wizardry, The Ecotechnic Future. If you don't have the money to buy them, see if your local library has them or can get them. If that fails, try a post on the Green Wizards website and maybe someone can let you borrow a copy.
I think it's time that WE put the Green Wizards site to good use, I don't know if it was JMG's intention when he mentioned that Registered Users of the site would be able to vote on the “The Great Squirrel Case Challenge of 2015” but I was hoping he did it to entice more people to sign up. Go back to the time around July – September 2010 and read JMG's posts about his thoughts. His post of June 30, 2010 introduces the concept of a Green Wizard. It's up to US to carry this forward and develop the repository of knowledge and the means to pass it on the future Green Wizards. JMG can't do all this for us.
...
1/18/15, 2:54 PM
jean-vivien said...
As for predictions... Not exactly in the future any more.
Re police forces :
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/us-usa-police-poll-idUSKBN0KO17620150115
Re lampposts :
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/18/us-usa-biden-shots-idUSKBN0KR0QO20150118
Terrorism is a wild card, all of a sudden culprits are found across Europe, and we happily ever after. Hmmm... hard to figure out the lies from the truth in that one.
Now the other, much more challenging task in this blog's project is to provide people with a vision of what needs to be done right here, right now, and not in the ecotechnic future. A lot of that has already been sketched out, and the comments so far are pretty much to the point. It will hopefully ease the job.
Finally there is a third objective : get people to do things. Err... That is precisely where we, as readers, are the most empowered, and should feel grateful that we have been left only with the most interesting part of the goal to achieve :-) And it is already starting, judging from the comments.
1/18/15, 2:54 PM
August Johnson said...
My own personal project in this is to attempt to help a group of Green Wizard minded people do this for the means of communication by Ham Radio. JMG had a great post on July 2, 2008 that I believe is an excellent path to follow. The future is going to need to have people skilled in communicating with less than ideal equipment and under less than ideal conditions. This knowledge needs to be gathered and learned well before it is needed. The time to start this is now, not 50-100 years in the future.
I have set up the Green Wizards Radio website and have a small forum there for interested parties to discuss some of the more technical aspects that may not be of interest to the other Green Wizards that frequent the regular Green Wizards forum site. One thing that I am also hoping to do is to help interested Wizards obtain equipment in an affordable way. I like taking equipment, both tube and solid-state, that I either get very cheaply or for free, and repairing it and getting it out to others to use. I have a backlog of rigs sitting on shelves waiting for me to get to them, a move got in the way and delayed work.
I can't do this by myself, any more than JMG can direct a Green Wizardry program by himself. I had started contacting some of the other Hams that were already on here, but had to stop to make a major move and deal with some other family problems (that in itself would take 5 years to describe my disgust at the legal/justice/elder-law system). Now we're working on getting our gardens and other things set up again. I finally got my antenna up just a few days ago and made decent contacts around the US and even Brazil on only 50 watts. Let's get this going again, let's all keep this going and not depend on one person to lead it.
BTW JMG, I've been given yet another TR4 to clean up and restore!
1/18/15, 2:55 PM
daelach said...
However, that means if the absolute zombie apocalypse broke down on the US right now and the US were forced to suddenly cut down consumption by whole 50%, even then they'd just arrive where we in Western Europe have never passed. Of course not, because Western Europe is "first class vassals" while the US are the centre of the empire. But be assured that quite a nice way of living is possible with such a consumption. Of course, that's not sustainable in the long run; but it isn't the complete collapse right now, this year, either.
Another point is that the US leadership has had the wisdom of not starting wars that would fire back on their own lands. That's unlike Germany where it took the leadership two times (and the hard way) to find out that a centre position isn't suitable for major wars on both sides. Maybe a better geography education at school would have been helpful. After WW2, Germany was in ruins, major cities completely destroyed. If I walk through my city, there are whole quarters of glass and steel. The reason is that these quarters had been razed to the ground by 1945. In silent, foggy nights, some still can see the fires burning.. Forget some skyscrapers collapsing, think of whole cities that looked that way.
The whole infrastructure was also down. On the other hand, many refugees from the eastern territories who feared the revenge of the Russians for what Germany had done to them. I'm talking of women with a handcart, carrying a little child and some clothes, loosing everything they had. If they made it at all instead of being gunned down by aircraft with machine guns. A fate that still was nicer compared to be group raped by Russian soldiers heading for revenging their beloved ones.
Well, the Germans who had been more fond of giving lead to women and children alike, if not gas. Luckily enough, the Russians were permenantly low on ammo. So low actually that Russian style "first aid" was carried out with a spade in order not to waste a cartridge.
1/18/15, 3:04 PM
daelach said...
In the big cities, especially the one where I live now, people lay on the water side of the dikes during the bomb raids. Unlike what the Nazi propaganda told, there were not enough bunkers for the civilians. They watched the phosphorous bombs hitting the roofs of their houses. Phosphorous bombs were especially nasty because they could not be extinguished with water. Not that water would have been available since the water piping was already destroyed. They didn't hope so much that their house would be missed, just that the bombs would not come down on their side of the dike, i.e. on their heads.
After the war, things didn't become that better, apart from that the bombs and the Nazis stopped being around. The refugees were not welcome to the locals. Not to mention the food scarcity. In the British sector, e.g. in Hamburg, the scheduled calory amount for an adult was 1200kcal per day. In winter, and 1946 had an exceptionally severe winter. In reality, the amount was rather 800kcal.
