... og vi leser kollapslitteraur

Reinventing Collapse - The Soviet Example and American Prospects (Dmitry Orlov)

og

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (William R. Catton, jr.)

Reinventing Collapse er en klassiker. Orlov er morsom uten å bli flåsete, innsiktsfull uten å være belærende. Han vokste opp i SovjetUnionen (SU), men har bodd og arbeidet mesteparten av sitt voksne liv i USA (US), så han kjenner begge verdener godt. Blandt veldig mange interessante poenger han har å komme med er den grunnleggende observasjonen at SU og US er veldig like. Selvsagt også veldig forskjellige, men mange av forskjellen er bare propaganda - og SUs demonisering av US var svært lik US' demonisering av SU. Begge var teknologisk-industrielle imperier; forskjellen lå først og fremst i organisasjonsmodellen. Og Orlov er overbevist om at det er en relativt uviktig forskjell; SUs fall bør ikke sees på som et bevis for at US' organisasjonsmodell "seiret" og SUs "tapte", men som en advarsel: Hovmod står for fall. US' fall tar han for gitt:

I therefore take as my premise that at some point during the coming years, due to an array of factors, with energy scarcity foremost among them, the economic system of the United States will teeter and fall, to be replaced by something that most people can scarcely guess at, and that even those who see it coming prefer not to think about. This stunning failure of the collective imagination is the specific problem this book seeks to address. (s 15)

(Annetsteds sier han at årsaken til SUs fall var at sovjetisk oljeproduksjon gikk utforbakke - bratt.)

Orlov er en skikkelig russisk bjørn på Amerika:

Most alternative forms of energy - solar, wind, water, nuclear, garbage incineration, gerbil wheels or hot air piped in directly Washington - will have only a small overall impact. The United States will not have enough energy to keep its economy functioning. There is also not enough energy, nor enough time, to build a different, more energy-efficient economy, on the same scale as the present one. The best alternative by far is to reduce energy consumption by progressively shutting down all non-vital parts of the economy, while commandeering and redistributing resources to uniformly provide for the welfare of the entire population. Since such a revolution is not politically possible, the only remaining alternative is economic and political collapse.

My conclusion is that the Soviet Union was much better prepared for economic collapse than is the United States. America's economy will evaporate like the morning mist.

[...]

Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day and leaves everybody in the lurch. Luckily, there is little prospect of such a scenario. (s 104 f)

Observasjonene om "Drugs and Alcohol" er også et sitat verd:

To a Russian, being drunk is almost a sacred right; to an American, it is a guilty pleasure. [...] The Russian can get furiously drunk in public, stagger about singing patriotic songs, fall into a snow bank, and either freeze to death or be carted off to a drunk tank. All this produces little or no remorse in him. Based on my reading of H. L. Mencken, America was also once upon a time a land of happy drunks, where a whiskey bottle would be passed around the courtroom at the start of the proceedings and a drunken jury would later render a drunken verdict. [...] When the economy collapses, hard-drinking people everywhere find all the more reason to get drunk, but much less werewithal with which to procure drink. In Russia, innovative market-based solutions were quickly improvised, which it was my privilege to observe. [...] In all, we should expect drugs and alcohol to become one of the largest short-term post-collapse entrepreneurial opportunities in the United States, along with asset stripping and security. (p 147)

----

Collapse er også en klassiker; utkom første gang i 1980, og kalt den beste boken om emnet av minst en kommentator på TODs "linkfest". Bokens uttalte mål er å frambringe et paradigmeskifte - det gamle paradigmet er vekstparadigmet fra "The Age of Exuberance" (roughly, pionertiden i USA); det nye, det økologiske paradigmet. Vi ser ikke verden bare gjennom øynene, sier Catton, men også gjennom våre idéer... paradigmet. Den første delen av boken snakker om vekstparadigmet, dets historie og svakheter... den andre om det nye, økologiske paradigmet. Det gis masse referanser, og tonen i boken er definitivt intellektuell. Det er mye interessant her, men bokens skop er bredt, så det er begrenset hvor dypt inn i materien den trenger... Dypest og mest interessant er beskrivelsen av The Age of Exuberance; Catton er i utgangspunktet sosiolog, og det merkes. Til å være en bok som forfekter et økologisk paradigme, snakker den veldig lite om økologi, annet enn å hamre inn på annenhver side at mennesket er et dyr som alle andre og er underlagt de samme naturlover... et standpunkt jeg deler, men det blir litt for mye misjonering og litt for lite argumentering og opplysning for meg.

Jeg kommer forhåpentligvis tilbake til Collapse her i et essay med mine reaksjoner på boken... men foreløpig, en av de mer interessante passasjene, en diskusjon av Malthus:

Malthus did indeed err, but not in the way that has been commonly supposed. He rightly discerned "the power of population" to increase exponentially "if unchecked". He rightly noted that population growth ordinarily is not unchecked. He saw that it was worth inquiring into the means by which the exponential growth tendency is normally checked. He was perceptive in attaching the label "misery" to some of the ramification of these means. Where he was wrong was in supposing that the means worked fully and immediately. (That this was his error has not been seen by those who reject his views.)

[..]

Despite Malthus's belief to the contrary, it is possible to exceed an environment's carrying capacity -- temporarily. Many species have done it. A species with as long an interval between generations as is characteristic of ours, and with cultural as well as biological aspects, can be expected to do it.

[...]

By not quite seeing that carrying capacity can be temporarily overshot, Malthus understated life's perils. He thus enabled both the admirers and the detractors of his admonitory writings to neglect the effects of overshoot -- environmental degradation and carrying capacity reduction.

Moyers-interview med Asimov

http://www.wesjones.com/asimov.htm

MOYERS: What about the subject you've written so much about - the population explosion? Right now, the population of the globe is over five billion. You've warned us about what will happen if it continues at its two percent growth rate per year.

ASIMOV: Actually, the growth rate is down to one-point-six percent, but with the higher population, it's the same amount in actual numbers: eighty million a year. By the year 2000, it's going to be perhaps six-point-five billion.

MOYERS: That's just twelve years from now. How many people do you think the earth is able to sustain?

ASIMOV: I don't think it's able to sustain the five billion in the long run. Right now most of the world is living under appalling conditions. We can't possibly improve the conditions of everyone. We can't raise the entire world to the average standard of living in the United States because we don't have the resources and the ability to distribute well enough for that. So right now as it is, we have condemned most of the world to a miserable, starvation level of existence. And it will just get worse as the population continues to go up.

MOYERS: But you can't just say to a woman, "Don't have children."

ASIMOV: That's not the problem; it's that so many people are saying, "Have children." There is such a pro-natalist attitude in the world. We celebrate Mother's Day so enthusiastically, we say, "May all your troubles be little ones," we celebrate additional children. I feel sometimes that if we'd only stop pushing for children, somehow there would be fewer of them.

MOYERS: Why did you say that the price of survival is the equality of women?

ASIMOV: Because if women are allowed to enter into all facets of the human condition, if they can enter business, if they can enter religion, science, government on an equal basis with men, they will be so busy they won't feel it necessary to have a great many children. As long as you have women under conditions where they don't feel any sense of value or self-worth except as mothers, they'll have a lot of children because that's the only way they can prove they're worth something. In general, if you look through the world, the lower the status of women, the higher the birth rate, and the higher the birth rate, the lower the status of women. If you could raise the status of women, I am certain the birth rate would fall drastically through the choice of the women themselves. We're always saying that there's no fulfillment like having
children, but I notice mostly it's men who say that. You know, men get along without giving birth to children. They do that by finding other things to do. If women could find other things to do, too, they would have fewer children.

MOYERS: But once again, you are in conflict with a biblical imperative, "Be fruitful and multiply."

ASIMOV: Right. But God said that when Adam and Eve were the only two people in the world. He said, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." The earth was replenished long ago. That's one of the problems of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists take a statement that made sense at the time it was made, and because they refuse to consider that the statement may not be an absolute, eternal truth, they continue following it under conditions where to do so is deadly.

