Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 10:07 pm Post subject: Unbridled Technology and Peak-oil; Cause and Effect.
I thought I would start a new thread to focus on what our options really are, as dictated by the laws of physics. The Second Law of Thermo Dynamics states that whenever energy is converted from one form to another, there is an energy loss in the form of heat. Technology is a transformer. Every technology ever conceived by the genius of man is nothing more than a transformer of energy from one form to another. We have come to see technology as if it were something almost magical, as if it was creating a new form of energy and adding it to that which already exists, so that we get more out of what was there to begin with. We call it, "increased efficiency."
Technology never creates energy; it only uses up existing available energy. Energy is always transferred from an available state to a dissipated form, or from an ordered state to one of disorder. Technology is merely the transformer. The faster we streamline our technology, the faster we speed up the transforming process, the faster available energy is dissipated, the more pollution and waste amounts, i.e., chaos.
The world we have created is not the world we think we created. Much like Orwell's 1984, we have come to believe that disorder is order, that waste is value, and that work is non-work. And yet, here we are on the brink of peak-oil, still thinking that somehow technology will come to the rescue, when in fact, the opposite is true; it will seal our fate.
History has shown us that every technological breakthrough has produced unforeseen secondary effects more disastrous than if it had never been invented. Every technological invention has appeared because the ones which preceded it rendered necessary the ones which followed. The faster we make new "transformers," the faster available energy is used up. We are always playing "catch-up." The problems proliferate faster than the solutions.
In all the other civilizations before the machine age, technology was limited in the functions it performed. It was a tool, but not a way of organizing life. In our utterly futile attempt to create order through exponential growth of centralization, mass production, efficiency, urban sprawl, technological complexity, and resource exploitation, we have created the crisis we now face. The exponentiality of the technological fix is a one-way ticket to disaster for life and for the planet. We need to stop "developing" new energy resources and live with what we have naturally, however hard, cruel and un-American that may sound. We don't really have a choice if we wish to be sustainable. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Mon Dec 12, 2005 8:16 pm; edited 6 times in total
The exponentiality of the technological fix is a one-way ticket to disaster for life and for the planet.
And herein lies the problem. I agree 100%......but most people will not. Faith in technology is nothing short of religious. The undelveloped world has the old religions, in the first world the market is God, technology his prophet. The faith in technology is so strong that those indocrinated find it impossible to denounce their faith even when faced with undeniable evidence that their market God will not spare us from the bondage of the laws of physics. They teach the "science" of economics, which of course is not a science at all, to appropriately programmed individuals in order to evangelize their faith. "Trust us, the economy looks A-OK from here." Yes, it would look good from behind the desk of whatever-channel news where you're, essentially, paid to brainwash the masses with your garbage.
The reason I say Economics is not a science is this. In science you make observations of events, you analyze the observations you have made, and then draw conclusions based upon those observations. Typically, it seems, in economics you draw conclusions based on what you believe should happen, based on what you've been taught. Only then do you make observations, you then fit those observations on what you had "concluded" at the beginning of the process. Therefore a "good" economist appears to never be wrong.
It is this illusion of economic omniscience, seen on the 6 o'clock news, that has duped the masses into accepting this false idol. The economist is never wrong, and he says technology will save us. What a shame.
The saddest thing is we could save ourselves the suffering ahead, if only we could accept the inevitability of change. Started today, and managed properly by decent people, the neccesary population reduction could probably take place through natural death ie: no gas chambers, mass starvation etc.
That will NEVER happen though because like Monte said:
Quote:
here we are on the brink of peak-oil, still thinking that somehow technology will come to the rescue, when in fact, the opposite is true; it will seal our fate
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:45 am Post subject: Re: Technology and Peak-oil; Cause and Effect.
MonteQuest wrote:
And yet, here we are on the brink of peak-oil, still thinking that somehow technology will come to the rescue, when in fact, the opposite is true; it will seal our fate.
Quote:
History has shown us that every technological breakthrough has produced unforeseen secondary effects more disastrous than if it had never been invented.
Monte, you say things like this often, and it makes me wonder: Do you disapprove of all technology? It seems, according to your analysis, all technology just speeds us toward chaos and death. Are there any technologies which you feel we should keep due to their positive benefits, for example: cooking food, or eyeglasses, or writing, or flush toilets, or medicine to control fever? In short, how does your analysis distinguish between good technology and bad technology, and on what basis?
Every technology creates a temporary point in time where there is order, and does so at the expense of greater disorder in the environment. History has shown us that every technological breakthrough has produced unforeseen secondary effects more disastrous than if it had never been invented.
Strangely, bacteria view you in much the same light. They wonder what on earth an advanced organised machine like you could possibly be useful for. They also wonder at the chemical transmission system that holds all of your cells in thrall to the common "goal", even though it will lead them all to an inevitable simultaneous crash. (a die-off if you will.)
Just like our "technologies" that you berate, we(multi cells, vertebrates, mammals, primates) are only recent advances on the timescale of the bacterial world. We are an unproven idea with dire potential consequences. We are also in the minority both numerically and by biomass. If either one of those measures were used in a determination of "ownership", this world really belongs to the bacteria.