The women of my grandparents' generation had really cool jobs then. With many men fallen, they had to fumble through the ruins, searching for intact bricks and hammering the mortar away so that they could be re-used. It was even more fun in case they were widow mothers. Let alone that they got pregnant before marriage and the man fell. The child was regarded as a bastard child, and the women got a damn bad standing. And a child to feed. Anyway, they were never thanked for that work; when they grew old, they just got a tiny rent too small to live on and just a little too much to die.
I remember a nice story here, I think it was last year. A leftist demonstration spun out of control, fireworks flying around, massive police forces trying to get the situation under control. Normal state of affairs here on May 1st, at least in certain quarters. A young 17 years old girl hid in a house entrance, completely frightened and crying. A calm old woman hid in the same entrance, looked at the crying girl and just smiled at her, saying "now you got an impression of how it was in war."
1/18/15, 3:05 PM
daelach said...
Compared to what my country has seen (and that's still fun compared to Russia!), anything that might hit the US right now is just kindergarden stuff. Just calm down a bit. Be lucky that your country has never seen really hard times, but please don't freak out even at the thought of just cutting down consumption to what just is normal in Europe. I admit, that to quite some US Americans, completely normal things like public transportation seem to destroy America because public transportation is evil satanistic communism, and driving cars for Jesus is mandatory for God's Own Country. Or so. Come on..!
Seriously, what I've told didn't just happen to some distant families, it happened also to mine. All of it. And I'm around nevertheless. Granted, it is but memories by now, but you can bet that it did influence my education because my parents still had lived through the times of poverty and misery. So I must admit that I don't understand what that short-term "US collapse" actually is about. What you fastidious US Americans may call "collapse" would have been heaven on earth to my family!
It feels to me like if you were inhabitating a completely different universe?! That all leaves me just thinking "what the frack are you talking about". But maybe giving up car, TV, smartphone, microwave and coffee machine doesn't feel like collapse to me because I don't have them anyway. The whole sewing I'm doing is just handwork with needle and thread - no sewing machine. Even my computer is greying. So what, I'm still lucky. Compared to quite some US Americans, the end time has been real for me for many years now, but voluntarily. What would I need a fancy car when I wake up every morning, seeing my beloved wife.. (:
now playing: Ludwig van Beethoven / Schiller - Ode to Joy
1/18/15, 3:05 PM
Melissa M. said...
Mr Greer, what got it through my fuzzy brain, was a comment in one of your blogs way back when, (pardon this crude paraphrasing) stating that even in the time of old-fashioned pirates, doctors and people who could repair ships tended to live charmed lives, because they were far more valuable when alive and happy, than in any other state.
You described it in a vivid way that made it easy to visualize, and made the concept easy to apply.
People are familiar with the survivalist bunker, the green little farm, and the one-minded group-hug type community as responses to collapse, but there's no stereotypical alternative that doesn't require owning land or perpetually getting along with large groups of people. So people have a hard time visualizing one.
A several post story demonstrating trades or tactics that will keep someone fed, housed, and surrounding people inclined to keep them in one piece, or a contest for short stories that demonstrate unorthodox, low-budget but viable responses to collapse, might help people wrap their brains around affordable, productive options that may work for their natural inclinations.
(and I'll say right off, that anyone around me who can knit, or has surplus produce, herbs, soap, brew, or muscle, won't go wanting for energy healing, or basic repairs in wood, metal or leather...)
I've been thinking about the squirrel contest, and hope to slip a story in.
1/18/15, 3:39 PM
Thomas Prentice said...
2015 is the year for nightmares, including Global Heating/Climate Disruption nightmares of the First Order. Once they occur, they will trump anything else, infrastructure, peak oil, Syriza, UK elections, you name it.
Please read this CounterPunch article by Robert Hunziker:
***The Dreaded Methane Veil***
"A veil of methane originating in the Arctic is heading southward, slowly spreading all across the Northern Hemisphere.
"As it happens, with 2014 the “hottest year ever,” the Arctic heats up evermore. It is especially vulnerable to the effects of heat-trapping green house gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2). In turn, the warming Arctic is stirring up humanity’s biggest nightmare, methane (CH4).
...
In that regard, “pre-industrial methane levels” in the atmosphere were 720 ppb (parts per billion). One hundred fifty years later, on January 19, 2014, CH4 over the Arctic was recorded at 2,362 ppb. By all appearances, the increase in CH4 is coincident with the era of industrialization. Worldwide GDP and CH4 now slope upwards in parallel."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/16/the-dreaded-methane-veil/
Please also take the time to view these youtube videos also covering the methane time bomb issue and positve feedback loops, tipping points and other linear and nonlinear effects of Global Heating:
The Arctic Death Spiral and the Methane TIme Bomb (please forgive their incorrect spelling of "spiral")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoztduCa1uw
Please also take a look at these two webcasts from this past December's 2014 Lima, Peru Climate Conference, 1 and 2:
1
COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #1 (12-4-2014 in Lima Peru)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2w0q6gxNiU
2
COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #2 (12-5-2014 in Lima Peru)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQkNxuQ0DoI
When I initially started to be a Global Heating Alarmist in the 1990s, it seemed as if the Climate Apocalypse would surely hit before collapse of global, industrial capitalist empire civilization. Now it seems as if the two looming apocalypsi are racing neck and neck.