MOYERS: What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?

ASIMOV: It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor: If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom; it should be right there in the Constitution.

But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door: "Aren't you through yet?" and so on. In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.

MOYERS: People say the United States is bringing its population under control, that many Americans are not even reproducing themselves, and that what the rest of the world does, we can't control.

ASIMOV: The population of the United States is still going up. The only time it went up really slowly was during the Great Depression, when there were no laws lowering the birth rate, there was just an economic depression, which made people think twice before they had children. But the United States is doing something else - it is absolutely refusing to help nations control population. Our feeling is that it's enough for us to make sure that the United States is in good shape, and what other nations do is their business. It's not just their business - it's our business, too.

MOYERS: Can we exist as a stable economy and a stable society if around us are turmoil and chaos?

ASIMOV: Absolutely not. Right now many nations are destroying the rain forests because they need the firewood, and they need the space for farms.

MOYERS: Why should we care about that?

ASIMOV: Because without the rain forests, we're going to have deserts. The food supply will dwindle. As a matter of fact, there's even the possibility that we're going to lose all kinds of valuable substances we know nothing about. Those rain forests have an incredible number of species of plants and animals that we know very little about. Some of them may produce chemicals of great pharmacological and medical importance. If properly cultivated, some of the plants might be new food sources. In addition to that, nothing produces the oxygen of the atmosphere with the same intensity that a forest does. Anything that substitutes for it will be producing less oxygen. We're going to be destroying our atmosphere, too.

MOYERS: What did you mean when you said once that we have to stop living by the code of the past?

ASIMOV: Times change. For example, in the past we felt motherhood was the most important thing a woman could do, and that to be a good wife and mother was the sum total of a woman's purpose in life. She didn't need an education or interests outside the house. You know, Kinder, Kirche, Kuche - the children, the church, the kitchen - or in English you say, "Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant." Well, we can't do that any more. We can't raise women to be baby machines. In the old days, we didn't worry about the future. Now we must. Things are changing so fast that we have to worry about the future all the time.

"We can't raise women to be baby machines"... Nei, ikke dersom vi skal skape et bærekraftig samfunn.

Men dette er et av de virkelig, virkelig store utfordringene: Å sette opp de sosiale spillereglene - på verdensbasis - slik at det ikke lønner seg for noen, det være seg familier, stammer, religioner, eller nasjoner, å gjøre sine kvinner til babymaskiner.

Problemet er at det er en veldig sterk seleksjonseffekt involvert: Kulturer som gjør sine kvinner til babymaskiner vil gjennomgå eksponensiell vekst (til de når sin Malthusianske grense); kulturer som ikke gjør det, stagnerer.

Selv om ordet "stagnasjon" er negativt ladet i daglig språkbruk, så er det nettopp stagnasjon vi ønsker å oppnå i vår situasjon... vi ønsker oss et paradigmeskifte her.

Problemet er at dersom du har to kulturer, den ene med en flat befolkningsutvikling og den andre med eksponensiell vekst, så tar det ikke lang tid før den første er vekk.

Eksponensiell vekst trumfer alt!

(jeg har snakket om dette tidligere)

PO vs GO (EB)

Is business-as-usual likely in a peak oil scenario? (Dave Cohen/Energy Bulletin)

Interessant titt på samspillet mellom Peak Oil/FF, klimaforandringer, økonomi og politikk. Konklusjon:

Assuming that peak oil occurs early in the next decade, and the currently envisioned cap & trade system, which goes into effect in 2012, is actually implemented, we can expect an overall decline in carbon emissions in the United States during the period 2010-2020. If growing emissions are a necessary condition for economic growth, as I have argued here and in The Radical Hypothesis, it follows that the American economy will shrink, not grow, in the coming decade.

If world oil production peaks, I predict most people will forget about terrifying business-as-usual climate scenarios. Instead, they will get down to the hard business of replacing oil by any means possible. If the economy is shrinking, any means necessary will be used to jump start growth. I am not so much interested in what should happen. I am interested in what will happen.

Thus, the years 2010-2020 will likely be the decisive decade of the 21st century. We should know by 2020 whether economies can grow as emissions decline. The result will define our response to anthropogenic climate change in all the decades to follow. We will know whether the consensus view espoused by Joe Romm, John Holdren and many others, as I have believed all along, is merely a politically expedient, faith-based “green jobs” guess about how things will turn out. Should that guess be proved wrong, our political leaders will run the other way.

Hvor går Norge?

OK, noen korte tanker om hva framtia kan bringe.

Det virker ganske opplagt at USA er fucked, og at det vil komme et nytt og værre krakk enn det vi så i fjor høst. Min gjetning er at det skjer i oktober '09; oktober er krakkmåneden...

Men hva skjer i Norge? DET avhenger stort sett av oljeprisen, og det er slett ikke sikkert at oljeprisen går i kjelleren (som livlig diskutert på TOD siste uker). Og på litt lenger sikt enn noen måneder, så virker det rimelig opplagt at de eneste landene i verden som kommer til å gjøre det "bra" er... oljeeksportører.

Mine herskaper, dette kan bli helt fryktelig. Allerede ser det ut til at euforien er tilbake i boligmarkedet... dersom resten av verden med USA i spissen går inn i en 10-år-pluss Greater Depression, men vi unngår en total kollaps... så kommer Norge til å holde seg på beina... det betyr alle (bolig, aksje, whatever-)boblers oldemor! For alt det som måtte være igjen av "hot money" kommer til å rømme til Den Siste Boblen...

Ta så med i beregningen at vi neppe har stort mer enn ti år igjen som oljeeksportør i verdensklasse... OK vi har kanskje gass lenger enn det, men you get my point... Vi risikerer å bli Bobleland, et nordens Dubai, med en enda mer vannvittig gjeldsgrad enn vi har i dag... og når boblen sprekker... om en ti, kanskje femten års tid... en episk sprekk. Vi kommer til å bli så bankerott at Island fremstår som et paradis.

En kommentator - husker ikke hvem - mente her i vinter at de heldigste landene er de som går konk tidlig i denne prosessen, for de har fremdeles et internasjonalt samfunn som kan hjelpe dem sånn ca. på fote igjen. Å konke når alle andre har mer enn nok med seg selv...

En guide til The Automatic Earth

The Automatic Earth har etterhvert blitt den økonomibloggen jeg leser med størst oppmerksomhet. De presenterer seg selv slik: Stoneleigh and Ilargi present a daily overview of Debt, Diesel and Dämmerung.. De har mye til felles med - og kommenterer og korrigerer - blogghelter som Mish, Denninger og Ritholz, men har noe ingen andre bloggere jeg har lest har: i tillegg til tung peiling på økonomi, er de også eksperter på energi - Stoneleigh var tidligere en nøkkelfigur på TOD - og kunnskapsrike og innsiksfulle innen politikk, økologi, ... Stoneleigh skriver i sin kritikk av Gary North:

In order to understand the scope of our predicament, it is necessary to understand finance, but also energy (net energy, EROEI, receding horizons etc), ecological carrying capacity and population, collective psychology and herding behaviour (see Prechter), diminishing marginal returns to socio-economic complexity (see Tainter), catabolic collapse (see Greer), positive feedback loops, adaptive ecological cycles (see Holling), pollution and pathogens, game theory, real politik, risk dynamics, reality versus perception as socioeconomic drivers etc, etc. Breadth and depth are not mutually exclusive, and the narrowly focused approach will only take one so far.

Kanskje det viktigste punktet TAE stadig terper på er at dette (for USAs del) ikke bare eller først og fremst er en økonomisk krise, men en politisk krise. Banker går overende i et rasende tempo; men noen få gjør det kjempebra... Men de som gjør det kjempebra nå, er ikke de som fulgte ansvarlig forrettningsskikk i årene før 2008 - de går konk -, det er de som har politiske forbindelser. Dette systemet er så korrupt, så moralsk fallitt, at... vel...

