'Peak Wood' Offers Parallels For Our Time 604
Harperdog sends in a piece from Miller McCune looking back at the history of mankind's relationship with virgin timber. Again and again, civilizations have faced a condition of "peak wood," and how they handled it (or failed to) illuminates the current situation with regard to oil. The piece ends with a quote from the 19th-century social scientist and communist theorist Friedrich Engels, who is not generally thought of as an environmental seer: "What did the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down the forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained sufficient fertilizer from the ashes for one generation of highly profitable coffee trees, care that the heavy tropical rains later washed away the now unprotected upper stratum of the soil and left only bare rock behind? ... Let us not flatter ourselves on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first."
I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think there's any point being scared of redbaiting - the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot. If you're going to be accused of socialism anyway, you might as well see if there's anything useful to be salvaged from the early socialists.
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"the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot."
The proponents of such legislation haven't done a very good job of selling it, or selling the idea of local sacrifice while law-free zones of the world do what they will.
There is the problem of climate change, and there is the problem of addressing it in ways that are not and are not perceived as "lawfare" against the US.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the "developing world" will never buy in. From their perspective, we got where we got by burning our resources; if we don't let them do the same, it's Da Man keeping them down.
Now, could you explain what motivation the "socialist plotters" have to exclude the developing world? I don't see how the evidence you present supports your conclusion.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
From their perspective, we got where we got by burning our resources; if we don't let them do the same, it's Da Man keeping them down.
So what? They're developing nations. If the rest of the world says so, they have to abide anyway. I say this not because I think that the "world community" should be pressuring sovereign nations on how to conduct their economic business but to prove a point. If it's wrong to force them, it's wrong to force me.
Now, could you explain what motivation the "socialist plotters" have to exclude the developing world?
Fair question. Restricting emissions in the industrialized world will have a negative impact on heavy industry, manufacturing is the biggest example. It will immediately result in leading countries not being able to compete on the world market with "developing" countries. The amount of emissions won't be changed by much in the long term because all of the emissions that are coming from currently industrialized nations will in short order end up coming from developing ones. The clear result will be to depress the economies of developed nations while inflating the economies of developing ones, when the outcome is that clearly predictably it's not unreasonable to think it's the intended one.
China has an enormous capacity for industrial production but somehow China and India were exempt from Kyoto.
LK
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If it's wrong to force them, it's wrong to force me.
Except that as a citizen of the West you are currently burning far more fossil fuel than those in the developing world. Energy consumption per capita [wikipedia.org]. You can complain how China is now polluting more than the US, but per person a Chinese citizen uses 47.81 GJ per year, whilst an American uses 327.38 GJ per year. There is a strong link between the amount of energy used and quality of life, so bringing everyone in the world up to Western standards would mean doubling present consumption rates. Whether you thi
Fiddling while Rome burns (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of things here:
Every day we delay fixing our energy problems, the consequences get worse. But hey, at least ExxonMobil, et al, are making a lot of money, so there's that.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Informative)
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The developing world has a right to use their (remaining) resources as they see fit. If the developed world is concerned about damage from use of these resources or wants access to them, they should be ready to pay fairly for the privilege. There are appro
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I'm sure that the Easter Island native who cut down the LAST TREE on Easter Island jealously fought for his God Given Right to cut that tree down. It was HIS tree damn it. Who the hell had any right to tell him he could not cut that tree down? Besides. He also had the last axe.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there's any point being scared of redbaiting - the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot.
If it's not, then why do all of the major schemes exempt the "developing world"?
LK
I know that die-hard capitalists will shirk at this word, but basically fairness. Is it really fair to say that an Indian family can't have a refrigerator to keep their food fresh, unless rich Westerners can have an equivalent percentage increase like a bigger SUV, swimming pool, or equivalent?
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:4, Insightful)
You're going to have a lot of trouble getting buy-in from the people you need it from if you're telling them that they're the only ones who are going to take a hit on this thing....
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where the expression, "even a broken clock is right twice a day" comes into play. Just because someone had some other ideas that were bad doesn't mean all their ideas are bad. America's founding fathers, who any true American patriot reveres, weren't exactly correct on the slavery issue, after all, but they were very wise about many other things. No one is right 100% of the time; we all have our failings, or certain ideas or principles that aren't correct.
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I actually just finished sacrificing a goat to Jefferson. May he grant me a thousand blessings.