With any luck -- and were 'it not for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all' as the song goes -- collapse of global, industrial capitalist empire civilization in 2015 might be just in the nick of time to force a massive, involuntry cut in CO2 emissions that possibly could seriously slow the looming mass extinction event of millions of species from the birds to the bees to the human species.
But maybe not.
It would be pleasing to have at least a semi-livable planet upon which we could build that campfire atop the wreckage of civilization and decide together what to do next -- and to be able to do so in spite of the massive human, plant and animal die-off which is almost certainly ahead, called "The Sixth Extinction" of this "Anthropocene Age."
In any case, 2015 is certainly NOT looking to be "an especially good year" for 7 billion bipedal primates with opposable thumbs, large brains, language and the ability to make tools and to think in abstract ways.
Please read the CounterPunch article and take the time to view the videos.
Things may be worse than they seem.
1/18/15, 4:56 PM
Avery said...
Note the source of the claim you are making. The author, one Venkat, is squarely placed with the Silicon Valley set. I'm not sure if you're familiar with technocrat culture, but they are basically intelligent, engineering-minded nouveau riche. They either harbor the "singularity" fantasy (which Venkat describes) that a computer-god will rescue the world from our problems, or else they recognize the problem of decreasing energy returns but have an intense desire to preserve their own wealth and standard of living.
I don't doubt that there will still be an upper class in the West for centuries to come, but weigh the benefits of Venkat's desire to "weaken the host just enough to feed off it" and JMG's "collapse now and avoid the rush". Would you rather be a parasite on a dying system, or the seeds of something new?
It seems that Venkat has written a series of essays called "Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths." This may be tongue-in-cheek, but of course he chose the title on purpose, and such an attitude of mental gaming and "hacking" one's deeply felt values is typical of technocrats.
1/18/15, 5:16 PM
August Johnson said...
Treadmills for punishment
1/18/15, 5:19 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Violet, excellent! You're in the contest.
Tom, oh, I know, it's a temporary reprieve at best. Life consists of a series of temporary reprieves.
Morgenfrue, oh, granted. I'll keep on yelling.
Bogatyr, welcome to the industrial world in collapse.
Derv, excellent -- you're in. The tone of groveling, tail-wagging hero worship is particularly choice.
Cherokee, and you're in too! Liked the names of the principals.
Gjemd, go look up what percentage of spacecraft launches end with the rocket blowing up and scattering the payload over hundreds of square miles of the Earth's surface, and then take a few moments to work out the likely consequences if that were to happen with the same percentage of nuclear waste launches. By the way, do we know for a fact what dumping a whole mess of heavy metals into the sun might do?
Walter, no argument there. I eagerly await your entry!
FLWolverine, I normally don't put through multiscreen comments, but yours and Daelach's are important enough that I'm going to bend my usual rules.
Ellen, the future doesn't care what narrative you want to believe, you know. If you want to choose a narrative on the basis of whether it makes you feel good -- which is what talk about "hope" usually amounts to these days -- hey, don't let me stop you.
Simon, hah! Very good. You're in the contest.
1/18/15, 5:37 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jean-Vivien, the third one's always the issue, but as you've noted, there are definitely people doing it right now. I'll be talking more as we proceed about the range of options -- remember, folks, buying a farm in the country isn't the only option, and for most people at this point it's no longer an option at all.
Daelach, thank you. I'm going to give you tonight's gold star, precisely because you've made a crucial point about just how bad things can get. One point, though -- it could get that bad here in the USA. Unless some things change in a hurry, in fact, I expect it to get that bad here over the decades ahead, though it'll probably be domestic insurgency rather than foreign invasion that has people huddling in basements hoping to be alive when morning comes.
Melissa, many thanks -- it's good to hear that somebody's been paying attention. You're right -- I should consider fiction as a tool here.
Thomas, please go look up how long methane remains in the atmosphere, and factor that into the somewhat overheated claims you're circulating. Mind you, I won't be at all surprised if we get a drastic temperature spike in the north polar region at some point not too far in the future, driving the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and visiting sixteen kinds of misery on the northern temperate zone. In fact, I've factored that into my predictions, and discussed it here repeatedly -- and no, that won't trump everything else; it will add an additional source of disruption to a kettle of trouble that's already coming to a boil.
1/18/15, 5:48 PM
avalterra said...
>>You have a fiction writing contest. You should have an "alternate energy" contest and have people send in their looniest ideas. I will bet that more than a few will end up appearing in the media.<<
1/18/15, 9:32 PM
daniel said...
1/18/15, 9:56 PM
Scotlyn said...
My grandparents thought long and hard about children during the Depression & WWII, my parents were convinced nuclear bombs would blight our future, my husband and I thought about practicalities, like a roof, as well as the certainty of climate change... I think it is safe to say ppl will think long and hard about children. And then, as often as not, take the leap of faith prompted by the life within us, and the imprinting of our many ancestors back to the very first who did the same. For good or bad, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, til death do us part, so we carry on this absurd and courageous project called life!