Uansett, TAEs post for dagen, Prime Rhyming Times, er en guide til stedet - hvilke nøkkelposter en nykommer bør lese og i hvilken rekkefølge.

Så sett i gang og les,

Vannproblemer for næringslivet

Diminishing water supplies creating profound business risk

“With global temperatures on the rise, scientists expect water shortages, like those now in California and China, to spread across the globe and become even more severe. The consequences for our already reeling global economy will be profound. A diversity of businesses — from electronics manufacturers and power producers to apparel and food companies — can expect water bills to rise, allotments to decrease, and water quality regulations to tighten.

“Water is one of our most critical raw materials — even more important than oil, for there are no alternatives. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestlé, put it starkly in The Economist: ‘I am convinced that, under present conditions and with the way water is being managed, we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel.’

“Already, China, India, and the western United States are seeing growth limited by reduced water supplies from shrinking glaciers and melting snowcaps that sustain key rivers. Meanwhile, power plants in Australia, Europe, and the southeast United States have been forced to cut back on power generation because more frequent and intense heat waves and droughts are impacting water supplies.

Ugo Bardi tolker Tainter

i "Peak Civilization": The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Litt overdramatisering av slakten i Teutoburgerskogen, synes jeg, men ellers veldig, veldig bra. Og langt. Et utdrag:

You'll probably agree that this explanation by Gibbon is a bit limited; just as are limited other interpretations by authors who came later. Spengler and Tonybee are two examples, but if we were to discuss their work in detail it would take - well - weeks; not hours. So, let me jump forward to the historian who - I think - has given a new and original interpretation of the decline of Rome: Joseph Tainter with his "The Collapse of Complex Societies". His book was published for the first time in 1990. [Jeg leste den som Påskekrim.]

It is a great book. I suggest to you to read it and ponder it. It is truly a mine of information about collapses. It doesn't deal just with the Roman Empire, but with many other civilizations. Tainter goes well beyond the simplistic interpretation of many earlier authors and identifies a key point in the question of collapse. Societies are complex entities; he understands that. And, hence, their collapse must be related to complexity. Here is an excerpt of Tainter's way of thinking. It is a transcription of a interview that Tainter gave in the film "Blind Spot" (2008)

In ancient societies that I studied, for example the Roman Empire, the great problem that they faced was when they would have to incur very high costs just to maintain the status quo. Invest very high amounts in solving problems that don't yield a net positive return, but instead simply allowed them to maintain what they already got. This decreases the net benefit of being a complex society.

Here is how Tainter describes his view in graphical form; in his book.



So, you see that Tainter has one thing very clear: complexity gives a benefit, but it is also a cost. This cost is related to energy, as he makes clear in his book. And in emphasizing complexity, Tainter gives us a good definition of what we intend for collapse. Very often people have been discussing the collapse of ancient societies without specifying what they meant for "collapse". For a while, there has been a school of thought that maintained that the Roman Empire had never really "collapsed". It had simply transformed itself into something else. But if you take collapse defined as "a rapid reduction of complexity" then you have a good definition and that's surely what happened to the Roman Empire.

So, what was important with the collapse of the Roman Empire is not whether or not there was an emperor in Rome (or, as it was the case later, in Ravenna). We might well imagine that the line of the emperors could have continued well after Romulus Augustulus - the last emperor. And even after him there remained a legitimate Roman Emperor in Byzantium, in the Eastern Empire. You could very well say that the Empire didn't disappear as long as there were emperors in Byzantium, that is, until Costantinople fell, in the 15th cenntury. And since the Russian Czars saw themselves as Roman emperors (that is where "Czar" comes from, from "Caesar"), you could say that the Roman Empire didn't disappear until the last Czar was deposed, in 1917. But that is not the point. The point is that the Roman Empire had started undergoing a catastrophic loss of complexity already during the third century. So, that was the real collapse. What happened later on is another story.

After that Tainter has spoken of complexity, and of the energy cost of complexity, it is perhaps surprising for us that he doesn't consider resource depletion as a cause of collapse. Resource depletion, after all, is the main theme of Jared Diamond's book "Collapse". It is how he interprets the collapse of many societies. Tainter explicitly denies that in his book. He says that if such a thing as depletion appears, then society should react against it. After all, it is normal: society always reacts to all kinds of crisis, and why shouldn't it react to resource depletion? This point made by Tainter may appear surprising - actually unpalatable - to people who have made resource depletion the centerpiece of their thought. Peak oilers, for instance.

The disagreement between peak oilers (and Diamond) and Tainter may not be so strong as it appears. That we'll see as we go deeper into the details. But before we do that, let me say something general about these explanations that people give for collapse. It happens all the time that people discover something that they describe as if it was the only cause for collapse. That is, they sort of get enamored of a single cause for collapse. They say, "I have the solution; it is this and nothing else."

Consider the story that Roman Empire collapse because the Romans used to drink wine in lead goblets; and so they died of lead poisoning. That has some truth: there is evidence of lead poisoning in ancient Roman skeletons; there are descriptions of lead poisoning in ancient Roman texts. Surely it was a problem, probably even a serious one. But you can't see this story of lead poisoning in isolation; otherwise you neglect everything else: the Roman Empire was not just people drinking wine in lead goblets. Think of a historian of the future who describes the fall of the American Empire as the result of Americans eating hamburgers. That would have some truth and for sure the kind of food that most Americans eat today is - well - we know that it is doing a lot of damage to the Americans in general. But you wouldn't say that hamburgers can be the cause of the fall of the American Empire. There is much more to that.

The same kind of reasoning holds for other "causes" that have been singled out for the fall of Rome. Think, for instance, of climatic change. Also here, there is evidence that the fall of the Roman Empire was accompanied by droughts. That may surely have been a problem for the Romans. But, again, we might fall in the same mistake of a future historian who might attribute the fall of the American Empire - say - to the hurricane Katrina.(I have nothing special against the American Empire, it is just that it is the current empire)

The point that Tainter makes, quite correctly, in his book is that it is hard to see the fall of such a complex thing as an empire as due to a single cause. A complex entity should fall in a complex manner, and I think it is correct. In Tainter's view, societies always face crisis and challenges of various kinds. The answer to these crisis and challenges is to build up structures - say, bureaucratic or military - in response. Each time a crisis is faced and solved, society finds itself with an extra layer of complexity. Now, Tainter says, as complexity increases, the benefit of this extra complexity starts going down - he calls it "the marginal benefit of complexity". That is because complexity has a cost - it costs energy to maintain complex systems. As you keep increasing complexity, this benefit become negative. The cost of complexity overtakes its benefit. At some moment, the burden of these complex structures is so great that the whole society crashes down - it is collapse.

I think that Tainter has understood a fundamental point, here. Societies adapt to changes. Indeed, one characteristic of complex systems is of adapting to changing external conditions. It is called "homeostasis" and I tend to see it as the defining characteristic of a complex system (as opposed to simply complicated). So, in general, when you deal with complex systems, you should not think in terms of "cause and effect" but, rather, in terms of "forcing and feedback". A forcing is something that comes from outside the system. A feedback is how the system reacts to a forcing, usually attaining some kind of homeostasis. Homeostasis, is a fundamental concept in system dynamics. Something acts on something else, but also that something else reacts. It is feedback. It may be positive (reinforcing) or negative (damping) and we speak of "feedback loops" which normally stabilize systems - within limits, of course.

Homeostasis has to be understood for what it is. It is not at all the same thing as "equilibrium" as it is defined in thermodynamics. For example, a human being is a complex system. When you are alive, you are in homeostasis. If you are in equilibrium, it means that you are dead. Homeostasis is a dynamical equilibrium of forces.