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This is where the expression, "even a broken clock is right twice a day" comes into play. Just because someone had some other ideas that were bad doesn't mean all their ideas are bad.
You assume much, young Jedi. And you know what they say about "assume"...
Everyone looks at Soviet Russia and says, "See? PROOF that Communism is bad!" when in fact the USSR was never a Marxist country. Lenin and crew used Marxist-sounding buzzwords to justify establishing a police state, which was certainly a dictatorship but by no stretch of the imagination could it be thought of as a dictatorship of the proletariat (which Marx himself said was only a temporary state). They also completely ignored Marx' te
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not much Socialism of a form Marx would recognise in Europe. There's a lot more Social Democracy. [wikipedia.org]
I also dislike this argument "Oh, but we've never had true Socialism, just every single time someone tried to establish it it led to military dictatorship and starvation". It has a faint ring of no true Scotsman [wikipedia.org] to it.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason why that happens is because the Communist Manifesto encourages violence (read it and you'll see it). This is the fatal flaw in their implementation plan.
When you encourage violence as part of your "overthrowing", you'll have a violent revolution. In a violent revolution, the people capable and willing of exerting the most violence will normally get to the top. Most of the time the people that reach the top aren't benevolent and aren't going to give up their power. The American Revolution is probably a notable exception (perhaps someone who knows about it better can figure out why it ended up OK - but from what I see, the USA was lucky to have good leaders at that point).
In summary: the popular Communism/Socialism Implementation Plan is easy for Dictators to hijack into starting their own Dictatorships.
This "design flaw" does look rather obvious to me, but I'm "just an EE" working in an IT line so it's really out of my field of expertise. Thus I'll be happy to see good arguments on why I'm wrong
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I think the reason the American Revolution didn't end up as badly as it could have, is because the commanders of the Continental Army were trained and educated former British Officers, who were trusted by the peasants, because they knew how to fight the occupying Red Coats. And the peasants knew that, implicitly. They acted as a rather civilizing force, and that's largely why US law is based on British "Common Law" - even if our governmental structure is not based on the British hybrid royal/parlimentary
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It has a faint ring of no true Scotsman [wikipedia.org] to it.
Except it's not, so... nice try.
If someone says "some triangles have four sides" and then point to a square, and I say "that's not a triangle, you fucking idiot", that's not a "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Similarly, communism is *defined* by the works of Marx. He invented it, ffs! So if someone goes and claims the USSR was an example of communism, and I say "no, that's not communism", that's a valid argument because we *have* a complete definitio
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In any large enough collection of people, there will be some who don't choose to co-operate. If you don't accept some form of property, than there is no such thing as theft, and them taking enough to live without producing it themselves is legitimate. So someone somewhere has to produce more. But again
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Communism and Capitalism are two sides of the same Materialist historical-dialectic coin. They are the same god damned thing in spirit, basing all measure of the value of human endeavor on material wealth production. That's why they both kind of suck.
Well here's the thing (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is somewhat true to say that the USSR was never a true communism, that is more or less the same as the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. You are right in that it didn't function precisely how it should on paper. However, it is in fact how all communisms implemented in the real world have ended up.
The reason is because communism does not take real people in to account. Real people are lazy and greedy. There are exceptions to this in various circumstances and for various people but over all, yo find this is true. As such, any economic/social system has to take this in to account. If you give everyone free choice to do whatever they want, and have all their needs met, well then many will choose to do nothing.
The only solution in a communist system is to force people to do what is needed. You tell them "You must work or the state punishes you." Then, to make them work hard you tell them "You must meet these quotas or the state punishes you." Net effect? Low personal liberty, low motivation, and the perfect environment for a police state to grow in. The government has to be involved in everything since the state owns everything and has to keep tabs on people. In that controlling environment, a dictatorship/police state is easy to grow.
So sorry, communism may sound nice on paper but it has never worked in the real world on a large scale. As such, without evidence to the contrary, I'd say it is pretty safe to say it won't work. Capitalism, at least when subject to some regulation and control, works. It allows for societies with high individual liberties and where most people have their needs met. It's not perfect, but no endeavor involving humans will ever be.