1/19/15, 12:41 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Many thanks, what a great idea the competition was. It was very fun to write. Yes, the names were a bit naughty - there is a bit of subtle and also not so subtle humour in there! hehe!
There is a new blog post up tonight too talking about steel and concrete stairs, tropical monsoons, seed saving and tomato updates! All good fun and lots of cool photos: The go away price
Cheers
Chris
1/19/15, 2:44 AM
Thomas Mazanec said...
1/19/15, 3:40 AM
Thomas Mazanec said...
1/19/15, 3:55 AM
jonathan said...
1/19/15, 5:32 AM
peacegarden said...
Thank you for that.
I was hearing the elegy from Mr. B’s Eroica; the Pittsburg, PA symphony played that as a response to the sad events on 9-11 on the Saturday after wards.
As we wept,I thought of my grandparents, peasant stock, both sides, one set from Poland and the other from Ireland and what they knew in their DNA…that melancholy and deep grief…how unlike life here in the land of plenty.
We are indeed fracked if we can’t even deal with kindergarten stuff…I will be meditating on your posts and my heritage for some time. Then on to new action and thoughtful parsing of what else we can let go of next, and next, and next. And decide again what we can pass on to the future.
Peace,
Gail
1/19/15, 6:44 AM
yo said...
http://www.crude.com/investor-center/oil-gas-investment-v4/?gclid=CKSbwrixoMMCFQioaQod9psAWw
1/19/15, 7:45 AM
Moshe Braner said...
When I ride my e-bike (electrically assisted but I also have to pedal), when somebody asks me "is that an electric bike", I KNOW that their next question is going to be "does it have regenerative braking". Or something like that, e.g., "does it charge the batteries when you pedal". When I try to explain that I am already working as hard as I'd like to, just to keep it going, and the e-assist is there to transfer energy that originally came from the grid, via the batteries, to help me by augmenting my pedaling, I get blank stares.
1/19/15, 8:39 AM
TMM said...
http://hyadrepr.blogspot.com/
1/19/15, 9:43 AM
TMM said...
1/19/15, 9:51 AM
RPC said...
1/19/15, 10:11 AM
John Roth said...
This statement is slightly inaccurate. Even before your discussions of the mid seventies, a test molten salt fission reactor had been operated at Oak Ridge for some years.
I keep seeing this statement. They had half of a reactor: the project to build the rest with all the necessary trimmings had been funded when it was canceled.
The amusing thing about the rather fantastical press release mentioned earlier this week is that Oak Ridge doesn’t have anything except the paper trail - all the people who worked on the thing have, by this time, either retired or died of old age. The plans only tell you so much - a lot of the most important information is in people’s heads or in ancillary processes that were never documented. The same thing happened with the Saturn V rocket. They had to reengineer it from one of the spares for the Mars rocket competition.
In counterpoint, there are several projects that are working on building the real thing; at least one of them is expected to be online this year. We shall soon see how reality matches the hype.
And no, it’s quite capable of building bomb material. The Oak Ridge partial reactor created enough for a bomb, which was reportedly built and tested. It’s just horribly inefficient at that task compared to uranium breeder reactors, which is at least part of the reason it was cancelled.
@JMG
By the way, do we know for a fact what dumping a whole mess of heavy metals into the sun might do?
Basically nothing. Stars similar to the Sun swallow whole planets without detectable effect.
1/19/15, 11:04 AM
Eric S. said...
1/19/15, 12:00 PM
Michelle said...
1/19/15, 12:51 PM
Morgenfrue said...
What I mean by every child being a leap of faith is that every (good) parent wants his or her child to thrive. As you say, health, safety and hope. And right NOW, living in the industrial west, we have a reasonable chance of being able to do that. Most people probably don't think too seriously about the alternative. But, like I said before, there are no guarantees. You may assume that your child is safe, but he isn't really. Car accidents, cancer, stupidity, violence, drugs. Yeah, pedestrian stuff, but it still happens and not necessarily to someone else. War happens and boys are sent off to die. Tsunamis happen and whole families are wiped out. That's what I mean by a leap of faith - that they'll make it in spite of everything.
I don't necessarily disagree with your vision of the future, although I don't live in the US, so will be facing a different variation on the tune of descent. (One that will involve lots of cabbage and potatoes when the supply chains collapse.)
I can only do my best to protect my own children. I don't know if they will have children, or live to adulthood. I couldn't know that anyway. (I'm a nurse, I have no illusions about children being immortal.) But I have no control over what happens five generations from now - to not have children because I'm afraid their descendants will be peasants or fall prey to a warlord or famine seems ridiculous to me.
Sorry if this is incoherent, it's past my bedtime here.
1/19/15, 1:03 PM
MawKernewek said...
http://www.indexmundi.com/united_kingdom/birth_rate.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-birth-rate-leaps-by-18-in-a-decade-9107483.html
I am not convinced this is mainly a phenomenon driven by foreign born parents.
1/19/15, 1:10 PM
jean-vivien said...
if you are gratified with a daily commute by public transportation, and own a smartphone (also known on this blog as an instrument of all technological evils), try to find some classical texts on the Internet, poetry or plays, and once you have picked up one that you love, try to learn it by heart. Imagine that you are playing it in front a loved audience, entranced into the intensity of drama... Shakespeare, Greek tragedies, whatever. if you know your text well enough, you might end up focusing energy around a drama project. Focusing on one specific scene of a long play does not demand too much focus, so it is perfect for commuting situations.