Then again, I'm a human. So all those bacteria can &$%#-off. I am perfectly happy to risk their precious world for the sake of my existence. To go a step further, I am a "modern" human, and am also perfectly willing to risk this world for the sake of my modernity.
Your argument seems to say that complexity leads to complexity and is a bad thing. Then again, you are complexity. Or do you want to argue that complexity should only be allowed to a point. If so, to what point, and who decides?
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 7:41 am Post subject: Re: Technology and Peak-oil; Cause and Effect.
JohnDenver wrote:
Monte, you say things like this often, and it makes me wonder: Do you disapprove of all technology? It seems, according to your analysis, all technology just speeds us toward chaos and death. Are there any technologies which you feel we should keep due to their positive benefits, for example: cooking food, or eyeglasses, or writing, or flush toilets, or medicine to control fever? In short, how does your analysis distinguish between good technology and bad technology, and on what basis?
Good question, John. Therein lies the conundrum; Second Law finds technology wasteful. This is not my analysis, this is the indisputable law of physics. Where do you draw the line? What do we keep? Since all activity uses energy, and the energy is finite, we know that one day it will be gone, so 2nd law tells us that those benefits are temporary. The sun is not due to wink out for a bit longer, so in the meantime we need to learn to make things simpler, and use them less often, and at a least frenetic pace--one that is sustainable and less chaotic. I'm working on a post to suggest just that. This, I feel, is where we need to focus our "energy." _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
The problem with most of our technology is that it uses energy, it doesn't create it.
Matter is a form of energy, and we need to find a way to unlock that energy in a way we can use. Using fire to burn the remnants of dead organisms is not a very efficient way to unlock energy from matter. We need to discover more efficient means of creating energy such as advancements in cold fusion, hot fusion, zero point energy, triated helium fusion.
We need to stop using up energy for technology and start using technology to create energy. The fact that we can't apply technology to create energy makes me believe that we are a primitive civilization. The fact that most people can't look even mere months into the future makes us very primitive. _________________ "If humans don't control their numbers, nature will." -Pimentel
"There is not enough trash to go around for everyone," said Banrel, one of the participants in the cattle massacre.
"George W. Bush loves poor people. He keeps making more of them." -unkn
PB - You make a critically important point. We face not peak oil, but a set of at least four unavoidable interactive constraints which are, God willing, going to help transform this tyrannous global hierarchy into a responsible global society. I.E. : Climate destabilization; aquifer depletion; soil degradation; fossil oil depletion.
Any response to peak oil which fails to address these four together will, predictably, permit further 'economic growth' that advances collision with the other constraints, thus, equally predictably, lowering the planet's eventual 'carrying capacity.'
It seems to me very obvious that we face a global crisis that is not soluble without global co-operation, however unpopular that idea may be in the US corporate media.
I wonder how many on this website recognize that it is the climate issue,
with its escalating impacts of drought, storm, flood. rising seas etc, that wealth can do little to deflect,
and with its potential for emissions trading under the equitable and efficient allocation of declining emissions entitlements within the strategy of "Contraction & Convergence",*
that is the rational and only viable focus for that global co-operation ?
We need to stop using up energy for technology and start using technology to create energy.
But that's exactly it.........we can't.
I'm not so sure that our lack of a technological fix makes us primitive.
As Monte pointed out, I don't think technology is able to provide an answer to our problems.
No technology can create energy. The only truly efficient energy converter
is the human brain, and it took us a long way before the discovery of fossil fuels. Upon discovery of fossil fuels, humanity prematurely blew it's load, so to speak. We entered an era of massive technological progression, before we were ready.
Even now, I would argue, humanity is not ready for the advancements we've made. Our scientific knowledge has not progressed enough for us to use our technology responsibly and safely.
What makes us primitive is the way we use every possible resource until we can no longer use it. At which point, instead of learning from our mistakes, we move onto the next resource and glut ourselves on it until it too is gone. Most people would use this as proof of our advancement, our ability to take advantage of new resources once the last is exhausted. I would use it as proof that we're no more "advanced" mentally than we ever were. Indeed we're hardly more advanced than the most primitive animals in the jungle, just more selfish. We equate our more developed cognitive abilities with advancement, yet refuse to use them to advance our Ideologies. We're constantly striving to make the world an easier place, but rarely take the time to make the world a better place.
Instead we've taken the last century to defile our land, our only land.
We cut down our rainforest and killed off 1/3rd of all the life on this planet. We're currently facing an apparent ecological breakdown, caused because we didn't have all the facts before we started burning that fuel like it would last forever. Primitive indeed.
On another thread, they were talking about UFO's and how anyone who had them must be 10,000 years more advanced than us. I say not neccessarily, maybe they just didn't waste their means to advancement on silly toys and SUV,s. Nor do I suspect, any alien species which has advanced to this point, to have experienced a massive overshoot in it's first few generations of technological advancement.