Also if you really think that social class per Marx exists in America today, it tells me you spend far too much time absorbed in a philosophy you want to be true, and not enough time examining the evidence. The biggest difference is that there is complete class mobility. Nobody tells you that you are limited to the class in which you are born. Doesn't mean you can move up the economic ladder with ease, but it does mean you can. There are countless examples. This is far different from the system of nobility you saw in places like Czarist Russia where if you were born a noble, you were one and could more or less do nothing to lose it, and if you were born a peasant, you could never rise above that. In the US people can move up and down depending on what they do in their life. You can go from living on welfare to super rich, and indeed it has happened.
Another difference is that there is not a "rich/poor" divide. For sure there are rich people, who can have a kind of life normal people cannot, and there are poor people, who lack basic necessities. However most people are neither, they are somewhere in the middle. They have their needs met, have some autonomy and independence, but still work for a living. The middle class is where most of America is. You can also further divide that middle class in terms of how stable someone is in it, how many assets they have and so on. It is not a bourgeoisie / proletariat divide.
Finally there is the simple issue of definitions of rich, middle, and poor. What they talked about when they talked about poor was abject poverty, lacking in even the barest essentials. That is exceedingly rare in the US. Our poor are not, by the standards of much of the world and history. They do not have everything we consider essential, and they must rely on help, but they are not attempting to live through subsistence farming (which happens in much of the world).
To me, it sounds like you've spent far too much time reading philosophy and not enough time looking at the world, and its people. Communism is a neat idea, but it is not a better system.
Re:Well here's the thing (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest difference is that there is complete class mobility. Nobody tells you that you are limited to the class in which you are born. Doesn't mean you can move up the economic ladder with ease, but it does mean you can. There are countless examples. This is far different from the system of nobility you saw in places like Czarist Russia where if you were born a noble, you were one and could more or less do nothing to lose it, and if you were born a peasant, you could never rise above that.
The "countless" examples you speak of are very, very few, in actuality (if only even because the number of rich and super-rich people is so small to begin with). Your assertion that class mobility was inexistent in pre-revolutionary Russia is patently untrue. There are countless examples in Russian history of boyars being created from peasant families (mostly those that got rich or provided some valuable military service to a czar).
Another difference is that there is not a "rich/poor" divide. For sure there are rich people, who can have a kind of life normal people cannot, and there are poor people, who lack basic necessities. However most people are neither, they are somewhere in the middle.
The economic "ladder" you speak of is not a ladder. Wealth distribution follows a Pareto law in most places (certainly in the US [wikipedia.org]).
I find it hilarious, by the way, that you acknowledge the existence of distinct groups of super-rich, rich and poor respectively, all while denying that the class divide is real.
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Believe it or not, there are still people in the world who have not swallowed the "greed is good" mantra.
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The only solution in a communist system is to force people to do what is needed. You tell them "You must work or the state punishes you." Then, to make them work hard you tell them "You must meet these quotas or the state punishes you." Net effect? Low personal liberty, low motivation, and the perfect environment for a police state to grow in.
I think you have it backwards. People are compelled to work in capitalist societies, not communist ones: i.e., you have to work or you don't eat. Most civilised countries have a welfare safety net (i.e. they are a little bit communist) so it is more like you have to work or you don't get any toys.
What you are saying is that many "communist" states have not really been communist but have taken aspects of capitalist societies.
The USSR managed to take many of the worst features of communism and capitalism.
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Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's just not true. Up until about 1945, things were looking pretty good for Marx's theories: increasing alienation and exploitation of the urban proletariat, a falling rate of profit, militant mass movements among the working class; but since 1945 we've seen a series of developments in capitalism that Marx failed to predict. That's not so say that Marx was an idiot, or that his methods were wrong - clearly, many of his predictions were correct - but if Marxist economics wants to call itself a science, it needs to accept that some of its predictions were wrong and that its theories need to be revised.
Here are some of the things a modern Marxist economic theory needs to deal with:
None of this should be read
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Especially given that "poor" is pretty cushy these days in the developed world.
Tin shacks are the new McMansion?
Starvation the new cleansing regime?
Chronic illness the new cool way to get that heroin chic look?
I think you and the idiot(s) who modded you insightful don't have a clue what it's like to have to choose between eating and keeping a roof over your head. One or the other. Not a little of both. Not pay the rent late when you get paid next week. No free money from the Bank of Mom and Dad to hold
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You're right in terms of the politics, but Slashdot isn't a political lobby. Can we readers not distinguish ideas from a communist that have merit from those that do not?
After all, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner and rapist, and Wagner was an anti-semite, but it doesn't stop most of us from selectively enjoying the portion of their contributions that weren't abhorrent.