And we (as in, people who can afford to enjoy screen-based entertainment) badly need to re-adquire some of the memory/focus abilities we have lost. Makes us smarter, but also better humans hopefully.
Even now, acting performance is still a highly regarded form of entertainment. Whether it is gonna gain value in the future is hard to tell, unless YOU make it happen of course.
1/19/15, 2:31 PM
Derv said...
I found your comment very interesting, and it's true that we Americans live in a state of luxury. Heck, I'm "poor" for the time being and am baffled how anyone could need more than what we have. Some of us do appreciate it, at least.
But there's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. A lot of the infrastructure that would provide for less consumption doesn't exist in many cases. I'm lucky enough to live close to a store, a hospital, etc., but many people live miles away from even basic access to necessities, while in an area with little or no public transportation. So it's not as though we could flip a switch and go to "Western European" mode. :)
Beyond that, the real risk is the degree of specialization that we have. Your grandparents were probably pretty resourceful and provided for many of their necessities. They had a pool of experience and a community of low-tech specialists to depend upon. But Debbie in Human Resources and Bob the waiter and Chuck in Accounts Receivable? If the grocery store doesn't have food to swap for green scraps of paper, they starve to death.
Basically, we don't have any freaking clue what we're doing, collectively speaking. Collapse doesn't mean that we have to go back to working the job my grandpa did. It means I have to figure out how to properly skin a deer, or my children die. We don't worry about the luxuries (which we have in abundance), but the necessities, because we're almost completely disconnected from the basic stuff humans did to get by for thousands of years.
Imagine dumping a bunch of 6 year olds in a ghost town and leaving them to fend for themselves, and you're not far off. The people on this blog (et al) are the big kids, who have a few years and skills. And even many of us would be pretty screwed without weekly deliveries on the Wal-Mart truck.
So cut us some slack. :) I'm perfectly happy walking to the store or not playing video games, as long as I don't watch my kids starve or freeze to death. We just know that, right now, if we cross a certain line, nearly all of us are in the dark. And that can get ugly, fast.
My two cents, anyway.
1/19/15, 2:34 PM
ghostlimb said...
When a cyber-attack shuts the internet and its tentacles down, those who have prepared have a temporary advantage.
But when they are discovered by outlaws, motorcycle gangs and ne'er-do-wells, their small community breaks down and is taken over by the outlaws - a plausible scenario not anticipated by many with good intentions.
1/19/15, 4:35 PM
Shane Wilson said...
a lot has been made of political turmoil shutting down oil production, particularly in the middle east. Do you think that some oil might make it through the first few rounds of collapse for some oil wells to be revived once things settle down a bit, albeit for much more restrained uses? I could see that happening, although I'd imagine that all the recoverable oil would be depleted by the time the ecotechnic age begins.
1/19/15, 6:13 PM
Robert Mathiesen said...
After 53 years that story still haunts me. Therefore I recommend it to American readers who are overly worried about the coming collapse. It will give some perspective.
There are English translations on the web. The title translates roughly as "Rats do too sleep at night!"
1/19/15, 6:36 PM
FLwolverine said...
That's your analysis. Pray god that you are right. That isn't my conclusion, and I'm not thinking just about five generations in the future, but about children born in this decade.
Maybe living outside the US, you can see a different future than here. But I have watched lives come apart here - a job lost, a severe and costly medical problem, a series of arrogantly made choices that result in losing everything (except student loan debt and unpaid income taxes, of course) - and I have a feeling for how quickly everything can go wrong. Basically I agree with Derv: "Basically, we don't have any freaking clue what we're doing, collectively speaking. Collapse doesn't mean that we have to go back to working the job my grandpa did. It means I have to figure out how to properly skin a deer, or my children die. We don't worry about the luxuries (which we have in abundance), but the necessities, because we're almost completely disconnected from the basic stuff humans did to get by for thousands of years."
So, no, Morganfrue, I wouldn't reach the same conclusion as you. Maybe if I were 22 again I would agree with you and be willing to take that leap of faith. I don't know. Let's be clear that I'm not judging you, even we don't see the future in the same way. I am definitely not judging whether it's right or wrong for anyone to have or not have children. The only truly "wrong" course of action, in my opinion, would be to refuse to think about the future and consequently to be unprepared to protect and defend one's children.
But AFAIK my starting point differs from most commenters here: in the long run, I'm not particularly interested in or excited about prolonging this human experiment. We've had our chance; we fracked it up. Maybe new human civilizations will arise; maybe not. I do not have high hopes or high expectations for them, because I have no hope or expectation that humans will behave differently in the future than they have in the past or than they do now. They will IMO, keep screwing up every opportunity.
BUT I can't do anything about that. Since the one thing I'm sure of is that humanity will go on - people will keep making babies! - and since I do have some skin in this game (kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews), as far as I can figure out the only sane approach to the future for me is that proposed by the Archdruid: to preserve knowledge and information that will help those future generations cope with the mess they find themselves in. To help those I love cope with the immediate future. And to try to contribute to the mess as little as I can.
1/19/15, 8:02 PM
chola3 said...
If not absolutely sure you dont want a child, go have one. If in low density area have 2.
