The Abandonment of Technology

This is a guest post by Cameron Leckie, known on The Oil Drum as leckos. Cameron is an officer in the Australian army. He is a member of ASPO Australia and lives in Brisbane with his wife and two young children.

The other day, whilst visiting the in-laws, I was involved in a conversation that in my view opened a window to the future of technology. My mother in law, who works in a small retail outlet was packing her lunch. My wife asked why she was putting an ice block in with her lunch box. The answer was that the owner of the shop had removed the staff refrigerator (and turned off the hot water system) to save a couple of hundred dollars a year. As someone who strongly believes that the most likely outcome for a debt based economic system approaching a world of declining net energy supplies is economic contraction and lower standards of living (at least materially), this started me thinking about the process by which industrial civilisation may abandon some of the technologies that we currently take for granted.

There are many reasons why we humans adopt new technologies, but in my view the root cause is that the benefit provided by a new technology outweighs its cost. Importantly costs and benefits can be measured both in financial terms and by other less tangible factors, something that will be important when considering which technologies are abandoned. One reason that we may abandon a technology is the flip side of the reason for its adoption - that the costs outweigh the benefits obtained. Thus the fridge has been abandoned because the cost of maintaining it outweighs the benefit of keeping lunch cold. Other reasons might be that the technology is no longer supportable (for example, If you cannot access fuel, your car is not going anywhere) or another technology appears/reappears to replace it.

In this post, I would like to propose a theory by which some, or potentially many, modern technologies could be abandoned. This is an important issue because of its implications for government policy, business investment and of course society as a whole. I will briefly examine the relationship between technology and complexity, detail a theory to explain how technologies might be abandoned and finally propose some questions for discussion.

Technology and complexity

Virtually all technologies increase the complexity of the organisation/society that adopts the technology. Whilst to the end user a new technology might appear simpler, from a systems perspective, complexity has increased. Consider a hunter gatherer versus a modern consumer’s procuring of food. The hunter gather had to work much harder to obtain and prepare food than the modern consumer reliant upon supermarkets and pre-prepared food. The system required to support our food system however is orders of magnitude more complex than that of a hunter gatherer. This increased level of complexity comes at a cost in terms of the capital, resources and energy required to maintain a level of complexity.

For example, to maintain our road networks requires significant financial and human capital, a vast array of equipment, and resources such as sand, gravel, bitumen, steel, aluminium and concrete. This is all supported by the expenditure of energy, such as diesel and electricity. Whilst the global economy has grown meeting these maintenance costs has been in the most part achievable. It is highly unlikely however that society will be able to meet these maintenance costs in a contracting economy. Indeed this is already occurring in some parts of the world, such as the US, where in some instances financially pressured local governments have been turning bitumen roads into gravel roads to reduce costs.

The theory

So how could a technology be abandoned? Figure 1 summarises the theory that I am proposing. Figure 1 represents a single technology, such as a car. Rather than using a specific number of units (e.g. cars) or other measures (e.g. Vehicle Kilometres Travelled), I have used percentages to represent the level of abandonment, with 100% representing the maximum uptake of a particular technology and 0% being its complete abandonment. Obviously how individual technologies are abandoned will vary considerably both in time and level of abandonment, thus the general case represented in Figure 1 is generic only to assist with explaining the theory.

Figure 1. The abandonment of technology.

General case. In the general case, technology is abandoned in four stages:

    Early abandonment. During this phase a small number of people abandon a technology for a number of reasons. These could be altruistic (selling the second refrigerator because of concerns over climate change), frugality (trying to save a little extra money) or economic (long term unemployment). Whilst some of these reasons will recur in later stages, the early abandoners will be small in numbers, the actual abandonment won’t cause major inconveniences to the people who decide to do so, the technologies are likely to be discretionary use items and the effects of this abandonment are likely to only have minor impacts upon the industries associated with that technology.

    An example might be provided by the home telephone. With the proliferation of mobile telephone services and attractive contracts, some people might decide to close their home telephone service and instead rely upon mobile phones. I know a number of people who have done this already and have even considered it myself as a means of reducing living expenses.

  • Economic abandonment. The transition from the relatively painless stage of early abandonment to this stage is likely to coincide with a financial crisis or economic recession. Unemployment, increased costs of living and reduced incomes will force tough decisions to be made resulting in abandoning or significantly reducing the use of technologies. Discretionary items are likely to be the first to go, but over time, items more and more fundamental to our current lifestyles will be abandoned. This stage will be characterised by major falls in sales. It is likely to be widespread, at least regionally or nationally and the items that are abandoned will have increasingly greater impacts.

    During this stage the item of technology will still be supported, that is the industries supporting the technology will still function. An example might be provided by cars. Sustained high oil prices combined with other economic factors are likely to result in significantly less travel by car; however there will still be an automotive industry. This stage is likely to last for some time, potentially decades depending upon the technology.

  • Systemic abandonment. This stage is defined by a technology being abandoned because it can no longer be supported or maintained, at least on a wide scale. The reasons that this could occur are many such as the unavailability of parts due to business failures/supply chain disruptions, a credit freeze, oil supply disruptions or an unreliable electrical supply. This stage is characterised by the physical inability to support a technology on a reliable basis. This stage could have global impacts and occur quite quickly due to synchronous failure. For example if Boeing, or Airbus, were to fail, this would have significant implications for airlines globally.
  • Die hard abandonment. The final stage of abandonment is likely to be the longest. Some technologies might disappear completely whilst others may last for decades or centuries. The use of a technology during this phase is likely to be isolated and dependent upon local circumstances. For example, you would expect that Saudi Arabia will have cars on the road far longer than an oil importing nation. Smaller numbers of a technology may also be maintained through the cannibalisation of parts or local manufacture. This stage is likely to be highly uneven between regions and different types of technologies. For example, maintaining mechanical items is likely to be more achievable than sophisticated electronic items.

Some general comments on the theory. Although this is explained in a linear fashion, the transition between stages is likely to overlap and could even occur concurrently between different regions or nations. Indeed some nations might be increasing the uptake of a technology at the same time another nation is abandoning it.

Also, it is not necessarily a one way process; it is likely to be dynamic. All that it will take to reverse the process is for the cost benefit analysis to alter direction, assuming that a technology is still supportable. In many industries we are likely to have major over capacity problems in the years ahead as the global economy contracts. Economic and systemic abandonment, whilst likely to be highly disruptive, may result in some technologies being able to remain viable for much longer as excess capacity is removed.

Finally synchronous failure, to use Thomas Homer-Dixon’s phrase, could rapidly accelerate this process due to the interdependencies between many technologies. As an example, if the US Air Forces Global Positioning System constellation were to fail, this could render a whole host of technologies that rely upon it immediately useless.

Questions

The key assumption that underpins this theory is that the future path of the global economy will be one of contraction. Taken in this context, detailed below are some questions for discussion on the theory of technological abandonment:

  • Is this theory valid? If not, are there other ways of describing how we might abandon technology?
  • Is there any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, available to support this theory?
  • What technologies are most at risk?
  • What technologies should we attempt to maintain? What are the priorities?
  • What role should Governments take?
  • Where should we be focusing investment and R&D budgets?
  • What characteristics should future technologies embody?
  • What are the implications for manufacturers and business?
  • What opportunities does the realisation of this theory present?
  • Should/could we abandon at risk technologies prematurely?
  • What do we do with the remnants of the technologies that we abandon?

Author's Note

This campfire post is an extension of my thoughts on the future of technology explained in a paper that has recently been published in the Australian Defence Force Journal titled ‘Lasers or Longbows: A paradox of military technology’ (from page 44). The paradox I define in the paper as being ‘The advantage provided by the increased complexity of a military capability increases the vulnerability of that same capability to systemic collapse due to its reliance on complex supply chains.’ Whilst this paper was describing the impact on the military, I believe that it is equally relevant to all technologies. This post expands upon the argument presented in the paper to examine how individual technologies may be abandoned.

I don't believe that it makes sense that we in the USA have been abandoning our roads because it relates to overall peak oil etc., as you say here:

"Indeed this is already occurring in some parts of the world, such as the US, where in some instances financially pressured local governments have been turning bitumen roads into gravel roads to reduce costs."

We simply have not been spending our money wisely. One reason that the USA is not spending money to maintain its infrastructure simply because the USA has such idiotic foreign policy and we spend too much on "defense" spending. Consider the many many billions if the USA wasn't so lacking in astuteness.

Yeah, transport is really the sector that will change. There is plenty of electricity available. Peak oil is about . . . well, oil. Between coal, natural gas, nuclear power, solar, and wind; there will be plenty of electricity for my lifetime and my child's lifetime.

We must keep in mind that there are considerable interdependencies between all sectors of critical infrastructure. With high oil prices come economic uncertainty, and low budgets for roads, which are expensive to maintain due to the high bitumen costs. Lack of road maintenance impacts almost every other sector - these supply chain risks are already being examined;


Critical Infrastructure Interdependencies from the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center

If we look at the impacts of road disruptions in specific areas over time;

If we take just a peek at some of the details in the Communications sector alone, we'll see how delicate our current (chaotic) system really is;

Just like the climate, we don't know exactly what will happen when the system is perturbed in any number of ways, so something as complex as our critical infrastructure must be modeled;

We are being supported by an n-dimensional house of cards. Pull one lower card out and...

Well I live in the state of New Jersey, which is a poster child for infrastructure problems. Among other things the state highway trust fund is so badly in debt that it spends its entire income paying off past bond issues. Recently work was stopped on a much needed rail tunnel into Manhattan because of financial issues.

The problem with attributing any of these issues to rising oil costs is that the evidence for political and financial mismanagement is far more convincing. Despite the huge infrastructure demands in NJ the state has been raiding gasoline tax revenues and using the money for other purposes for decades. Now of course any attempt to raise the gasoline tax is deservedly viewed as untrustworthy because nobody believes that the funds will be used for infrastructure.

Also the model that you provide for communications infrastructure looks to be based on a model of the public telephone network. That is rather obsolete; most communications (including voice telephone calls) are routed through IP switches at the end office which have a robust network failover architecture. The key dependence on the switching office shown in that diagram just does not exist anymore.

STA,

One major dimension of road costs is the cost of the bitumen for asphalt. As oil went from $11/barrel in 1999 to $147 in 2008, asphalt costs went through the roof. Even in 2006, many jurisdictions were having to scale back their maintenance levels;

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2006/06/26/story1.html

"They wanted a 25 percent increase. There was no way we could go to our city council asking for that kind of cost increase," Carnahan said.

The city's paving budget is already fixed at about $1.2 million, and rising costs have a direct effect on the amount of work that gets done, Carnahan said. "If the cost of asphalt goes up 20 percent, we pave 20 percent fewer streets."

Add to that the reduced revenues from the recession caused at least in part by high oil prices, and that points to the double impact to road maintenance by high oil prices.

While certainly much in the way of communications is now via email and many voice calls are now via VOIP, I see no evidence that most local ones are, so the loss of a telephone switch still has significant impact.

As oil went from $11/barrel in 1999 to $147 in 2008, asphalt costs went through the roof.

In the somewhat longer term, road construction can go to concrete, which is now less expensive.

"If the cost of asphalt goes up 20 percent, we pave 20 percent fewer streets."

That's just an example of bad management. Asphalt isn't the only cost of road paving - labor is probably larger. If they can't compensate for 20% higher asphalt costs by reducing the project list by 10% (or less), and then transferring labor (and funds in other account types) to the supply account, then their budget & accounting systems are really inflexible.

As asphalt prices stay high (when they are not going up) and revenues plummet, a 20% increase in price could actually result in more than a 20% drop in road maintenance.

Concrete is extremely energy intensive, even with on-site power and co-generation - and remember, building concrete and road concrete are not one and the same;

http://www.deq.idaho.gov/multimedia_assistance/p2/case_studies/idaho_san...

As asphalt prices stay high

I think they've dropped from the 2008 peak, along with oil:

"Asphalt prices not halting road projects in Lake, Geauga
Published: Friday, July 16, 2010

Despite an ailing economy, asphalt prices are holding steady as local departments resurface area highways and roads.

Geauga County Engineer Robert L. Phillips said asphalt prices are about $125 to $145 per cubic yard this year and were about the same last year.

In 2008, asphalt prices were about $150 to $160 per cubic yard."

http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2010/07/16/news/doc4c3f20c496c822105...
--------------------------------------------------------

revenues plummet

Overall local revenues are rising from their bottom during the recession. It's true that stimulus money was temporary, but motor fuel tax funds are pretty stable (gasoline consumption is rising slightly, as is VMT). If they decline in the future due to declining road fuel consumption then local government will have to figure out how to fund road projects with a broader revenue base.

a 20% increase in price could actually result in more than a 20% drop in road maintenance.

As best I can tell, asphalt is about 25% of road maintenance cost. Again, that should mean that a 20% increase in asphalt prices would mean a 5% reduction in maintenance (with proper budgeting).

Concrete is extremely energy intensive

True, but little of that energy is from oil. For better or worse, I don't see a major effort to charge the cement/concrete industry for it's CO2 emissions.

It is not that simple to just :"go to concrete" for roads.

Bitumen is a flexible pavement, it does not need to be a structural element. Concrete, however, is rigid, so it must be designed as a continuous slab, and cannot be allowed to crack under load. This means it has to be very thick, and reinforced, to handle heavy truck loads. It is not cheaper and more energy intensive.

For those who care about CO2 emissions, bitumen roads, are, believe it or not, a form of carbon sequestration - it just sits there in the road. With concrete, coal was burned to make the cement, so CO2 was actually released.

The level of effort required to build a lane of proper concrete highway is actually more than that needed for a railroad line.

The real way to go with cheap roads is either cement stabilised base gravel road, or the old fashioned spray seal. It is not as smooth and quiet as hotmix bitumen, but it is very cheap to build, and, done properly, lasts almost as long.

The real problem with roads are the heavy trucks. Damage to the road increases as the 4th power of the axle load - one truck is equivalent to 10,000 cars. If we didn't have heavy vehicles on the roads, we would have far fewer road maintenance problems (and less fatal accidents into the bargain)

Concrete...is not cheaper and more energy intensive.

Both the literature, and the highway engineers I've interviewed say that historically (per-PO-lite)the life-cycle costs of asphalt and concrete were similar: concrete was more expensive, but lasted longer.

Yes, conventional concrete is high-CO2. For better or worse, I see no sign of that slowing down it's use.

Have you looked at this?

"Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year, for concrete and other things, pumps out 5% of the world's CO2 emissions - more than the entire aviation industry."

A new cement has been developed, which consumes rather than produces CO2.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/31/cement-carbon-emissions

The life cycle costs are similar, but the thing with concrete is you have to build a heavy duty road, whereas with asphalt you can build light or heavy duty. Asphalt can take a certain number of overloadings (e.g. garbage trucks on suburban streets) but concrete can;t - one overload and its cracked.

So for highways, they are line ball, and that is why both are used, but for secondary/light duty roads, asphalt is way cheaper.

There is, actually, one way to make light duty concrete roads - you make them flexible, with segmented block pavers. These are used in carparks, container ports, etc etc. You can use them for roads too - modern versions of cobblestones. Needs more labour and less concrete to make - good to for today;s economy.
Only downside is they are not high speed roads, 80km/h tops, but for urban streets, that is fine. They look good too, and can have al sorts of inlaid colour patterns. I saw a residential subdivision in sydney that used these, and you truly felt like you were in a different place, like a "garden" community instead of just a city suburb.

After all, the Roman roads were "segmented block pavement" and look how long they have lasted!

lots of tech info here:
http://www.cmaa.com.au/html/TechInfo/TechInfoPaving_permeable.html

Asphalt prices seem to have moved up more this summer than the fuel prices did year to year. This was probably due to a lot of "stimulus" construction going on. If your road wasn't being paved with money from Washington, you were in an unfavorable competitive situation.

Stuff in communications powered directly from the grid includes: customer premises network terminating units, controled environment vaults, cell sites and towers, central offices, repeater stations, long distance offices, data centers, control and maintenance centers, dispatch centers, warehouses and adminstrative offices for a start. Important locations have dual feeds from separate substations.

Most of these also have uninterruptible power supplies and battery backup, while the bigger locations have diesel or turbogenerators and battery plants to provide emergency power to critical functions. The latter, of course, are also supplied with oil and/or gas.

Will, thanks mucho for these tables. I've already sent the link around to folks up here in Sarah-Palin-Land to who argue that we can focus uni-dimensionally on a single issue. Food seems to be the favorite. The issue of complexity and what comes apart first can be examined through the issue of transformity, and as usual, the argument boils down to the importance of the grid and transportation fuels. Does complexity unwind the same way built up through progressive transformations?

http://dieoff.org/page170.htm#transformity

http://patternliteracy.com/food.html

Does complexity unwind the same way built up through progressive transformations?

I'd say that simplification of a complex system can only be achieved through progressive transformations. Unless of course you have a catastrophic failure of the system in which case I wouldn't call it a mere 'simplification' process. However that simplification process will not likely be a straight forward reversal of the process that originally led to the existence of the complex system.

All one has to do is think of the increasing complexity over time that a fertilized egg must undergo so that it eventually becomes, say, a highly accomplished neuroscientist... and compare that process to the cascade of organ failures the leads to his or her death followed by the decomposition of the body.

WHT's inadvertently coined word 'Entrophy' might be a good way to describe the later.
Entrophy being an amalgamation of the words Entropy and Eutrophication.

If one could obtain data with which to graph the delta 'Entrophy' from the moment of the first cellular disruption leading to the series of organ failures that would eventually cause the cascade of failing organs, one should be able to obtain momentary snapshots of the simplification process (decreasing complexity) in action along a chosen timeline.

I believe the same picture can be obtained for any complex system undergoing an 'Enthrophic' process, even our complex industrialized civilization which is IMHO now undergoing it's first cellular disruptions due to declining energy sources and diminishing resources. This particular oil candle has burned exceedingly brightly by having been lit at both ends.

Here's your analogy of the highly accomplished neuro-scientist, pictured below in terms of transformities. But to equate the physical DNA, the cells of his liver with the legacy of his work (books, medical knowledge that then gets passed on, and other cultural DNA) is mixing two different streams of transformity. The physical stream of DNA and cells is what makes us mammals as part of the food chain. The information stream is many exponents greater in terms of transformation, and it is what makes the human culture so amazing. The body dies, but the legacy lives on within the culture, as does the DNA of the neuroscientist, if propagated? The failure of both streams of transformation may occur at drastically different rates. Cultural DNA is arguably just as valuable as genetic DNA, but on a different, shorter time scale, but with massive embodied energy from our FF culture?

Thanks Iaato, it's because of responses like yours that I keep coming back to TOD!

One of the interesting deals with eutrophication in action is that as long as entities of interest grow, the amount of dieoff is not as apparent. Take the case of lake distribution sizes. Eutrophication happens but the water that would end up settling in the pond ends up going somewhere else, so it is best modeled as a positive dispersion in flow rates -- which still shows up as positive peak in lake sizes away from zero size on a logarithmic scale.

Big lakes don't as easily undergo eutrophication. Bizarre that I happened across this link today: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/this.week.html
Lake Aggasiz which dwarfs the Great Lakes has been reduced to the size of Lake Winnipeg today. The idea was that this lake broke its banks and flowed into the Atlantic which lead to the Younger Dryas cooling.

If true, that was some fast eutrophication!

Could it have been a single point failure in the system -- that is a single beaver dam somewhere in Quetico Provincial Park or Boundary Waters that failed. I kid you not, some of these beaver dams are huge.
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=961698

I have hiked in the BWCA and I swear I saw one big enough that left me slack-jawed.

Isn't this the most bizarre theory yet?

Fred with your graphics skillz, you should place a beaver dam on the map!

Interesting and bizarre indeed. By fortuitous coincidence the application I use is also used by geologists in the oil industry because besides its myriad graphics functions and seismic analysis features, it also has GIS capabilities which allow me to place that beaver dam into a very precisely georeferenced map. WHT, I might take you up on this just for fun!

This is the longest beaver dam I have found so far with a systematic Google Earth search and interpretation of beaver habitat across Canada. Beaver lodges are visible and the dam must be the result of at least two beaver families. Dams of about 500 meters are quite common in Canada, but 850 meters (2790 ft) is exceptional. Long dams like this tend to develop mainly in large wetlands. Many more beaver dams can be observed in the surrounding area. This dam is located near the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park , in Northern Alberta, Canada and about 190 km North of Fort McMurray and the Alberta Tar Sands.

Wikipedia provides a reference for a beaver dam near Three Forks, Montana, with a length of 652 meters (2,140 feet), 4.3 meters (14 feet) high at the highest point, and seven meters (23 feet) thick at the base. I have not been able to find this dam on Google Earth.

The challenge: "Find the largest beaver dam in your area"

If I can find this beaver map location on Google Earth and I have my son who is an expert in that, then I can get precise Lat Long coordinates and use my graphics app to get very precise perimeter and area measurements for the dam, I can then place it into any USGS georeferenced map and even export as ESRI GIS shapefile. Hey, might as well have some fun while we still can, right?

The idea was that this lake broke its banks

It was a glacial lake formed during the end of the last ice age, and the bank it broke was essentially the ice cap retreating northward. Kind of beside the point, but beavers weren't likely culprits there.

Kind of beside the point, but beavers weren't likely culprits there.

With regards lake Agassiz I'm pretty sure you are right that beavers probably weren't the culprits but still, it might be fun to locate some large beaver dams and correctly place them on a map.

Happy hunting!

An earlier break went northward apparently.

This one was later and was on the southern edge of the boundary and the outlet was through the St. Lawrence River. I was thinking it went through the Rainy River near Lake of the Woods right at the boundary of BWCA and Quetico, and then dumped into Lake Superior.

Whether it was an ice dam or a silly beaver dam it really points out what kind of havoc that single points of failure can cause.

Hi Will, Might I suggest that the graphic showing the interrelationships of all the different sectors of the economy be redrawn with oil at the base instead of at the top. Like this:

Oil Based Economy

Good point, it shows the 'house of cards' effect more clearly.

How did you do that, btw?

I use a high end scientific graphics application called Canvas 11 from ACD Systems.

I took your image imported it into Canvas, flipped the image on the horizontal axis then selected the black color with the eyedropper tool then used the select similar function which allowed me to select everything that was black and then hit delete. Since this image was a low resolution I still had to go in and do some rough clean up after which I ended up with basically just the colored grids an arrows.

Then I just typed in all the labels by looking at the original unflipped image and following the arrows.

This was quick and dirty work I could have done a much better job either by recreating the image from scratch or at least done a better job of applying different filters to make it cleaner and I could have changed the resolution and made it much higher.

FMagyar,

I had to give a little chuckle when I say this diagram. That is the ISO OSI Seven Layer Model in operation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

It has many interpretations. Welcome to my world of trouble-shooting computer networks.

PH.D. and the lowly likes of me have taken this model to heart in the industrial technology world and find it somewhat fungible.

As any piece of paper can only be folded in half a maximum of seven times, take any system or process and chances are one can resolve it to the seven layer model. An abstract for sure, but once you get the idea it is a mighty powerful system structural analysis tool.

Heh, I can relate!

I once had the opportunity to work at a satellite TV uplink station in Miami Lakes... I worked in network operations on a unix server farm. Now why anyone would place such a facility in a place called Miami Lakes is beyond me, but suffice it to say as is wont to happen around these parts we had a hurricane and a major flood.

Well water got into everything including the back up diesel generators and *ALL* power including backup was lost at this location... no power, no network... Fortunately there were a few mirror server farms set up in drier locations around the world so the customers still got to watch their TV.

The point is if you pull the power plug (lose access to cheap oil) then you won't have much of a complex system left to deal with...

Time to bring out your canoe, flashlight, hand cranked emergency radio and your fishing pole!
Good Luck!

David, the reversion to gravel roads is an example of economic abandonment. I am not arguing that this is as a result of peak oil, rather it is an attempt to identify cost savings resulting in a particular technology being abandoned at a local level. That is exactly what I mean by economic abandonment.

The conversion of some roads back to gravel is not abandonment of the technology. It is most likely due to local conditions, such as reduced population and use in specific areas, reduced tax revenues by local governments, or changes in spending priorities by local governments, perhaps due to mandates from the state or federal government that other services be provided. In one heavily publicized case in North Dakota, the road was an old highway that had been paralleled by Interstate-94 some years ago, and it was broken up rather than repaved.

I doubt very much that the number of lane-miles covered in asphalt is declining in the United States. Even if they were, it would still reflect a change in the volume of use of a technology and not an abandonment of the technology.

Another example would be US Navy surface ships. During the Reagan adminstration there was much talk about a 600 ship Navy, although I'm not sure whether we built up to that level. The Navy is now well under half that number of ships. However, I don't think that one can say that the Navy has abandoned ship technology.

Certainly not full abandonment, but the number of ships that are affordable is far lower than it was previously, which ties in to the article's thesis statement. Of course, the threat has changed a bit too, so this may not be a fully representative domain.

And if you are reading the right forums, you will have seen arguments for the proposition that the actual capacity of those fewer ship is paradoxically greater.
Technology creep - incremental improvements year over year means the ships/fleet they have are more capable and effective than that older 600 ship fleet would have been.
No doubt there are many who would argue the toss on that, but simply comparing gross numbers isn't that useful.
It keeps coming back to the idea that technology is used to perform a function. So, 600 average ships may not be as good as a smaller number of more capable (and costly)ships to perform the required function.
And plenty of wriggle room in there for every man and his dog to have an uninformed opinion. Price/capacity/training/availability/misc unanticipated events/factors... etc.
At this point though, the fleet isn't any smaller because of the amount of money being spent, that has gone up(both absolutely and relatively I believe). It has been about choices made about what techniques and mechanisms the navy wanted to employ to achieve its desires/objectives.
So far there is no question of abandoning any technology, or of being forced by cost to abandon any real capability.

So far there is no question of abandoning any technology, or of being forced by cost to abandon any real capability.

I'm not quite sure that's true. Many military technologies have been abandoned - like big gun battleships, sail power, and coal power
In most military situations it is not because of cost that they are abandoned, but because they are rendered obsolete (e.g. coal) or ineffective (battleships).

There is a recent example of cost abandonment - the US Navy used to have some nuclear powered cruisers, which are more operationally capable than conventional ones, but were "abandoned" )i.e. not replaced) for cost reasons. The nuke cruiser concept was refloated, and re-abandoned, as recently as this year.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL33946.pdf

I can think of no better example of an increase in capability (i.e. "infinite" range), for a massive increase in complexity. For large ships (carriers) and submarines, it clearly makes sense, for small ones it does not - the cruisers are clearly near the crossover point.

...but because they are rendered obsolete (e.g. coal)...

Following the oil price spike at the end of the 1970s, there was some consideration given to the possibility of building new coal-fired steamships. At least one, the SS Energy Independence, a small bulk freighter, was actually built. The thinking was that improvements in boiler design and automation of fuel handling developed by the electric generating industry appeared to make such ships feasible. There were a whole list of practical problems that would have had to be solved, such as contemporary ports lack of infrastructure for handling coal fuel. At some level, coal is "obsolete" only as long as you have oil.