Also, homeostasis cannot contradict the principles of physics. It can only adapt to physical laws. Think of yourself swimming in the sea. Physics says that you should float, but you need to expend some energy to maintain a homeostatic condition in which your head stays above the water. Now, suppose that your feet get entangled with something heavy. Then, physics says that you should sink. Yet, you can expend more energy, swim harder, and still keep your head above the water - again it is homeostasis. But, if nothing changes, at some moment you'll run out of energy, you get tired and you can't keep homeostasis any more. At this point, physics takes over and you sink, and you drown. It is the typical behavior of complex systems. They can maintain homeostasis for a while, as long as they have resources to expend for this purpose.

Something similar occurs for human societies. When there is a forcing, say, an epidemics that kills a lot of people, societies react by generating more children. Look at the demographic statistics for our societies: there is a dip in numbers for the world wars, but it is rapidly compensated by more births afterward. Also in Roman times there were epidemics and the eruption of the Vesuvius that killed a lot of people. But those were small forcings that the Roman society could compensate.

Not all forcings can be compensated, but we know that the Romans were not destroyed by an asteroid that fell into the Mediterranean Sea. It might have happened, and in that case there would have been no feedback able to keep the empire together. We would have a single cause for the disappearance of the Roman Empire and everybody would agree on that. But that has not happened, of course. Perhaps, something like that has happened to the Cretan civilization; destroyed by a volcanic eruption - but that's another story.

So, in Tainter's view there is this feedback relationship between complexity and energy. At least the way I interpret it. Complexity feeds on energy and also strains the availability of energy. It is feedback. And not just energy; resources in general. So, I think that Tainter is right in refusing a simple explanation like "resource depletion is the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire". But, clearly, resources are an important part of his model. I think Tainter had in mind the Roman Empire when he developed this model, but it is of quite general validity. If this is the way things stand, his model is not in contrast with the models we have that see resource depletion as the main factor that causes collapse. But not the only cause. We must see collapse as something dynamic, and now I'll try to explain just that.

(Også noen veldig interessante kommentarer, spesielt en information dump fra arkeologen Boris ("mididoctors") om potteskår i Londinium: "they dumped them in the river"...)

Et viktig relatert poeng er at kapital må ansees som "kompleksitet" i Taintersk forstand (selv om det er diskutabelt om Tainter selv hadde det synet). Bardi var inne på dette tidligere i sommer, i The Fifth Problem: Peak Capital:

Here is a very clear description of how capital interacts with the other elements of the world model in a synopsis written in 1972 by the authors of the [Limits to Growth] report:

The industrial capital stock grows to a level that requires an enormous input of resources. In the very process of that growth it depletes a large fraction of the resource reserves available. As resource prices rise and mines are depleted, more and more capital must be used for obtaining resources, leaving less to be invested for future growth. Finally investment cannot keep up with depreciation, and the industrial base collapses, taking with it the service and agricultural systems, which have become dependent on industrial inputs.

Peak Oil for nybegynnere

To enkle, men velargumenterte artikler på The Oil Drum fra nær fortid:

Peak Oil Overview - July 2009 av Gail the Actuary:

Most people who have read a little about peak oil have heard that US oil production peaked in 1970. This happened, even though oil companies have been working as hard as they can to keep production up. Oil companies have even applied enhanced oil recovery techniques to wells where it looked like doing so would be profitable. After the US mainland (48 states) peaked in 1970, extra effort was expended to ramp up Alaskan production. It soon peaked as well, in 1988.

Figure 1 - US Oil Production, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.


The question now is with respect to world production. The price of oil isn't very high--is there any possibility of a near-term peak in world oil production? Lower prices would seem to suggest there is no problem.

It seems to me that if we look closely at the situation, world oil production has likely peaked, even though prices are not behaving as most had expected. Furthermore, the peaking of world oil production seems to be a major cause of the current financial crisis. The tie of peak oil to recent demand destruction points to a possible continuing destruction in demand in the years ahead, with oil prices fluctuating, but not necessarily rising to great heights.

og

Is Peak Oil Real? A List of Countries Past Peak av Praveen Ghanta:

Only 14 of the 54 oil producing nations in the world are still increasing their oil production. The era of cheap oil is definitively over, as shown below.

(I kommentarene finnes forøvrig denne juvelen, en bønn til den Hellige (usynlige) Hånd:

Prayer To the Invisible Hand

Invisible Hand, Most Gracious and Giving Hand, I pray to you that you abundantly bless us with alternative energy. I know that you recognize, our need for a substitute to our daily supply of oil. Oh,Invisible Hand, I send up to you a prayer request for an energy blessing.

Invisible Hand I know that for you nothing is impossible, you just will it and it will happen. I thank you in advance for your magic. Release your alternative forms of energy that I may be a good steward over all that you have called on me to be in my energy Blessings with high EROEI.

Invisible Hand, for I know how wonderful and mighty you are and how if we just believe in you and and your magic powers and have the faith of a jathropha seed that you will pour out energy. I thank you now Oh, Invisible Hand! for the recent free energy I have received and for more free energy yet to come because I know you are not done with us yet.

In BAU's Name, I pray,

Amen.

Signert FMagyar)

Abstrakt tenkning vs. følelsesmessig impulsivitet

Consciousness and Complexity (Dr. Michael P. Byron / OpEdNews):

[I]f an ape is given a choice of two bowls of fruit which contain differing amounts of fruit, and is asked to choose only one bowl, the ape will invariably choose the bowl containing the most fruit. Further, if the ape is asked to give one bowl to another ape, while keeping one for itself, it will always give the bowl containing the least amount of fruit to the other ape. So far so good, humans would generally do the same.

However, when an ape is placed in a situation where the other ape receives the bowl of fruit which was not selected for it by the first ape, then despite learning that the way to obtain the most fruit is to offer the bowl with the most fruit to the other ape, the choosing ape simply cannot do this. It sees the bowl with the most fruit and always immediately selects it for itself-even knowing that by doing this the other ape will receive the full fruit bowl, and not itself. Human three year olds behave similarly, while older human children soon figure things out and offer the fuller bowl to another child knowing that by doing so; they will receive it for themselves. Great apes are emotionally unable to do this.

Interestingly, if an ape which has learned to recognize and understand the meaning of human numbers is used in the experiment, they will offer the higher numbered bowl to the other ape knowing that by doing so, they will actually receive the greater number.

Abstraction seems to break the grip of emotional impulsivity.

Dette er viktig. Det er riktignok ikke nye tanker; Arne Næss kommer med et lignende poeng i forordet til "Noen elementære logiske emner" (håper jeg husker riktig, har ikke boka for hånden). Næss trekker fram tysklandsstudentene - norske universitetsstudenter som under krigen ble deportert til Tyskland og forsøkt nazifisert - som til nazistenes ergrelse viste seg å være immune mot indoktrineringsprogrammet. En viktig del av denne immuniteten var studentenes trening i rasjonell tenkning - logikk - som lot dem avsløre (og latterliggjøre) doktrinens mange selvmotsigelser.

I det hele tatt, instinkter (jeg tolker "følelser" som den subjektive persepsjonen av instinkter i aksjon) er skumle saker. Oppstått ved evolusjon som de er, så var de relevante i det miljøet de oppsto i... og er det en ting som er helt sikkert, så er det at det miljøet vi i den teknologisk-industrielle verden lever i er radikalt forskjellig fra det miljøet (hovedtyngden av) instinktene våre er relevante i, en eller annen form for veidekultur. Moderne manipulatorer, som reklamebyråer, er veldig flinke til å utnytte disse malplasserte instinktene til sin egen fordel... og selvsagt også statlige propagandister. Dagens reklamebransje har lært mye av nazistene.