I would even suggest adoption for those who dont want to create their own.
But, speaking as a person who went through a harrowing experience of nearly losing my new-born baby, accept that the chance of something bad happening is higher in the coming future.
In my thinking:
in the current society (middle class in kuala lumpur), my child has a 95% chance to make it to his 30th birthday.
If we are going to reduce to 2 billion in a century, it would mean my child's chance to reach his 30th birthday is 68%. There are steps i can take to increase the odds. Just healthy food and gardening ability to get good vegetables might increase the odds to, say, 85%.
I am sure the must be some others actions on my part to increase the child's odds to 90%. Then it is up to chance/luck/providence.
In the meantime the brat is enjoying his 3rd year on earth and i will do my best to let him have the best. No schooling him to death the malaysian way.
1/19/15, 8:03 PM
Morgenfrue said...
1/19/15, 9:54 PM
Kylie said...
1/19/15, 10:18 PM
Adrian Skilling said...
1/20/15, 2:57 AM
Pierluigi Dipietro said...
there is a technology that could be os fome use in the post crash, if something of the previous infrastucture could be preserved.
It is called Kite Winf generation.
His characteristics:
1)reasonably simple and low-cost tech (which also has low cost maintainance).
2)Green ( or maybe greener than the current wind energy)
3) considerable higher output of energy
4) considerably less intermittent (or not intermittent at all)
Drawbacks
1) it will not solve the fossile fule demise, nor will be a substitute of it
2) it gives only electricity, and the issue of a energy storage is still to be approached for large scale use
3) It is stille dependant from electronics in some degree (for the part of automated control involving the use of sensors put on kites and the controlling software to be runned on a laptop. and for the part of converting electricity from continuous to alternate, licke in PV).
In my view, this tech is the best fitting for a time of decadance: much less capitals and mantainance needed, less energy output than the fossil, but still very much more efficient and delivering than the current greeen one (barring the thermal solar, which for me is the best overall deal ).
It seems to me that we will have much less gas i nthe future, but hopefully some electric power to carry on decently (more or less to the level of Cuba in the recent decade)
Have a nice day
1/20/15, 2:59 AM
Phil Harris said...
The links you gave did not include 'fertility rate'
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=31
Admittedly there is a speculative extrapolation in the calculation of FR but over time there has been a significant European decline in FR i.e. the number of children for each woman. According to this link UK fertility rate is still below the long-term replacement rate of 2.0.
There are apparent contradictions in population statistics mainly because of the long lag between birth and reproductive age - linked also to the span of reproductive age - apparently confounding longer term trends like FR. It is not too surprising to see sudden blips in birth numbers apparently because of external circumstances or social changes synchronising behaviour in women of reproductive age. There was a baby boom in UK after the start of WWII - for example. My mother had two more children after a gap of 6 years, and my younger brother and I met some others of the boom in large classes of children when we reached school.
best
Phil
1/20/15, 5:02 AM
Ellen He said...
I have decided to stick with the Long Descent narrative because it's already too late for industrial civilization to apply beneficial modifications to save itself. However, it's possible to do beneficial modifications and improvements of the system on a local and personal scale, using modified principles of the Hackstability narrative expressed in this quote:
"Now extend the argument to all of civilization as a single massive technology that can never be thrown away, and you can make sense of the idea of hackstability as an alternative to [total] collapse. Maybe if you keep hacking away furiously enough, and grabbing improvements where possible, you can keep a system alive indefinitely, or at least steer it to a safe soft-landing instead of a crash-landing."
1/20/15, 7:18 AM
FLwolverine said...
I can agree with that description, and I suspect meant more people agree with you than with me. My question is why? Why do you and others want to continue the human experiment?
That's a straight question. I am curious. And as you know from our discussion here, I'm not advocating any actions to end any existing human life (humanity is doing a good job of that on its own). I just don't see a good reason to contribute new lives to the experiment.
1/20/15, 7:21 AM
Tyler August said...
"If not absolutely sure you dont want a child, go have one."
Wow. Just. Wow.
Please, no one listen to this. Do the exact opposite. If you are not absolutely sure you want a child, wait. If your fertility clock is running out, wait; you can always adopt. It's much harder to reverse your decision if, after a few years, you decide procreation was a bad idea.
I have seen some of the fallout that an unwanted child can bring and have to live with-- why risk ruining multiple lives if you aren't absolutely certain?
This has nothing to do with the long descent or expected standards of living; even on the upslope, when upwards mobility was a reasonable expectation, too many people took Chola3's attitude, and left broken lives in their wake.
Oh, I know-- there are maternal and paternal instincts. Most people fall deeply in love with even the most inconveniently unplanned children. Not everyone, though, and it can get ugly enough that my internal actuary quails at the risk.
Life is precious. Do not gamble with it.
1/20/15, 7:52 AM
Tyler August said...
I think the point of divergence in your thread is far, far too late. The lack of coal would already be having large knock-on effects on European civilization before North American colonization; coal was already becoming an important fuel for industry, heating and cooking in the 14th century and earlier. Increased pressure on northern European forests will change history long before the narrative you set up has time to happen.