It would help a lot of one could do away with that nasty "steam" portion of the power train. Direct-coal fuel cells, if they ever make it out of the lab and into the field, operating at 50-60% efficiencies, would make things interesting.

At some level, coal is "obsolete" only as long as you have oil.
And even when you don;t have oil, the choice is then to make Fischer-Tropsch oil from the coal, like Sasol does.

For ships the problem with coal is that you lose too much cargo volume, compared to oil, even though the fuel is less than 1/10th cost.
For trains, it would be much easier to go to coal, from an infrastructure point of view, but it would be easier still to use CNG.

Coal doesn't mean you have to use steam, you can gasify the coal and use in an IC engine, but for a transport application this is cumbersome.

As for the steam part, I think it actually has its advantages, as I mention downthread. Doesn't mean it will be used everywhere, but it has its niches.

The interesting question with steam arises when you look at biofuels (or coal to liquids) to replace oil. Given that a steam engine can always burn the fuel directly, and can burn any type of fuel, it becomes more fuel efficient than most biofuels, because of the conversion losses.
Most X to liquids processes have less than a 50% yield, so the steam engine only needs to be better than half the efficiency of the oil engine, and they are usually better than that.

In an oil constrained world, a steam engine is the ultimate omnivore engine, so I will not be surprised to see it re-appearing in a few places, particularly agriculture.

The fact that steam is appearing again for some specialty (tourist) trains, though in oil fired form, is an interesting juxtaposition!

It's worth pointing out that one of the environmental disaster sites in my town is the site of a coal gasification plant was operating in the early 20th century.

[edit] In other words: these technologies work but, even though we could do it better today, they come with a substantial price.

Perhaps the Smaller Nuke ships were abandoned due to a lack of recruits with the intellectual capacity to learn how to operate and maintain the reactors. Essentially a failure by the feds to support our public schools leading to the lack of people qualified to even learn about such systems in detail. Somewhere we lost the connection between a well educated population and national security.

A similar connection was seen when the draft began in 1940 in preparation for WW II. The depression resulted in a large percentage of young men growing up with inadequate nutrition and being declared 4-F.

" So,600 average ships may not be as good as a smaller number of more capable (and costly)ships to perform the required function."

Very true. Instead of an ASW ship and an AA ship (and possibly multiples of each) and a command ship, now you can do it all with one warship.

The catch will be if the shooting starts. Losing the one all-purpose ship will hurt more than losing one of the task force. The argument is the one ship is much more survivable than the group, and if you lose one member of the task force you have neutralized it anyway.

This has not yet been proven in the real world. In a world of 30 day sea wars like the Falklands, it may be true. If we get a four or five year naval slugfest, then we well regret having so much capability in one hard to replace package.

Maybe we have a slightly different understanding of what I mean by economic abandonment. The conversion of bitumen roads to gravel may or may not be economic abandonment depending upon the circumstance. For example, if the reason that the road was changed to gravel was because the population or road use didn't justify the expense of maintaining the bitumen that would not be a case of economic abandonment. If on the other hand the reason was because of reduced tax revenue I would argue that this would be an example of economic abandonment. The reason being that given the choice the local government would maintain the road as bitumen, but due to economic reasons has chosen not to in order to spend it on some other expense.

Personally I think that financial reasons will be the main driver of technologies (or products) being abandoned, at least in the immediate future, as opposed to physical shortages of inputs.

But even the case of population or road use is still en economic case. In this case, the benefits had shrunk, that they were now exceeded by the costs. Other cases the costs increase, for whatever reasons, but I would argue that if it is based on cost-benefit, rather than say, technical obsolescense, then it is an economic abandonment.

Whether it is the cost, the benefit, or even the ability to pay the cost, regardless of the cost/benefit, it is an economic decision.

THis is how individuals, businesses, and organizations make decisions in real life. But exactly how, when, and how severely the financial environment will change as a result of Peak Oil is the central question.

Some time during my lifetime, oil constraints will be a big problem and lots of normal people will no longer be able to afford to burn the stuff for something so trivial as commuting to work. That will have huge ripple-effects, most bad but some good. One of the important questions that I haven't been able to answer is whether this will happen by inflation (gasoline costs $20/gal), or by deflation (gasoline costs $5/gal, but most people don't have jobs so $5/gal is a lot of money).

Of course, I'd probably have to understand the entire US economy in order to figure this out, and that's beyond my ability to figure out on my own!

Of course, if I'm wrong about my "Peak Oil will look like the Great Depression without end" scenario, then who knows! But all of my grandparents made it through the Great Depression, and they did it just the way you'd expect -- by being very good at skilled work that's always in demand, by being flexible and changing careers when necessary, and by adapting to new technologies and environments gracefully. I'm doing my best to learn from those examples.

Lecksos writes: "For example, to maintain our road networks requires significant financial and human capital, a vast array of equipment, and resources such as sand, gravel, bitumen, steel, aluminium and concrete. This is all supported by the expenditure of energy, such as diesel and electricity. Whilst the global economy has grown meeting these maintenance costs has been in the most part achievable. It is highly unlikely however that society will be able to meet these maintenance costs in a contracting economy. Indeed this is already occurring in some parts of the world, such as the US, where in some instances financially pressured local governments have been turning bitumen roads into gravel roads to reduce costs."

Leckos,
I guess I am just a bit confused.

I thought you were saying, above, that due to the increase in all energy costs, economic activity would decrease, governmental revenues would go down and hence fewer dollars available for road maintenance. That's not correct?

All that I was saying was that the unwisdom of American foreign police and hence over-investment in military goods, the US GDP is making the choice to spend more on US military and fewer roads, bridges etc and their mantenance.

Oil had by our current methods of getting it is sure enough expensive, isn't it?But how much would it cost us to do without it, in the short term?

Considering the history of our species in terms of war and empire,in an entirely disinterested and objective fashion, we might not have very much of an economy at all in terms of oil and its derivative , asphalt, were it not for our bloated military budget.

I'm not saying that this is morally right, or that the decisions made in the past in respect to war and imports were correct, but only that each incoming administration has to play the cards it is dealt by fortune in an ongoing game when that administration takes its seat at the table of world politics.

Of course a lot of very well intentioned people have a very hard time getting thier heads around this idea-they confuse wishing and wishful thinking with Darwinian reality on the grand scale.

The troops aren't coming home, not so long as we have the ability to keep them in the field, regardless of which party controls our govt;because IF they come home, in a VERY short period of time, the oil will cease to flow our way and we would be in about the same sort of economic situation as a typical third world country on the verge of collapse.

Of course nice civilized Europeans, and niave well intentioned Americans,love to bitch about America bullying the rest of the world.

But an impartial reading of history, or a basic understanding of the science of biology, indicates that SOMEBODY is always bullying the rest of the (accessible) world.

There is not one iota of evidence leading me to expect this situation to change-other than the possibility of a a Mexican standoff or stalemate -which cannot be permanent.

But hey, a Mexican standoff kept us and the soviets from mixing it up directly for half a century right?And come to think of it, I don't remember hearing about very many people getting killed trying to get from the west of Germany into the east.

America's days on top of the heap are probably numbered.All the people who benefited from our status as a superpower, both American citizens and the citizens of countries allied with us, are going to miss us when our place is taken by the Chinese-a people and a culture with a long memory.

The self righteous professional soccer moms and daddies who like to think of me as an uncultured redneck as going to be really pxssed and embarassed when they have to park thier Escalade and I'm still driving because as a farmer I get a gasoline allotment. ;)

If they ask very nicely and humbly and come in thru the rear door of the barn, I might condescend to sell them a little extra fruit or a few eggs, above and beyond thier rationed quota.

Of course in the grand scheme of things, there will be as many or more people happy with the chan

People really do hate to have thier noses rubbed into unpleasant realities, but contrarian old coots such as yours truly enjoy the rubbing.

Yair... Oldfarmer. I amost always agree with what you post...but could you (or someone) explain how U.S. intervention overseas in any way secures oil supply?

Like a dog standing over a bone he isn't ready to eat yet;he stops somebody else from eating it.

We embargoed Japan just before WWII to cut off her supply of essential imports, including oil.Japan and Germany were already embarked on wars of conquest.

Right now we have as a practical matter already conquered the middle east in terms of securing the oil there;we don't actually claim the territory, but our troops are on the ground there, and there is nobody capable of kicking them out.

If we were out, and the old soviets or the modern chinese were in, we couldn't kick them out either, unless they failed due to collapse from within.

The yankee occupation of the middle east is preemptive-like when a business man hires an armed gaurd to stand around to watch out for crooks;or if you prefer, like when a bank robber posts an armed man in the street to make sure nobody comes in while he robs the bank.If you wish, you may look at the flow our way as a long term robbery, although we do give some real value in addition to the soon to be worthless dollars-our troops keep the people such as the House of Saud in control;otherwise they would have long since been deposed and probably beheaded, unless thgey managed to escape.

You can stake your last dime on this-where great fortunes are known to be, there will always be armed men to gaurd over them, to make sure nobody else moves in and siezes the goodies.

The considered and sober opinion of the federal govt of the USA is that the oil of the middle east is of such importance to us that we simply cannot take any chances whatsoever with the free market and the good will of the rest of the world ensuring our access to it;without it we are finished, we stink worse than last weeks cut bait left in a cooler in the hot sun.

Ergo, we occupy the middle east.

If you are a regular here, you know all about depletion, export land, and so forth.

The consensus here may be that the govt is blind to peak oil, but I assure you this is not so;the fact that our boys are over there proves it.

When tshtf, middle east oil will still be coming our way for a good while after other countries are doing without.

It's a Darwinian world, dude!


The consensus here may be that the govt is blind to peak oil, but I assure you this is not so;the fact that our boys are over there proves it.


They're on to it for sure. It's also true that the fed gov would take a big credibility hit if peak oil were announced prematurely. I think most observers would agree that it would take a year or two after the peak to be sure it had happened.

I predict the president (if not Obama, the next one) will announce peak oil. Obama would do well to do so. I'm not sure if graphs will help -- maybe save the graphs for the published version of the speech.

Yair...thanks for reply OFM...but how come U.S.oil-co's didn't grab much of the action during the last round of development applications?

Is this an antsy politicaly correct stand off i.e. the U.S. doesn't want to confirm the real adgenda...and then if things go pear shaped with oil supply some "coalition of the willing" will go back in there and take over all those Russian and Chinese buildouts and development...as I mentioned on another thread it is mostly Chinese and Russian outfits heading in there. I saw a picture some where of a column of shiny new Russian "Kamaz" trucks captioned "heading for Iraq".

Makes me wonder what it has all been about. We only have one world and as I see it if the Iraq adventure had never happened Saddam's oil (out of necessity) would have ended up on the market anyway.

Makes me wonder what it has all been about

Someday there's got to be a book written with all the behind the scenes stuff so it all makes sense...I think it all went pear-shaped in '79 myself, when we were still on our heels after the oil embargo, when the US peak was starting to become apparent, and when our guy in Iran got run out of town by a popular revolution. Everything since then has been more or less desperate damage control with ever-more-limited resources, behind the carefully constructed facade of a charming presidential smile.
Obviously Iraq didn't work as planned, or it would have been an open market free-for-all there in 2005 or so, and once the oil and money was flowing there we could have dictated whatever terms we wanted in Iran. I think that was a Plan B to begin with, and the desperation with which it was clung to probably meant there was no Plan C. At some point failure has consequences, currently being that China and Russia are in one economic situation, and we are in another very different one - outmanuevered.

Scrub,

Of course you might be right about the oil ending up on the market anyway.

But looking at the situation from the pov of a president and congress sitting at the poker table and faced with the possibility of Saddam really tightening up the screws and forcing the rest of the exporters in the general area to cut back exports and really ack the price:

As a practical matter, given his record, rhetoric, and personality,the decision was made that Saddam would use his newfound power to put a truly major hurting on us-and the rest of the western oil importers-he obviously never gave a damn about the prosperity of his own people.

While we might have survived an embargo such would have crippled us economically, resulted in the failure to get relected of many incumbent politicians,and destroyed our prestige and dominant leadership position.

These would have been the fast short term consequences of letting Saddam go his way .

Great powers, regardless of who is in charge, do not suffer thier noses to be twisted in such fashion.

The first rule of understanding big power politics is to keep in mind that the game never stops, and the players cannot leave the table;they can't get redeals, and going busted means the country is relegated to a lower , possibly much lower, position in the world.

So for instance while I am not much impressed with OBama I realize his hands are tied and that he has relatively few options;the hand history dealt him is a poor one, and he has only a couple of good cards.

As I see it, Saddam could have run the price of oil up to the level necessary to plunge the world into recession in very short order-and might have done so.Tpt were at the time came to the same conclusion-but for reasons of politics could not say so in so many words of course.

Written by oldfarmermac:
When tshtf, middle east oil will still be coming our way for a good while after other countries are doing without.

Or the U.S. gets the bill for providing security for the oil that goes to China and the profits that go to the Middle East while America descends to third world status.

If the leadership of the oil nations think that, at any given time, the US could kill you and/or your family - that tends to make the leadership be more receptive to the message of the US.

The various bases all over act as a place to preposition supplies and, in their own terms "project force".

An interesting read:
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue51/articles/51_06-07.pdf

It doesn't matter if the attempted actions are a failure - if the actors think it'll help 'em, they will take the action.

Written by oldfarmermac:
The self righteous professional soccer moms and daddies who like to think of me as an uncultured redneck as going to be really pxssed and embarassed when they have to park thier Escalade and I'm still driving because as a farmer I get a gasoline allotment. ;)

If they ask very nicely and humbly and come in thru the rear door of the barn, I might condescend to sell them a little extra fruit or a few eggs, above and beyond thier rationed quota.

They will not have a sufficient gasoline ration to travel from the big city to the rural farm.

During an economic depression, overfed Americans will get skinny from a lack of money reducing the demand for food and contracting agriculture.

Urban gardens will make a dent in the demand for farm products.

Farmers may have difficulty affording fertalizer.

FHA loans paid for by those big city folks might become scarce as tax revenue plummets.

Deflation and peak oil suck for everyone.

Twilight,

I totally agree with you- I was being (or trying to be ) a little sarcastic/humorous in maling that remark-which is why it has a winkie at the end of it.

Interesting theory.

I don't know how much data is available, but I think we might be able to quantify this fairly well for particular technologies.

For one thing, we already have very good examples of technology abandonment.

Oil and Gas lanterns, horse-drawn transport, and solid fuel residential heating are three that come to mind immediately.

Yes, we still do those things, just like your mother-in-law still uses refrigeration even though it is no longer supplied by her employer. But the dynamics behind the shifts from the old ways to the new ways of doing these things definitely applies to figuring out how future changes might work out.

With any task there are a limited number of ways to deal with a key resource limit:
Eliminate the dependence.
Do it more efficiently.
Do it less.
Do without.

For any given task (point-to-point transportation, residential heating, lighting in the samples above) the solution at any given point in time has always turned out to be some combination of those, except in unusual circumstances where the replacement technology has proven to be superior (for the moment) in every way to the technology being replaced.

The 20th Century was very unusual, but there is no denying that a Nissan Leaf is more cost effective for individual transportation in most places than a quarterhorse.

For one thing, we already have very good examples of technology abandonment.

Oil and Gas lanterns, horse-drawn transport, and solid fuel residential heating are three that come to mind immediately.

Funny I guess you and I think differently, This is what came "to mind immediately" for me.
1) human space travel to the moon
2) supersonic commercial passenger jets
3) the space shuttle aka "reusable" spacecraft
4) nuclear power in Germany
5) and for a good laugh "Smell-O-Vision"

Those are fine examples of technologies that were never widely adopted in the first place, and/or have not been abandoned.
If a technology has never had deep penetration because it is too expensive, can you really be said to have abandoned it later?

A slightly different proposition there.

My examples were all (like the refrigeration example above) deeply penetrated, widely used technologies. They aren't dead yet, but where they are used it is because of exceptional conditions or as a novelty.

A remarkable book that discusses the complexity of modern medicine is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Complexity is one of the drivers for rising medical expenses. For decades I have been astonished by the progress seen in nuclear medicine, digital radiography, computed tomography, PET and especially MRI and fMRI (magic resonance imaging?). Although I have recently benefited from the service of a super specialist, a certified cardiologist with a sub-specialty in cardiac electrophysiology, I doubt that increasing medical complexity is sustainable. In coming decades society may be forced into acceptance of simpler medical care.

http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto

Gawande's Checklist Manifesto is indeed a most excellent book. It has many insights that go well beyond medicine. I highly recommend it.

To my mind, your model seems sound. Placed in the larger context, it will operate on various technologies as we descend the fossil fuel production curve:

Greer's Stages of Technic Societies

Is there some level at which contraction is halted and we remain with whatever technologies proved their economic worth as we moved through the bottleneck? Perhaps. It seems to depend on when the renewable energy sources ramp up sufficiently to support a certain level of economic activity:

Economy vs Renewable Energy

I've heard Robert Hirsch say several times that it will take decades before suitable liquid fuel replacements come online and one could include that in the white curve above. (BTW, others have pointed out that the contraction will certainly not be smooth but I haven't changed the graph yet.)

Of course even that graph is simplistic because energy isn't the only resource that will be in scarce supply soon either because of an absolute shortage or because it becomes too dear to purchase for all but the most important uses. When cheap energy goes, so do a lot of the other resources because we're mining the current low-concentration ores only because we have the energy to process more rock. This is one reason why Greer calls the stage we are heading into Scarcity Industrialism. Note that the term is somewhat misleading because there will be absolutely no scarcity of labor from now on.

Then there are depleting aquifers, overfished oceans, etc.

I'm coming around more to Greer's view that we are, in fact, headed for a new Dark Ages — quite possibly by the end of this century.

The more I study this the more easy it becomes for me to see how quickly this could all happen. Not overnight, for sure, but I think within 90 years is certainly highly plausible. Many parts of the world will enter their own Dark Age progressively until, say, 90% of the world population has access to only the most basic technologies. It seems to me all but inevitable that this level is reached within 200 years — and this may be overly generous.

I agree with Greer on the technological slide to "Dark Ages", but I think the statement in itself is not particularly useful. Before invoking some sense of urgency about a return of the dark ages, it should be noted first that they probably weren't so dark for the people in them, and the "neural correlates" of the time are necessarily about the same as our own. In the actual dark ages, the moment to moment and day to day preoccupations of the majority were about the same as they are now - 95% socialization, somebody talking about somebody, someone new in town, someone moving away, someone not behaving right, someone nice to you, etc - all the basic human relations that occupy the majority of our thinking lives.

If you get past that, then thinking about what we might put some effort into keeping is more useful than a focus on hardware, such as modern medicine, engineering expertise, an ethics of human equality and kindness, etc.

Good point, Daxr. My Dad studied the "Dark Ages" extensively, and came to pretty much the same conclusion. He was particularly fascinated by how careful people were about hygiene! Validating examples are like blueberries in a blueberry patch, the closer you look, the more you find.

That may be true but I think there is much more to it than that.

1. 7 billion people competing for a shrinking pie (in all areas — energy, metals, fresh water, etc.) is a very different context than the Middle Ages/Dark Ages
2. it's very possible (likely?) that we will see the rollback of The Enlightenment in many areas of the world that have it now.

Even with a broadly available public education system, the best the U.S. has gotten to is this:

Half of all Americans believe they are protected by guardian angels, one-fifth say they've heard God speak to them, one-quarter say they have witnessed miraculous healings, 16 percent say they've received one and 8 percent say they pray in tongues, according to a survey released Thursday by Baylor University.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/19/half-of-americans-believ...

It's not just technology...it's the whole of society that will regress.

...much more of course, and book-length discussions would be easy enough to fill out with all the perspectives and details. I don't worry much about technology myself (though the abandonment of technology certainly also means a reduction in our capacity to feed 6.8 billion people) but rather as you say the rollback of the enlightenment.

If you've ever studied medicine one unfortunate transition was from the promising methods and approaches of the Greeks and Romans, to the general ignorance of the 7th or 8th centuries, where the "Magic Egg" was the most common treatment for disease in many areas of Europe - on the theory that disease was caused by evil spirits, and evil was irresistibly attracted to innocence, and there was nothing so innocent as the unborn, an egg was placed against a disease part to draw out the evil for some time and then buried far away once the spirit was trapped inside. Our medical knowledge is an accomplishment in itself not entirely tied to technology, which it would be a shame to lose.

The eradication of many forms of slavery is perhaps a greater accomplishment, linked closely to a philosophy of equality that has few historic parallels, and no necessary biological support. Perhaps it is related to the current density of our species and the need for close cooperation, but it would be easy to see everything go the other way. Just listening to US talk radio, it seems the rollback of the enlightenment is well under way...

Yes! Now we're talking. I agree with your post.

What we are witnessing, in its many varied forms, is nothing less than the rollback of the entire Enlightenment project, including classical liberalism, which is an offshoot.

Still, I think that we will gain much, however imperceptibly, once population falls to the 1 to 2 billion range. Of course nobody knows the exact number but my guess is that global civilization could function sustainably with renewable energy at that level.

You are not kidding. A sample of an online conversation I was having with someone just the other day.

Batsh!t insane. Believes the Glen Beck moral crusade is the way to go. Also has bought into the Kurzweilian rapture post humanist thing. Which is a heady mixture.

guess I will do this sooner rather than better. Some experiences of God:

Speaking in Tongues- back in the 70s there was something called the charismatic movement running through mainline churches. People were demonstrating spiritual gifts described in the New Testament, one of which was speaking in an unknown language. You can pretty much tell the difference between someone speaking a language and someone babbling—there is a cadence to a language. My girlfriend had this experience, and so I prayed to receive it as well. It was odd. I was in full control of my faculties, could start and stop talking when I chose, could choose to speak English or the other. There were no emotions attached to the experience, but there was a rather distinctive word that kept popping up.

Now the churches were pretty divided over the charismatic movement, so speaking in tongues never became a part of my regular spiritual routine. About 5 years later my now wife and I were taking an Old Testament class. The professor used that distinct word I had spoken in my first encounter. My wife and I looked at each other, that was the word! Since the professor thought we were smarter than we really were, he did not stop to define it. We talked to him after class.

Th word was pronounced Shik-eye-na. Shikinah is a Hebrew word meaning "to dwell" It is the word used to describe the glory and presence of God. In the old testament there are references to the glory of God being so great that the priests could not stay in the temple. It is attached to the cloud of God that appears in Exodus. I was 17 when I had that tongues experience, with no training in Hebrew, nor access to the language. Perhaps it's a coincidence that I spoke that word. But I believe I have also experienced the Shekinah myself.

The Glory of the Lord. In my 20s I belonged to a big non-denominational church. It had grown pretty quickly, and was run by a group of type A personalities with a type A+ pastor. The success started to get them off track, and I along with others began to see signs that the services were moving away from true worship towards crass manipulation. A small group of us got together to pray for the leadership. (as opposed to simply complain about it) We agreed that we would pray blessings on the leadership, and no "take the jerks out" prayers.

As soon as we got quiet and began to pray, a heaviness filled the air. The best word I can use to describe it is dread. Not fear, not excitement, although it had a bit of those.

It reminded me of a story I was told by a guy who saw the Hindenberg as a child. He was at school, and the class was released for recess early because of an unnamed "surprise." The kids heard the engines before seeing the thing, and it made them uneasy. Then it appeared, and the whole damn sky was filled with aluminum! By now the kids were clustered in groups because this was scary. Nobody said a word. All you could do is look at this thing you had never seen before and could not have imagined.

My first time in that presence I shook. And not just me, but all five us in the room. At the end of the prayer the presence lifted. We talked about what we experienced and it was the same for each of us. Each week as we gathered for prayer that presence would return, and once I got past the dread, and incredible stillness replaced it. Peace lacks the gravitas to describe the sensation. We never planned ahead what we would pray about. A theme would emerge and we would run with it. What was odd was that after several weeks of praying the pastor's sermons began to be about the issue revealed in prayer the week before. He was apparently hearing from God, but not seeing the application regarding the church.

During this time one of the type A elders came to our prayer meeting. He exuded this smug, condescending, "oh you naughty little children-time to return to the fold" attitude. He wanted to know why we weren't with the standard format of small groups and show us the error of our impudence. We expressed our concerns about the direction of the church, and invited him to pray with us. As we did, the presence came and knocked him on his ass. He was literally brought to his knees. Not only did his attitude change, but he and his wife immediately joined our group. The crisis eventually ended and as it did, the presence stopped appearing. It is rare, but it has in my experience returned when people gather to pray in the midst of troubles.

more to come... prayers answered, demons, and some more of the day to day stuff.
gotta get work done

Just for fun:

http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/08/24/dumb-things-americans-believe.html

The truly scary thing is how easy it seems to be to get people to believe ridiculous crap...in an autocracy it doesn't make much difference how stupid the populace is, but in a democracy everything tends to get dragged down toward the lowest common denominator.

That's something that has amazed me for years.

People like to believe that the rich/elite gather in conspiracies which know everything. In fact, the rich/elite believe their own propaganda, and often end up far stupider than can be believed.

People like to believe that the rich/elite gather

Fact? Or not?

in conspiracies

What is discussed that is illegal or in secret? (hallmarks of conspiracy BTW)

which know everything.

To know EVERYTHING is a hallmark of a God.

It is not possible for a group of mortals to know EVERYTHING. Ergo - false belief.

Now to move onto the why....

To blame things on a small group in control suggests a 'remove the head of the snake and the snake dies' type thinking. Thusly if one wishes to remove the evil snake, just find the head and kill it.

Yet, the evil is not a snake and therefore trying to find a 'grand unified theory of evil' won't get you a head to remove to kill it. A heady brew of money, power, sociopaths mixed with a dash of ego leads to much of the ego. Yet most of us have these same seeds, some needing more care and feeding to grow than others. If you wanted to stop the evil, how do you find and fix the sociopaths? How to address money, power and ego? What if you did and it turns out that these items are not the cause....what then? How many would have to die to stomp out the evil.....and where are you, dear evil-slayer on the list? (Hint: Someone thinks you are more evil than they are.)

A solvable solution is something you can sell. A snake that can be de-headed is a sellable vision. The actual reality of creating a solution is not that easy of a sell.

Speaking in Tongues- back in the 70s there was something called the charismatic movement running through mainline churches. People were demonstrating spiritual gifts described in the New Testament, one of which was speaking in an unknown language. You can pretty much tell the difference between someone speaking a language and someone babbling—there is a cadence to a language. My girlfriend had this experience, and so I prayed to receive it as well. It was odd. I was in full control of my faculties, could start and stop talking when I chose, could choose to speak English or the other. There were no emotions attached to the experience, but there was a rather distinctive word that kept popping up.