You're all missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
The point is this article has the phrase 'Peak Wood' right there in the title, and no one has scored above 3 with a joke about erections as far as I can tell. What the hell happened to slashdot?
Re:You're all missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
They didn't want to call attention to their virgin timber, obviously.
We are predators (Score:2)
Changing to cultivation is a relatively new thing, and we're really novices at it given things like the dust bowl were only 75 years ago.
Re:We are predators (Score:5, Insightful)
by design; we do not conserve, we consume.
Tens of millions of Farmville players would like to disagree.
Okay, seriously: As near as anyone can tell, organised human society became possible with the rise of agrarian societies, so stewardship and resource management are rather central to the human condition.
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That's what I'm saying - agriculture is a necessary precursor to city building.
Collapse by Jared Diamond (Score:5, Informative)
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I get "peak wood" looking at Natalie Portman.
I doubt she classifies as _virgin_ timber, however.
Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
Comparing timber to oil is not a valid analogy because timber is a renewable resource. We can plant more and within enough time for it to be economical there is more timber. For oil to be a renewable resource we are going to have to bury a lot of organic material for a long time.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
it is only renewable if it is used in such a manor.
One just needs to look at Easter Island to see how "renewable" trees were to the natives.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no option for the natives of Easter Island to plant new forests, once the last tree had been felled. There was no potential renewability for them. They couldn't even build seaworthy craft to go in search of seedlings. In a word, they were FUCKED. And they did it to themselves.
So every historical and archaeological record that bears on how we handle the extremes of resource management is instructive, insofar as it tells us about our patterns of past successes and mistakes.
We live with a finite set of resources at the bottom of a massive gravity well isolated by millions of miles of hard vacuum from anything else at all. We are consuming many of those resources at an unsustainable rate. If we don't want to end up like the people of Easter Island, we'd better not take any of it for granted.
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Easily, sure. Quickly? I think not. In a time when businesses operate quarter to quarter, it takes decades to grow a tree and a century or more for the most valuable hardwoods. Old growth trees are still being cut. Why do you think this is?
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In that the societies mentioned were consuming much faster than the resource could renew itself, I think it to be a valid comparison. Nothing mentioned in the article involved replanting of trees, to my knowledge, but maybe someone knows differently.
You're right. It's the floor. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing timber to oil is not a valid analogy because timber is a renewable resource.
True. The question is -- if we tend not to do well with even renewable resources, how well are we likely to do with exhaustibles... at least, without some greater discipline than we've got now?
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that our economies work on much shorter timescales than trees. If we destroy all the forests, our economies collapse and people starve or relocate. Sure, a couple of generations later the forests may regrow, but that's a lifetime or more to humans. Worse, forests only regrow if you put a lot of effort into planting them properly. Left to their own devices, they don't; a few trees may regrow, but it takes millenia for a whole forest to regrow from a few trees by natural reproduction. Humans have only started replanting forests within the last century at best, and then mainly for business purposes (timber harvesting), using fast-growing trees.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
Then think energy, not oil.
The oil we're using with such wild abandon is valuable to us because it is comprised of densely stored solar energy from millions of years ago.
That's not a lot different from using lumber stored in forests, and when the stored item runs out, we're reduced to using the much less dense renewable versions.
It's not impossible, but it does take more effort than simply collecting the stored versions.
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Comparing timber to oil is not a valid analogy because timber is a renewable resource.
To be pedantic, petroleum *is* a renewable resource, only on a time-scale much larger than the human life span :)
Re:Abiogenic Petroleum (Score:4, Informative)
Or, someone could read about the idea and see it is considered bunk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin [wikipedia.org]
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How many of those particles should we find, as a percentage, of any given biological mass? 1%? .0001%? Does that account for the quantities of He found accompanying natural petroleum deposits?
Probably not. There's no need for the oil source to be the same as the Helium source. The most likely source of all the helium in a petroleum deposit is the radioactive material in the rocks in and below the deposit's formation. For example, the amount of Americium found in your smoke detector creates 30,000 alpha particles per second, a kilogram of Uranium ore produces 25,000,000 per second [nucleonica.net] (scroll down a bit to see the activity rates table in the linked reference). Since alpha particles are equivalent
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Why is is it that every time there's a weird theory floating around, someone comes up and says "The Russians did it/are using it, so it must be true", without there ever being a shred of evidence for the Russians either having used or done it?