For example, without coal to offset wood-burning, Britannia would have never had the timber to build enough ships to rule the waves; North America would have likely then stayed French, and the French pattern of settlement was much lighter than the English one, which would prolong the life of North American forests. England herself would have likely stayed an underdeveloped nation, exporting raw wool to the continent and importing (hand) manufactured goods. There might never have been an industrial revolution at all, beyond increasing refinements of the 'zeroeth' (ecotechnic) industrial revolution of the middle ages.
1/20/15, 8:03 AM
Nastarana said...
1/20/15, 8:19 AM
daelach said...
@ Derv: Community? What community? Germany turned from "well-ordered" to "in ruins" only in the last two years of WW2 since during the first four years, Germany instead wreaked havoc on other countries. Then you could not just relocate from the east: First, cars were not wide-spread, fuel was not available to civilians either, and the railroad was used for military transports. Second, the Nazis didn't want millions of refugees from the east because that would have spoiled their "final victory" propaganda. You couldn't even put up a white flag of surrender on your house as long as die-hard Nazis still were around because they would have executed you on the spot. The time window for leaving was narrow: after the die-hard Nazis either fled or came to terms with reality and before the Red Army arrived.
Those who were bombed out out of the western cities were put to smaller cities and had to work in ammo production, just to make the lost war last a bit longer. No time for building up something useful. In fact, even saying something like "building up a community for after the war" would have got you executed since that would have implied doubting the "final victory". Plus that the Nazis became even more paranoid after the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944.
We were in no way resourceful. Knowledge like running an inn or so is quite useless when you have to abandon the building. Parts of my family came from those eastern territories that were already lost after WW1. They built up a modest life, but only to loose everything again 20 years later in the bomb raids of WW2. There were other, more lucky families who stayed prosperous or even rich after WW2..
But as you may have guessed by now, fortune never befriended my family that much. The very best card any of mine could hope for was labeled "alive", and quite some didn't get even that card, especially men. Somehow muddling through was the motto of the day after the war. Even for the children who had tasks like stealing some coal from the coal trucks.
1/20/15, 9:05 AM
daelach said...
Didn't the Archdruid say something about "LESS"? Maybe "less of a car" would be a starter. (;
The good thing, however, is that "peakoil" doesn't mean "empty". When transportation got cheaper and cheaper, the old, decentralised structures went away in favour of WalMart & co. That will also work the other way round because local structures will beat the current ones as soon as the big transportaion overhead will stop to be economically viable.
In the same way, public transport may re-appear. I mean, the car is what kills public transport in the first place. If everyone drives in his car beside the bus, the bus is empty and will get canceled. If fuel stops to be dirt-cheap, then the fact that a bus with enough passengers takes much less fuel than the cars will make a bus line viable. Of course not every ten minutes if the urban sprawl doesn't allow for a high density of population. Maybe only one bus per hour. So what, that was what I had when I commuted to the university where it was one train per hour. A car would not have been in my budget. I neither could have afforded renting a room near the university and thus lived at home, plus that I was needed there.
Or you can use the bicycle or even the feet for a short distance. When I was 10 years old, my school was 2 miles away, and I used the bicycle. Even in rain where I put on a plastic poncho. It was worse in winter, and the 1980s still had real winters. My parents didn't drive me by car because they had to work. So when it was 10 inches of snow and -15°C (5°F), my ma woke me up half an hour earlier than usually so that I had the time to walk, of course with the satchel on my back. That wasn't exceptionally hard in those years, that was just normal, even for a 10 year old child. Well, helicopter parents were not yet around back then. On the other hand, we had the fun of snowball fights even before school, when the snow was best.
Maybe you see now why I have a somewhat different standard for what "LESS" means.. (:
1/20/15, 9:06 AM
Grebulocities said...
1/20/15, 9:52 AM
Morgenfrue said...
I understand that some people don't want children or circumstances prevent them from having children, fine. But to put that on the scale of humanity, and ask why continue - that's like saying "why do you not kill yourself?" It seems a backward question.
You would prefer a peaceful extinction? Is there so little of value in humanity?
1/20/15, 11:04 AM
Cathy McGuire said...
cathymcguire.blogspot.com
And I will post the entries we've gotten so far over on the forum. David emailed to say he's down with flu, but we will get a voting mechanism in place in time to vote! If you want to vote on the forum, check that you can post a comment - if not, email me at c athy @ cath ymcgu ire . co m (remove spaces) and I'll help you.
1/20/15, 11:10 AM
Shane Wilson said...
1/20/15, 12:12 PM
Myriad said...
I think you're right, if you're talking about the divergence of political history, such as who was establishing colonies where and when. The original discussion was more about the eventual development and paths of technology (the "tech tree" to use a simulation gaming term), so e.g. "New England circa 1800" represents a resource situation and suite of commonly used technologies for which one can ask what would have happened next, rather than a claim that that exact situation would have come about at that time and place without e.g. coal in England for several centuries prior.
I do think it's likely that without fossil fuels, someone, most likely Europeans, would still have spread lethal epidemics to the New World and then later established colonies, making use of the wood and water-power resources of the east coast. Who and when could have been different, though. Of course that entire scenario could also be wrong, but I didn't discover any specific reasons (e.g. lack of ocean-worthy ships or lack of firearms) that would have prevented it from happening or made it very unlikely without coal.
A good historical study of pre-industrial artisanal uses of fossil fuels, and especially of the use of coal in the ship-fitting and firearms industries would probably clarify things. That might be more a pursuit for a professional (or dedicated amateur) historian than for a speculative fiction writer, though.