Hmm, you just gave me an idea. I'll get myself a nice thick slab of plexiglass and strategically position in it on some cinderblocks in the bushes in my local park. I'll hook up some LED lights to my solar generator along with a boom box and a microphone. I'll dress up in white robes and wear a long wig and sit on the lit from bellow slab of plexi, in the bushes at night, so it looks like I'm levitating and I'll recite the following text translated into Hungarian...

RAINBOW-SNAKE: The Great Creator Serpent, in charge of Fertility, Growth and Refreshing Rain.

The RAINBOW-SNAKE is a bit of a mish-mash, with a kangaroo's head, a crocodile's tail and a python's body, all decorated with water lilies and waving tendrils.

The Snake has many names and comes in male and female form. YINGARNA, the female, is the original Mother of Creation, and her son NGALYOD is the Great Transformer of Land. Family portraits go back 8,000 years, which makes the Rainbow Snake one of the oldest religious symbols. And it's still going strong today.

Every so often I'll switch to fluent English and ask for a donation in hard currency to help me with my spiritual journey to spread the word so to speak...I'll even hand out little pictures of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. Hey, you never know, it might work!

If you think about it, rollback of the enlightenment has been under way for a few decades now. It probably started with the mass invasion of living rooms by television, and is continuing unabated.


Even with a broadly available public education system, the best the U.S. has gotten to is this:


I got a statistic even more stunning: half the population is below average in intelligence.

And people use 40% of their sick days on Monday and Friday.

The advent of scarcity will cause changes as we naturally respond to pricing and our central planners respond by altering our tax and economic structure.

As costs go up, it is a certainty that we will travel less and supplement this change with more video conferences Etc. So our technology age will benefit while our fossil fuel industries will change to electric if they can (auto industry) and become cost prohibitive except for the very critical trips by air. (Politicians will travel on the taxpayer’s dime and the very wealthy will still travel at will but the air industry will slide to a much less frequent trip schedule or travel will be by private plane.)

My favorite future imagination is that we expand our electric infrastructure and eventually go with the EROI winners – which I believe in the main will be nuclear with a scattering of renewables. We will also become more efficient in every form of energy use and make choices such as outlined above. (Letting refrigeration be cut at employment sites and people buying smaller and more efficient refrigeration in the home.) So I believe that our energy generation will play the major role in picking winners and losers.

KC

I suspect that refrigeration will be one of the last to go. The ability to temporarily store food is a huge benefit and better insulation could reduce energy input dramatically as is shown by the 12 volt refrigerators presently available for solar applications. On a larger scale I suspect a return to ammonia based absorption refrigeration will be employed in things like the meat processing and general food merchandising industries as well as home based systems. These can run on wood burning or solar heat alone, for small systems, and a heat source combined with very minor amounts of electricity for large systems. Ammonia based systems were developed in the mid 1800's and could certainly work on a large scale again. Achilles heal is that the heat exchangers cannot be copper based.

I hope you are right about refrigeration. It has *huge* value. I'm dependent on the grid for it right now, but, if I was to make serious choices, there are a lot of things, like cable TV, that I'd far rather give up in order to retain refrigeration, as well as the freezer.

I am old enough to remember my family having an 'icebox'. At intervals the iceman would deliver a block of ice to place in the icebox. The milkman would leave your standard order of cold milk and butter. There was an ice house on my grandfathers' Missouri farm. The ice which was garnered in the winter would generally last until late summer. Open refrigeration in heated grocery stores is convenient but an interesting waste of energy.

http://blog.gayleleonard.com/2009/06/getting-annoyed-in-appomattox/

Dropping cable TV would be easy. You can get all the entertainment you need via the internet. My children don't even have cable TV in their lives.

What would really be a harder choice would be internet vs. refrigeration. I've lived without both at various times in my life so I know what each entails. Losing either would be painful.

"Ammonia based systems were developed in the mid 1800's and could certainly work on a large scale again."

The local food processors all use ammonia refrigeration. On a large scale nothing is better. It's a little too dangerous for home use though.

Yair...PV, I think the comment was about the ammonia ABSORBTION system.

treeman:
.
The really fun thing about home and Recreational Vehicle ammonia-cycle sorption refrigerators is: they are heat engines. A flame or an electric heater boils the ammonia out of solution with water and the cycle begins. Systems other than ammonia-water are also used.
.
You can make solar-thermal sorption refrigerators and air-conditioners. The Air-conditioner is the most appropriate: works best in the hot bright sun. Made a demo using a Servel refrigerator and a 4-sun concentrating-trough/flat-plate collector. Thought myself all clever. Read a patent from 1915 which used a sphere for the works within a conical collector. Oh well... it has all been done before. They weren't dumb in 1915!
.
http://www.coolmaxbar.com/service/2007-06-29/2007062910.html
http://www.coolmaxbar.com/upload/UploadFile/2007823102233201.jpg
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solar-refrigeration
http://www.ashrae.org/content/ASHRAE/ASHRAE/PDF/20058309533_886.pdf
http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk/P13.pdf
This last one uses an split-phase day/night cycle and a salt. The demo makes ten pounds of ice overnight.

Most examples of "abandonment" are really "replacements". New technologies which are better, easier, and cheaper replace old ones (though the "cheaper" part doesn't matter much for military technology).

Audio recording has gone through mechanical recording on Edison cylinders, 78, 45 and 33-1/3 discs, magnetic recording on wire, 1/4" reel-to-reel, 8-track cartridge, Philips cassette, optical recording on CDs, and media-independent computer files, such as MP3s. Of these only the 33-1/2 vinyl records, CDs, and computer files survive in any volume.

However, the audio recording technologies are all replacements. As was the replacement of black powder by smokeless powder, matchlocks by flintlocks by percussion caps by cartridges, wooden ships by iron hulls by steel hulls, etc. It wasn't that the supply of vinyl or saltpeter or flint or wood ran out.

Abandonment of a technology because a factor needed for its production or operation is pretty rare.

I think that in some cases irrigated agriculture has been abandoned when water supplies became too meager to sustain it. However, in most cases irrigation had been abandoned when the soil becomes to alkaline or salty for further irrigation, which is a different type of failure.

Carving of ivory objects or objects made from rhinocerous horn might be an example. I can't think of a mineral or a plant substance that has become totally unavailable, but several animals have become endangered or extinct. Market hunting of passenger pigeons and other game birds is no longer done. Beaver hat making has been abandoned.

Yes. Replacement, not abandonment, will be the significant trend. Those technologies most directly associated with coal, oil, and gas will be replaced with those for capture, storage, transformation, and utilization of solar energy. Our current technology materials mix is coloured by our use of carbon as a metallurgical reductant and petrochemicals as polymer feedstocks. Solar electricity used in electo-metallurgy will result in greater use of metals like magnesium, titanium, manganese and aluminum (which are hard to reduce with carbon), and biomass feedstocks will be useful for a wider variety of 'designer' polymers.

There is no reason why secondary industries like manufacture of refrigerators should be affected beyond materials choices.

If i were an Australian i would be mindful of the fact that enough solar energy could be captured in the outback to power most of the world. That resource should identified as something of strategic importance and defended. Solar technologies are not ready yet, but will be long before the last of the fossil fuels are gone.

Most examples of "abandonment" are really "replacements". New technologies which are better, easier, and cheaper replace old ones (though the "cheaper" part doesn't matter much for military technology).

What if the replacement technology does not make your life easier. Does that count as an "abandonment" are a "replacement"?
Old-fashioned washing machine

Sorry, but your example is not quite right. Look at what is there in the video.

Plastic Bucket?
Vitreous China sink?
Modern detergents?
Michelle Obama? (just kidding)
Where did the water come from?
And many more...

This is a very poorly designed use of a very basic technology. Kinda like pushing a rope. Reminds me of a bicycle with square wheels.......

Most technology today, and for the last 50 years, is nothing more than mental masterbation.
Technology for technologies sake....a Child's Merry-go-round to nothing.

I'm wondering what you're referring to with recent tech..

There is a lot of junk, but the core advancement they are built on, Microprocessors, for example, have proven to be highly adaptable and useful in real ways as well.

I remember doing corporate videos 15 years back, and noting all the different applications I was seeing 'old' IBM AT's and PC's still being used for, from CAD-CAM app's to Making T-shirts, to Trading, Bookkeeping, Desktop Publishing, DataLogging, etc.. with programs and interfaces that could largely be installed from the Screenprinter's machine onto the Trader's machine and be expected to run just fine. Even if the products they were creating were unnecessary or built on the 'Overconsumption Model', that doesn't mean that the flexibility of this technology was at fault.. and Now, I've got a handheld from HP in 1995 that can run any program that an old IBM 8086 or 286 would run, powered by a pair of AA batteries. There are all sorts of useful and meaningful ways such tech could still be put to use for localized groups.

all the different applications I was seeing 'old' IBM AT's and PC's still being used for

The most striking example for me was the space shuttle, powered by the original PC-XT 8086 processor!

Which brings to mind this old internet gem.. of the dependence of Modern Tech on the Ancients.

THE SPACE SHUTTLE AND ROMAN CHARIOTS

Does the statement, "We've always done it like that" ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses!

Now, the twist to the story

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.
The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's butt.

SNOPES demurs on this one a bit, but gives it some credit here and there.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

LOL! Well I'll be a Horse's ass...

That looks like a James washer, a human powered washing machine common in off-grid homes.

http://www.realgoods.com/product/home-outdoor/green+living/james+washer.do

I think the transition from whale oil to kerosene for lamps was imposed by peak whales.

Leckos -

I think your theory is quite reasonable at least as a broad generalization. However, technology is a very nebulous subject, and the very term 'technology' often connotes different things to different people. Even the dictionary offers several different definitions of technology, none of which are terribly helpful, to wit: i) the study, development, and application of devices, machines, and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes, ii) a method of methodology that applies technical knowledge or tools, iii) the sum of a society's or culture's practical knowledge, especially with reference to its material culture.

Note that none of these definitions talk about specific products as being 'technology', and I think that's where some people get into trouble when using the term technology too loosely. If I drive a monstrous Ford pick-up truck while you drive a small, fuel-efficient Smart Car, we are both using automotive technology but in the form of vastly different products. However, if I go to a bicycle, then that is switch to a different technology. If the modern Australian Air Force flies jets while the WW II RAF flew piston-engined planes, they were both using aviation technology, but vastly different propulsion technologies. One often encounters this conflating of technology with products in technical advertising. A company with a new line of water filters will boast about their new 'technology' when in actuality it is nothing more than a new product based on fundamental filtration technology, and thus really just a different embodiment of an existing technology.

My purpose here is not semantical nit-picking, but rather to point out that technology and products are not the same thing. And I think much of what you call 'abandonment of technology' is often just a case of restricting or limiting the application of products based on that technology. In the example of your mother-in-law's boss who removed the employee's refrigerator, he was not abandoning refrigeration technology, but rather was stingily restricting access to a particular product based on that technology. I'm sure the boss still maintain a nice refrigerator in his own home. But if we replace a coal-fired power plant with a wind farm or solar array, then that is clear an abandonment of one technology and the taking up of another technology.

Then we have the problem of complexity, which can also be somewhat in the eye of the beholder, as illustrated by the following question: which is more complex a classic steam locomotive or a modern diesel-electric locomotive? The answer is not as obvious as it looks. While the steam locomotive uses lower-tech coal instead of higher-tech petroleum (and the vast infrastructure associated with such), it is a plumbing nightmare, far more complex in operation, and requires far more complex maintenance. An external combustion engine is inherently more complex and inefficient than an internal combustion engine, even though it came first. So, one might argue that this forward step in technology, i.e. going from steam to diesel, actually reduced rather than increased complexity. Ditto for going from vacuum tube to solid state electronics.

And lastly, many people tend to view individual technologies in a vacuum and don't fully appreciate the extent to which one technology is dependent upon many others, with economics being the main driving force. If I can no longer drive my car because a whole chain of parts suppliers have gone bankrupt and I can no longer get replacement parts, it's not that I have abandoned automotive technology, but rather that a systemic failure of infrastructure has occurred.

I prefer to view what you're talking about as products being abandoned due to economic and infrastructure problems, rather than abandonment of technologies, per se. Regardless of which way one wants to phrase it, you are on the right track, and the technological landscape of the future will not necessarily be more advanced than that of the present, as what has been viewed as 'progress' often turns out to not be progress after all. For things to work, the technological mix must be appropriate and fit the set of circumstances under which we live. However, I fear this will never happen in an ordered and painless way, and we will largely keep doing what we're doing until we can't.

I agree, Joule:
Cam is on the right track, and we humans tend to keep doing what we're doing until we can't.
That truism applies not only to beneficial behavioural patterns (I automatically get out of bed, shower and go to work each morning, all of which has benefits) but also to all sorts of vices (smoking, drinking, junk food, wasting time on the internet, even thievery... people often must be forced in some way before they will stop).

Many Ontario farms have a spot in the trees where a half-century ago, the farmer dragged off his horse-drawn equipment: seed drills, wagons, two-furrow riding plows, etc. They did so, often reluctantly, trusting that gasoline (and eventually diesel) tractors would prove superior to live horsepower. Many farmers bought a tractor but still kept the horses "just in case," and sometimes that paid off.

But I think your distinction between abandonment for economic & infrastructure reasons (vs abandoning the technology itself) sort of parallels the debate over what will prove to be the "cause" of peak oil: what 'causes' it will matter far less than the fact that it has occurred, and the result may be pretty much the same.

I do agree that a person may not abandon the technology on some emotional level (a power failure in no way diminishes my appreciation of my computer, even though it's completely useless for a while) but we may be forced into it because of infrastructure problems (what if the grid became unstable and we had occasional voltage surges which damaged our expensive electronics?). Or financial hardship may force us to give up something which we certainly have no desire to abandon (as you correctly pointed out).

In any event the infrastructure really can't be meaningfully isolated from the technology, since the technology can't really operate effectively without it, just as the infra would not exist were it not for the technology.

But the fear here is the vulnerability which is inherent in the interconnectedness and the complexity of both our technologies and their attendant infrastructures, including the economic and fiscal systems which support them.

And that is, I think, the central message of the recent Bundeswehr report on peak oil: oil is so fundamental to our mobility, our supply chains for food and everything else, our jobs and the tax base, military capabilities, etc... anything which interferes with our large-scale access to affordable oil could very quickly put us outside that narrow band of economic and social stability.
The Bundeswehr report is unprecedented in the publicly-available military literature for that reason: instead of focusing on the usual set of concerns, most of which are external (choke-points, NOCs, resource wars, geopolitics, Chindian demand, etc) this report has flagged the potential for economic, social and even technological unraveling on the home front.

As the Amish continue to prove, there is great resiliency in technologies and an infrastructure which are under one's own direct control. They are the classic example of a society which thinks long & hard before it decides to change its technologies or its infrastructure. (Some of us make such changes in an eye-blink, following the latest commercial, with no real thought.)

The Amish (and many other farmers) just have to pray that the rest of society will leave them alone when the flashy, consumptive lifestyle which many of us have chosen runs into trouble, which probably won't take too long....

Just a note re. the Amish saving us. I come from a Mennonite family that used buggies long after everyone else was in cars. That society was dependent on having large families to provide the farm labor; my grandmother was one of ten. Overpopulation was prevented by exporting the excess into the surrounding communities, so my grandmother stopped that lifestyle and became modernized, along with many of her siblings and most of their descendents. Without high birth rates, the Amish/Mennonite system is not going to work too well.

Farms without extensive mechanization certainly need labor, but it doesn't have to come from one's own family. Currently an Amish farm could not even begin to compete on the open job market for affordable labor; in the future things may be different.

If you harken back to the beginnings of the feudal era, it wasn't so much that powerful feudal lords enslaved the local populace as serfs bound to the land, but that - desperate for daily bread and security - a large number of individuals found such servitude to be a decent quiet life, and far better than the alternatives of the time.

Hi, Vertigo
I wasn't claiming that the Amish would save us (or even be able to save themselves if others move in on them).
Rather, I was pointing out their reluctance to change without giving things a good deal of thought, and their reliance on the simple.

As for large families, my wife is one of 13 farm kids (most of them born annually throughout the 50s).
But as with your grandmother, that on-farm population boom may have been due less to a desire to produce a generation of cheap farm labourers and more to cold nights, amorous feelings and a lack of technology (the pill... maybe condoms were too expensive... also my in-laws are Catholic, so there's a couple of technologies/products that were never accepted).

RickM,

Yes, you raise one more worry. What happens to birth control when medications get too expensive or too hard to obtain? Then we're back to letting nature take its course through disease and starvation. But your point regarding Amish simplicity is a good one and one would hope having some of these skills from earlier times will help during transition.

In the Middle Ages there were convents and monestaries which helped keep the breeding down.

They also preserved knowledge and developed new technologies -- improvements in brewing for instance.

The availability of modern contraceptives did not prevent the population explosion of recent decades, probably to be followed now by disease and starvation for more of the population than any historical period.

This redirection away from the word technology and towards the word product seems a good idea to me. Actually, I had been thinking of posting some thoughts about renaming the target of discussion as modern behaviors which will be abandoned. And I'm inclined to believe that still has merit.

When I started feeling uncomfortable with the abandonment of technology as a topic, the behavior that first came to mind, for me, was the phenomenon of world leaders gathering in person at the United Nations building in New York on a annual basis. Although the cost of this trip is a trivial burden on USA for our President, there are other nations for which it must be a difficult burden, or a source of corrupt influence on the leadership by foreign business interests. This is an example of a topic which doesn't fit well with either technology or product, but belongs somewhere in a discussion of what the future might bring. But for now, lets concentrate on technology.

For a technology to exist, there must be a sub-set of the population who count themselves as being experts in that technology. These people must maintain their skills and must recruit and train their replacements before they retire (or die). So every technology has a base level of cost even if it is very little used. And every technology also seems to depend on other technologies to some extent. So for a technology to survive, its supplier technologies must also survive. There was a time when an economist (Leontief) tried to create a diagram of how all the economic activity in the US was linked into a gigantic whole. (Most economic activity is the actual implementation of a few inter-related technologies.) If we had that linkage map, we might be able to read off it what technologies would live, or die, as groups. But we don't have that map because that work was itself a technology that has not survived.

Joule, I take your point on technology versus product and you are right in saying that I am talking about products being abandoned due to economic and infrastructure problems. I do think however that there is the potential for whole technologies to dissappear.

As far as complexity goes I see two sides to it - from a system perspective and an end user perspective. Thus I would say in your example above with the steam locomotive that from the end user perspetive it is more complex but from a system perspective it is less so and vice versa for a diesel locomotive.

I have to disagree absolutely that the steam engine, or steam locomotive, is more complex than a diesel one.

The number of moving parts, and precision machined parts, is much smaller. (an excellent photo comparison at http://www.cyclonepower.com/comparison.html)

The metallurgical treatments involved is much smaller. The steam engine can be operated without any electrical system at all (as can a diesel engine, but not a diesel electric). Steam engines do not de-rate with altitude. They can, suitably equipped, run on any fuel.
The "plumbing nightmare" is not much worse than the plumbing nightmare in and diesel - look at a map of lubricating oil flows in a diesel engine.
And, to cap it off, look at the *very* complex NOx emission control systems being fitted to modern diesels - these are not required with steam engines as the combustion takes place at atmospheric pressure, and NOx is not formed. The nature of continous combustion also minimises Co and HC emissions

Granted that the diesel IS more thermodynamically efficient, especially given the non- condensing nature of railroad steam engines, but I would argue there is a considerable increase in system complexity to get this. A diesel may be simpler for the operator, but it is a perfect example of the supply line issue - no diesel, no go. A suitably equipped steam engine can use almost any liquid, gas or solid fuel, and solid fuel can be, if needed, obtained in the field.

I think where the mismatch comes from is that steam locomotives are old, and were not developed over the last 80yrs, so they reflect knowledge as at the 1930's. Built with todays knowledge,many of the problems disappear - here is an example of a company in Switzerland making new steam locomotives (fired by oil)

http://www.dlm-ag.ch/attachments/Typenblatt_99.10xx_1d1_en.pdf

I would argue the steam engine (in modern form) is not more complex, just less efficient. It is then a case of trading off complexity for efficiency.

Paul Nash -

As I said, a good deal of complexity is in the eye of the beholder. I was largely talking about a steam locomotive versus a diesel-electric locomotive, not merely a generic steam engine versus a diesel engine. If you've ever examined detailed construction drawings of a 1940s-vintage steam locomotive, it should be evident that it has a very large number of parts, many of which are large and not easy to manufacture.

Both a steam engine and a diesel have cylinders and pistons, but a steam engine has the added complexity (and major headache) of a boiler. Plus, the valve train on one of these steam locomotives is far more complex than the valve and camshaft system on a diesel.

Much of the complexity associated with steam locomotives is separate from the physical object. While large and robust looking, a steam locomotive was a rather temperamental piece of machinery and required constant maintenance and repair. The main weak point was the boiler, which was prone to scale build-up from minerals in the feed water, required constant cleaning, and needed frequent replacement of boiler tubes. If in constant service, the locomotives often had to keep a banked fire in their fire box overnight so they could start up the next day without a long wait to get up steam. Railroads needed coaling and water tanks positioned along the route. Plus there was ash handling and disposal. All this was very labor-intensive, but back in those days labor was cheap.

Now with a diesel locomotive, you just fill her up like a car, and off you go. While the diesel engine is directly coupled to a generator and electric motor, no external electrical power is required. Of course, the electrical controls on a modern diesel do represent additional complexity.

Now, if you've ever examined the detailed drawings of a steam automobile .... now there's a plumbing and maintenance nightmare! No wonder it turned out to be a technological dead end.

One other thing, as a final note: steam locomotives were not really mass produced in the current sense of the word, but were turned out in relatively small batches, sort of like military aircraft. The manufacture of diesel engines on the other hand closely parallels that of the automotive industry, with all the associated economies of scale that entails.

But I guess these comparisons can only be taken so far, as after a while it's like asking: which is more complex, an apple or an orange?

Joule,

I guess my issue is that comparing a 1930's locomotive to a modern diesel is not quite fair, as the state of knowledge then is not what it is now. Yes, they were complex beasts, and maintenance intensive, and the diesel engine much more robust(after ww2)

We should compare to a 1930's diesel, or to a modern steam one. And that is why I provided the DLM link - they are making a modern steam one, which has removed much of the plumbing complexity of the old ones. It uses the same diesel fuel, so the boiler is much simplified, as is maintenance. They have kept the firetube boiler, partly to keep the locomotives looking old style, but they could also have used a watertube, or a LaMont style boiler

For a modern version of a coal burner, you would use a coal gasifier, and then feed the gas into whatever the boiler is.

To me, the comparison can best be described as saying that steam has some disadvantages, in return for being able to use unrefined fuel, of any type. Diesel is very simple to operate and maintain, you have shifted the complex part to the fuel supply/refining end of things. The DLM locomotive shows that if you use oil for the steam locomotive, and design accordingly, it also simplifies the locomotive operations somewhat.

I would suggest the "well to wheels" complexity of a diesel system is greater than a solid fired steam system, but at the operator end, yes the steam engine is more complex, though modern ones are much less so than older ones.

As for batch built, yes, absolutley right.

Here is modern steam engine, that looks like a diesel, and would be an interesting one for a steam locomotive - you could run it as a steam electric, or through a hydraulic gearbox to the wheels (similar to diesel railcars), rather than the old style steam mechanisms.

This engine does not need oil in the steam either, it just needs steam. A modern, automated boiler could easily do the job, even a solid fuelled one;

http://www.spilling.de/english/produkte.php

Definitely not as simple a locomotive then as a diesel -electric, but simpler than an oilfield, oil refinery, and a diesel electric.

Taking this whole argument a step further, we can consider an electrified rail system - the electric locomotive is simpler still than a diesel electric, but the supporting system is now much more complex.

Paul Nash -

I've been vaguely aware of some efforts to resurrect the steam locomotive, and I wish them luck because I happen to have a soft spot for steam engines in general.

As you correctly pointed out, one of the big advantages of steam is that it does not require liquid fuel, and in theory, could run on dried camel chips if need be. However, an oil-fired steam locomotive nullifies that advantage, and the inherent lower efficiency of the steam engine (in locomotive form at least) will increase oil consumption. The other advantage of steam is that it can provide maximum torque at zero speed, which is why a diesel engine cannot be used directly but has to power a generator that feeds high-torque electric motors. That is why I see little point in going with steam-electric, as steam already provides high torque at low speeds (at least a reciprocating steam engine).

I don't doubt that there is room for much improvement over the 1930s-vintage steam locomotive, but whether it can compete with the diesel locomotive in daily operation remains to be seen. You may or may not be aware that shortly after WW II some efforts were made in the US to develop a steam turbine locomotive. Some actually went into service (my first Lionel train set had one of these). They were very powerful and much more efficient than the reciprocating steam engine. However, the drawbacks (turbine and gearbox problems) outweighed the benefits, and the concept never went too far.

One other point, in a stationary power plant or in a large marine power plant, one can do all sorts of things to attain high thermal efficiency that are not practical in a locomotive (and even less practical in a steam car). So again, we have the question of selecting a technology that is appropriate for the circumstances.

But I think one thing we full agree on is that complexity must be viewed in a much wider context than just the object at hand.

Joule, I think we are in agreement here.
I will point out one last caveat with the oil fired steam locomotive - it can easily be set up to use almost any oil/liquid fuel, including vegetable oil, used motor oil, pyrolysis oil from wood, etc. so in that regard, it is still fuel omnivorous, just liquid fuel.

Steam locomotives, of course, were the least efficient as they never incorporated condensation. There have been lots of efforts with "modern steam", to get the efficiency up from the old 5-6% to 15%, and with condenisng you could get into the 20's. This would be an option for small engines pulling light trains (i.e. passenger service) but for freight, your condenser is just too large.

I love the old steam loco's too. The most well known one in western Canada is the Royal Hudson - I have seen it run, but not ridden on it, and it is truly an awe inspiring sight.
A good little photo story about one of its runs here; http://www.wcra.org/hudson/TripReport.pdf

The opening line says it all
"No machine ever built by man can attract a crowd like a steam locomotive. "

The turbine train idea is still around - I saw a demo train by Bombardier in Calgary in about 2002. It used the same 5000hp engine as used on the Q400 turboprop planes, and they called it the "jet train" They were offering this up as a cheaper alternative than electric for high speed rail. It was about as successful as any high speed rail project has been in N. America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetTrain

Ultimately, the trend has been for the systems become ever more complex, (think of the supply chain for oilsands oil!) but as long as the complexity is hidden from the end user, they will almost always win out. The end user seeks to reduce their own complexity, not that of the whole system. In that context, the diesel electric is almost unbeatable, even if the diesel fuel is 20x the cost of coal., it is still worth it.

But not as beautiful as the old (or new) steam engines!