Anyway I'm starting to think we're past the point where anything can be done. The american way of life is non-negotiable ie: we're Fark. Ironically our leaders, who are supposed to represent the people they lead, seem to have no sense of responsibility to anyone but t
Well, Fusion may eventually live up to the promise of actually MAKING net energy. Solar and Wind technologies are fair harvesters of energy but aren't very efficent at conversion.
Viper - yup most of those bacterica can go f#$% off EXCEPT those which allow my digestive system to work!
Technology is a ladder which builds on itself. We will never discover fusion energy living in caves. So this is just a transistion period to the future. We may fail, and go crashing down to a previous level.. Or we may succeed and procede forward with even greater technology!
Joined: Aug 14, 2004 Posts: 2063 Location: San Diego, Ca.
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 1:36 pm Post subject:
I think we are on top of the civilization/technology curve. We have arrived at the final exam. We will discover a new source of energy or slip back down the technology ladder only to live like our ancestors did.
Once we run out (very low) on fossil fuels, there will be a die off in progress and chaos (wars, famine, civil unrest, disease, etc.). Over several generations, humans will lose knowledge and a majority of our moderate to advanced technologies. We have seen this occur with other civilizations.
500 years from now, if a "scholar" were to find a detailed manual on how to make a 2000 Ford Mustang GT, how could he ever have the hopes of making one from scratch!?! Maybe the scholar could make a wooden model that is gravity powered or pulled by horse. _________________ "Peak oil isn't more than an interesting industry factoid and doesn't have anything to do with the hysterics speculated on ad nauseum around here!" ReserveGrowthRulz
Most of our technology for creating energy involves mining and drilling fossil fuels, then setting them afire to boil water and spin turbines. We can also mine and refine uranium to heat water and spin turbines. The next step would be to find a new process for converting matter to energy. Preferably, we would need a common and abundant form of matter. Helium, water, oxygen, and nitrogen are all abundant things. If we knew a way to bond 3 helium atoms together on a massive scale, we could create fusion reactors that fuse triated helium with deuterium. Almost no radioactive waste is produced, and far more heat is produced than any other method we know. We still have a lot to learn about nuclear physics. There may be atomic reactions that we don't even know about. _________________ "If humans don't control their numbers, nature will." -Pimentel
"There is not enough trash to go around for everyone," said Banrel, one of the participants in the cattle massacre.
"George W. Bush loves poor people. He keeps making more of them." -unkn
heheheh sorry about that last post. I had technical difficulties. My girlfriends parrot chewed through my mouse cord and then all sorts of crazy things started happening on my computer that I just can't explain.....
Oh well anyway that last word was supposed to be themselves.......but I'm just not in the mood to rant anymore so, on that note, I shall say farewell
The problem with most of our technology is that it uses energy, it doesn't create it.
All of our technology uses energy, all.
Quote:
Matter is a form of energy, and we need to find a way to unlock that energy in a way we can use. Using fire to burn the remnants of dead organisms is not a very efficient way to unlock energy from matter. We need to discover more efficient means of creating energy such as advancements in cold fusion, hot fusion, zero point energy, triated helium fusion.
First Law, energy can not be created or destroyed.
Quote:
We need to stop using up energy for technology and start using technology to create energy. The fact that we can't apply technology to create energy makes me believe that we are a primitive civilization. The fact that most people can't look even mere months into the future makes us very primitive.
The only source of energy there is, is the sun. All technology uses energy. The more technology, the faster you use it. You can't get there from here. Reread my first post. You don't get it yet. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sun Jul 23, 2006 8:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
Every technology creates a temporary point in time where there is order, and does so at the expense of greater disorder in the environment. History has shown us that every technological breakthrough has produced unforeseen secondary effects more disastrous than if it had never been invented.
Strangely, bacteria view you in much the same light. They wonder what on earth an advanced organised machine like you could possibly be useful for. They also wonder at the chemical transmission system that holds all of your cells in thrall to the common "goal", even though it will lead them all to an inevitable simultaneous crash. (a die-off if you will.)
Just like our "technologies" that you berate, we(multi cells, vertebrates, mammals, primates) are only recent advances on the timescale of the bacterial world. We are an unproven idea with dire potential consequences. We are also in the minority both numerically and by biomass. If either one of those measures were used in a determination of "ownership", this world really belongs to the bacteria.
Then again, I'm a human. So all those bacteria can &$%#-off. I am perfectly happy to risk their precious world for the sake of my existence. To go a step further, I am a "modern" human, and am also perfectly willing to risk this world for the sake of my modernity.
Your argument seems to say that complexity leads to complexity and is a bad thing. Then again, you are complexity. Or do you want to argue that complexity should only be allowed to a point. If so, to what point, and who decides?
-Viper
Berate? Telling you that water cannot flow uphill is reality. This is not about just pollution and killing off species. The world is moving constantly towards random disorder. Technology, being a transformer, increases that rate.
Complexity is only allowed to a point. It is called the carrying capacity. When it is exceeded, disease sets in, the ability to reproduce becomes harder, and there is a die-off back to a sustainable population. Nature decides, and always will. In all of the replies to my posts, I never see an attempt to dispute the Law of Entropy, only a defense of a misunderstood reality. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
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