Med dette i tankene har vi to gode grunner til å lære oss kritisk distanse. Den første er personlig: Du får mere tid og overskudd til ekte følelser dersom du tar to skritt tilbake og distanserer deg fra konsument-kulturens shoppe-for-å-bli-lykkelig-jobbe-overtid-for-å-få-råd-til-å-shoppe-mer-bli-utbrent-kurér-med-shopping... Den andre er at, per Arne Næss' observasjon, utbredt mangel på kritisk distanse er det stoffet denne verdens Hitlere bygger sin makt på. Et demokrati kan hverken opp- eller bestå dersom ikke en betydelig andel av befolkningen kan og vil tenke selv. (Men cave det populistiske mantraet om at "du vet best"... selvtilfreds jeg-vet-besthet er ikke det samme som å tenke selv. Å tenke selv er for det første mye jobb, for det andre en ferdighet som må læres, og for det tredje krever det en individualistisk innstilling, en ikke-flokkmentalitet, som er populismens rake motsetning).

Det hender jeg blir kalt "kyniker". Da legger jeg hodet på skakke og smiler... jeg vet det ikke er ment sånn, men jeg kan ikke la være å ta det som et kompliment. Men det betyr ikke at jeg mener analytisk, kritisk tenkning er den eneste måten å forstå eller oppleve verden på. Det er et essensielt verktøy i enhver intellektuell verktøykasse... jeg er helt enig med Michael Byron (sitert innledningsvis) når han sier at

Holistic comprehension of reality is complementary to logical analytical reasoning. Try to learn to harmoniously think like both a scientist and a poet.

Vel, nesten helt enig i alle fall. Mens alle forskere verd navnet behersker analytisk tenkemåte, så er det påfallenede hvor mange forskere, iallfall av de virkelig store, som også med stor letthet "tenkte som poeter"... Einstein og Feynman er to opplagte, kjente eksempler. Jeg er nesten villig til å gå så langt som til å si at det er denne evnen til å både tenke analytisk og "poetisk" som skiller "forskeren" fra "ingeniøren" (ikke for å disse ingeniører, flere av mine venner er ingeniører og flere av dem er også utpreget "poetiske")... uten denne evnen er du bare en nerd.

Jeg har vært tiltrukket av hackerkulturen (nei, de er ikke kriminelle. Kort fortalt så er hackerne for Internet hva cowboyene var for Det Ville Vesten... se her og her)... hackerne er mestere i å koble poetisk med analytisk tenkning... whatever works. Paul Graham beskriver det slik i "Hackers and Painters":

When I finished grad school in Computer Science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work -- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge.

Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.

What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover som new technique, so much the better.

For ikke å snakke om hackerkulturens fascinasjon med taoisme og zen.

Lagring av energi

The Oil Drum v/JoulesBurn ser på EEstor i Who Killed the Electric Gas Tank?

A few months from now, or perhaps 5-10 years from now, we will know whether or not EEStor can make good on its promise to sell a electrical storage device capable of propelling a reasonably-sized automobile down a freeway for a couple hundred miles before needing a recharge. There are some indications that they are making progress and that this could happen, but there are many reasons to remain skeptical.

Har ikke fordøyd helt ennå (og må sove), men ble minnet på The limits of energy storage technology (Kurt Zenz House i Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) som gir en veldig god, kort og konsis oversikt over situasjonen:

1 kilogram of crude oil contains nearly 50 mega-joules of chemical potential energy, which is enough to lift 1 metric ton to a height of around 5,000 meters. Furthermore, crude oil happens to be liquid at Earth's surface conditions, making it easy to store, transport, and convert.

The energy densities of natural gas and coal, around 55 mega-joules per kilogram and 20-35 mega-joules per kilogram respectively, are similar to those of crude oil. [...] Biofuels such as ethanol and biosynthetic diesel can have volume and mass energy densities equal to that of fossil carbon, but since they're regularly harvested, their areal energy densities are substantially lower.

[...]

Today's lead acid batteries can store about 0.1 mega-joules per kilogram, or about 500 times less than crude oil. Those batteries, of course, could be improved, but any battery based on the standard lead-oxide/sulfuric acid chemistry is limited by foundational thermodynamics to less than 0.7 mega-joules per kilogram.

Due to the theoretical limits of lead-acid batteries, there has been serious work on other approaches such as lithium-ion batteries, which usually involve the oxidation and reduction of carbon and a transition metal such as cobalt. These batteries have already improved upon the energy density of lead-acid batteries by a factor of about 6 to around 0.5 mega-joules per kilogram--a great improvement. But as currently designed, they have a theoretical energy density limit of about 2 mega-joules per kilogram. And if research regarding the substitution of silicon for carbon in the anodes is realized in a practical way, then the theoretical limit on lithium-ion batteries might break 3 mega-joules per kilogram. Therefore, the maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven't been demonstrated to work yet is still only about 6 percent of crude oil!

[...]

And given other required materials such as electrolytes, separators, current collectors, and packaging, we're unlikely to improve the energy density by more than about a factor of 2 within about 20 years. This means hydrocarbons--including both fossil carbon and biofuels--are still a factor of 10 better than the physical upper bound, and they're likely to be 25 times better than lithium batteries will ever be.

What about storing energy in electric fields (i.e., capacitors) or magnetic fields (i.e., superconductors)? While the best capacitors today store 20 times less energy than an equal mass of lithium-ion batteries, one company, EEstor, claims a new capacitor capable of 1 mega-joule per kilogram. Whether or not this claim proves valid, it's within about a factor of 2 of the physical limit based on the bandgap of the dielectric material. Electromagnets of high-temperature superconductors could in theory reach about 4 mega-joules per liter similar to our theoretical batteries given a reasonable density; existing magnetic energy storage systems top out around 0.01 mega-joules per kilogram, about equal to existing capacitors. Here again, both the realized technology and its ultimate physical potential are far behind the energy density of common hydrocarbon fuels.

[...]

There is one more energy-storage approach that theoretically beats hydrocarbons. Energy density comparable to lithium-ion batteries has been demonstrated with flywheels, and a theoretical device composed solely of toroidal carbon nanotubes could reach 100 mega-joules per kilogram. But the fabrication and safety challenges inherent in such a device render it unlikely that even a small fraction of this potential will ever be realized.

The bottom line is that nature has given us hydrocarbons in the form of fossil carbon and biomass, and their energy-mass and energy-volume densities are superior to the thermodynamic limits of nearly all conceivable alternatives. Thus, it's quite likely that hydrocarbons of one form or another will be humanity's primary energy storage medium for quite a long time.

Ja, der har vi løsningen, dere: noen fantasillioner roterende nano-karbon-kringler i en liten eske. Så enkelt er det!

Vi må frykte mer

Enda et bra skriv fra Michael Lardelli: Peak Oil means Peak Food as well

I am pessimistic about the future because I have seen and understood the data on resources. I know that oil production peaked in July 2008. (I have seen the unpublished reanalysis of the International Energy Agency's own 2008 report that shows this conclusively.) I know that our use of other resources - such as water and phosphate - is critically unsustainable. Now that energy is declining there will not be enough to invest in building the alternative energy future that many of us dream of.

The nature of our economic/political system means that the declining fossil energy supply will go to the shorter term priorities of growing food, supporting armies and maintaining (as far as possible) the comfortable lifestyles of an ever-contracting circle of the wealthy. The time needed to build any form of alternative energy infrastructure - and the scale of the expansion needed in the face of the current and worsening energy decline - mean that it will simply never happen.

If I am so pessimistic, why do I bother writing about it? What good does it do? As a scientist I know that you must understand a problem in order to solve it. To have any chance of coping with this developing disaster we need to see it for what it truly is - not pretend that it does not exist (for example, the population problem) or that it will never happen (for example, peak oil). If we do not understand the true nature of the problem the "solutions" we attempt may make the problem worse. Like supporting future population growth through more efficient use of resources. Or growing biofuels on marginal land without considering how you will replace the soil nutrients they deplete. Or planning to electrify of the car fleet without considering the load that will place on an overstretched grid or where the energy and materials will come from to maintain the road network it requires.

[...]