An interesting example of a bunch of people trying to collect the know-how to run a circa-1960's-level village

http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

In a hurry but a quick read notes you did not really address the issue of maintenance a simple example is Cuba which keeps a lot of old cars on the road. One reason these have probably not been slowly replaced is they simply cannot maintain the newer models. Going with this example you could expect auto technology to simply if it stays around moving to a technical level thats maintainable via smaller machine shops.

Going with that you can look at the gunsmiths of Afghanistan and what they produce in crude shops.

Indeed the critical aspect seems to be the machines that make the machines and the designs that are produced.
Its difficult for me to envision a world that abandons most of our machining capability. Its not hard to envision mega projects or even large projects like machining and engine block becoming rare.

Certainly mass production can fall off dramatically even as we retain the ability to build basically anything in a effectively one off fashion. Consider the construction of military jets vs commercial jets.

In the end the devil is in the details it seems once mass production fails. However the collapse of the mass production of unmaintainable goods that have a limited lifespan is fairly easy to see. Aka our throw away society.

Past that its really really hard to envision what would happen next.

But consider the implication of the collapse of our current production styles on expensive transport. Esp if you include the hidden costs of maintaining a road network etc.

Personally I don't see how its possible to have a transport network on the scale we have today without the current throw away production technologies. With thought you can see the two are tightly intertwined.

You raise an interesting point Memmel. I know little about the inner workings of a modern car. I know this frustrates my father who in his younger years could fix just about anything in the cars of that era (60s and 70s) but can't fix anything these days. Of course even today's mechanics would be able to do little without their expensive computer based test equipment.

If the auto industry suffered a major collapse and could no longer provide maintenance to modern cars on a wide scale, I wonder whether it would be possible to revert existing vehicles to run on simpler engines, and if it could be done,on what scale?

Recently I was in Vietnam- it was impressive to see some of the locally manufactured tractors they had put together.

Other posters are now bringing this up. Vietnam is and interesting case I used to live there myself.
Unfortunately I suspect not to different from what the future will bring to the US.
For good and bad I might add. Whats important is the network supporting a particular technology not the technology itself. The intrinsic problem is that a network is only as good as its weakest link and redundancy is expensive.

Vertical integration or self sufficiency is effectively the same as a highly redundant network. The effective equality is interesting with extreme redundancy you pay for the option to have someone produce something with vertical integration your effectively paying yourself the same option. You can see that its no different really and thus equal.
Regardless every other case suffers from classic network failure that has little to do with the actual technology and everything to do with the network required to efficiently utilize the technology aka have both the means of production and a market for the product.

I think we place way way to much emphasis on technical advancement since many technologies have been commercialized within living memory of most of our readers. What we miss is that the fundamentals where pretty much done by the 1950's at the latest one could readily argue the 1930's. The fact that we just recently acquired the fundamental knowledge base to create practically any technology does not change the fact its in the past.
Its basically a binary event before we had it and afterwards. Once past its past. Thats not to say that technology and knowledge and even science don't continue to advance but we have crossed the most important hurdles already at least at a technical level. Socially is a different issue :)

Since we are probably facing network failure the future is probably one of both right tech for the job and vertical integration to support critical technologies where the cost and rewards are justified.
Rather obvious a variant of the modern assault rifle will probably now be with us forever along with the RPG.
That technology will simply via force ensure the existence of a technical society that can support it.
Any society that loses the ability to at least acquire assault rifles will quickly fall.

Just as obvious other technologies which are important for the military will survive even if it means extensive vertical integration to ensure the survival. Anyone with them can command the resources to ensure they get them sort of a natural bootstrap. What they are is tough to say one would think some aerial capacity some naval some heavy Armour etc. And almost certainly powered by liquid fuels of some sort.

The next half given we are post fundamental technology is these military technologies are not constrained but lack of knowledge nor are they particularly constrained by market forces i.e vertical integration works.

Thus going forward you have a strong case for a sort of baseline society. Against it of course lower tech societies that can acquire much cheaper insurgency equipment can readily counter the high tech societies thus you have a stalemate condition.

If your starting to think about Afghanistan today or Vietnam in the past then your on the right track. Those are perfect examples of the network/technology impasse that exists today.

For the moment at least the situation is relegated to war zones but given that a network collapse effectively mean the entire planet becomes a modern day Afghanistan/Vietnam night mare then it holds globally at least as a sort of minimum baseline technical condition.

This can certainly be better than that indeed much better but I'd argue that I doubt they will get much worse. Not that Afganistan is a picnic any more than Vietnam is today or was back when it was at war.

Once you get a good feel for the network/vertical issue and the technology minimums and forget about the role that knowledge gains played in the recent past then you get a good feel for our future at least for its minimal form.

The silver bullet guys are simply living in the past when real knowledge advancements and technical growth made huge differences. But thats the past not the future. The future is controlled by the network topology of a particular society and of course what vertical solutions it can execute.

The worst case is a sort of global Afghanistan I suspect the best cases are not a lot better than modern Vietnam.
There simply are not a lot of functional topologies possible for technology networks most devolve to a significant amount of vertical integration. Note this is simply Westexas's ELP economize localize produce. Its the right answer simply it does not yield todays technical network that does not mean its not high tech or low tech simply fundamentally different.

One of the things that I noticed in Vietnam was the facilities in place to maintain their bicycles (and to a lesser extent motorcycles).

Firstly there bicycles were, in the main, much simpler than those common in Australia. No gears, steel frames and solidly built. Many of them looked 30 or 40 years old, but still going strongly. This compares to my mountain bike with its gears, hydraulic brakes etc - far more complicated.

There were also a lot of bicycle repair shops (well a person sitting on the edge of the road with a bicycle repair kit) that provided easy access to riders needing a tune up or just to put some air in the tyres. I watched with interest one of the repair man fixing a flat tyre. The tyre had obviously seen better days, probably causing the puncture. However rather than discard the tyre, the repair man cut part of another old tyre and inserted it inside the tyre to cover the hole. Not very pretty but no doubt effective and a much better use of resources.

the repair man cut part of another old tyre and inserted it inside the tyre to cover the hole

That's a common more or less temporary repair known as "booting" a tire, to back up a section with casing damage. You can use all sorts of different things - I had to use a folded over US $5 bill as a boot once and it held fine for a couple thousand miles. In my road repair kit I carry a couple of pieces of Tyvek for the purpose, a very strong synthetic paper used for large postal envelopes.

I wonder whether it would be possible to revert existing vehicles to run on simpler engines

As an automotive mechanic myself I can offer the easy answer - no, its not possible on any practical scale. Of course any number of labor-intensive one-off's could be made, but there are a number of reasons why existing vehicles are impractical to simplify beyond a point. Too many integrated systems - where air and fuel and ignition systems are integrated together via an "engine management system" (of which there are about as many specific varieties as there are car models-per-year on the road). No standard engine exists, so no standard replacement exists for a failed engine management system - everything is model-year specific. No standard transmission exists either, so if you had come up with a reliable bolt-on engine management system (such as a simple carburetor, and a points-type ignition), and then came up with an engine for it to run, it would still have to be custom fitted to any vehicle and transmission around. Automatic transmissions, btw, being more failure prone and complex than most engines to begin with...no, I think once the existing massively bloated and inefficient automotive aftermarket service industry fails, you won't see cars on the road for long.

Very well said Daxr!

In a rationally operated economy, there would be a mandatory standardization of components, such as we now have in plumbing and electrical work.

There is an adequate standardization in the heavy trucking industry now-brought about by the fact that truck operators won't buy trucks that are hard to repair.

A new Catepillar engine will bolt quickly and easily into a Ford dump truck equipped with a third make of transmission.

Cuba which keeps a lot of old cars on the road. One reason these have probably not been slowly replaced is they simply cannot maintain the newer models.

After the Cuban Revolution in the early 1960's Cuba no longer had the foreign exchange needed to import new cars.

Similar ideas are covered by Rogers in his "Diffusion of Innovations" book.

What you are in a sense describing is the reversal of this process.

Always and everywhere, the adoption or abandonment of technology is the cost/benefit equation. New technology/products replaces old technology/products because it is more cost effective/efficient (per the perceptions of the user). Technology is a tool for obtaining a result. When one type of technology becomes price prohibitive (or uncompetitive), it will be replaced with an alternative.
Technology per-se is essentially an intellectual understanding of our physical world and an ability to manipulate it. From that, all you need is some very basic tools in order to build more advanced tools in order to fabricate the ultimate tool or product you want.
While one "technology" or another may be adopted or abandoned due to the availability/cost of resources, that technology is really just a technique.
The real question is, have the techniques we have used to date to prosper, outrun our resource base due to an aberrantly high EROI we wont ever see again?
How much will we need to contract (if at all) over the next 10/50/100 years?

Always and everywhere, the adoption or abandonment of technology is the cost/benefit equation

Only if you include "status" as one of the perceived benefits. Much of the electronics industry (and the auto industry as well, come to think of it) is devoted to developing status-conferring devices, and then selling them at a premium by emphasizing how cool you will be...

Of course, if "status" leads to even slightly more frequent reproduction, then in an evolutionary sense it becomes far more than merely a "perceived" benefit - it becomes a real benefit that helps determine who survives as the generations go by. Indeed, we may need to set aside commonplace wishful thinking: in this respect at least, the meek may well not inherit the Earth...

I will have a blog post up showing how much of the adoption is purely random cast in terms of human language diversity.

[EDIT]
Here it is and it is another mind blower!
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/10/tower-of-babel-how-languages-di...
You can't get away from entropy.

I will have a blog post up showing how much of the adoption is purely random cast in terms of human language diversity.

I just read it, it still doesn't explain 'HUNGARIAN' >;^)

Typically the Logistic Function is a good fit for adoption of new technology.

If one technology is replacing another, the curve for the one being replaced is the logistic function reflected around the vertical axis.

The curves you show are for partial replacement, i.e. the numerator is less than one.

I agree completely. This is something the Logistic function is better suited for as it brings about the concept of carrying capacity. The adoption of new technology saturates at some level (possibly below 100%) which is related to the maximum carrying capacity. (note that this is not anywhere near the same as using logistic for oil depletion, which has a completely different derivation)

If things die-off it could be simply a replacement with new technology which has the logistic shape. And that reflextion around the y-axis is exactly what Merrill is referring to. Brilliant!

So the question is whether something will die-off without something better taking its place?

Its all so tricky to model in any predictive sense in that we have no idea what the saturation level will be for any new product. Interesting to think about though.

WHT, I haven't read the book but I did look at the adoption of technology whilst writing this post and came across Rogers work. It is indeed a reversal, it is not so much the curve itself but rather the process that could cause such a curve that interests me and what we should do about it.

I have called the curve the general case because I think that in some, perhaps many areas, there is the potential for a technology (product) to be abandoned virtually overnight in the event of a catastrophic failure of one of its dependencies, which would look more like a cliff than a gentle curve. GPS being one example (not that I am predicting its imminent collapse).

Given that there are about a billion GPS users, the maintenance of the GPS satellite fleet probably has a pretty high priority. It's not clear what resource shortage would prevent the continued launch of GPS satellites, short of thermonuclear war.

A lack of billable end users would do it. Very very few people really need GPS, its just at the moment a virtually free convenience.

Well there are events our Earth is about to experience that could possibly take down GPS satellites and more such as telecommunication, earth monitoring and weather satellites, ground based radar systems and our interconnected power grids possibly causing cascading damage and extended blackouts. These are the solar storms - sunspots - of the upcoming Solar Maximum that will happen in 2012 and 2013. Here are some links from NASA for more information:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/10mar_stormwarning.html
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29may_noaapred...
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solarcycle24.html

Here is a brief article on the human impacts that solar storms could have:
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/spaceweather.htm

This site - Solar Weather - http://solarstorms.org/index.html - has excellent imformation on the adverse effects that severe solar storms could cause on Earth. It is a bit doomish, but there are also lots of links to reputable sources of information. Concerning the power grid: http://www.solarstorms.org/Spower.html
Concerning the damages to satellites, here is an analysis of the vulnerability satellites would have to the upcoming solar storms: http://www.solarstorms.org/Svulnerability.html
Information of the kinds and types of satellites that may be affected: http://www.solarstorms.org/Sscope.html

Hesitant to be so pessimistic, but there is a chance that if massive solar storms happen in the next two to three years, our civilization may be passed peak technological capability - with little chance of marshalling the huge investments necessary to recreate the lost capabilities.

I think Merrill's point is that GPS is not the best example to draw from. Also read closely what Merrill said earlier in regards to the Logistic. Something may just as easily replace GPS, and you couldn't distinguish between the decline of GPS with the replacement of something orders of magnitude better.

So I guess the crash would have to stand in isolation from any improvements, which may indeed have some validity, you just have to figure out a good example.

I wonder if what are called GPS devices are really using cell phone towers as their reference points instead of the satellites?

Any that provide location data to the cell phone user have GPS receivers in them. Many others also have GPS receivers, but they only make location data available to the cell phone tower so that the phone company is able to locate the phone to within 100 meters as required for Extended-911 service. Early on, cell phone locations were also determined by triangulation of signal strength as receive by 3 or more towers. But this is not very accurate.

One technology that has been abandoned virtually completely is that of the once-dominant slide rule, which was indeed a symbol of advanced technology for a long time. Its abandonment followed Graph 1 of Leckos almost perfectly, albeit in a state of advancing rather than declining technological culture.

I abandoned my K&E log-log-decitrig slide rule for an HP-45 engineering calculator in the late 1970's. (Ten years later, I knew some working engineers who forswore calculators and still used their trusted slide rules. Several of them were anything but dumb or backward.) The slide rule languished first in a series of desk drawers, finally at the bottom of a chest of drawers, under the socks and underwear — I could abandon its use but, discard it? ¡Nunca!

Eventually I made a beautiful mahogany case for it, with a glass front. The case, with the slide rule (displaying π × e), sits behind the glass window, on which is etched:

IN CASE OF ELECTRONIC FAILURE, BREAK GLASS

For years, this brought considerable merriment to guests. Now the vast majority of the under-thirty guests simply don't get it. Even when it is explained.

I used a cheap slide rule until my retirement a decade ago. For a quick and sufficiently accurate calculation of the cardio-thoracic ratio on a chest xray, it was faster than a calculator. It also made an interesting conversation piece.

I still have my 50+ year old slide rules from college. In the chemistry dept you didn't get to use one of those move the carriage calculators until you were senior - whoo, whoo! My dad worked for an engineering company and the guys used really "big" slide rules - like 3 feet to get more precision.

Elegance of use and purpose have been lost. It's like the abacus; a marvelous tool that won't die when the chip fails or the batteries die.

Todd

PS the "nerds" in college used circular "slide rules."

Was using mine a few days ago for some temperature conversions, quicker than a calculator. Handy for roof angles as well.

NAOM

I used to work with a 'sly drool' as my dad would have said. Still have the sucker, but have forgotten how to do anything more complicated than multiplication and division. Somehow old, manually operated tools like that are great to keep around. Might need them again someday, who knows?

Maybe you can find instructions on how to use it on the Internet? (irony intended)

There's an iPhone App for that; seriously!

Though I'm not sure that I would be able to use it if I hadn't learned on a circular slide rule flight computer. I think the pilot's E6b survived long after the engineer's slide rule disappeared. But i don't know if anyone learns how to use them now. My GPS tells me almost all that info.

Bryan

I think the pilot's E6b survived long after the engineer's slide rule disappeared. But i don't know if anyone learns how to use them now. My GPS tells me almost all that info.

I still navigate by dead reckoning and a compass despite having a GPS with me when I kayak dive

I also don't use a dive computer when I dive EAN 20, I actually still plan my recreational dives on air with these and it allows me to add my own safety factor due to my advanced age... I used it as recently as yesterday.

http://www.scubadiverinfo.com/images/Dive_tables_NAUI.jpg

EAN20! Take oxygen out? I tend to prefer EAN32 or 36 myself ;) Air tables give a better safety margin for nitrogen but you still need to use the MOD for the EAN oxygen content.

NAOM

EAN20! Take oxygen out?

Gee, notanoilman, air is roughly 20% O2 and 80% N2, I thought most people around here knew that much... >;^) BTW I've had more dive certifications over the last 35 years than Imelda Marcos has shoes, including HeliOx... now there we did take out some of the O2 due to partial pressure toxcicity considerations a depths of 500 ft. and used a breathing mixture of 13% O2 with the remaining 78% being Helium. The deco does get a little hairy. Ever try having a conversation with Donald Duck?

Heh, I was using the 21% approximation :) Although I find tech interesting we have no real need for it here, the most interesting stuff is mostly less than 100' with much of it above 20'. They do train it here though and the centre that does that blends its mixes including helium varieties. I do like Nitrox after some heavy diving though. 13% sounds a bit strong for 500', ppO2 around 2.1?

NAOM

13% sounds a bit strong for 500', ppO2 around 2.1?

You are right about that, I was certified 500ft by Sub Sea Oil and the 13% O2 I was referring to was actually what we used on shallower dives. The breathing mixtures were provided as needed by Sub Sea Oil at the time, we're talking circa late 70's...

My brother caught me preparing for a Kayak dive at my local beach last weekend and then as I was surfacing from the dive. This was an EAN20 dive given that the max depth was just under 30 feet. Conditions were poor, rough seas, poor viz and a strong current and too much wind for me, I'm getting too old for this >;^)

Saturday Dive

It occurs to me that a good chunk of what's being discussed is actually cost-shifting rather than actual abandonment. The employee with the lunch box gets to waste time futzing with the block of ice (and with the meltwater) so that the employer can save a few cents a day per employee. The time-cost of futzing with the ice doesn't appear on the employer's books, so it's free to the employer, and no one ever gets to discover whether the exercise is actually cost-effective overall, or not.

Something similar will happen with the gravel roads. The costs of cracked windshields, of extra accidents from the more rough and slippery surface, and of extra wear-and-tear on everything and anything where the clouds of gritty dust settle, don't appear on the county books. Those costs are free to the county, allowing it to squander the money on politicians' pet projects and the like. And again, those costs are never counted, so we never get to discover whether the exercise is cost-effective overall, or not.

Similarly with trying to force people onto slow, tardy, unreliable city buses. The immense time-cost is nowhere tallied, nor the psychological cost of people seeing even less of their families, so according to the reports and assessments that will all be free, with only the oil "savings" being counted.

Somehow I expect to see a lot more of this sort of arrant nonsense if and as things continue to get tougher. It seems like a shell game in much the same spirit as "Don't tax you, don’t tax me, tax the fellow behind that tree."

Unfortunately - all too true :-(

What your actually talking about is attempts to cover the real economic effects of falling EROEI.

Fantastic post as it gets into the accounting games used to hide the truth.

Rising traffic density and gridlock was claimed to be the result of rapid growth yet back in the 1950's we built the interstate system from scratch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

The US went from being able to build and entire interstate system to being unable to keep its roadways expanding with demand in about 50 years depending on how you define it even less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_congestion

The reality is congestion was simply and attempt to hide the economic cost of falling EROEI.

Its just a book keeping game the quality of life of the person is directly and obviously impaired by falling EROEI no matter what accounting tricks you play. We are simply and fundamentally poorer now than we where in 1950 because of falling EROEI.

Taking the stance that the high point of modern society was driving from your modern suburban house to work in ten minutes or less in a comfortable air conditioned car then the zenith or peak was probably right near 1970-1975 :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning#Automobile_air_conditioners

A bit of a spread but peak Americana lifestyle happened right before the OPEC oil embargo and was certain after US oil production had clearly peaked. Quality of life using the American Dream as the top has declined sense in lockstep with falling EROEI. Technological advances have done little to offset this at least for people attempting to live the standard suburbia American dream lifestyle.

By picking the "peak" its clear that since then bookkeeping games have simply papered over the decline.
At least till now.


We are simply and fundamentally poorer now than we where in 1950 because of falling EROEI....

... Quality of life using the American Dream as the top has declined sense in lockstep with falling EROEI.


Average EROI has only recently gotten worse than 1950. For the US, best average EROI of all time was in 1999 (EROI=17). EROI has dropped to about 10: as of 2008, energy is about one-tenth of GDP.

Worst all time (since 1950) was 1981. EROI= 7.3

See table 1.5
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/aer.pdf

That's a ratio of energy cost to GDP. It's useful, but it's very different from E-ROI.

Actually, our recent economic problems have very little to do with E-ROI. They have something to do with oil imports, but that's more a problem of geographical distribution than it is of E-ROI.

IOW, oil importers are transferring income and wealth to exporters. If oil importers had a share of oil production that was proportional to consumption, it would matter very little that the share of the workforce in oil production had gone up a bit, or that production was stagnating. Some ex-autoworkers would move over to oil production, and we'd use our production a little more efficiently: fewer SUVs, more small cars, hybrids, etc.


That's a ratio of energy cost to GDP. It's useful, but it's very different from E-ROI.


I disagree. When you spend money, you spend energy. End of story.

Labor is far more important. Yes, you can argue that human labor is a form of energy, but human energy isn't fungible with extra-somatic energy (oil, etc) in an advanced economy.


Labor is far more important. Yes, you can argue that human labor is a form of energy, but human energy isn't fungible with extra-somatic energy (oil, etc) in an advanced economy.


Wrong.

It's ALL energy. A dollar represents energy. That's what it is worth. This does not mean that each dollar you spend reflects the energy embodied in the product. But a dollar has an average value that does reflect, in total, all the energy in the economy.

So, if you spend $5000 on a work of art that took an artist one afternoon to produce, the energy value of those dollars does not reflect his or her energy expenditure to produce the work, but it must average out.

Human energy (in terms of calories, whatever) amounts to about one quad out of 100 quads in the US. But that's a trivial point. Everything costs energy. That's what we pay for. Sometimes we pay a premium, and sometimes we get a better deal, but the value of a dollar (or any other monetary unit) is the same as all the other dollars.

But as you point to with the artist's valuation, the dollar values can heavily skew away from the energy values for a variety of reasons of habit, of perception and of cultural bias, etc. The reason to delineate EROEI as distinct from monetary energy values is to look at energy sources which don't 'suffer' from being overvalued or under-debited by way of subsidies, and hence leave us without a clear picture of what their value may be once the costs of all energies have been 'corrected' by the privations of Peak Oil.

'It must average out' .. Well maybe, but those averages are skewed today with cheap energy, so the variable of money value which is subject to numerous psychological factors, should be removed for a better detail view of individual pieces of the puzzle.


But as you point to with the artist's valuation, the dollar values can heavily skew away from the energy values for a variety of reasons of habit, of perception and of cultural bias, etc. The reason to delineate EROEI as distinct from monetary energy values is to look at energy sources which don't 'suffer' from being overvalued or under-debited by way of subsidies, and hence leave us without a clear picture of what their value may be once the costs of all energies have been 'corrected' by the privations of Peak Oil.


Well, not exactly. In energy value theory -- my version anyway -- the two sides to the equation are like so:

EA=EP-EC

In an economic system, for some period of time, where EA is Energy Available for doing things other than producing energy. EP is Energy Produced, and EC is the Energy Cost of producing EP.

We can also break it down to

EA1+EA2 + .. EAn = (EP1+EP2+ .. EPm) - (EC1+EC2+..ECm)

which describes energy used for n non-energy things made or done using m bundles of energy produced (EP) which have associated Energy Costs (EC).

The left side of the equation has to equal the right side. If the artist's EA item gets a high value, the other EA items have to take less. Overall, it has to balance. It is understood there will be quite a bit of variability for how close the dollars fetched for the item matched the energy value of those dollars.

A lot of the EA items never get any dollar value. They may represent things done for which no money was paid.

The right side of the equation deals with energy products. The dollar amounts will more closely reflect the energy values, but there will be some variability there too.

So, EROI = EP / EC

When I first wrote my student paper on this 35 years ago, instead of EROI, I called the ratio the price of energy and expressed it as the inverse of what we now call EROI. When, years later, I heard of the term EROI, I thought it was good. It was a little confusing in my original paper to talk about the price of energy because I had to distinguish between the physical price of energy, EC/EP, and the market price of energy. The EROI term is a little less confusing, although we have to understand that high priced energy means low EROI, and vice versa.

Aggregate EROI, which would be the inverse of the percentage of GDP for energy expenditures, is a good concept because all the various inequities are evened out.

We get to the energy represented by a dollar (or whatever monetary unit) by total dollars spent divided by EP. Where EP also equals EA + EC. The Annual Energy Review (http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/aer.pdf Table 1.5) already has the calculations done for BTUs per dollar and energy expenditures (EC in dollars) as a percentage of GDP.

When you get to EROI for various types of energy, it is not necessarily going to give you the clearest picture of the value of that energy. Energy has different qualities due to efficiencies, location (distance from plant to user), ease of transmission (or ease of transport), energy content by weight, energy content by volume, dirtiness (resulting in external costs), and the time of day they are produced. So EROI is only part of the picture when it comes to dollar value.

For example, solar electricity may not have the greatest EROI, but it is energy in a very high quality form (electricity) and it is produced at a time when it is most needed. So, it is worth more money (a lot more, actually, because supplying electricity at peak times from other sources may be very expensive) than using EROI, based on trying to calculate energy inputs and outputs, as the yardstick for value.

I think that using the production cost of some energy in terms of dollars is all you need to calculate EROI, and it much more likely to include all the inputs. Ultimately, we are interested in EROI of the delivered retail product. In my Oct 3 article, I show calculations for a barrel of oil (EROI 12.5) and a gallon of retail gasoline (EROI 5.8). Oil is starting to suck bad.

Filtering out subsidies can be tricky. Almost every form of energy has some subsidy behind it, and it may be difficult to get at.

It's ALL energy. A dollar represents energy.

I'm not sure where this idea came from, but it makes no sense. You could say the same thing about other essential resources: "it's all oxygen: everything uses it, everything needs it.". Or, "it's all metals", etc., etc..

I call this the Garbageman's Fallacy: if sanitation is essential to the running of a big city, does that make garbage pickup the most essential service of all?

If all houses were Passivhaus designs, and used no net energy, would we get less value from housing? No, we'd get more (more stable temps, etc). If we move from a SUV to a Prius, we can reduce energy consumption by 80%. Do we reduce value by 80%? No. If we move from diesel trucking to elctric rail, we can reduce energy consumption by 90%, and FF by 100%. Does that reduce the value of the freight transportation service? Not at all.

Energy is just one of many inputs. It's certainly an essential one (though at levels far below our current consumption), but it's not the only thing in our economy.


I'm not sure where this idea came from, but it makes no sense.


I came up with the idea on my own many years ago (1975) ... at college. While researching the idea and working on a paper about it, I found a lot of people had essentially the same idea. Frederick Soddy I think had the earliest writings about it. Soddy said, essentially, that economics is about the flow of energy.
http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2009/07/economic-thought-of-frederick-sod...

I've also heard it called Thermoeconomics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics

There were a lot of others. Charles Hall is probably the most vocal one currently.

