Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13191 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:18 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
vtsnowedin wrote:
The first oil well was drilled by Drake in 1859. So there is no possibility of going back to any technology level prior to that date. This would include steam locomotives , steam ships
Kind of tough if you don't have much coal. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy
Joined: May 26, 2008 Posts: 1190 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
Ludi wrote:
vtsnowedin wrote:
The first oil well was drilled by Drake in 1859. So there is no possibility of going back to any technology level prior to that date. This would include steam locomotives , steam ships
In other words, specify precisely what the mistake is you are refering to that makes a decline to stone age technology an inevitable outcome of the steep and remorseless decline of oil.
In other words, specify precisely what the mistake is you are refering to that makes a decline to stone age technology an inevitable outcome of the steep and remorseless decline of oil.
Reverse Engineer
It's a figure of speech _________________ Machines are what distinguish modern man from the savage.
Joined: Nov 24, 2007 Posts: 140 Location: Christchurch, New Zealand
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
outcast wrote:
Notice how it says it is three times more abundant than silver, yet I'm not hearing anyone shouting that we will run out of silver. Anyway, here is a good post that will hopefully clear this up a bit.
I think you missed my point entirely, outcast. Common materials like iron and copper won't be a problem, precisely because we have 1) heaps of it sitting around in mostly pure form such as buildings and electrical wiring, 2) deposits of high-grade ore are still available for production even in a low energy future.
Indium, on the other hand, is very expensive to extract precisely because there aren't high-grade ore deposits of it available.
My entire point, is that in a future with less energy resources, where large-scale strip mining and processing operations aren't really feasible, indium will be rare. Much like it said in the wikipedia article that there wasn't more than about 1 gram of it isolated anywhere in the world before 1924. If anything, that single statement proves my point entirely.
Of course, society seemed to get along just fine without indium until recently, but I wasn't arguing that point, just that it would be much rarer. This in turn could have large ramifications on future technology - what happens if they discover a really fantastic solar power cell that could preserve our current way of life (more or less), but it relies on a hard-to-extract rare earth element that is not widely available?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:19 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
Quote:
Of course, society seemed to get along just fine without indium until recently, but I wasn't arguing that point, just that it would be much rarer. This in turn could have large ramifications on future technology - what happens if they discover a really fantastic solar power cell that could preserve our current way of life (more or less), but it relies on a hard-to-extract rare earth element that is not widely available?
For one thing that isn't going to happen for a while, which does give us some time to find an alternative power source for the mining machines. The processing machines can just use something like this to provide power.
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:53 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
Quote:
Mine is just based on the assumption that iron will turn to iron oxide over a long period of time, and become prohibitively difficult to smelt back into iron. Nothing "sudden" about it.
Like I said, it depends on your prediction. For all this iron to turn to nothing because of rust it will take hundreds of years. Even so rust can be prevented.
Quote:
I find your assumption that there are of necessity replacements for every material to be flawed.
How so? The only material I can think of that doesn't have an alternative is phosphorus. But here's an example, a while ago there a lot of people thought we were suddenly going to run out of tantulum, an element used in making high quality capacitors. So, they started using niobium instead.
Quote:
I find your assumption that alternatives will be found "in time" to be flawed.
How so? We were able to find an alternative to tantalum quickly enough.
Quote:
My other assumption which may or may not be flawed is that practical information will become increasingly difficult to find, retain, and transfer between individuals and societies.
I still have to disagree, the reason why so few people have these "survival skills" (I think that is what you were alluding to) is because it isn't practical for most of us. If I lived in compton or harlem, how would wilderness survival help? Practical skills vary depending on what your situation is. Now that most of the world is literate and an increasing number of people have the internet, it becomes easier than ever to look into how to do certain things. Like your practical chemistry thread. 20 years ago it would have been impossible to so conveniently look up such information.
Quote:
But it's kind of irrelevant what our assumptions are, because our assumptions won't change reality, whatever it is or may become.
You're right in that it doesn't change the reality, but it still does matter because people base their planning on what they think they know. If someone's assumptions are wrong, then usually they will make a bad decision based on wrong assumptions.
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
Ludi wrote:
vtsnowedin wrote:
We are the Saudia Arabia of coal. we have plenty though pollution is a problem that must be dealt with.
Plenty of coal for the next few hundred to several thousand years or so?
That's the time frame I've been talking about throughout this entire thread.
I am not talking about the near future.
We are about one hundred years ahead of the invention of the automobile and human flight. Another hundred years will take science and technology as far beyond what we can imagine today as space flight was to a citizen of 1908. We have plenty of coal for the next hundred years and six billion people looking for a better way to do things. In one hundred years global warming will have happened or not, florida will be under water , or not, the human population will have stabilized at sustainable levels , one way or the other. We are not going back to the stone age not now not five hundred years from now not ever. Change will happen and it will be traumatic at times, but there is no need to burn the books and start over and every discovery that has been made sense the inventon of writing need not be reinvented oil or no oil.
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:23 pm Post subject: Re: Why Stone Age?
EndOfGrowth wrote:
ReverseEngineer wrote:
EndOfGrowth wrote:
Make a specific argument
Did you not read the article?
Sure I did. All it does is mention oil based products that won't be available. BFD. In no way does it demonstrate we inevitably end up with Stone Knives and Bearskins.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
But when I wear my hat it dosn't show!!