1/20/15, 4:41 PM
Glenn said...
"One thing, JMG, people on here and other blogs are talking social unrest and worse as this round of collapse proceeds, yet crime statistics are supposedly still down compared with historical highs in the 70s."
Most violent crime and property crimes are committed by young men from the age of 16 to 24. As the boomers have aged out, that demographic as a proportion of society in the U.S. has shrunk. The decline in violent crime is real. What Ferguson, #all women, et al demonstrate is a sea change away from our willingness to be subject to certain types of injustice. Flatline real income for 40 years for working class people have fed intolerance for institutionalized B.S. as well.
Glenn
in the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
1/20/15, 6:03 PM
onething said...
I have to answer that the thought of a humanityless planet seems awfully desolate, despite that it would be lush and teeming with life. It is because of the level of our consciousness. Now, I am often appalled at the low opinion people have of animals. I think they are intelligent, aware, problem solving beings with an intriguing inner experience. Nonetheless, I do not think another consciousness compares with out own, and to cut off humanity is to cut off the highest possibility that life has yet brought forth. The only thing that keeps me from total despair at the thought that we may wipe ourselves or this whole planet out is that I am pretty sure there are myriad life filled planets in the universe.
1/20/15, 6:17 PM
hhawhee said...
I also had lustful thoughts of the liquid hydrocarbon-filled oceans of Titan. I humbly submit that the details of my consortium's plan excel Mustard's for its potential to sop up all remaining productive capital on earth and for its many points of potential failure. Steps are as follows:
1) Set up a factory on Earth's Moon to build and launch several large robotic factories into the Asteroid Belt.
2) These robot factories would use the plentiful materials found in the Asteroid Belt and the low-G environment there to churn out solar-sail-powered robot tankers that would slowly make their way to Saturn's moon Titan.
3) The robot tankers would descend to the surface of Titan and slurp up some liquid goodness
4) The tankers would distill enough of their cargo into oxygen and high-grade petrofuel to be able to blast off from Titan and make their way back to low-Earth orbit
5) From orbit, the tankers would finish refining the rest of their cargo into combustible material and burn it, converting it into high-frequency radiation beamed at receiving towers on Earth.
6) At the receiving towers, the microwaves would be converted into usable electricity.
7) The tankers would retain enough fuel and oxygen to return to Titan and start the cycle over again.
8) The robotic factories would also continue to churn out robot tankers.
Having little graphic skill, I did a very nice cheesy Microsoft Paint drawing (not to scale) of the whole process). I even got the Red Eye of Jupiter in there.
I won't be submitting to the contest, but I humbly offer my idea to humanity, and anyone who wants to run with it and put even more icing on the manna-from-heaven cake is welcome to it.
BTW, I had thought of an acronym that would spell SALVATION but can't remember all the words anymore ("SA" was "SAturn" and "TION" was "TItan's OceaN"
1/20/15, 8:49 PM
Melissa M. said...
Man's Best Friend Solves our Energy Crisis
1/20/15, 11:32 PM
Thomas Mazanec said...
1/21/15, 3:56 AM
donalfagan said...
I have often attributed lower crime rates to CompStat and to our enormous prison system, but I suppose demographics play a part as well. I wonder if the crime statistics include those occurring within the prison population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat
1/21/15, 4:57 AM
Ellen He said...
Would making alliances with biker gangs for "security" constitute a hack?
According to the essay on hackstability I linked to, hacking is: "Hacking is the term we reach for when trying to describe an intelligent, but rough-handed and expedient behavior aimed at manipulating a complicated reality locally for immediate gain. "
The author argued :"I’ve concluded that we’re reaching a technological complexity threshold where hacking is going to be the main mechanism for the further evolution of civilization. Hacking is part of a future that’s neither the exponentially improving AI future envisioned by Singularity types, nor the entropic collapse envisioned by the Collapsonomics types."
What do you think of his claim , not his mindset?
1/21/15, 7:24 AM
William Church said...
"There's a fine line between salvation and drinking kool-aid in the jungle." - Gym Jones founder Mark Twight
Always liked that quote. Fits well with your concept hhawhee.
Will
1/21/15, 8:33 AM
HalFiore said...
http://mentalfloss.com/article/54634/happy-squirrel-appreciation-day
1/21/15, 1:34 PM
pg said...
Over the years of insomnia, my dad filled those pages ( to which I had added some photographs) with fountain pen script.
The older sister, 1943 vintage, totally rejected his account. The next sister, the historian of the "family" ( she taught history within the German secondary school system and married a history buff who retired as appellate court judge in Cologne) . It remains to be seen whether the next generations ( my nieces and nephews, now in their thirtees and forties) will value the hard lessons of my mom and dad.
1/21/15, 3:01 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
1/21/15, 3:35 PM
Eduard said...
1/22/15, 4:56 PM
Flagg707 said...
Don't miss out!
1/23/15, 2:27 PM
Flagg707 said...
1/23/15, 2:39 PM
Jon said...
2/8/15, 10:48 AM
Philosopher said...
2/18/15, 1:14 AM
Bengt said...
http://www.asposverige.se/2010/04/oandliga-mangder-metan/
Many regards
3/28/15, 1:12 AM