Energy has a different role compared to your "it's all oxygen: everything uses it, everything needs it" example. We pay a measurable price for energy. This becomes the basis for how we value things: what it cost us. Oxygen is everywhere. We don't generally pay anything for it. Energy is also everywhere and we don't usually pay for it. For example, most of our space conditioning is provided by natural ambient energy. But when we expend energy to get something, that's forms the basis for what we think it is worth. When we expend energy to get energy, the surplus energy from that process is what we have available to do other things.

"We pay a measurable price for energy. "

Yes, but also a VARIABLE price for energy. A barrel of oil was $10 a decade ago, and $80ish now, and yet it does not raise 8 times the amount of new oil from the ground as it did in 2000.

"This becomes the basis for how we value things: what it cost us. "

And These values tell us more about economics than about the long-term value of energy supplies. They tell us what companies will invest in for immediate gain, or what people will pay for out of habit and absence of well-considered alternatives, even if it's to their own eventual disadvantage. That offers little clear information about the real value of an energy supply.

".. what it cost us."

.. and This is why we so often now buy cheap junk or cheap energy and don't see past the immediate prices to understand how it's frequently worse for us down the line. Not just in the ignored externalities of pollution or depletion, but even missing the clear advantages of the payback from a renewable, due to the high initial costs.

VALUE has to escape the psychological trap of COST.


That offers little clear information about the real value of an energy supply.


Fine, I agree with that. However, economists that ignore thermodynamics also don't give us clear information.

If you follow that link I gave on thermoeconomics, you'll find this Charlie Hall quote: "Neoclassical economics is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics." He is right about this, of course.

So, if we are going to come up with better idea about economics, we'd better start by taking into account thermodynamics. The equation I gave, EA=EP-EC is essentially a restatement of the first law of thermodynamics. This is a logical place to start.

I never developed this idea fully, although you can see some of it in an article I wrote recently. I think the chart on page 6 is important to understand. http://www.safeenergyassociation.org/ad/eroi.pdf

I always assumed someone else would develop thermoeconomics fully and it would be taught instead of the dismal stuff they now teach in economics courses. I think Charles Hall is doing some of this with his group at SUNY. I don't know how Charlie is regarded on this forum or if he ever posts here. I believe he has presented at APSO.

In any case, we need a new economic modeling system that incorporates thermodynamics, EROI, and so on. The new economics ("thermoeconomics," if that's what it will be called) needs to include all the topics you mention (e.g., externalities) and more.

Thermoeconomics seems to ignore the complexity of economics and technology: there's a lot more to an economy than energy.

Energy is basic to biology, because food is scarce. OTOH, extra-somatic energy isn't scarce - we have an enormous surplus, such that we can drive single-passenger SUVs and condition our homes within a single degree.

Oil has become slightly limited, lately, but that's pretty temporary: it will be replaced pretty quickly (by electricity from many sources, and in the long-term from wind, nuclear, solar, etc) from an historical point of view.


Thermoeconomics seems to ignore the complexity of economics and technology:


Nah ... thermoeconomics is not that well developed and not very well accepted at this point. The variable quality of energy products complicates matters significantly. This makes it a bit difficult, but not impossibly difficult. It will be a while before it hits the high school kids' textbooks. I predict we'll have thermoeconomics working a lot sooner than a fusion reactor.


there's a lot more to an economy than energy.


Certainly that's true. FYI, here is the separation I see in this equation:

EA=EP-EC

The left side, EA, is the economy. It represents the energy available to do things other than produce energy. Everything we want is there: house, car, clothes, education, entertainment, kids' braces, health care, and so on. If you ask someone, "what do you want to spend your money on," they will never say "energy." People want things other than energy.* They want the stuff made with available energy. The right side of the equation subsumes energy. It is the stuff we require. It's what feeds the economy.

*
[food is perhaps different ... in an advanced economy, food can go on the left side because the heavy lifting is done by extrasomatic energy. In a primitive economy, somatic energy would go on the right side since significant work is done with human muscles]

Dechert,

Sorry, but I find that formula to be extremely woolly. The terms are convoluted between variables within 'Available', and a range of assumptions about Price and Cost.. these are unstable, and make any discussion of a Thermodynamic relationship prone to hidden assumptions, or changing conditions.

Maybe it's a step in a better direction for Economists, but I hope it's not how physicists will be measuring Power Supplies..

We have had a number of posts with Charlie Hall's work on EROEI (and I'm not sure if your EROI is synonymous to that, or if you mean Energy Returned On a [Financial] Investment)and I think he's well regarded here, but I don't recall any advocacy for this sort of counting approach. Economic arguments must be put forward, but I don't believe they should be conflated with purely energetic assessments, and I truly don't accept the thought that a cost measurement will fully cover the inputs in a fair and open way. That makes it no longer a closed system, as far as I can tell.


Sorry, but I find that formula to be extremely woolly. The terms are convoluted between variables within 'Available', and a range of assumptions about Price and Cost.. these are unstable, and make any discussion of a Thermodynamic relationship prone to hidden assumptions, or changing conditions.


I don't necessarily disagree with what you say. However, reality is messier than we'd like. Energy qualities vary. What we are willing to pay for something often does not correspond with the energy it took to make the thing. Nonetheless, our economy is still bound by the laws of thermodynamics. Energy can neither be created or destroyed. EA=EP-EC is just a restatement of that.

Despite the difficulties, I stand behind what I wrote. Current economic models are prone to break -- especially at times of changing EROI -- because they defy thermodynamics. If we're going to arrive at a more accurate economic model, that model must start with a recognition of the most basic thermodynamic principles.

There is a very good NYT article on Charlie Hall's page. It quotes Hall but also one of the TOD guys, Nate Hagens:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/23/23greenwire-new-school-of-though...


"If you go from using a 20-to-1 energy return fuel down to a 3-to-1 fuel, economic collapse is guaranteed," as nothing is left for other economic activity, said Nate Hagens, editor of the popular peak oil blog "The Oil Drum."

"The main problem with neoclassical economics is that it treats energy as the same as any other commodity input into the production function," Hagens said. "They parse it into dollar terms and treat it the same as they would mittens or earmuffs or eggs ... but without energy, you can't have any of that other stuff."


I completely agree with what Hagens said. In the new and improved economic model, no matter what we call it, energy has to be treated differently from earmuffs and eggs because it's the stuff that makes all those other [non-energy] things possible.


We have had a number of posts with Charlie Hall's work on EROEI (and I'm not sure if your EROI is synonymous to that,


Well, yes, it's exactly the same. Hall defines EROI very clearly as a ratio of energy produced to the cost of producing that energy. BTW, I don't know who added the EI do-dad. Charlie uses "EROI" (see http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/ ) and that's what I heard years ago. I think Charlie will claim to be the progenitor of that term. Adding the extra E to EROI is superfluous because EROI is a ratio where both top and bottom are in units of energy. I think no matter what someone invents, someone else will want to dick with it.

Anyway, I've said that we may as well use dollars to compute EROI because dollars really represent energy. I told Charlie that much (in a phone call). I'm not going to say he disagreed or agreed. As I recall, he said something like uh-huh.

I've written that as:

                   BTUs per unit
EROI  =  ----------------------------------------
 	   BTUs per dollar X dollars per unit

I highly recommend that NYT article. It even quotes Frederick Soddy saying, "energy should lie at the heart of economics."

our economy is still bound by the laws of thermodynamics.

Yes, but that's not really important. The earth isn't a closed system, which is going to run down: vast amounts of energy are funneling through it everyday: 100,000 Terawatts of solar energy, compared to human consumption of about 4 terawatts.

"If you go from using a 20-to-1 energy return fuel down to a 3-to-1 fuel, economic collapse is guaranteed,"

Perhaps (it depends on other factors, like the speed of the energy return, and the labor required), but even if it did, we're in no danger of declining to a 3:1 E-ROI. We have enormous amounts of high E-ROI wind, solar, nuclear, etc.


The earth isn't a closed system, which is going to run down: vast amounts of energy are funneling through it everyday: 100,000 Terawatts of solar energy, compared to human consumption of about 4 terawatts.


This is true, and interesting. But it is a little misleading as far as our economy goes.

The earth will not "run down" as you say. Life on earth will continue -- probably for billions of years. There may be mass extinctions, as there have been in the past. There isn't anything humans could possibly muster that would destroy the earth. We could make the earth uninhabitable for humans, but we are unlikely to destroy all life on earth. The earth is likely to be here until the sun blows up.

We are concerned with human systems. These are far more delicate than the larger eco systems, which will recover no matter what humans do. Humans are quite capable of destroying their own life support systems, and this has happened to more than one culture over the ages. It takes monumental stupidity to destroy ones own support system, but it has been done over and over. We revel in high technology, but stupidity still prevails. When you hear drill baby drill what are you hearing if not stupidity? Need other examples? Dial up a few campaign speeches over the next week or so.

It is true the earth isn't a closed system, and our economy isn't exactly closed either. Our economy can expand or contract depending on things people do. Anyone with some space, some tools, and some spare parts can cobble together a solar water heater. Batch heaters can be really simple. Thermo-siphon systems are only slightly more complicated. If the solar water heater is then connected to preheat water for an existing conventional heater, non-renewable fuel will be displaced by renewable fuel. The BTUs produced by the cheap solar water heater will not show up in government statistics regarding energy production, even though high-EROI energy is being produced that way. It is also possible to go off-grid altogether and engage in other activities that will throw off economic statistics even more. But it takes time and capital to become self-sufficient.

Quoting Hagens, you say,


"If you go from using a 20-to-1 energy return fuel down to a 3-to-1 fuel, economic collapse is guaranteed,"

Perhaps (it depends on other factors, like the speed of the energy return, and the labor required), but even if it did, we're in no danger of declining to a 3:1 E-ROI. We have enormous amounts of high E-ROI wind, solar, nuclear, etc.


We don't have that much high-EROI nuclear now and there is no way we can have much more for many decades. A large-scale effort to develop nuclear would have a very negative impact on average EROI in the near term -- for some decades. Solar and wind can be deployed much quicker, but that is still very capital intensive and will take time.

When you consider how rapid depletion could occur (Cantarell down 70% in 5 years http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Mexico/Oil.html ), collapse could go to EROI 3. But I got news for you, EROI 3 might last a day on the way to EROI 1 or less.

You need to imagine what economic collapse would really look like: angry mobs tearing everything to bits. Rational voices will not be heard under these conditions. Have-nots (which most people will become) will be going after the haves. If you have anything, they will come to take it. If you're well-armed and not afraid of using the weapons, you can kill them. But they will eventually overwhelm you. Only people who are both well-armed and well-organized will survive.

It's like the twin towers. Once the support structure for the upper floors was sufficiently weakened, the upper floors fell. The momentum of those floors gained as they went down.

Ponder page 6 of my OCT 3 article:
http://www.safeenergyassociation.org/ad/eroi.pdf

Going from EROI 17 to 16 was barely felt. As you go down, available energy decreases more rapidly. Going from EROI 4 to EROI 3 contracts the economy twice as much as going from EROI 5 to EROI 4.

EROI 3 will be highly unstable and won't last any longer than the lower floors of the twin towers. We're at about EROI 10 now. If it gets to 6, I say run for the hills, but you might not make it.

Solar and wind can be deployed much quicker, but that is still very capital intensive and will take time.

Wind doesn't really cost that much. The US could build 30GW (nameplate) per year for $60B, and replace coal in 20 years. More importantly, the US has far more coal and natural gas than would be needed during such a transition.

There really isn't a big problem with cheap and affordable electricity supplies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

collapse could go to EROI 3

Are you still using EROI as a synonym for GDP divided by energy cost? That's really going to confuse everyone.

More importantly, it just doesn't make sense: if Saudi Arabia were to reduce supply by 5M bpd, and double the price of oil overnight, would E-ROI change overnight? Of course not.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As far as rapid descent goes, we've already done that: the US reduced it's oil consumption by 19% in just 4 years, from 1978 to 1982, while still growing GDP slightly and raising interest rates to 18% to kill inflation expectations.

Dealing with oil scarcity is somewhat painful, but it's not going to make many things collapse. We might have to suffer the indignity of carpooling...


Wind doesn't really cost that much. The US could build 30GW (nameplate) per year for $60B, and replace coal in 20 years. More importantly, the US has far more coal and natural gas than would be needed during such a transition.


This formula is a bit goofy. It's not the goofiest I've seen on this forum, however. If we see that falling EROI is a problem, why the imaginary program to replace coal with wind? Average EROI has dropped from 17 in 1999 to about 10.

We should be looking at how to stabilize EROI in the near term. Transportation is hit hardest by peak oil. We need a plan to replace transportation fuel with renewables.

Also, it can't work the way you've stated it. Logistically, it is impossible to immediately go to 30GW per year and then stay at that rate. It is, however, possible to reach the target amount 600GW in 20 years. In fact, at the current rate of increase, of wind power, we would exceed that figure. It's been ramping up at more than 20% increase per year for several years now. If wind continued to increase at 20% per year, we'd wind up at over 1000GW in 20 years (we're at about 36GW installed as of 2009). However, for a variety of reasons, it is likely to slow down to less than 20% per year. Actually, the investment in infrastructure to efficiently use that much wind power will be far greater than the cost of the wind turbines. All things considered, we should reach at least 600GW over the next 20 years for installed wind capacity, with a 33 percent capacity factor (average 200GW).

So, you are right, in a way: we can certainly increase wind that much. That amounts to about 20% of total current US energy needs (all forms of energy). Replacing coal with wind is good from CO2 global warming perspective, so I'm for it. As you've stated it, however, it doesn't address falling EROI and doesn't address the transportation sector, which has the biggest fuel problem. In my OCT 3 article, I talk about replacing gasoline with wind-generated hydrogen. We need a nationwide hydrogen pipeline grid to do that.


Are you still using EROI as a synonym for GDP divided by energy cost? That's really going to confuse everyone.


What you're saying is a bit garbled. GDP divided by energy expenditures gives an average EROI for the whole economy. As of 2008, it's about 10. Some forms of energy are better than that, some are worse. Fuel from refined petroleum is definitely worse than 10. Previously, I gave a formula for calculating EROI for various forms of energy given the price per unit, BTUs per unit, and BTUs per dollar.

I've been talking about this and writing about this for 35 years. It confuses a lot of people. I try to clarify. Some agree, some don't.

Here are a couple of things to support the concept:

1) Everything you pay money for took some energy to produce.
2) All the other things it took to make the thing you bought also took energy to make.

Do you agree or disagree with these claims?

If agree, then it is a pretty short step to understand that to spend money is to spend energy. Once you have that under your hat, you should be able to say that there is some energy value associated with each dollar.


More importantly, it just doesn't make sense: if Saudi Arabia were to reduce supply by 5M bpd, and double the price of oil overnight, would E-ROI change overnight? Of course not.


It would not go up over night because there are so many other factors. But, if they could sustain it (for a variety of reasons, they could not), average EROI for the US would drop dramatically. We pay dollars for the oil, and since the dollars represent energy, we are spending a lot more energy for the oil.

We have some data for an example where OPEC increased prices dramatically. See table 1.5 of the AER:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/aer.pdf

1973 average EROI was 12.3 (energy was 8.1 percent of GDP). It dropped to 7.3 by 1981 (energy 13.7 percent of GDP). I don't know if you remember those times, but I do. The economy tanked, generally speaking. Very high unemployment, very high interest rates, and very high inflation.

BTW, EROI for gasoline is already bad... less than 6. It is already cheaper to move to electric powered vehicles, from the perspective of fuel costs. If oil prices doubled overnight, it would be the best thing that ever happened to elec vehicle market.


As far as rapid descent goes, we've already done that: the US reduced it's oil consumption by 19% in just 4 years, from 1978 to 1982, while still growing GDP slightly and raising interest rates to 18% to kill inflation expectations.


This is one of the goofiest things I've read on this forum. This is about peak oil, right? The example you give is from the left side of the curve. The whole point is that we are past peak (or nearly so) now. We haven't experienced much descent on the right side ... we're still at something of a plateau (it's already pretty bad, though, with 15 million unemployed). There is a big difference between then and now: it's all downhill from here. We were still on the oil upswing in the early 80s, and the oil price collapse happened 1985-86. EROI went way up. It is completely different now. We haven't experienced anything resembling sustained rapid descent. That's the whole thing about post peak oil. It was no problem stopping a temporary descent when we were still ascending. We are on the downside of the curve now.

If we see that falling EROI is a problem, why the imaginary program to replace coal with wind?

To reduce CO2 emissions, mainly.

Average EROI has dropped from 17 in 1999 to about 10.

No, the cost of oil has risen, due to a change in supply and demand. That's not EROI. It's really not.

We need a plan to replace transportation fuel with renewables.

I agree.

Logistically, it is impossible to immediately go to 30GW per year and then stay at that rate. It is, however, possible to reach the target amount 600GW in 20 years.

Sure. That was a simplified example, to address the cost of wind power.

GDP divided by energy expenditures gives an average EROI for the whole economy.

No, it really doesn't. When energy expenditures rose sharply in 1979, EROI didn't fall. It really didn't.

1) Everything you pay money for took some energy to produce. 2) All the other things it took to make the thing you bought also took energy to make. Do you agree or disagree with these claims? If agree, then it is a pretty short step to understand that to spend money is to spend energy.

No, it's a very, very long step. You could ask the same question about metals: does that mean that to spend money is to spend metal??

It would not go up over night because there are so many other factors.

It certainly could. Let's say a nuclear explosion took out Saudi Arabia's main distribution complex. Oil prices might triple overnight: would that triple the EROI of oil? Of course not.

If oil prices doubled overnight, it would be the best thing that ever happened to elec vehicle market.

I agree.

The example you give is from the left side of the curve.

That wasn't clear at the time. And, it's irrelevant. The point is, there was an external oil supply shock, and the US responded by reducing oil consumption dramatically. And, it did so while still growing economically.

It is completely different now.

It's no different. We can, and should, reduce oil consumption. We can do that while still growing economically.

We haven't experienced anything resembling sustained rapid descent.

Actually, dealing with a long-term oil-supply problem is easier: it takes time to gain the benefit of investments in EV, rail, etc.


1) Everything you pay money for took some energy to produce. 2) All the other things it took to make the thing you bought also took energy to make. Do you agree or disagree with these claims? If agree, then it is a pretty short step to understand that to spend money is to spend energy.

No, it's a very, very long step. You could ask the same question about metals: does that mean that to spend money is to spend metal??

You are incorrect. Energy has an absolutely unique role in the economy. You can't [logically] say the same about metals or anything else.

Suppose you become stranded on CastAway island. There is nobody there -- just some tropical vegetation and a decent water supply. The boat you were on was lost. You have no supplies at all. There is NO METAL to be found on the island.

You could still survive. You could still have an economy. In fact, the exact equation I gave previously applies: EA=EP-EC

In order to have energy available (EA) to do things other than produce energy (EP), the energy cost (EC) of producing EP, must be less than EP. Let's say you fashion a bamboo spear and get pretty good at spearing fish in the tide pools. And you get pretty good at finding coconuts and other things to eat. So, you have a fairly decent EROI. To pass the time, you teach yourself to weave baskets -- something to keep your coconuts in. There are lots of dead branches laying around and you can make a fire.

Now suppose there is a neighboring island and there are people living there. They see the fires at night from a distance and decide send someone to pay you a visit. A friendly native shows up in a boat on your shore. You are expecting that rescuers from your country are going to find you and that you should stay put, but it's nice to see another human. And you might benefit from the contact. He has coconuts in the boat and notices your baskets. He offers some coconuts for one of your baskets.

How many coconuts will you take for your best basket? You may not be thinking in terms of calories, but if it takes you only 10 minutes and about 100 calories to come up with a coconut, and you spent several days weaving the basket (thousands of calories), you are going to want quite a few coconuts for the basket he wants.

Anyway, you start trading and you become part of a real economy. Energy is the thing that makes it all work. There may be no metal involved. You did not have to pay anything for any of the other things around you: wood, water, rocks, etc. If you want to use any of them, it costs you a little energy to get them. That's all. It is all energy.

Let's say time passes and you are not rescued. So you recruit some people from the other island and start building a society. As it advances and you start to use extrasomatic energy to do work previously done with somatic (human) energy the same thermoeconomic principles still apply. There is no point at which they don't apply.

Maybe you'll find metal and start using that. But the basis was energy, and your economy always remains energy-based. For a variety of reasons, you may pay more or less energy-wise in any transaction, but thermodynamics always rules. Over time, in aggregate, EA must always equal EP-EC.

And if EA becomes zero or negative (meaning EROI 1 or less) for very long, you die. It happens. It has happened lots of times to individuals and whole societies.

Here is something else that may help get this point across: I prefaced my presentation of energy value theory in my OCT 3 article with a couple of assertions:


  • Energy means the ability to do work.
  • Machines don't do work: they are agents for the energy, which does the work.

This is really basic physics, which you should have picked up in any high school physics class. I only included that in the article because not everyone has studied even high school level physics.

Work is done with energy. This is true whether the machines are human or non-human. There are no exceptions at all. Humans can use machines (including their own bodies or draft animals) to do work in creative ways, but it is always the energy which does the work.


The example you give is from the left side of the curve.

That wasn't clear at the time. And, it's irrelevant. ... it's no different [now].


Wrong. It is highly relevant. Because we were still in a time where worldwide oil production was still increasing, there was potential for a price collapse, which happened. As the US nearly stopped importing oil from the Middle East, they had to drop the price. Oil went from $40 per barrel to $11 per barrel almost overnight. That can't happen now because there are so many other customers bidding for the oil -- especially China and India.

Have a look at the chart I have on pg 21 of my article. Then tell me again things are no different. You should notice that since 2000, US energy consumption has not increased at all. But energy expenditures have almost doubled. Price increases averaged over 10 percent from 2003-2008. Clearly, this is very different. Welcome to Peak Oil.

At $1.4 trillion, energy expenditures are now one-tenth of our $14 trillion economy. And you think this has nothing to do with EROI?

You might want to trade in your ECON 1A book for a high school physics book.

As long as we are mainly dependent on fossil fuels, EROI can only go down. Do you deny that?

Energy has an absolutely unique role in the economy.

Yes, but many others essential. What about oxygen? Carbon? Phosphorus?

You can't [logically] say the same about metals or anything else.

They're both essential to an advanced economy.

There is NO METAL to be found on the island. You could still survive. You could still have an economy.

Sure, but not an advanced economy. This is much closer to a simple biological system. Of course, energy in the form of food will be the most important thing here.

the basis was energy, and your economy always remains energy-based.

Kind've. As the economy becomes more advanced, and extrasomatic energy becomes more important and abundant, energy is no longer a Liebig's minimum.

Machines don't do work: they are agents for the energy, which does the work.

I don't know - I'd say the machines do work, using several important inputs.

Because we were still in a time where worldwide oil production was still increasing, there was potential for a price collapse, which happened.

That happened later, years later.

At $1.4 trillion, energy expenditures are now one-tenth of our $14 trillion economy. And you think this has nothing to do with EROI?

Not that much. Of course, it's important at the margin. But, the margin and the overall average are very, very different. The difference is very, very important.

As long as we are mainly dependent on fossil fuels, EROI can only go down. Do you deny that?

Kind've.

First, it can stay flat for a very long time - that's what coal is doing, and nat gas isn't rising that fast.

2nd, PO is a liquid fuel problem, not an energy problem. We certainly need to replace oil ASAP. I agree - that's very important.


Energy has an absolutely unique role in the economy.

Yes, but ....

Yes, no buts. Absolutely unique. It's the one thing everything else requires.


the basis was energy, and your economy always remains energy-based.

Kind've. As the economy becomes more advanced, and extrasomatic energy becomes more important and abundant, energy is no longer a Liebig's minimum.

The fact that somatic energy becomes less a factor is a trivial point. Thermodynamics always rules.


Machines don't do work: they are agents for the energy, which does the work.

I don't know - I'd say the machines do work, using several important inputs.

Fail. Crack a high school physics or look up the physics definition of energy anywhere else. e.g.,
http://physics.about.com/od/glossary/g/energy.htm
Energy is the capacity of a physical system to perform work.
A machine with no energy = no work


Because we were still in a time where worldwide oil production was still increasing, there was potential for a price collapse, which happened.

That happened later, years later.

No. The oil price collapse coincided with the low point of US imports. The average number of barrels of oil per day, in thousands, imported from the Persian Gulf by US:

1977 - 2,448
1978 - 2,219
1979 - 2,069
1980 - 1,519
1981 - 1,219
1982 - 696
1983 - 442
1984 - 506
1985 - 311
1986 - 912
1987 - 1,077
1988 - 1,541
1989 - 1,861


At $1.4 trillion, energy expenditures are now one-tenth of our $14 trillion economy. And you think this has nothing to do with EROI?

Not that much. Of course, it's important at the margin. But, the margin and the overall average are very, very different. The difference is very, very important.

Wrong. Average EROI is most important for an economy. There is a large variance in EROI from various sources. We can tolerate not-so-great EROI for a fuel due to special qualities ... like high energy per unit weight, or high energy per unit volume, or time of day availability, and so on. We need a good average EROI, like around 10 or better. Oil is bad. Gasoline is now under 6 EROI.


As long as we are mainly dependent on fossil fuels, EROI can only go down. Do you deny that?

Kind've.

First, it can stay flat for a very long time - that's what coal is doing, and nat gas isn't rising that fast.

Coal is not so flat. It is still relatively cheap, but it is getting more expensive. See table 7.8 of AER -- coal is up, 50% over the past decade or so in real terms.

Except for a brief dip, natural gas has been going getting more expensive too (worse EROI). Drilling more and more and getting less and less.

Dependence on fossil fuels means worse EROI.

2nd, PO is a liquid fuel problem, not an energy problem.

This is a pretty odd statement. Last I checked, liquid fuels make up a substantial part of our energy consumption -- especially transportation. Besides that, we have a $10 trillion+ infrastructure investment in vehicles, roads, refineries and all the rest that facilitates usage of those liquid fuels.

We certainly need to replace oil ASAP. I agree - that's very important.

Yeah, I guess.

. It's the one thing everything else requires.

Again, the Garbage Man's Fallacy. Just because it's required doesn't mean that it's the only thing that's required. Remember Liebig's Minimum: what's important is what's scarce, and extrasomatic energy isn't scarce in today's advanced economies.

The fact that somatic energy becomes less a factor is a trivial point.

No, it's really not. What's important changes, depending on scarcity.

Thermodynamics always rules.

Which rule? The first? The second? Remember the fact that the Earth isn't a closed system, so the 2nd law's not that helpful.

Crack a high school physics or look up the physics definition of energy

Oh, I know the definition.

A machine with no energy = no work

Sure, a certain minimum of energy is needed, but so's the machine.

The oil price collapse coincided with the low point of US imports.

Exactly: the low level of US imports helped cause the oil price collapse, not vice versa.

Average EROI is most important for an economy.

Sure. Nevertheless, it's very different than marginal EROI. Prices are set by marginal EROI, not average EROI. That's why the average cost of energy is misleading.

Gasoline is now under 6 EROI.