"Optimism" is the problem, not the solution. We use it as an excuse to avoid thinking about the desperate measures we must take to cope with what is coming. We use it to put off actually doing anything. As long as Dr X, CEO Y or Minister Z says, "I'm optimistic that we will develop new energy sources" then we can go back to sleep because someone is obviously taking care of the problem - aren't they?

[...]

Today we are often told we need a new "Manhattan Project" for alternative energy but we will never make the sacrifices necessary for this in our already worsening economic situation if we are not truly, deeply fearful of the consequences of failure. Only fear - not optimism - can motivate populations sufficiently when they are already struggling with rising food prices, falling incomes and unemployment.

Tragically, our sensationalist media also know that fear grabs people's attention. Our collective crisis fatigue is now so great that we ignore truly significant threats such as climate change and energy decline. Our anxiety is diverted into worrying whether it's safe for our children to step outside the 4WD (SUV). But soon we will be worrying if we can find or afford to put food in their mouths.

Sniktitt på 'State of the Future' 2009

 

The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

 

An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse".

This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society".

The impact of the global recession is a key theme, with researchers warning that global clean energy, food availability, poverty and the growth of democracy around the world are at "risk of getting worse due to the recession". The report adds: "Too many greedy and deceitful decisions led to a world recession and demonstrated the international interdependence of economics and ethics." 

6 700 sider??! Massivt.

 

Mer vannmangel

I India: India prays for rain as water wars break out

It was a little after 8pm when the water started flowing through the pipe running beneath the dirt streets of Bhopal's Sanjay Nagar slum. After days without a drop of water, the Malviya family were the first to reach the hole they had drilled in the pipe, filling what containers they had as quickly as they could. Within minutes, three of them were dead, hacked to death by angry neighbours who accused them of stealing water.

In Bhopal, and across much of northern India, a late monsoon and the driest June for 83 years are exacerbating the effects of a widespread drought and setting neighbour against neighbour in a desperate fight for survival.

India's vast farming economy is on the verge of crisis. The lack of rain has hit northern areas most, but even in Mumbai, which has experienced heavy rainfall and flooding, authorities were forced to cut the water supply by 30% last week as levels in the lakes serving the city ran perilously low.

I California: Feds document shrinking San Joaquin Valley aquifer

California's San Joaquin Valley has lost 60 million acre-feet of groundwater since 1961, according to a new federal study. That's enough water for 60 Folsom reservoirs.

This is among the findings in a massive study of groundwater in California's Central Valley by the U.S. Geological Survey. It helps shed light on the mysteries and dangers of California's groundwater consumption, which is mostly unregulated.

According to the study, groundwater pumping continues to cause the valley floor to sink, a problem known as subsidence. This threatens the stability of surface structures such as the California Aqueduct, which delivers drinking water to more than 20 million people.

The Central Valley is America's largest farming region; it's also the single-largest zone of groundwater pumping.

EDIT: Se også WATER TABLES FALLING AND RIVERS RUNNING DRY (av Lester R. Brown, utdrag fra boken Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006))

Since the overpumping of aquifers is occurring in many countries more or less simultaneously, the depletion of aquifers and the resulting harvest cutbacks could come at roughly the same time. And the accelerating depletion of aquifers means this day may come soon, creating potentially unmanageable food scarcity.

While falling water tables are largely hidden, rivers that are drained dry before they reach the sea are highly visible. Two rivers where this phenomenon can be seen are the Colorado, the major river in the southwestern United States, and the Yellow, the largest river in northern China. Other large rivers that either run dry or are reduced to a mere trickle during the dry season are the Nile, the lifeline of Egypt; the Indus, which supplies most of Pakistan’s irrigation water; and the Ganges in India’s densely populated Gangetic basin. Many smaller rivers have disappeared entirely.

OPPDATERING: Heavy rain eases Mumbai's water woes Reddet av gonggongen.

Metallmangel i fokus

på TOD: Metal Minerals Scarcity and the Elements of Hope

Grei oversikt over problemet, halter på noen punkter (slide 16 f.eks. sier egentlig ingenting; OK Europas andel av verdens gruvedrift har falt dramatisk siden 1850 men so what?, den totale mengden gruvedrift har jo skutt i taket), og kunne godt gått litt dypere inn i materien synes jeg... men verdt å få med seg, og mye bra i diskusjonen etterpå, som vanlig... selv om Neil1947 begynner å irritere meg, han slenger ut mengder av halvrelevante fakta og stiller spørsmål i øst og vest, ofte motsier han seg selv fra kommentar til kommentar... aner ikke hva den egentlige agendaen hans er, men det virker som han er ute etter å skape mest mulig forvirring. Jeg har sluttet å lese kommentarene hans; men han klarer - merkelig nok - å provosere fram mange interessante svar. Her er ett av dem, fra metalman:

As regards total energy usage in mining, let me add a comment. If it costs several hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to construct a new open pit copper mine in, say, a remote area of the high Andes, how much of this is represented by the cost of energy needed to build roads, railroads, generating plants, a company town, the physical plant of the mine, and so on, and then to strip off millions of tons of barren overburden, before you get out your first ton of ore and first pound of copper concentrate waiting to be shipped to a smelter in China or Japan? Far more than most people would imagine, would be my guess. And I'm sure that with more time most of us could think of dozens of other energy costs involved in mining. I'd guess that a new technology such as heap leaching would have only a small affect on the total amount of those energy costs, although copper leaching does allow lower grade ores to be processed, at the cost of no longer producing by-product molybdenum and silver or gold.

Grunnen til at jeg uthevde den siste setningen er at heap leaching i en annen diskusjon ble brukt som bevis for at hele teorien om at energikostnaden for metallutvinning øker med tiden er feil.

Noen utdrag fra artikkelen:

Slide 7
A typical critique on stating that we are running into metals scarcity is the notion that you will find 300 times more ore as you lower the ore grade with a factor of 10. This misses the point that you need much more energy to keep extracting the same amount of metal. Even when the ore grade is more or less stable (example: copper over the last few decades), you still need increasingly more energy to extract the same amount of copper because you have to dig deeper and handle ever more quantities of solids to get to the ores. Of course lower ore grades aggravate the situation and increase energy expenditures much more because of the amounts of solids which have to be processed to keep up the production rate of concentrated metal.

Slide 11
A typical critique on stating that we are running into metals scarcity is the notion that the free market (the laws of demand and supply) will upgrade parts of the resources or the resource base into reserves once reserves start to get tight. This has seemed to be true for decades when there was cheap and abundant energy available. However with energy scarcity, the big lower part of the graph in figure 11 is out of reach (red crossed lines). We should also let go of the notion that vast amounts of rich ore deposits lie waiting somewhere to be discovered (red crossed lines), see slide 12.

Slide 19
The consequences of metals scarcity will be serious. Not only various established sectors like machining and the chemical industries will be affected. Especially the promising “new” sectors will be hit hard. For example there are no satisfactory substitutes available yet for essential and already scarce metals for efficient and mass-produced solar cells, permanent-magnet drives/generators (wind mills, hybrid cars, electric cars), catalysts, fuel cells, batteries and various electronic devices (telecommunication, displays/ touch screens/ plasma screens, micro-electronics).
Without a shift from scarce to less scarce metals, a large-scale transition towards a more sustainable economy doesn’t stand a chance. Moreover metals scarcity aggravates energy scarcity because the energy sector is one of the largest metals consumers. This applies to the whole chain from exploration, production, storage and distribution up to conversion into the desired forms of energy.

(mine uthevinger) Ikke egentlig noe nytt her altså... men en bekreftelse av at metallmangel er et problem, og at det er en gjensidig forsterkende vekselvirkning mellom energi og metallutvinning.

En kommentator hevder at dette ikke er tilfelle fordi vi tross alt har karbon-nano-rør som leder strøm bedre enn kobber og veier tiendeparten... men han blir raskt skutt ned: karbon er sprøtt og egner seg ikke til strømdistribusjon over litt avstand, og nanorør er svært dyre/energikrevende å produsere...

Energi er og blir nøkkelen.