No, you're talking about market prices, not Energy Return on Investment. They're very different.

It is still relatively cheap, but it is getting more expensive.

Yes, nevertheless, it's EROI isn't changing. The energy cost (or total cost) of digging up coal hasn't risen, just the profits of coal miners.

natural gas has been going getting more expensive too (worse EROI). Drilling more and more and getting less and less.

Actually, the market price of nat gas is at a low, adjusted for inflation. The last I looked, it was about $3.70/MM - that's mighty cheap. And, production volumes are at a historic high.

liquid fuels make up a substantial part of our energy consumption

Yes, they do. PO is important. Nevertheless, it's very different from Peak Energy.


Gasoline is now under 6 EROI.

No, you're talking about market prices, not Energy Return on Investment. They're very different.

Sorry, wrong, still. There are several points in the production phases of energy where the cost is interesting. The cost of a barrel of oil is interesting. Production cost of a kwh of electricity from a wind turbine is interesting, especially to the wind turbine owner. But it is not what we wind up paying. EROI has to take into account all the costs. Whether it is transmission costs, pipeline costs, refining costs, marketing costs, or any other cost, those costs represent energy expenditures involved in the production of the delivered product, thus part of the EROI.

Again, you're talking about market prices, not Energy Return on Investment. They're very different.

First, financial cost and financial price are very different: Saudi oil costs $10 to lift and refine, and sells for up to $80. The average price of oil rose by 4x in the last few years - clearly that's not the case for average production costs.

2nd, labor costs are 80-95% of financial costs, and they aren't fungible with extrasomatic energy.


Again, you're talking about market prices, not Energy Return on Investment. They're very different.

First, financial cost and financial price are very different: Saudi oil costs $10 to lift and refine, and sells for up to $80. The average price of oil rose by 4x in the last few years - clearly that's not the case for average production costs.

2nd, labor costs are 80-95% of financial costs, and they aren't fungible with extrasomatic energy.


I don't know where you got your concept of EROI, but it is completely wrong. Here's the problem as I see it: You are mixing Econ 1A concepts with thermoeconomics. They really don't mix. EROI is integral to thermoeconomics. It doesn't fit with conventional economic thinking. A big problem here -- not your fault -- is that the textbooks on thermoeconomics have not been written.

In thermoeconomics we have to start with thermodynamics, which says EA=EP-EC. EROI is EP/EC. BTW, as I mentioned before, in my original paper on this way back, I did not say EROI. I said physical price, which was the inverse of EROI, namely, EC/EP. Nonetheless it is exactly the same concept. I have adopted EROI as it is the ratio Charlie Hall has advanced and it has caught on. Also, for various reasons, it is better than "physical price" or EC/EP. Mathematically, the difference is trivial.

This is something you are not getting: the EROI the Saudis get is not the EROI we get. The EROI of oil can be seen from at least several different perspectives, and they will all yield a different number. For example, for the very same barrels of oil, we can say there is an EROI the Saudis see, an EROI the US sees, and a universal EROI, which is applicable to multiple systems included in your universe. Oil at $80 means, among other things, that some hard-to-get oil that was once "uneconomic" to produce in the US, will become "economic" to produce. That hard-to-get oil will have a lousy EROI, and $80 may barely cover the cost of bringing it to market. But from our perspective, it is exactly the same as the $80 barrel from the Saudis that had the good EROI. From our perspective, there is no EROI difference between the $80 barrel from the Saudis and the $80 barrel we produce from the hard-to-get place. For the US to produce the poor EROI $80 barrel, it will bring down universal oil EROI somewhat -- considering that the universe we are talking about includes both the US and Saudi Arabia or the whole world.

I'll try to illustrate by extending the islander scenario I described before in this post:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7048/735125

Let's say the you, the stranded islander, are up on thermoeconomics and endeavor to keep close track of the flow of energy in your system. You spend the mornings on energy production. You go to your hut where you have ropes, spears and other things you've made for harvesting energy. You have a book where you write down your results, EP-EC. For simplicity, let's say you are currently producing energy at EROI 5. You get 5 coconuts each morning, containing about 600 calories each, including the milk (kilocalorie, actually -- about 4 BTUs per).

You have a ledger for recording EP and EC. You write down 3000 for calories produced (EP), and 600 for what you spent in the process (EC).

At noon, you close the energy hut, and go home with your 4 coconuts and do things other than produce energy. You have a ledger for keeping track of what you do with EA.

Calories
600 -- making sand castles
600 -- weaving baskets
600 -- Household work and hygiene
600 -- sleep
-----
2400

The books balance for the day. EA=EP-EC. You are doing okay with EROI 5. You are not starving and you are able to put a little something away every day.

You also have a "vault," which is a cave where you put your stuff. You make one basket and put it in the vault. Each day you make stuff with EA and increase your wealth. Most of the EA is immediately consumed, but you try to make stuff with about one-fourth of your EA that you might be able to trade.

The guy from the other island shows up with a boat load of things, and offers to trade for one of your baskets. He offers one coconut. His EROI on the coconuts is 10 (which you may not know). It only costs him 1 coconut to get 10, twice as good as your EROI. You make the trade. Your EROI for coconuts stays the same at 5. You got one coconut, which is exactly what you spent making the basket. He came out ahead because the coconut he traded you only cost him half what it cost you. In effect, he got the basket half-priced.

So, you got an EROI 10 coconut, but that's only from the other guy's perspective. For you, it was EROI 5.

Likewise with Saudi oil, if we're paying them the same as it would cost us, the fact they get a good EROI benefits them, not us. We're not looking at the same EROI.

Yes, if we're paying a lot of money to the Saudi's, from one point of view it doesn't matter a lot whether they're using that to pay for the cost of the oil, or socking it away in their sovereign wealth fund - either way, it hurts us.

From a different point of view, it does matter.

Let's look at the 50% of oil produced domestically. If the price of oil quadruples, and the cost of producing that oil inside the US doesn't change, then the portion of the US economy devoted to producing that oil doesn't change. What changes is that the stockholders of the oil companies have more money to spend on new granite counter-tops, and the consumers of oil have to take 2nd jobs installing granite counter-tops.

Do you see what I mean? The distribution of wealth and income changes: they move from oil consumers to oil producers. But, the portion of the economy devoted to oil production hasn't changed.

Those costs are free to the county, allowing it to squander the money on politicians' pet projects and the like.

That's unreasoned anti-government prejudice which is only created as propaganda to justify "Don't tax you, don’t tax me, tax the fellow behind that tree."

For the love of life the first that shall go will be the automobile.

There was a series of threads within last year dealing in detail with collapse of complex systems and civilizations. Here are two dealing with the subject.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6339
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5528

duplicate

Thank you very much for these.
.
My understanding is that before the coming of the Roman empire to the British Isles, people made rubble walls.
The Romans introduced bricks, brickwork, and brick-making.
After the empire fell, the people stepped-back to making rubble walls.
.
Of course, this played-out in isolation. America is reachable from all over the world. The Russians, or Chinese, or Dutch could simply buy-up everything for a song, import THEIR technology, and give the Americans the same life as was given to the Native Americans.
.
I am forced to observe again the timeless universal uselessness of human leadership in anything other than a highly enriched, virgin setting.
They could have made anything work in America: society based on fancy funerals, on throwing big parties... with such new-found exploitable resources*.
.
I see that every objection I have to such a final calamity, "But, look at Cuba!", are simply stable, stratified steps: regressions in complexity.
Perhaps our untrained and ill-equipped children will invent the next easy source of nearly-free energy. Maybe we can still heed Richard Nixon's call to action... decades later... and without a thick buffer of remaining resources... in an irredeemable state of economic collapse***... in the face of global warming... feeding hundreds of millions more people... **
.
From the second, 5528, I see a present American echo of the past:
The wealthy are leaving for the lands of wealth. The rich Romans left for the east, where the wealth still lay accumulated. Dubai...
The masses are left behind, fodder for folly: Taxation... Starvation... Useless warfare... Dystopia...
Get out. Follow the money.
.
Unpopular words for sure.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5hXZyLUYdY
.
.
*
"Faces of Culture"
http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/cummiskclasses/faces_of_culture.htm
"The Western Tradition" Eugin Weber UCLA
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=020DB09ACE7DA0FC
.
**
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent...
.
***
http://www.businessinsider.com/mortgage-fraud-scandal-2010-10#ixzz12QBfjiyD

What we must do is remember the difference between technologies and accumulated knowledge. 30 years from now oil production will have collapsed to a point where nearly all the technologies developed over the last few decades will be irrelevant, unusable, or inaccessible. This I believe is even rue for many governments that will likely fall to civil unrest, debt overload, or other forms of change.

However, the knowledge of evolution, star and galaxy formation, gravity, thermodynamics, anthropology, epistemology, chemistry, embryology, genetics, geology, etc. will still be recorded in books whether or not a formal education system exists. I am 23 years old, and just graduated with a Bachelors in Biology in May. I can say that over the last several years I intentionally kept all of my course books in anticipation of needing to have as much a reserve of knowledge for future generations as possible. I will never have children because... well... if I did heir lives have a good chance of being less enjoyable than mine (and yes thats quite a heavy euphemism), but for those who will inevitably be our future I will be pleased to assist in teaching them the wonders of the universe. As all of you are only aware of the reality of peak oil due to your scientific, objective, and empirical analysis of data I'm sure most would agree that we don't need to have an energy party in order to sustain the knowledge that it was invisible microbes that make you sick- not evil spirits.

Your point about knowledge will "still be recorded" is not always true. Knowledge gets lost all the time. Oldest example that comes to mind is the knowledge as to how the pyramids were built, has been lost.
Newest example is from incompatible data file formats, computer viruses, aging digital media etc. The examples above of people not knowing how to use a slide rule, or how to drive standard and so on.
What would happen if the server(s) where TOD is stored were in a fire?

Knowledge, overall, does increase, of course, but knowledge that is no longer in general use becomes the preserve of a few specialised people/places, and the less widespread it is, the more susceptible it is to accidental loss.

What we have with the internet, is widespread access to knowledge, but the knowledge itself is being concentrated in smaller, more remote locations. How many businesses would be unoperable tomorrow if internet access were lost?

http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-lost-technologies.php

...an interesting article on lost technologies. Roman concrete is the obvious example of a comparatively simple technology that was lost, and which the people of the time would have said was far too useful and widespread to ever be lost. Egyptian rock-cutting methods are another, and the old Chinese mortar formula used in the Great Wall...

Historical or commercial knowledge of only limited importance will be and probably is being lost all the time.

But there are now so many copies of basic and advanved technical works in existence in so many formants in so many places that barring an utter collapse such that advanced knowledge would not be useful anyway, it seems unlikely that any large portion of our accumulted scientific and technical knowledge will be lost permanently.Just one math textbook out of the millions in existence is all that must be preserved to preserve the lnowledge of mathematics contained within it;and there are apparently quite a few people around who are taking the possibilities of collapse seriously and storing away books.

As to as our knowledge of the methods used in constructing the pyramids is concerned,we may never know PRECISELY what methods were used;but we know of several methods that have been used to accomplish such large jobs with simple hand tools and only primitive instruments.

If for instance you want to level a bed of crushed stone, or bedrock stone smoothed off, to within a small fraction of an inch over a distance of say five hundred feet, it is quite simple(but labor intensive to be sure) to build up two ridges of compacted soil from one end to the other and fill the trench between with water.On a calm day with no wind, you have reference points-the water's surface- at each end, and more anywhere along the way that are essentially perfectly level-that is to say, accurate to the limits of the eyesight of the surveyor.II rc, the bases of the pyramids typically were leveled by actually inscribing small channels or grooves for water in the bases or bedrock as the surface was leveled off.

There is very little comment coming from those most familiar with actual civilisational collapses like the end of the Roman empire to shed some historic context on the likely ways for the process of technological abandonment/loss to unfold.

The only information I recall from this area (being a scientist myself) related to how manufacturing changed during this time in Roman history. At the height of the empire the manufacturing industries had been steadily centralised until only a couple of cities were specialised in making glass, pottery or metal. The high quality and low priced finished goods were transported across the empire so that anyone of means could afford to own them. As the downturn began it manifested as people cutting back on replacing old equipment, making their high quality manufactured goods last as long as possible. This appears to have gone on beyond the point where the manufacturing cities were all but shut down (presumably since their income dried up).

Only when the stocks of manufactured goods were sufficiently reduced did attempts at local manufacturing begin, only to find the skills needed to do the job were lost. A quote on local elites a few hundred years after the peak being buried with laughably crude finished goods stuck in my mind.

So I would point out the potential for industries and skill sets to be destroyed by their own success. The over production in our own age has echoes, though the tendency to produce goods for rapid disposal seems to be a point of difference, though well made plastic items can last a very long time. The effect on more dynamic mechanical and electrical machines is presumably more dramatic since they wear out faster through use than simple plates.

The main other point I wanted to discuss the potential for new game changing technologies to emerge through the upheaval. The main focus seems to be on adapting and maintaining technologies that sprung from the foundation of fossil fuels. The biggest one of these new technologies is probably genetic engineering. In its current form it is highly dependent on a reliable supply of disposable plastic lab ware and reliable electricity, but in principle it should be able to allow the development of a society not at all tied to fossil fuels.

Western reductionist science seems to have gotten lost in the enormous information content of living things, and clings to the scientific approach where they believe they must have a full mathematical model of life in order to proceed to applications. The apparent non-linearity of living things instead suggests that a new approach of empiricism and determined tinkering is more likely to lead to useful technologies (perhaps an approach more suited to Eastern nations, apparent in their lack of hesitation to explore in this area to date).

The whole enlightenment and scientific method are deeply interwoven with fossil fuel use and the industrial revolution (and with colonialism). Perhaps the golden age of rationalism and science is coming to a close. What may be coming next is something so unrecognisable as technology, or even perhaps as society, that we fail to imagine very far beyond what we already know.

Actually I might just be able to make a short response I'll try.

The problem is the local manufacture must offer a lower quality product at a higher price since he will be forced into vertical integration. The buyer can no longer afford the quality products he used to buy at a lower price.

So your trying to sell and inferior good at a higher price to a poorer market. I suspect hoping you will make it up in volume :)

Thats why markets and eventually market economies fail soon after the underlying network starts to fail.

Indeed we are undergoing exactly the same collapse as the Romans did. Almost certainly at a faster pace but same intrinsic reason for collapse.

And thats the short of it :)

Good post Cameron. I have been pondering something similar lately but it has more to do with the diminishing returns of new technologies. Consumer electronics are the obvious first candiadte to examine here.

I do not have a flat screen TV in my house. We have a 56cm and a 48 cm fat back telly connected to digital set top boxes, and one $49 DVD palyer which has a handy USB port for playing "backed up" Xvid movies. My family watched one such movie last night and there were no complaints that it was not in BluRay HD, 3D, 5.1 Dolby sound. The thing is it was a good story and we all enjoyed it and I doubt if that expereince would have been enahnced by thousnads of dollars of new gadgetry.

Mobile phones are another issue. They are now so packed with features and so connected to everyone that you can now talk to everyone you have ever met and find out what they are doing at any time, whether it's important to know such things or not. You can video blog every single thought you have and have the barometric pressure read out to you every minute if you want. But really, for most people what is the point of all these new "apps"?

Thanks for your comments Termoil.

In order to rationalise our phone/internet bills I recently got one of the new mobile phone deals that includes internet etc so that we can off load the home phone. It is quite amazing what the phones can do, although I probably only use 5% of its functionality (text, calls and internet access). From a complexity point of view I can see how these items make our life simpler at the end user level (e.g. I can pay a bill through electronic banking from my phone) but at the cost of the enormous technical complexity at the system level required to enable my ability to wonder virtually anywhere and access these services. Of course the mobile phone is not a necessity, although very convenient. Without them, it would be much simpler from a system perspective, but our individual lives would be much more demanding.

What you have works for you. Me, I like movies presented as the director intended and have always found a small screen unsatisfying. The ability to have a 1.5 meter screen and theater levels of sound reproduction is very much appreciated. It's not a merely quantitative difference. The experience is completely different.

On the other hand I've never really cottoned to fancy mobile phones. I appreciate the ability to receive a call wherever I am, especially when a family member needs help and thus carry a minimal mobile phone on a minimal service contract. Otherwise it isn't my cuppa.

Better yet, for us and our level of use, we deleted our big telecom service plan entirely (and I so enjoyed the "you're fired" moment). We switched to simple pay-as-you-go phones and love it. $20 bucks for a great, simple phone, NO BILL, no marketing calls, and you don't even have to use your real name/address. My old provider whined and cried like a child when I told them that they were the victims of increasing the complexity in my life. Complex bills, taxes, service charges, access charges, blah, blah, blah!

I load my phone with minutes by buying a card at my local market. That's it. I spent less than $80 on cell phone service last year.

Hi Speaker, I do appreciate the big screen occasionally and there are some movies, like Avatar and 2012, I will go to the cinema to see. I just don't see the need to replicate all that in my loungeroom. I can have a lot of cinematic expereince at $15 a pop before teh economics would add up. I realise that there are some movie buffs that have built their lives around watching movies. I also understand that there are people who have a much better apprecaition for music than I do and can discern the different instruments in the orchestra when all I hear is a nice tune, even its coming down an ordinary AM signal.

The vast majority of consumers however have no such refinements but feel the need to have their homes full of the very latest gadgets with which to impress their friends. I have had friends boast to me about how good it is to watch movies on their huge plasma screens only to have them boast the next months how good it is to be able to watch the same movies on their iphones! This is waht I mean about diminishing returns. Same movie played on really expensive new technology that doesn't really change the expereinces very much from the original motion picture technology of projector in public room onto a silver screen.

I'm with you on this one.

I love a big picture and perfect THX surround, etc, but I've also been to too many Imax movies where they had excellent imagery, but no script, no heart.. wasted dollars!

I remember seeing Avatar the second time so I could experience the 3d - while I didn't expect otherwise, some part of me was puzzled, thinking "but it's just the same movie!" The 3d effect was fun, but didn't really change the core experience. (But I do think I'll try to go one more time!)

Every time I've read Jurassic Park, I keep thinking 'now THIS would make a fun movie!' .. even tho' I have enjoyed the Spielberg film a few times.

I am sure that I am not the average consumer. Nor am I obsessed with having the latest shiny toy. I don't own a smartphone as I mentioned in my previous post.

It isn't a matter of the cost of going to the cinema at all, that is not how I do this calculation. it is a matter of having access to presentations of a vast number of films through something like Netflix or a personal collection and being able to view them in a manner approximating how they were designed to be viewed. What plays in the cinema on any given day is rarely at all what I am interested in watching, and I find the patrons I share the theatre experience with these days quite often detract from the film.

There is no possibly way that I could watch the films that I am interested in viewing by going to cinemas. And while you may be satisfied by a small low definition presentation I think that is cheating one's self of the visual art of cinema. Laurence of Arabia and many others do not have the same effect on a small screen.

Each person must make his own choice.

"Each person must make his own choice."

Nice work if you can get it..

As it relates to the availability of Technology, of course, we have been ungodly lucky to see the growth of a range of equipment that ALLOWS us to currently have the choice of creating a full HD-THX cinema experience in the privacy of our homes.. but this mirrors so many of the outgrowths of surplus energy that have left us with the opportunity to create our own separate cells, (or Sting's 'Shiny Metal Boxes') with all the trimmings, lofted by an umbilical of ready power.

I don't mean to disparage the experience you're describing. I've done what I can to have a similar chance, while we simply borrow a projector from my wife's job, and I made my own 10' screen from window-shade fabric that rolls down over a picture window. (and 5.1 speakers from Freecycle!) It's truly wonderful to have a picture big enough to sort of sink into, and to be able to 'screen' movies that don't have Art Houses to show them any longer. Well of course, those art-houses died in large part DUE to the availability of Videos for Home consumption, which killed their audience base, it must be remembered.

But like the Luxury of Driving Alone, Eating Alone, Working Alone, this set of options (regardless of their numerous, mixed blessings) might become casualties in the Energy war that's coming.. so I'm glad that I'm often as happy with a scratchy print projected on a Cinder-block wall with a crowd of enthusiastic viewers sitting on the grass, as I am with pristine conditions, as long as the Filmmaker was able to reach THROUGH that screen and make a connection with us out in the Peanut Gallery. To me, that's heaven..

Pseudolus: "Playgoers, I bid you welcome. The Theatre is a temple, and we are here to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy. Tonight, I am pleased to announce a comedy. We shall employ every device we know in our desire to divert you. "

- A Funny thing happened on the way to the Forum - Lyrics, Sondheim

Me, I like movies presented as the director intended and have always found a small screen unsatisfying. The ability to have a 1.5 meter screen and theater levels of sound reproduction is very much appreciated. It's not a merely quantitative difference. The experience is completely different.

Yeah, ok!

A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.

- Samuel Goldwyn

The truth is you might be able to get a large screen experience by wearing a very small display.

Slip on some Sony Glasstron audio/video glasses and the experience is unreal. Switch on your video source, and it's as if you're watching a 52-inch screen from just two metres away. At the same time you get amazing wraparound sound through the integrated stereo headphones. If you like total audio/video immersion, nothing matches Sony Glasstron. Carry the glasses with you and you'll have a giant TV screen wherever you go.

Disclaimer: This not intended to be an endorsement of Sony or other any other company's products.

I can say that we were without power for a couple of weeks here in Houston after a hurricane a couple of years ago.
I had just got a new iPhone (now waaay too slow), and somehow the phone companies kept the cell towers working.
I could recharge the phone using the car adapter, and have communications -phone text, internet, and now with the faster
ones video, news, music and almost every modern electronic convenience for very little electrical power at the user end.
I have a nice TV and speaker system, but when none of that worked, the phone was a good enough replacement in real life.

So, I think we could remove all of our electronics and replace them with fancy phones which use much less power for most
peoples every day home lives, assuming the over the air phone and internet can be kept working. - And if electricity got
much less reliable, I think a lot of people could do this, and still see there TV shows and movies with little loss (although
I do like the subwoofer for explosions).

"backed up" Xvid movies.

I think I'm falling behind the mainstream. What is this?

Xvid is a DVD ripping format that strips out much of the unecessary data and compresses the file to something small enough that could, only in theory of course, be transmitted easily from one internet user to another. For er, back up purposes only of course.

Leckos,

Great article, and your one in the Defence Force Journal makes for good reading too. I am of the view that most abandonment of technologies to date has been for reasons of obsolesence and/or cost and/or environmental consequences (e.g. lead pipes, PCB's etc). It is hard to think of any that are directly from unavailability of a material, although reduced availability usually manifests itself as increased cost (as we are seeing with oil).

For this reason, I think modern society struggles with the concept of having to give something up (i.e. oil based personal transport) not because a better option is available, but because the current option is no longer available (at an affordable cost). The thought of having to back to something, such as the gravel roads, is anathema to most people, but sometimes there are advantages.

If you are not familiar with it, an excellent collection of such things is at the Low Tech Magazine

In the case of Australia (writing here as an expat Aussie living in Canada), part of the supply line problem is that Australia is often at the end of it, so I can thoroughly understand why the Australian military is keeping an eye on this. In a regional conflict situation this would be exacerbated even further.

My personal favourite example of a successful real world decision to specifically use an obsolete technology, in prefernce to the state of the art, is this device;

De Havilland Mosquito, 1942

The designers of this, in the late 30's, knew that aluminium would be in short supply in a war situation, as would machinists, and their machines. The decision to build it out of plywood was initially laughed at by the RAF, but DeHavillands reasoning was that wood would be in more plentiful supply (and is cheaper), and can easily be worked by carpenters, furniture makers etc, with simple equipment. This represents a perfect example of a conscious decision to decrease complexity.

And, of course, it proved it self to be faster and more capable than any other aircraft then in the skies.

So, there are cases, if the designers really look hard, where you can get the win-win of both increased capability and decreased complexity. This obviously works for the military, but clearly is a concept that most industries that sell to consumers (e.g. carmakers) have rejected.

Thanks for your comments Paul.

For this reason, I think modern society struggles with the concept of having to give something up (i.e. oil based personal transport) not because a better option is available, but because the current option is no longer available (at an affordable cost). The thought of having to back to something, such as the gravel roads, is anathema to most people, but sometimes there are advantages.

That is an excellent description of what I was trying to explain in the article, but I don't think that I did as well as I could.

The Mosquito is an excellent example that you provide. Other examples could be the British Sten and Australian Owen sub machine guns developed during WWII which were crude but effective weapons.

The military (the situation would be no different for industry as well) has a very difficult balancing act to make. All modern militaries (state based anyway) are on a similiar path of increasing technological development. There are obvious reasons for this (measure, counter-measure and so on). This is essentially the basis of the paradox described in the journal article. But at some point there will need to be a transition to simpler more robust technologies. The issue is that the military that does this first has the potential to be at a significant disadvantage for as long as other militaries are still capable of maintaining their 'advanced' technological advantage.

The asymmetrical approach I guess is one way around this as has been demonstrated through successful insurgencies by technologically inferior forces.

Suppose that NATO were to fight in Afghanistan without aircraft, drones, helicopters, armored vehicles, night vision goggles, GPS recievers, etc.

In other words, limit the forces to light infantry in trucks with rifles, grenade launchers, machine guns, mortars, light artillery, binoculars, maps, and other low tech supplies.

I'd think that a force of about 500,000 could eliminate the insurgency in about 6 months and take casulties of no more than 50,000.

Most of the military high-tech is oriented towards:
- fighting the war with very low casualty rates because otherwise political support will end, and
- proving out technologies and tactics in case a war with a similarly high-tech adversary occurs.

Problem with military high-technology is that there is no price constraint. As a result, it may evolve to the point where political support ends because military expenditures are damaging to the military's national economy, rather than acting as a Keyensian stimulus to the economy and as a source of pork for elected politicians.

Paul

Nice link to the Low Tech Magazine I'm gonna get lost in there for a couple of hours.

Your example using the Mossie is IMHO not correct. De Havilland proposed making it out of wood because that's what they did, build wooden planes. They believed it to be better than the alternatives. Also the RAF where not that concerned about the wooden aspect of the build, more with the fact that De Havilland proposed getting rid of the rear facing defensive guns. If I remember correctly the main objection to wood was the fact that the specification was for a world aircraft and wooden planes might suffer in high heat / humidity environments. In fact several planes suffered gluing failures whilst operating in the Far East.

Yep, the low tech magazine is one of my favourite places - the old school techniques always had a reason why they were what they were, and we tend to forget them rapidly when they are obsolete, but many (such as the woodenpipes) still have their niche applications.

With the Mosquito, yes, wooden planes is what DH did, and that alone is one reason why they were not building many for the air force. Also correct about the concerns for tropical use - that is one of the reasons why wood became obsolete.

BUt, part of their pitch was the (likely) scarcity of aluminium and machinists, and once the war had started, it also became obvious there were plenty of skilled woodworkers available.
It was also obvious that if Britain was not defended successfully, the tropics would not matter.

The key thing is, the wooden construction was considered, by industry and government, to be obsolete, and had been discarded by the military. DH knew the many advantages, simplicity of construction being one of them, and the Mosquito proved them right- brilliantly.
A great combination of modern engineering applied to old school methods/materials.

Paul- how would you classify the abandonment of civilian supersonic travel? Isn't that an example of something that was abandoned because "cheap oil" was no longer available?

No, it was abandoned because it was never cost effective, and not just because of fuel costs. The Concorde lost money on every flight it ever made. The last straw was the crash in 2000, an era when oil was still pretty cheap.

It was the aircraft equivalent of a Ferrari, a superfast, sexy status symbol, and it was only if you valued the statues, or your time was truly worth thousands of dollars per hour, that it was worthwhile.
It wasn;t even that fast any more, unless you were going Ny to London or PAris - go anywhere else and the time advantages were lost, and would be even worse in today;s security obsessed airports.

When the Concorde was conceived in the 60's, there was not much corporate air travel. But as corporate jets boomed in the 70's and 80's, they took away the people most likely to use the Concorde. The convenience of point to point corporate jet far outweighed the speed of the Concorde, and the status was probably about equal.

Finally, the Concorde was restricted where it could fly supersonic because of sonic booms - back to the Ferrari analogy - great as a means of speed thrills out in the open, but for a business of point to point transport, it is not the right machine for the job. But it is the sexiest!

I have similar thoughts on high speed rail - a very complex, expensive system for the sake of a small amount of time saving.

There was also environmental concerns over the amount of H20 and CO2 that would be injected into the higher stratosphere.

So the SST was partly banned by regulations and political decisions. There are lots of examples of technology banned politically. Coca Cola no longer contains cocaine. Analog TV was shut off.

When the Concorde was conceived in the 60's, there was not much corporate air travel. But as corporate jets boomed in the 70's and 80's, they took away the people most likely to use the Concorde. The convenience of point to point corporate jet far outweighed the speed of the Concorde, and the status was probably about equal.

Finally, the Concorde was restricted where it could fly supersonic because of sonic booms - back to the Ferrari analogy - great as a means of speed thrills out in the open, but for a business of point to point transport, it is not the right machine for the job. But it is the sexiest!

I have similar thoughts on high speed rail - a very complex, expensive system for the sake of a small amount of time saving.

China is having second thoughts about expanding it's maglev system. Does that count as a technology abandonment?

It counts as non-adoption.

A technology has to be adopted before it can be properly said to be abandoned in the sense of the main article.

Agreed.

I think China has realised that;
1. Maglev is a very expensive way to do a Very Fast Train
2. A Very Fast Train , of any type, is not worth the cost.

They are doing "fast trains" (200mph) but not "very" fast - as you get faster the energy and other costs increase, and the capacity of the line decreases, so the cost per passenger is going up exponentially.

Similar sort of economics to supersonic flight -only worth it if people are prepared to pay really big$$ to ride.

as you get faster... the capacity of the line decreases

Really? What's the mathematical relationship? What's the sweet spot for speed?

As the trains get faster, the braking distance increases, exponentially, so you have to have exponentially greater distance between trains. This means the headway (time between trains) must be greater too.

There is a further complication, with electric high speed trains, of the power supplyt, which increases as the cube of speed. so if you then have several trains operating on the line at the same time, you start needing really large power supply equipment - 50MW, and the catenary lines have to handle this.

Once they get much over 200mph, the energy required for the system starts to approach that of planes! This is because with trains you have a lot of energy invested in building the line, especially where there are bridges/tunnels etc (which planes don;t need) and curves, where planes go point to point.

This from an essay at the Low Tech Magazine; http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/04/planes-on-whe-1.html

A lower capacity of the railway line is another consequence of high speed. When velocity increases, so does the braking distance, so trains have to keep more distance.

According to the Lancaster study, the capacity of a railway line is at its highest at a speed of 100 kilometres an hour, when every 60 minutes 50 trains can pass. With a velocity of 350 kilometres an hour, only 25 trains can pass. More energy is used to move less people, all we gain is speed.

There is a similar relationship in car traffic flow theory, because the headways increase faster than the speed, and the optimum for cars, as I recall, is actually about 80km/h, but don;t quote me on that - it;s been two decades since I studied traffic flow!

Of course, the individual only cares about their transit time, but the system operator is concerned about capacity. A city with a network of one lane freeways at 100mph, you could, theoretically, get from anywhere to anywhere else very fast, as long as their isn't so much traffic as to jam them up. However, it will not do many cars per hour.

For both railways and freeways, the cost of building them increases exponentially with the speed rating, they must be straighter, flatter, wider (roads), longer on/off ramps, etc. You are spending more money, to move less people vehicles, and using much more energy per person/vehicle in doing so. Speed is very expensive.

That is why I am actually a fan of toll freeways - the user has to bear the real cost. In many cases, it is worth it. In BC there was a toll freeway leading from Vancouver over the mountains, which replaced the old trans canada that ran along the Fraser river canyon. Turned a 6hr drive into a four hour one, for a $10 toll (now removed, for political reasons) - well worth it, and probably still to cheap to pay for the road.

For high speed trains, the cost for the trip at 300kmh should probably be much more than triple that for the same trip at 100km/h. High speed trains are like the trophy wife - irresitably sexy, but very expensive and high maintenance, and very few people get to ride them !

"As the trains get faster, the braking distance increases, exponentially, "

No. Breaking distance does increase, but not exponentially, only with the square of the velocity. Double the speed, and quadruple the breaking distance. Triple the speed, and increase the breaking distance by a factor of nine.

It's Newton (really Galileo):

velocity = acceleration x time

(acceleration is a [negative] constant--the maximum breaking you can reasonably apply)

d distance / d time = velocity = acceleration x time

which is the derivative of

distance = acceleration x time x time / 2

Still, your basic point stands: The greater the speed, the smaller the maximum capacity of the line as measured in trains per hour.

The greater the speed, the smaller the maximum capacity of the line as measured in trains per hour.

Absolutely true but not the most important measure - what really matters is passengers per hour - high speed lines solve the trains/hour capacity reduction issue by running longer trains (train length is much less than the separation distance between trains so the extra line occupation from the length is not enough to reduce the capacity back to that for the shorter ones) and this also reduces the aerodynamic losses per passenger.

Non the less ~200mph is the reasonable commercial limit - above that to make a noticeable difference to the journey time the journey needs to be so long air is a better bet unless the speed is raised so high that the energy cost is actually larger than that for air travel.

The biggest advantage of high speed rail as practised in most of Europe is that the high speed lines only carry high speed trains - trying to run a mixture of train speeds on the same lines dramatically reduces capacity for both the slow and the fast ones.

SBB plans to run 300 trains/day through the Gotthard Base Tunnel once completed, at speeds varying from 240 kph to 100 kph.

Alan

It is MUCH easier to run longer trains when they run slow - freight trains are over a mile long, - no passenger trains come close.
The operational limit of passenger train length is usually the platform, so the slow speed train can be just as long as the high speed one. In an idealised system, the Pax/hr is dependent only upon the loading/unloading time, and the headways between trains. Slow speed trains win on both counts.

I agree with the advantage of using dedicated lines for passenger rail, regardless of speed, but I still disagree with the advantage of speed. The trains need to be competitive with car travel, not plane travel. A packed plane uses less fuel/pax-mile than a single occupant car.

Time on trains is no longer unproductive time (you can use your phone/laptop/internet) so we don;t need to spend massive amounts of money minimising it.
The service needs to be good, and reliable, and faster than driving. Those for whom time is really critical will always fly, no matter what the cost.
Take them out of the equation, and then we can have a medium speed system that is affordable for lots more people.

Yes, there is a mathematical relationship, as I note below. Capacity decreases speed: Specifically, maximum capacity goes with the reciprocal of speed. There is no sweet spot--that is, you increase capacity until your speed is so slow that your travelers get frustrated with the travel time, or you decrease travel time until your system hits maximum capacity and starts to congest.

You are optimizing contradictory criteria, and where you optimize depends on how much you value each--a personal or a political choice.

Why not incorporate flywheel storage into Maglev systems ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage

Track-side that might work nicely. Train side you get gyro-stabilized to death.

An alternative solution to the problem is to have two joined flywheels spinning synchronously in opposite directions. They would have a total angular momentum of zero and no gyroscopic effect. A problem with this solution is that when the difference between the momentum of each flywheel is anything other than zero the housing of the two flywheels would exhibit torque. The result is two heavy spinning gears. Both wheels must be maintained at the same speed to keep the angular velocity at zero. Strictly speaking, the two flywheels would exert a huge torquing moment at the central point, trying to bend the axle. However, if the axle were sufficiently strong, no gyroscopic forces would have a net effect on the sealed container, so no torque would be noticed.

...just thimkin' out loud again, sorry.

That's helpful info.

where you optimize depends on how much you value each

It's reasonably straightforward to put an economic value on speed, vs the cost of providing a minimum capacity requirement. It sounds like there's a general consensus that 100KPH is too slow, and that 300KPH is too high. It would be interesting to see the results of a quantitative analysis/optimization.

Not true. British Airways made Concorde profitable during its latter years.
Wikipedia gives a fair summary of its politically complex rise and fall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

Whatever the reasons, I can't help but see Concorde and the Apollo missions as engineering 'peaks' never to be topped.

Rovman, it was "profitable" only because they basically bought the p[lanes for $1;

From that wiki site;

By around 1981 in the UK, the future for Concorde looked bleak. The British government had lost money operating Concorde every year, and moves were afoot to cancel the service entirely. A cost projection came back with greatly reduced metallurgical testing costs because the test rig for the wings had built up enough data to last for 30 years and could be shut down. Despite this, the government was not keen to continue. In late 1983, the managing director of BA, Sir John King, convinced the government to sell the aircraft outright to (the then state owned, later privatised) BA for £16.5 million plus the first year’s profits.[109][110]

If BA had to buy the planes for a price that reflected the true cost of developing and building them, it would not have been profitable.

The fact that no one has done it since, confirms this.

I guess you could say they were engineering peaks, both achieved in a time when their respective countries had the wealth to chase such high tech, but economically unproductive projects.
In that regard, they are in the same category as the pyramids, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, etc

both achieved in a time when their respective countries had the wealth to chase such high tech, but economically unproductive projects.

Oddly enough, those countries are wealthier now than they were then - they just don't feel like it.

I guess that depends on how you define wealth - which I'm sure you'll let me in on.

Well, heck, that's simple: GDP per capita.

Average GDP is much higher in the UK and France now vs 30 years ago.

I presume you mean inflation adjusted GDP, but even so, I think it is an imperfect measure of wealth.
I might have a well paying job (personal GDP), but that does not mean I am wealthy - I could be in poor health, have huge debts, a crumbling/devaluing house, be getting old, etc - does any of that sound like the UK today?

GDP is only the "income" produced per year, not total wealth

I think there was more optimism then too, the attitude that anything could be done, given enough technology and effort. That doesn't seem to be the case today.

I could be in poor health, have huge debts, a crumbling/devaluing house, be getting old, etc - does any of that sound like the UK today?

I don't know - I'd want to see the numbers. That may be the way citizens of the UK feel now, but they may have more total net assets than they did then, and their physical and personal assets may well be better than they were.

In a lot of ways, citizens of the OECD (and the world) are far better off than they were 30 years ago: better health, better homes and vehicles, higher incomes, etc, etc. They may not feel like it, but it's true.

I suspect that this is more a matter of perception than reality.

{}

Oddly enough, those countries are wealthier now than they were then - they just don't feel like it.

I am guessing either you weren't in the UK in the late '70s / early '80s or you have your rose tinted glasses on. By my recollection, at that time, the UK was in a mess economically, things were pretty grim. The 'Winter Of Discontent' was followed by the Thatcher years with all the attendant social unrest. Riots in the streets, mass unemployment.

Then there was the 'Thatcher Economic Miracle' which in reality was largely a combination of two things- the mass sale of publicly owned assets into private (often foreign) hands, and the income from North Sea oil, which ramped up steeply in the '80s. Of course the fact that most of this black gold was found in one region of the UK whilst most of the profits were spent in another didn't seem to bother Mrs. T, but that's an aside.

Anyway, the salient point is that things were grim then, but we felt ok because we were on the way up. Now, we are wealthier but feel bad because things are on the way down.

Actually, there's not much sign of decline. It's just depressing for people to see relative stagnation. IOW, expectations are being reduced.

As many yarns used for clothing are oil-based, with increasing oil scarcity/higher prices will natural yarn use increase, leading to reintroduction of technology for carding wool and home knitting circles?

Will US neighbourhood associations banish tumble dryers and insist on line drying?

Will investment banking survive, or will it persist like a bed-bug?

Will governments concentrate research on balancing ecosystems, efficient heating and insulation?

Will plant nutrition become a core curriculum subject?

Will long distance tourism diminish leading to collapse of white knuckle ride technology?

I dont know any of the answers but my feel is that governments will pander to the mob and any technological changes will be enforced by scarcity of resources and price.

Yarns: agriculture is heavily petrol fuel based too. Which is more efficient? Synthetic direct from oil yarn or yarn grown with synthetic fertilizers and mechanically processed?

Driers: Depends on the source of electricity. If alternatives pan out the answer is no.

Investment banking: This predates modern energy use, no reason to think it will not continue after.

Research: Government guiding research isn't a particularly good idea. Funds for basic R&D are ok, but applied topics not so much.

Plant nutrition: It already is if you are an agriculture student.

Long distance tourism diminish: Yes.

OT slightly, but I figured since this is basically a discussion of systems complexity and stability, it applies.

------------------------

Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered mathematical shapes known as fractals, has died of cancer at the age of 85.

R.I.P.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES-yKOYaXq0&feature=player_embedded#!

------------------------

A call for direct action to improve the 'climate' and reduce the rancor within the human world.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/15/130596355/tg

Many thanks to Joel Burns for sharing his truth. Were it not for elective mutism among people who know better, who could choose to do one right thing by speaking out loudly and clearly about whatsoever is believed to be true.....

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, est. 2001
Chapel Hill, NC
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
http://www.panearth.org/

One needs to consider the many reasons for the advancement of technology and increased complexity to get a handle on which technologies will be abandoned. Safety, convenience, profit, culture and style are all drivers (mothers of invention), as surely as necessity.

Does one invent a better mouse trap to catch more mice, or to make money selling mouse traps?

Photobucket

We are driven to ever more complex solutions for many reasons, the same reasons that will determine which of these "sollutions" will be abandoned first. At what point will ego and increased profit be abandoned for simplicity, frugality and practicallity?
The drive for technology and more complexity is surely hard coded into homo sapiens by evolution. I submit that we'll continue to make the same mistakes, until we can't, and evolution modifies our programming or discards our species entirely.

I think that we'll find that some people are going to have to take a very hard look at how they live & make a determination between "need" and "want" . Borrowing from Buddha, I say attachment is suffering. There is a false security, confusion and illusion created from an overabundance of wealth, commodity and technology.

Ghung, surely you are not saying that companies would deliberately make things more complex, to increase profits?

A reputable company like Microsoft, for example, would never do that, now would they?

I think your point is spot on, and the way they have been able to get away with dramtically increasing complexity is by (generally) simplifying the user interface, so the user perceives simplicity. Ask any (city) woman about your two moustraps, and chances are she'll go the electric one.
Windows based operating system - huge complexity hidden behind a simple to use/learn user interface (at least simple compared to the days of MS-DOS, and before that, well, I can't remember.

Automatic transmission for vehicles is another prime example, far more complex, expensive and less energy efficient, but 9 of 10 cars sold have it.

It is because we prefer to transfer the complexity to someone else, usually an expert, and will pay for it. Now use the word "convenience" and it all falls into place - convenience is one of the most expensive things you can get, but it is what we all aspire to - make our lives simpler by transferring the complexity to someone else.

it is when we can no longer afford the transfer, or it is no longer available, that things get interesting.

I have even heard of some people who voluntarily take on complexity in their lives, choosing to do such ridiculous things as generate their own power and grow their own food. What kind of person would do that?

That's like someone who had been trained in one of the most complex systems ever devised (a nuclear submarine) going to the other extreme of self sufficient living. For them to decide to do that - they must know a thing or two about maintaining complexity that I don't!

Cheers,

Paul

Arrrghhh! There's complexity and there's complicated.

BTW, I detest the proliferation of throw away mouse traps. God forbid one would have to see (or maybe even touch) a dead mouse. The simplest mouse trap, the sticky trap, is one of the least popular because, folks say, it doesn't kill the mouse. The little guy may suffer, or worse, you'll have to dispatch it yourself. Die, mouse, die!

Anyway, Paul, your point is well made. My situation is one of simplicity enhanced by complex systems. Passive solar/cooling, natural lighting, spring water, wood heat and simple radiant floor system; pretty simple stuff. Maybe I resent having complexity foisted upon me by "the system", or maybe I prefer to own my complexity (figuratively and literally).

I always try to plan things with a "plan B", so if my PV system were to become unsustainable in the future, this is one home I know of that would be quite liveable, even in a power-down situation.

Even the most advanced submarines today have quite simple backups. The emergency blow system is mearly a set of large compressed air tanks with a set of manual valves, connected to the main ballast tanks by piping. The main air filtration component is a big box filled with bags of activated carbon. The problems I see ahead are that we have no fallback systems for our hypercomplex, hyperinterconnected society. Therefore, I tinker and scrounge ;-)

p.s. I have found a great little reusable mouse trap that works great. It's basically a plastic paper clip with a locking mechanism. Easier to set than the old wooden traps, and you don't have to touch the dead mouse. EEEWWWWW!

Behold, the Victor Quick Set:

Photobucket
http://www.victorpest.com/store/rodent-control/b130-2

....for when the cat gets too old and lazy.

Now that is a good looking mousetrap - I'll keep that in mind, if ever have a mouse problem.

Being an ex military guy, have you got any thoughts on the military complexity issue that author starts with, or higlighted in his journal paper?
The two examples that come to mind are the carriers and stealth bombers. Both require an immense amount of resources to keep them going/protected.
The stealth bomber, in particlular, seems to me, to be a very expensive solution for a problem that doesn;t really exist anymore. You could buy a lot of attack drones for one stealth bomber.

Our continuingly more complex military is, of course, only one aspect of our continuingly more complex special experiment. Whether or not military progress is the driver or the beneficiary of our technological "progress", it suffers from the same eventual fate; an open-ended experiment in growth and complexity is doomed in an essentially closed system. Whether or not these things are neccessary depends on one's world view.

I spent my last 11 months in the Navy TAD to the Nimitz, (due to a quirk in my contract) and consider the experience one of my most memorable and exciting. There's a lot more going on on a carrier than aboard subs. Truly the pinacle of warship evolution. (Peak Warship? That's gotta be a new one ;-) I see the Stealth bomber the same way. Hopefully we've learned a lot, considering the massive expenditures of resources and money.

Speaking of resources and money; UAVs are an attempt to remove the blood from the "blood and treasure" costs of war. Huge philosophical questions there, contemplation of which gives me an equally huge headache. Setting intent aside, UAVs, like ICBMs, have the consequence of de-complexifying warfare. Push a button, play a video game, people die.

This reminds me of Star Trek episode 23 "A Taste of Armegeddon", 1967:

On Eminiar VII, the Enterprise finds a civilization at war with its planetary neighbor. Unable to discern any signs of battle from orbit, Captain Kirk leads a landing party to the surface where he discovers the entire war is fought by computer. Even though the war is simulated, citizens who are listed as virtual casualties still report to termination booths to be killed for real.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

...a brilliant look at cleanly solving the complexities/costs of war and the society's population issues as well.

"Peak Warship" that's a good one, and probably true. With the proliferation of drones, I wonder if the days of the carrier are numbered?

Agreed with your points about drones and icbms - lots more bang (literally) for less bucks. Difference being drones are actually getting used.

Great fins about the Star Trek episode - it is one of the ones I remember most, for Captain Kirk's speech at the end;

During the final act of the episode, Captain Kirk delivers a speech insisting that war must be brutal and messy so that man knows that it is something to be avoided. "Destruction. Death. Disease. Horror. That's what war is all about."[1]He concludes that the two planets have made war such a clean, sterile, and painless process that they no longer understand the true toll of warfare.

I brought up this Star Trek episode in a conversation with someone a few months ago on this topic, about how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become sanitised - much easier to fight if the blood doesn;t actually get on your hands, and if the public doesn;t see it.

The predictive power of that show always amazes me - they even predicted the flip open cellphones!

....talking/voice recognizing computers; compact, portable memory/data chips, the list is long. Somebody even posted an article here the other day about matter depositing laser machines, a sort of proto-replicator.

3-D printing has been around for some time now..here's one example.

http://www.zcorp.com/en/Products/Rapid-Prototyping-Machines/ZBuilder--an...

Or, you can get directly involved :

http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

....for when the cat gets too old and lazy.

Jeez, just go on down to Catmart and get a newer model...

:D


Does one invent a better mouse trap to catch more mice, or to make money selling mouse traps?


False dilemma. The [true] inventor wants to make a better mouse trap. If s/he makes money at it, so much the better. The new one looks neat, if it works. The old one is messy.

Visit this page and call me back.

http://www.victorpest.com/store/rodent-control?&sortby=BestSellers&pageD...

That's just one company. 44 ways to kill your rodent.

The point I was trying to make is that an inventor is trying to solve a problem first. I don't think many successful inventors started by saying, "I want to make some money, so let me think of something to invent." Just my opinion.

I doubt if Victor invented many of these products. They probably bought the ideas (or maybe just took old ideas) they thought they could sell. There appears to be no shortage of ideas for ways to kill mice.

If you make a better mousetrap
And put it in your house,
Before long, Mother Nature
Will build a better mouse...

<:3)~

Thanks for that!

My daughter is having a 'Deathday Party' tonight for her last little mouse, "Fruit", who joined her sister "Chocolate" in the ground a few weeks ago. They were her first pets.

That will be a fun (somewhat dark) little decoration for the party!

Bob

"For example, maintaining mechanical items is likely to be more achievable than sophisticated electronic items."

I disagree. Microprocessors (specifically embedded microprocessors and microcontrollers) are cheap, non-perishable, lightweight, and mind-bogglingly useful.

My argument rests on these pillars:

After a couple of years of lurking on this site, I see Peak Oil unfolding as a "Great Depression that never ends" type scenario. If you think this scenario is unlikely, my comments will be of limited interest.

Microprocessors/microntrollers are cheap: only a couple of dollars. In a "never-ending great-depression" type of peak-oil scenario, that's affordable. Also, this cheap price is made possible by the economies of scale of a large factory, and a large factory or 3 can be enough to produce the entire world demand.

Microprossors/microcontrollers are non-perishable: Electronics feel perishable because someone might invent a better device during a particularly long transit-time. However, in real life, they can sit on the shelf for decades and they're just as useful as the day they were built. In a "great depression that never ends" scenario, the actual utility of an electronic device (rather than how it performs relative to the one next to it on the shelf) will be the most important factor.

Lightweight: a chip the size of my thumbnail doesn't weigh much. Being lightweight and non-perishable makes it easy to ship, just like spices.

Mind-bogglingly useful: They can also make a mechanical system simpler while maintaining a complex behavior. For instance, a microcontroller can monitor a pyrometer, thermometer, rain gage, and a number of other factors to open and close the windows of a building or greenhouse in order to reduce the energy consumption when the owner is away. Note that I'm not talking about iPods here. This is a different kind of electronics here -- it's the parent of the electronics under the hood of your car, or that runs your microwave.

So, I think we'll be shipping microprocessors around the world, even in most Peak Oil scenarios. And I think that they wil be useful. My thought is that our technology will change quite a bit (and become much more user-serviceable) to reflect our new needs, but electromechanical systems are going to stay with us. The kids in any community who would have taken up HAM radio in the past can surely learn to program a microconteroller.

Grouch, Welcome to TOD!

I view the microprocessors as a perfect example of moving the complexity upstream, away from the user. And they are great, as long as you still have access to them, and someone knows how to build and program them.
That knowledge, however, becomes increasingly concentrated, and, those who make the chips decide which ones they wil continue to make, based on theior reasons, which can often lead to good chips systems becoming obsolete/unreproducible, even though they work fine. The same cannot be said of an engine crank - the ability to make that is everywhere.

Case in point - I know a fellow who makes control systems for stand alone micro hydro systems. You need to have a governor to dump excess load, and give certain loads priority when their is excess demand. He developed such a system based on old style PLC's - works brilliantly. Except that said PLC's went out of production 1999. he bought several hundred from the last batch, but was told he would need to order 10,000 before they would even consider doing another production run.

There are other ways to achieve the same end, you can, of course, program a computer to do that, but that is a much more complex system. The remote nature off off grid hydro systems demands they be simple and reliable - dialing up for help is not always an option.

So good things can become obsolete not because something better replaces them, but because someone doesn't want to make them anymore. It leads to standardisation, but sometimes is a barrier to innovation. Overall, you are right in that we are better off, but there are of course cases where we are not.

Don't know about that example, Paul.

There are so many consumer level MicroProc's and PIC's available now, plus the countless hacks available on the web for using other consumer Electronics as Control Systems (Pocket PCs, etc) .. It seems that the genie has left the factory.. even tho' there is that equal/opposite force of Operating Systems and Hardware that has, indeed, grown more opaque and untouchable.. still, look at how the open-source community has been thriving, with numerous variants on Linux, etc, and other OS's and apps.

There is also a broad offering for small-shop custom Motherboards, Controllers and Op systems. Sure, the fab's can stop making a chip, but which is more important to them, control or sales? As soon as one chooses 'control', a bunch of competing upstarts seem to show up with visions of Sugardaddies dancing in their eyes instead..

Well, that was as he told it to me five years ago. There are probably suitable alternatives available now, but he was adamant there weren;t then.

I think Linux and other OS stuff is actually the best thing since sliced bread, because it reverses the concentration and control of the information. not great for a controlling corporation, but great for the development of the stuff, as long as the signal to noise ratio is good enough.

With OS stuff you have less chance of "the old man with the secret died", as, by definition, it is not secret.

I think that will turn out to be the single largest benefit enabled by the internet.


I think Linux and other OS stuff is actually the best thing since sliced bread, because it reverses the concentration and control of the information. not great for a controlling corporation, but great for the development of the stuff, as long as the signal to noise ratio is good enough.


Renewable energy is desirable for some of the same reasons -- decentralization, generally. We may as well get rid of Microsoft and Exxon at the same time.

Renewable energy is desirable for some of the same reasons -- decentralization, generally. We may as well get rid of Microsoft and Exxon at the same time.

Correct, renewables are to centralized energy production and grid distribution systems as Linux and open source are to Microsoft monopolization of OS. Which is why there is so much resistance to their implementation from TPTB, it takes away their power... (all puns intended.)


... and grid distribution systems ...