Bare noen få vil overleve

...i følge James Lovelock:

 

One last chance to save mankind (Interview med Lovelock i New Scientist)

 

The Dark Side of Climate Change: It's Already Too Late, Cap and Trade Is a Scam, and Only the Few Will Survive (AlterNet)

 

 

There is another, fourth voice in the debate over cap-and-trade, one ringing out from shadows rarely approached by the media. In these shadows dwell scientists who believe the time has passed for any sort of legislation at all, no matter how radical. The best known of these frightening climate gnomes is the legendary British scientist James Lovelock, father of Gaia Theory and inventor of the instrument allowing for the atmospheric measurements of CFC's. In recent years, Lovelock has emerged as the world's leading climate pessimist, raining scorn on the new fashionable environmentalism and arguing that the time is nigh to accept that a massive culling of the human race is around the corner.

"Most of the 'green' stuff is verging on a gigantic scam," Lovelock told the New Scientist shortly before the release of his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. "Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning."

Those who read Lovelock's controversial 2006 book, The Revenge of Gaia, know that hope junkies should keep a safe distance from the 90-year-old scientist. Lovelock, who has been compared to Copernicus and Darwin, years ago arrived at a disturbingly stark conclusion about Earth's climate future. His prognosis is now starker than ever. The small window of short-term hope he left open in Revenge is closed in this year's Vanishing. In its place is a long-term hope that humanity in some form will survive the present century, though barely. The result is a dark and contrarian work that seeks to demolish the terms of the climate debate while mocking our response to the crisis at the personal, national, and species level. (fra AlterNet-linken over)

 

 

Jeg har stort sett oversett Lovelock til nå, siden han er mannen bak Gaia-hypotesen... som jeg har sett på som et stykke mystisitisk kvasivitenskap. Som Dawkins påpeker ett eller annet sted, jorden er åpenbart ikke en organisme i evolusjonsbiologisk forstand; alt det vi beskriver som levende er nødvendigvis oppstått ved evolusjon... og Gaia kan ikke ha oppstått ved evolusjon. Hvordan formerer f.eks. den postulerte Gaia seg? Ved spaltning?

 

På den andre siden, det er mange komplekse, selvorganiserende systemer der ute, og om de ikke er "levende" i Dawkins' forstand så kan de kanskje tilhøre en mellomklasse... selvorganiserende systemer, på grensen mellom kaos og orden... kanskje menneskelig bevissthet også hører til denne klassen?

 

Problemet med kompleksitet/kaosteori er at når et system går inn i kaosland, så er det totalt uforutsigbart. Lakmustesten på "vitenskap" er at den produserer testbare forutsigelser... men i Kaosland kan du ha en perfekt modell av et fullstendig deterministisk system, og likevel ikke ha forutsigbarhet. Da står man igjen "forklaringer"  som ikke lar seg skille fra mystisisme hverken i form eller innhold... uten å egentlig ha gjort noe feil, fra et vitenskapelig synspunkt. Det er rett og slett bare det at systemet du studerer, under visse forhold ikke er åpent for vitenskapelig analyse.

 

Jeg skjønner at jeg er nødt til å sette meg inn i hva Lovelock egentlig mener med sin Gaia-hypotese; til nå har jeg bare lest andrehåndsbeskrivelser.

 

Vannmangel i Mumbai

Mumbai faces acute water shortage

 

 

The BBC's Prachi Pinglay in Mumbai says that rainfall figures are alarming compared with last year. In many areas of the state of Maharashtra and its capital, there has been only 25% of the rainfall received by this time last year.

If more rain does not arrive soon, the lakes which supply Mumbai will recede still further.

The drought in Maharashtra in the west comes as half a million people have been stranded as rivers burst their banks due to flooding in the north-eastern state of Assam.

[...]

India's capital, Delhi, is also reeling from depleted water supplies, while many towns and villages across the country still have woefully inadequate safe drinking water facilities.

They depend largely on bore wells, which have seriously depleted the country's water table.

The BBC's Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai says farm produce is also likely to be badly affected if the full monsoon does not arrive soon.

 (lett stokket)

Flom i en del av landet, tørke i en annen... Dette må vel skrives på kontoen for klimaforandringer.

Chris Nelder om fremtiden

The Seven Ways To Solve The Energy Problem (Business Insider)

Også publisert som How to Navigate Peak Fossil Fuels. . .And Profit (Energy and Capital)

Strålende oppsummering av situasjonen:

By the end of this century then, a mere 90 years from now, we'll need to have an infrastructure that runs exclusively on renewably generated electricity, biofuels, and possibly nuclear energy. That's where we're going.

Fortunately, there is more than enough available renewable energy to meet all of our needs, if we can harness it. Unfortunately, we're starting from a point at which less than 2% of the world's energy comes from renewables like wind, solar and geothermal.

Hydro provides about 6%, and nuclear about 6%, but for reasons too numerous to get into here, some of which my longtime readers have already heard, I don't believe either source will increase much in the future, and both could actually decline.

Our challenge then is to make that 2% fraction grow to replace about 86% of the world's current primary energy, in 90 years or less.

We are currently at peak oil, a short, roughly 5-year plateau which goes into terminal decline around 2012. All fossil fuel energy combined peaks around 2018, less than a decade from now.

All strategies for accommodating the fossil fuel decline require decades to have any significant effect. The now-iconic study "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management" (Hirsch et al., 2005) demonstrated that it would take at least 20 years of intensive, crash-program mitigation efforts to meet the peak oil challenge gracefully. Another study, "Primary Energy Substitution Models: On the Interaction between Energy and Society," (C. Marchetti, 1977) showed that it generally takes decades to substitute one form of primary energy for another, and 100 years for a given source of energy to achieve 50% market penetration.

[...]

The final and most important factor is population. The few population models that actually take fossil fuel depletion into account assume that global population increases roughly out to the global fuel peak, and then stabilizes at that level or declines naturally while economic development promotes lower fertility rates and renewables and energy efficiency increase to fill the gap of declining fossil energy. I understand why this assumption is made—because the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate—and for the immediate purpose of this article I will go along with it. I will note however that history and scientific observation of populations suggest some sharp episodes of decline are more likely, and in my estimation we will end this century with a considerably smaller population than anyone forecasts, at some level well below today's.

Jeg er veldig, veldig glad for at jeg bor i Norge, som dekker kanskje 40% av energibehovet sitt med vannkraft (og ved ta enkle grep - som å forby "snømåking" vha varmekabler i oppkjørselen - kan redusere energi"behovet" betraktelig), som har rikelig med ferskvann, som er langt mindre overbefolket enn de fleste andre steder på kloden, som har en distrikspolitikk som i lys av PO framstår som clairvoyant, som faktisk bevilger penger til bygging av toglinjer og vindparker til havs... (Ja, det er vindparkene som skal bygges til havs, ikke toglinjene, altså).

Norge, kjempers fødeland!

Peak Oil er hard kost for sarte sjeler

Bugging Out (The Monthly)

Simon taught himself to read at the age of two. At ten, he could explain the sub-atomic workings of a semi-conductor. Later, his work in physics won him a university medal: "I discovered two new star nebulae. Very minor ones." But he was already disillusioned by the academy, because "a scientist is someone who finds out more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing." After September 11, he began to read about the theory of peak oil. He was compelled by the idea that vast population growth has relied on cheap oil and that vast populations will use all the oil, or at least make it very expensive, resulting in massive, rapid population decline. After a great deal of reading and thought, he could find no way around this impasse.

"The attraction of civilisation fits so many of the characteristics of addiction," he says. "It has appeal. It has immediate benefit and gratification. It has hidden costs. My mistake was trying to quit civilisation cold turkey."

[...]