I don't know why you included this in your analogy. We don't need huge monopolists to produce energy, but we need grid distribution for decentralized energy production. Grid distribution minimizes the need to store energy from intermittent sources. Continuing the analogy, the energy grid is like the Internet.

I agree that the knowledge has left the factory!

I have a degree in computer science, and spent a lot of time working in computer engineering labs during my undergraduate career. I could design a microcontroller or a PLC if I had to -- it would take me a while, and it wouldn't be quite as good as what the pros do, but I could make a useful one.

Furthermore, I could teach a group of those HAM Radio type kids enough to improve it.

Another factor that I didn't mention is the Open Source movement. Provided that communication networks keep working, then people all over the world share notes about this sort of thing. It worked to produce Linux, compilers, and a whole stack of non-proprietary software. There's even an open description of the Sparc microprocessor that is written in a description language called VHDL, and a matching compiler written in C that can run on just about any existing computer. There are also small-scale chip fabs around the US, but they don't have the economies of scale that I see continuing to exist in the large factories in Asia (and at a few large factories in the US and other places).

One thing that I didn't address was high-end microprocessors, such as the type found in servers, laptops, and supercomputers. I see those stagnating in a depressed economy. The development of them has already stagnated to some degree because of physical limits (heat dissipation), though folks are just throwing more cores at the problem and streamlining the design -- but you could just as easily put that effort into reducing power consumption. If the relative-price increases, we'll use less of them and there won't be much incentive to invent newer/better ones, but modern desktop/laptop/server CPUs can do just about anything that a person would want to do with a personal computer anyway -- so I don't see computers going away, though I can see them becoming more difficult to buy.

I don't mean to come off as a utopian -- I'm not, and I'm currently in the process of getting another degree that should make it easier to feed my family during the hard times that I think will happen in the next decade or so. However, since I can easily pick a a subset of existing electronic/digital tools whose worth would far-exceed their cost in a low-energy depressed-economy future, I think it's a mistake to discount the things that we have going for us technologically.

Microprossors/microcontrollers are non-perishable:

You have dopant migration - 50 years or so is a projected life on 74LS stuff from the 80's.

A solar flare or nuke in the air EMP can 'perish' 'em. Same with ESD. Spikes in the rail - poof!

Even if the microprocessor is fine, electrolytic caps leak and go bad.

I can get behind replacing 7400 logic every 50 years! And, yes, parts break. I'm arguing that the usefulness of this stuff outweighs the cost (and difficulty of production and shipping) in a post-peak world.

As for the broken capacitors, they can be replaced. I have the soldering skills to replace the capacitors on those motherboards that were such a problem 5 years ago. The problem is economic one -- I make too much money to have me spend 4 hours refurbishing a $75 part, and I'd surely fail to fix a few of those motherboards.

Designing electronics for serviceability hasn't been a priority over the last few decades. It's certainly possible. I'm not arguing that the existing consumer electronics we use are going to be with us long-term. I'm arguing that microprocessors (microcontrollers in particular) are so useful in a post-peak world that they will continue to be mass-produced and shipped around the world. I'm not arguing that you'll be using an iPhone.

Gail, your post is based on the assumption that there will be no (sufficient and timely) progress in alternative energy technologies, namely fusion. It is thus a pessimistic view.

But right now there is a variety of approaches to make fusion energy in the works and some of them might prove successfull in a few years from now.

What if one of these approaches will be able to deliver energy to cheap to meter - maybe even allowing to make synthetic oil without pondering over energy input. Or delivering cheap energy input for enhanced oil recovery operations.

Wouldn't this change everything?

Given the track record of fusion - i.e. no success yet, and always "a few decades away, with sufficient funding" I would not say it is pessimistic. view, it is a realistic view .

So fusion could provide large amounts of electricity from high tech, centralised plants - sounds like fission nuclear. Yes, the fuel is more plentiful, but there is more than enough uranium/thorium as there is , and that fuel currently costs less than 0.5c/kWh, so how difference does it make if it is free?

Yes, there are other issues of waste disposal, though the thorium reactors, and Candu types solve that by burning most of it up leaving only low level waste.

In any case, a view of the near future (next 50yrs) without fusion is more likely to happen than one with.

JET was successful and generated fusion energy. It was not designed as a power generating system but as a test bed for the Tokomak fusion. ITER is being built to test out the practical problems of a fusion reactor such as materials. DEMO is intended to be a first proof generating reactor. Maybe 20-30 years ago the 'just around the corner' view may have been justified, mainly due to over optimistic claims of success. The current program is a series of steps planned to lead to a working reactor. The current delay is far more due to political molasses than technical issues, ITER could be 5 or 10 years further down the road if it was not for arguments such as where to build it.

NAOM


JET was successful and generated fusion energy.


Let me think about that .... uh .. no.

JET is so far from anything resembling proof-of-concept that fusion must remain in the same category as "what if energy from Tinkerbell's wand could be harnessed?"

According to their own web site, JET produced 16 megawatts of fusion power -- for some small period of time they don't mention -- while the input was 24 megawatts. It doesn't sound like any energy was generated. http://www.jet.efda.org/jet/history-anniversaries/

If they ever figure out how to produce energy from fusion, but the plant costs more than $9,000 per kilowatt, it is useless even if it runs forever 24/7 on auto pilot and the fuel is free. We have plenty of ways to produce limitless renewable energy cheaper than that -- much cheaper at current rates of cost decline for wind and direct solar.

Worse, the fusion fuel is not free. They use tritium, which we only get in small amounts from nuclear fission. Currently, tritium costs $200 million per pound.

I don't know where you get your numbers from, but from JET, there really is no time table at all for commercial energy production.

http://www.jet.efda.org/faq/iter-and-the-future/

They say, "probably within 30-40 years’ time," but that's only for a reactor that produces net energy. It says nothing about viable commercial operation, which would have to take into consideration capital cost, O&M, fuel cost, etc. In other words, they have no clue at all. BTW, I have been hearing about fusion since the 1960s and it has always been 30-40 years away to achieve some goal.

It is interesting research and might be worth continuing on some scale. But to give any role to fusion in planning for a non-fossil economy would be sheer lunacy. Commercial viability on any sort of time table is completely unknown.

Even with the most wildly optimistic break-thoughs happening "soon," and a commercial fusion reactor built, this still says nothing about how quickly the next one could be built and operational. How do we come up with the tritium to feed these monsters? The Canadian designed (CANDU) reactors produce some tritium -- I think they have a stash of about 75 pounds of it. Some tritium gets released to the atmosphere with CANDU reactors, which is a cause of concern since it is radioactive and potentially harmful.

As far as I have been able to tell over the past 50 years of hearing about fusion, the promise of limitless energy from fusion has always been something to justify employment for some people that are doing some interesting work (and investment in some very expensive lab equipment). It has nothing to do with commercial energy production.

JET is so far from anything resembling proof-of-concept that fusion must remain in the same category as "what if energy from Tinkerbell's wand could be harnessed?"

According to their own web site, JET produced 16 megawatts of fusion power -- for some small period of time they don't mention -- while the input was 24 megawatts. It doesn't sound like any energy was generated.

JET was not intended to produce an excess of power, that is ITER's job. It did its job, it produced 16 MW of fusion power and provided the proof that the design could provide plasma fusion. This is far from failure and even further from Tinkerbell's Wand that does not even exist.

The next step is ITER which is intended to generate excess power while at the same time test methods and concepts. Tritium will be produced in plant as a by product eliminating your point on that. The methods for extracting energy have been mapped out and again are part of the project. The follow on reactor,DEMO, is intended to be a testbed generating reactor. Oops, sorry that sounds like a plan for generating power from fusion.

The time table is affected more by politics than the scientific considerations. Also, it is a stepped program that requires the completion of one step before moving onto the next. The time table for DEMO will depend on the results from ITER. I do not believe that it has been given a role in planning but it would provide an alternative to fission dependent on these next 2 projects. This is research and I am sorry if it doesn't fit into your schedule, there is a lot of work to be done and that will take time not least because these machines are 'first of a kind' and experience needs to be built up over a time scale of a few decades. If you look at nuclear fission it started with a massive, no expense spared, effort and took several decades to get into mass production. Solar has taken decades to build momentum. Wind power likewise. How long did steam take before they had it tamed?

NAOM


JET was not intended to produce an excess of power, that is ITER's job


Got it. From their FAQ, they say, "ITER ... 2-3 times bigger than JET, costing several billion pounds and capable of producing significantly more fusion power for longer periods." For several billion pounds, we get what? Since they never said for how long the fusion was observed, who knows what "longer periods" might be. If fusion was happening for one-millionth of a second with JET, I suppose if it lasted for TWO millionths of a second it would be successful: twice as long!!! And then if the power of the fire was 32 megawatts that would be twice as much power!!

It sounds like they may be able to meet their design goals while showing they are further than ever from anything that could possibly pay a positive return on investment.

They say they'll breed tritium, but they do not say it will be in a form they could use for fuel or if it would be enough to keep itself going. The lithium blanket they speak of (which has to be replaced every 5-10 years) has never been made.

Compared to fission, solar, and wind, fusion research is a perfect black hole for R&D dollars. There is a qualitative difference between something produced and nothing produced. We had functioning fission reactors within a few years of R&D initiating. The nuclear powered Nautilus was cruising under the North Pole in 1958. The first megawatt scale wind turbine was built around 1940, working reasonably well first time. Solar and wind have been ramping up over the decades. You can't ramp up fusion because it doesn't work. It is not comparable at all to the examples you give.

Let's just say if the economics of fusion ever work out, it's gotten off to a really really bad start. There isn't a single product in history into which so much money has been sunk over such a long period of time with so little result.

I think if you talk to sensible people, they'll tell you that there's no reason fusion can't work, but that it's a very large problem, and it will take a long time - roughly 60 years.

Not a fantasy, but not a near-term solution for our energy problems.


I think if you talk to sensible people, they'll tell you that there's no reason fusion can't work, but that it's a very large problem, and it will take a long time - roughly 60 years.


Until we have proof-of-concept. it is really just unknown. If the concept is that we are going to produce electricity with fusion, then proof-of-concept must include positive energy production over some period of time -- controlling the fusion reaction for days or maybe weeks, not fractions of seconds. We do not have proof-of-concept or anything close to that.

The 60 year figure you quote is pretty meaningless. There are several significant factors left out of the "it works" equation. Assuming positive energy can be generated this way, we have issues with,

1) Costs (capital costs, O&M, etc)
2) Scalability

As for costs, given the size and complexity of the plant, it is very very difficult to imagine how the kwh produced will be economical.

Tritium constraints mean that it would take centuries -- not decades -- before fusion could be contributing any significant percentage of worldwide energy.

There is barely enough tritium available to cover ITER and DEMO. While the fusion plants are supposed to breed tritium, there are significant amounts needed for startup.

Here is a Los Alamos presentation on "Tritium Supply Considerations":
http://fire.pppl.gov/fesac_dp_ts_willms.pdf

Assuming a first commercial fusion plant could be built in say, 60 years, how long before we have enough tritium for the 2nd plant? And the 3rd? Keep in mind it has half life of 12.3 years. I haven't seen the math lately, but as I recall, it would take centuries to have 10 or so fusion plants running.

There is no conceivable economic benefit to fusion power. At best, it is interesting research, like exploring Jupiter's moons. I'm not saying it should not be done, it just isn't something that's going to contribute to the energy infrastructure for centuries, if ever.


Not a fantasy, but not a near-term solution for our energy problems.


Right, but "not a near-term solution" is an understatement.

In keeping with the abandonment theme of this thread, I think fusion research should be abandoned at this time. Tritium constraints mean that we have to make a large commitment to fusion or not do it at all. Declining EROI is dangerous. Fusion research exacerbates EROI decline because it diverts billions in precious energy R&D dollars to something that won't pay off for a very long time, if ever. Also, it diverts attention to the EROI problem to a false hope. Given that we are facing serious economic contractions, fusion should be abandoned for now. Once EROI has stabilized worldwide, fusion could be picked up again.

Given that we are facing serious economic contractions, fusion should be abandoned for now. Once EROI has stabilized worldwide, fusion could be picked up again.

I'm concerned about that approach. The world doesn't really have a shortage for funds, just a shortage of nerve to invest them. I'm not sure it's a good idea for government to cut back spending or investment anywhere, let alone an area that supports an advanced technical infrastructure, both directly and indirectly.

Nick,
I'm not opposed to some funding for Fusion research, partly just for the value of learning in and of itself, or possibly of the discoveries from the research that find completely unexpected knowledge, even if they don't yield the initially sought goals..

But '20 years out', or 60, and I think that does put it into the category of Fantasy, as well. I'm not one who sneers at fantasy. Roddenberry 'fantasized' about Laptops and other things in the Original Star Trek series, and that vision became a self-fulfilling prophesy, even if noone as late as the mid 80's would have been able to promise that we'd see things like I-phones and GPS in peoples' cars.. I do feel that you put your vision and imagination out there, and then see if you can fill that image with something real.. and the Wright Brothers did it, the Mercury Program did it, Bill Gates, Gandhi, (& Hitler) etc..

Yet I found the comment by DougPHD to be extremely disturbing, and it sadly confirms what I often hear from the Sci-Tech side of things.. it's fine to dream and envision.. but don't plan your picnic around the offerings of an imaginary can-opener. Physicists shouldn't dabble in economics.


The world doesn't really have a shortage for funds, just a shortage of nerve to invest them.


hmmm. I'll take the no shortage point, but I don't think the world is lacking "nerve to invest." The US shows a lot of nerve setting up military bases and operations in the Middle East. We lack focus. Certainly, we are not [correctly] focused on mitigating the effects of peak oil.

Peak oil means EROI free fall and massive economic contractions. Nuclear power cannot forestall EROI decline -- fission nor fusion. The US has a grand total of about one nuclear power plant under construction and that won't possibly improve our average EROI for some decades, and will worsen EROI in the near term. It is unlikely we will construct enough nuclear power plants to replace the ones that will be decommissioned in the next few decades.

The only way to stabilize EROI is massive conversion to renewables -- mainly wind and direct solar. I favor abandoning fusion not because we can't afford to do both, but because we need to focus on where we are going in the next few decades. I remember Exxon commercials saying there's plenty of oil and then showing a picture of the ocean and saying that when we need to switch, we can produce limitless energy from water. Go to sleep America. Don't worry about it.

I think abandoning fusion would be a wake up call. The Exxon commercial was BS. We have a big problem Exxon didn't tell us about. Obama should address the nation with a peak oil speech, saying, "look folks, peak oil is happening sooner than we thought. This is a crisis. Fusion isn't ready, and we don't have uranium to expand fission very much. We need to focus on renewables. Therefore, we are rolling out this incentive program for energy conversion. Oh, by the way, we'll create a lot of jobs, and eventually get clean air and no CO2 emissions...."

The US shows a lot of nerve setting up military bases and operations in the Middle East. We lack focus. Certainly, we are not [correctly] focused on mitigating the effects of peak oil.

Our ME efforts are aimed precisely at PO. Sadly, they're aimed at perpetuating oil/FF BAU, not moving us "beyond petroleum (BP!)".

Peak oil means EROI free fall and massive economic contractions....The only way to stabilize EROI is massive conversion to renewables -- mainly wind and direct solar.

Sadly, we have plenty of coal. I agree that massive conversion to renewables is the right thing to do. It's not necessary to keep the lights on, but it's the right thing to do.

Obama should address the nation with a peak oil speech

You've seen the John Stewart video of all of the presidents back to Nixon, right?

We don't have a problem of elite/public awareness, we have a problem of corporate resistance:

"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...


Sadly, we have plenty of coal.


In a way, coal is a problem. People hear we have so much coal it gives the impression there is nothing to worry about. The picture with coal is really mixed and depends a great deal on where you live.

The most immediate and visible impact of peak oil will be in transportation. Coal has limited value as a transportation fuel. Here in California, it would be just a bit of a problem filling our cars with coal. It is possible to transform coal into a transportation fuel, but it is too expensive. By the time we look at the expense of reforming coal and building all the infrastructure to handle it, we may as well be doing renewables. Massive conversion to coal would not stop EROI free fall. The cheapest and best coal is gone. Cleaner burning anthracite is practically unavailable. Only renewables can stabilize EROI. In some places, like California (well, we don't have coal), renewables can start beating coal based on price (i.e., what we would have to pay for coal in our cars).

Then, you already knew that.


We don't have a problem of elite/public awareness, we have a problem of corporate resistance:


I think we have a problem with entrenched interests, but I don't think I'd say "We don't have a problem of elite/public awareness...." It's called leadership. I probably saw all the presidential speeches in the John Stewart vid (even though I haven't seen the video). I remember Nixon saying "energy independence by the end of the decade." Carter's "moral equivalent of war," speech, and so on.

I think we have a big problem with public awareness. What if you conducted a survey of people randomly, asking:

a) Describe, briefly, current US energy policy.
b) Describe what you think US energy policy should be.

I've done some of this informally over the years in connection with my work or just people I meet by chance. I think the answers show a great need for public education. Some people get it, but most people really don't. For one thing, the scale of the issue -- the numbers -- are just mind boggling. I put a quiz (pg 19) regarding how much we spend in my OCT 3 article (SafeEnergyAssociation.org). The answers I've heard confirm that most people just have no idea.

I was at the Solar Power International conference last week in Los Angeles. Even at an event where you'd think everyone is up on public policy, peak oil, and so on, there are a lot of misconceptions. A surprising number never heard of peak oil.

I should say we want more than a speech from our leader(s). We want a comprehensive program to bring about energy conversion. In order to overcome the entrenched interests, it will take a relentless public awareness campaign. Sadly, it usually takes disaster to bring about public awareness. We only got the Soil Conservation Act after the Dust Bowl.

It sounds like we see coal fairly similarly. A quibble: "The cheapest and best coal is gone." isn't really accurate. We have a lot of Illinois Basin coal, and it's both high quality, and from a larger perspective only slightly more expensive to handle due to it's sulfur content. In a competitive environment, it's winner takes all, and only slightly more costly sellers lose out completely.

I agree that most people don't understand energy issues very well.

The way I see it is that lack of information, and especially misinformation, on the part of the public is not an accident. Corporate influence prevents most media from providing good information (that's why Consumer Reports doesn't accept advertising), and corporate media like Fox directly plant misinformation. The same influence greatly reduces government efforts towards constructive change:

"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...

For better or worse, coal can be readily transformed into transportation fuel, if the transportation runs on electricity.

Alan

Sorry, I did a full answer last night but the server ate it. Here is a summary

Confinement
JET 10s of seconds
ITER 1,000+ seconds
DEMO production
Current record from other Tokamaks 690 seconds
Looks like progress to me

Power
JET 16 MW
ITER 500 MW
DEMO 2 GW
Looks like progress to me

Tritium, which form of Tritium are you thinking of, Tritium or Tritium? It will be produced in quantity.

Lithium blanket, I can see no big issues with this and ITER will be developing this system.

Nautilus
Result of a huge military program with massive funding. A similar program would speed up fusion greatly.

Fission, wind and solar may have started early but have taken decades to get good traction. Fission took a good 30 years before reactor building was at its height.

Fusion is getting results, you just don't want to see that.

NAOM


Tritium, which form of Tritium are you thinking of, Tritium or Tritium? It will be produced in quantity.


I gave a source for this information, Los Alamos National Lab...
http://fire.pppl.gov/fesac_dp_ts_willms.pdf

When you say, "in quantity," can you tell us how much will be produced over what period of time and cite a source for this information? How much tritium will the fusion plant consume? The Los Alamos paper says 4 - 10kg needed to start up DEMO, 55.8 kg T/yr for 1000 MW plant.

Do you know of any credible estimates on installed cost per kw of fusion power plant? What about O&M?

Tritium production is not a huge problem. The political will and commercial constraints are. One of the main uses of Tritium is in nuclear weapons. With arms reduction demand has reduced and producing reactors have shut down. If there was demand to use it in fusion reactors then it can be produced. As for the quantity produced by the fusion reactors that is one of the questions that these prototypes will be addressing. As far as cost per KW that is another issue that the prototypes will be addressing, I suspect there may be numbers floating around but I would rather wait untilthey get more answers.

NAOM

One reactor, TVA's Watts Bar 1, supplies the US military needs for tritium. With it's relatively short half-life (5+ years), the military stockpile of H-Bombs needs a fairly large supply of tritium.

During an extended transition from fission to fusion, the existing nukes can supply a fair amount of tritium.

Alan

Half life 12.32 years though I think the military like to change it out more often so they lose less bang.

NAOM

And like any of the others, it has to Work, AND it has to be reliable, and it has to be affordable.

There's a LONG way to go. I've no objection to having science run people down that road, but the dreamy promises have been unhelpful.

Exactly on all points. One reason there is a long way to go is that operating time needs to be accumulated to answer cost and reliability issues. I can see ITER and DEMO needing to get a good 10 years operation each first. It may even end up that the economics don't add up at the end of the day but that is going to depend on where energy costs are in 30 or 40 years time.

NAOM

Out of a well-spent hour, it would make sense to give about three minutes of that to the question of 'What if we found an energy source that lets us forget energy expense altogether?' Make that two minutes..

..particularly since the clock is ticking, a great many lives hang in the balance, and it's clear enough that what energy we DO rely on is not at all secure.

What if Fusion research falls though again?

Would THAT change everything? I've got that image in my head of Indiana Jones stretching down into the broadening crevasse, trying to grasp the Holy Grail, as his father advises him to 'let it go, Junior.' How much longer do we keep reaching for it, while other solutions (electrical storage) need good minds applied to them?

I've got an image in my head of 9 billion hungry people on a darkening planet, all crowded around the Last Great Hope Fusion Reactor, after decades of promise and anticipation, as they prepare to flip the switch "on" at long last...

They flip the switch and there is a big flash and the reactor vaporizes... Oh, well back to the drawing board!

I have seen this movie before - it's called "Christmas Vacation"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ian6NyXpszw

Oh, Oh i've seen this one. That's where the supercolider makes a strangelet next month and makes a crater - right?

Gail, your post is based on the assumption that there will be no (sufficient and timely) progress in alternative energy technologies, namely fusion. It is thus a pessimistic view.

Are you trying to suggest there is some natural law which governs the universe that basically says humans are special so no matter how dark the hour may be, the last 10 minutes must always yield a solution.

Geez that sounds more like a religious belief resting on faith rather than a scientific thought.
oops or did I just give away the plot line to one of those Star Trek TV shows where the engineering department finds a solution to some impossibly difficult technical problem?

Interesting hypothesis. Usually a proponent will advance several predictions that will bolster the hypothesis or falsify it. Good hypotheses must be falsifiable. It seems that history has already supported your hypothesis.

Nevertheless, any technology of the type focused on is really a function of available resources to support that technology, but since civilization is also a consideration in your hypothesis, one must consider the economic nature of the society that is going to use or abandon a particular technology. In other words will it sell?

The point I will get back to is that without the resource base (fossil fuel, or renewable fuel) the technology is unusable so it must be abandoned, there is no choice.

The final determinant is the environmental concerns. If the use of a technology destroys the environment where it is slated to be used, axiomatically that technology will be abandoned like slavery in the sense that ultimately "success" is a function of technology that is compliant with its environment.

I would agree with you. It's a very interesting topic indeed.

I don't mean this as a snark - understandably as systems become more complex the political response (particularly in a democracy) becomes more simplistic. If people can no longer comprehend the complexity behind a system they will resort to simplistic answers. Hence a policy like "drill baby drill" substitutes for a more thoughtful analysis of peak oil.

Perhaps in the end that is the precipitating factor in the collapse of large complex systems.

crazyv.
I think you make a significant point. I think it is not a snark to point out that the modern world presents complex issues for which there are not answers that are at once simple and workable. This is not limited just to politics. Current evidence is that the world economic system is not understood by anyone who is involved it running it. Besides the economy, there are many others things that no one really understands. My impression is that most of human history is a record of people who really didn't understand, muddling through with a lot of violent striking out at others and blaming others.

We seem to be able to work successfully in small groups, but we haven't worked out the conditions under which these small groups can really live in peace with each other for extended periods of time. Oil seemed to have provided a situation for an extended period of inter-group peace, but the political system that was developed during Pax Petroleum seems incapable of being extended beyond petroleum.

And I don't know what is the upper limit on the size of a "small group". The bankers on Wall Street seem to be a successful small group. A rural community with a functioning volunteer fire brigade is another. Two examples that are very different in almost every detail.

When all information is equally incomprehensible then all worldviews are equally acceptable.

Although I can explain a logic gate I have not the beginning of a clue as to how my mobile phone works let alone enough to build one.

My ability to tune a 1970 otto cycle engine gives me no useful information when my post-1995 ignition computer fails.

So when I'm told that holding pink crystals focuses the cosmic energy of the zero-point virtual particle field I really can't dispute that.

If the phone engineer, car mechanic and crystal hawker say it's true I pretty much have to take their word for it. I call "bullshit" on the rock crystals but I can see why my Republican friends drew the line at climate chaos. Who can tell where to draw the line today?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke's third law

If the phone engineer, car mechanic and crystal hawker say it's true I pretty much have to take their word for it. I call "bullshit" on the rock crystals but I can see why my Republican friends drew the line at climate chaos. Who can tell where to draw the line today?

By logical deduction I conclude that you are the perfect candidate for my new and vastly improved bullshit detector, only $9.99 plus shipping, limited time offer, only while supplies last. All major credit cards accepted.

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Google Sneak Review

It is my understanding that the Europeans lost the technology of paved road building for almost 1,000 years. Yet they continued to use old Roman roads for centuries to millennium, until nature and wear destroyed them.

There are several technologies that should still produce energy long after the ability to replicate new versions is lost. Hydroelectric dams and solar PV come to mind.

Humans like hot water and a relatively rare technology, solar hot water, is likely to increase even as other technologies shrink.

Another shift may be away from obsolete technologies towards better technologies. ICE cars, trucks and SUVs will likely shrink/disappear in favor of better technologies like bicycles (including ebikes & etrikes) and urban rail. That the replacement technologies require less complexity will just be a bonus, but not the driving force for the switch.

Sorry to be late and to not read all the comments,. but other obligations supersede.

Best Hopes for Better Development of this valid concept,

Alan

A key issue with any scientific theory is whether the theory makes predictions that are testable (falsifiable). If it does, then the theory can be tested and the results of the test compared with the theory's predictions. If the predictions are correct, then the validity of the theory is reinforced. If it is falsified, then the theory must either be modified or abandoned and replaced by a new theory.

One way to test this theory is to derive predictions from it then look backwards at history to see if the abandonment of technology in the past matches the predictions the theory would have made about those civilizations at that time.

Personally, the theory appears too vague to me to present falsifiable tests and quantitative predictions. The theory appears to need further refinement until such quantitative predictions can be made and then tested.

If you really want to undestand the complexity of Technology you need to check out "Death by Technology" at www.deathbytechnology.us

More important, It tells you what we need to do to fix the problems and even peak oil.

No it tells me nothing.

Because the link wants money - and I doubt its worth the money.