But what finally sealed Simon's conviction was the fact that his beliefs seemed to trigger a personal cataclysm. Soon after he found out about peak-oil theory, he collapsed at a local swimming pool. He collapsed again at his computer. A terrible, gnawing pain took hold of his gut; he lost 20 kilograms in three weeks; his right hand swelled so much that he had to learn to write with his left, one of the few skills he was able to learn after the onset of the illness. Simon was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which is thought to be psychogenic, perhaps a demonstration of the mind's awesome ability to wreak havoc on the body.

Verdens matforsyning II

Et par interessante artikler:

Whatever happened to the food crisis?
(The Economist)

At the moment, the world’s population is 6.7 billion and 750m people are born each year. Though the rate of increase is declining, inertia means the total will go on rising until 2050, when the population will reach 9 billion. In Ethiopia, for example, 18m children are born every year, rising to 24m a year by 2040. That will double its headcount from 80m to 160m.

The FAO reckons that, to keep pace, the amount of food available in developing countries will have to double by 2050, equivalent to a 70% rise in world food production. If that does not happen, fears Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, there could be a return to the food conflicts of 2007-08 which caused riots in more than 60 countries and set off a controversial worldwide land grab—a rush by rich food-importers to buy swathes of Africa and South-East Asia on which to grow food. Even if the rise in output comes about but in the “wrong” way, there could be problems, since water in some areas is growing scarce and increasing food output will make it scarcer.

[...]

Almost all the increase in cereals output in 2008 came from rich countries: the harvest in those nations increased 11%. In developing countries, the rise was a mere 1%; if you exclude China, India and Brazil, grain output in poor countries actually fell. So while the costs of the food crisis bore heavily upon the poor, the benefits accrued more to farmers in industrialised countries. And nowhere were there signs that yields (output per acre) were rising. Harvests increased because farmers took more land under the plough.

The European Union shelved a programme that had obliged farmers to leave 10% of their land fallow; China scrapped a scheme that had allowed marginal arable to return to woodland. Both these actions boosted the amount of farmland. This was not bad in itself, and it was the quickest way to boost output. But it is only a first step. World food production cannot be increased by 70% just by increasing acreage: there is simply not enough unused land to go around.

Airdale på TOD kommenterer:

Corn futures have been dropping like a rock...

Sept corn was way down...this is going to be a very very interesting crop year.

The USDA gave corn reports on acreage that had no corn even planted on it as yet and so the market responded by dropping.

Illinois and Indiana hadn't even planted due to spring rains and the report came out..I think they are making this shit up out of thin air.

Most corn farmers are really pissed now.

Agriculture and Food in Crisis
(Monthly Review)

What are the prospects for the future? Are they really as dire as Lester Brown suggests? As we write this, a severe recession has set in around the world — deep and, perhaps, long lasting. It has already resulted in much more hunger and food insecurity in the United States and many other countries. How much worse can things get? Probably quite a bit, is the unfortunate answer

Jernbanetrøbbel i Storbritannia

Jeg har vel nevnt før at jeg er motstander av å privatisere infrastruktur...

 

I påvente av en lengre post om emnet:

 

Rail crisis: London-to-Edinburgh route to be nationalised

 

"It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging," said [transport secretary, Lord] Adonis.

 

 

Uakseptabelt ja, men også svært forutsigbart.

 

Privatisering av profitt og sosialisering av kostnader kalles det

 

Sykling forbundet med lav bentetthet

 

Is Bicycling Bad for Your Bones?

 

 

A study published in March, for instance, that compared the bone densities of weight lifters, runners, and cyclists found that the cyclists had lower bone mineral density than the runners or the weight lifters. In another study, triathletes added moderately to their bone mass over the course of a season.

Cycling, unlike running or weight-lifting, causes little impact to skeletons. Bones react to external stresses by strengthening bone. [...]  From their studies they have found that body mass is a central factor. In Smathers' study, the lightest riders had the lowest bone density. In addition, many serious riders burn more calories in a day than they consume, an energy imbalance that is being studied to determine its impact on bone loss. And sweat could play a role. A rider can lose hundreds of milligrams of calcium an hour through sweat.

Slankepresset i sykkelsporten er jo nesten like legendarisk som i hopp...

 

Personlighet

Snublet over Myers-Briggs personlighetsklassifisering.

Jeg er definitivt Introvert (ikke ekstravert), og definitivt Perceiving (ikke Judging). Jeg er også Thinking mer enn Feeling.

Litt mer tvil om jeg skal kalle meg Sensing eller iNtuiting... men jeg ligger og vipper mellom INTP (dvs. Introvert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Percieving) og ISTP, det er klart.

Disse karakteristikkene synes jeg er treffende:

INTPs organize their understanding of any topic by articulating principles, and they are especially drawn to theoretical constructs. Having articulated these principles for themselves, they can demonstrate remarkable skill in explaining complex ideas to others in simple terms, especially in writing. On the other hand, their ability to grasp complexity may also lead them to provide overly detailed explanations of "simple" ideas, and listeners may judge that the INTP makes things more difficult than they are. To the INTP, however, this is incomprehensible: They are merely presenting all the information.

Given their independent nature, INTPs may prefer working alone to leading or following in a group. During interactions with others, if INTPs are focused on gathering information, they may seem oblivious, aloof, or even rebellious—when in fact they are concentrating on listening and understanding. However, INTPs' extraverted intuition often gives them a quick wit, especially with language. They may defuse tension through comical observations and references. (fra Wikipedia-artikkelen linket over)

Eller hva med:

It is difficult for an Architect to listen to nonsense, even in a casual conversation, without pointing out the speaker's error. [...] Architects regard all discussions as a search for understanding, and believe their function is to eliminate inconsistencies, which can make communication with them an uncomfortable experience for many.

Ruthless pragmatists about ideas, and insatiably curious, Architects are driven to find the most efficient means to their ends, and they will learn in any manner and degree they can. They will listen to amateurs if their ideas are useful, and will ignore the experts if theirs are not. Authority derived from office, credential, or celebrity does not impress them. Architects are interested only in what make sense
(hentet herfra)

Spot on... jeg klarer for eksempel ikke se på TV-nyheter, jeg begynner å kjefte på oppleseren: "Tøys! Tror du på det du selv sier?!?"... Og jeg har alltid sett på diskusjoner som en leting etter forståelse, men har smertelig erfart at det ikke er vanlig, at mange (de fleste?) ser på diskusjoner som konkurranser, dominansspill... Og samboeren min spacer alltid ut når jeg prøver å forklare noe... "Du forteller så vanskelig!" Hæ? Jeg bare presenterer all (den relevante) informasjonen!...


Men på den andre siden,

[ISTPs] can be closet daredevils who gravitate toward fast-moving or risky hobbies (such as bungee jumping, hang gliding, racing, motorcycling, and parachuting), recreational sports (such as downhill skiing, paintball, ice hockey, and scuba diving

Skal vi se... Har spilt ishockey, gikk dykkelinje på folkehøyskole... Drevet med triatlon... padler kajakk...

Men alt i alt er jeg nok mer N enn S.

---

Tar vi egentlig dette seriøst?

I et annet kjent klassifiseringssystem er jeg Slangebærer.

Bra om elbiler

Bosch: Electrification is Coming, But Combustion Engines to Dominate for Another 20 Years (Green Car Congress)

 

What will the electric car look like in 2015? It will weigh around 1,000 kilograms. It will have a drag coefficient of 0.34, and its 40-kilowatt motor will be capable of speeds up to 120 kilometers per hour. In Germany today, the average distance covered each day by 90 percent of cars is under 80 kilometers. According to recent surveys, however, drivers want the electric car to have a minimum range of 200 kilometers. To make this possible, our electric car needs a battery with a capacity of 35-kilowatt hours.

Based on the technology we expect to be available in 2015, this battery will weigh 250 kilograms and cost around 12,000 euros, or 350 euros per kilowatt hour [US$495/kWh]. Depending on the design of the electric vehicle—how heavy it is, for example—and depending on how the lithium-ion battery develops, the cost of the battery may be slightly lower, at around 8,000 euros.

—Wolf-Henning Scheider