Is it because it is so far away, or because some people can see it from their houses?
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Not sure where you got your quote from, but it wasn't from the link you gave, and the entire site doesn't hold a single reference to Yukos. Not completely surprising, because it is the webpage for International Continental Scientific Drilling Program - nothing to do with Yukos. Not to mention that drilling a super-deep well has nothing to do with whether the drill probe found an economically viable field.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Informative)
Forests in the US have been increasing for almost the past 60 years. More wood is grown than harvested by a ratio of 3:1, and significant acreage has been returned to forests, in part because more responsible timber farms have been created over the decades. We may have at one time reached peak wood, but usage and growth patterns changed, and that is no longer the case.
Other nations may have problems with their forests, but the US is not one that does.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Interesting)
That is set to reverse. The price of wood has dropped so low here in the south that many timber companies can't afford to stay in business and the huge plots of land they grew trees on are in danger of being sold. If that happens, they will most likely be cleared for development or cattle and will never again grow forests.
I live in an area surrounded by forests that are planted and cleared for use by lumber companies and paper mills. We fear the closing of lumber companies because it will mean our forests will start shrinking.
The really sad part about it, is the huge number of enviro-nutbags that want lumber companies out of business in a completely backwards effort to "save the forests."
I really want to get a tshirt that says "Save the trees! Use more paper!"
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in an area surrounded by forests that are planted and cleared for use by lumber companies and paper mills. We fear the closing of lumber companies because it will mean our forests will start shrinking... The really sad part about it, is the huge number of enviro-nutbags that want lumber companies out of business in a completely backwards effort to "save the forests."
I'd suggest every time you feel an urge to assert an absolute of some sort, you take a few seconds and reconsider.
The "forests" your favourite lumber company has planted (so full of form and colour from afar), is a forest only in the loosest definition of one. I'd suggest "a collection of trees". The enviro-nutbags have a point, one that's easily recognised by someone who's been in a forest, or otherwise knows what the term "monoculture" means and what its implications are.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I'm one of those "nutbags" who hikes regularly through some of those replanted forests. There's a lot of difference between a healthy forest composed of a variety of trees, and a monoculture stand of genetically selected fast growing softwoods.
One supports a variety of life and is a pleasant experience with animals and the sound of birds; the other is a wasteland with mostly insects to keep you company.
Taking out a large sitka spruce that may be 600 years old and replanting three seedlings is not an equivalence.
If our forests are "growing" why is the timber industry pushing to get at the few remaining stands of old growth forest? Just harvest the three trees you planted last harvest season. After all, that's 3 times the trees you will find in the old growth forest.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to this that as a species we desperately need land for food cultivation. We don't have enough right now, even with advanced farming techniques, to feed everyone.
This is utter nonsense. There is enough food for everyone, people in developing countries are starving because their dictators are diverting that food to fuel their petty armies.
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It would be great if it were that honest.
Some dictators starve their populace on purpose to receive foreign aid.
Arguably, the timber examples are even less (Score:5, Insightful)
Forests, on the other hand, are a population, not a mineral resource. If you are willing to forgo some short-term profit, you can generate modest returns more or less in perpetuity. If you aren't, you'll find yourself with a fancy new lunar resort. Anyone who destroys a biological resource isn't, as with a mineral resource, simply reaching the inevitable sooner rather than later, they are effectively pawning an annuity for pennies on the dollar.
With oil, the only real questions are 1). "Will we invest some of the convenient energy and chemicals in finding another source of the same before the first runs out?" and 2."How far will we go, in terms of sacrificing other resources(ie. drilling in the middle of highly productive fisheries or digging up large chunks of canada and boiling it down for tar) in order to secure that one?" There is no question of whether or not we will be "sustainable"; because, for mineral resources, there is no such thing, only a question of how fast you want to dig up the supply you have.
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Oil is not a mineral resource, it is organic not mineral, there is not a finite supply, and it is renewable. A sustainable oil industry is theoretically possible, though of course largely impractical.
Theoretically new oil is being created all the time and will continue to be created for the rest of eternity. The rub of course is that we've used up the majority of the oil created in the last billion years or so in the last century, so our rate of use is quite a bit faster than the rate of resupply.
A: because it breaks the flow of a message (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oil, unless you subscribe to one of the abiotic origins/provided by Jesus to empower the American Way of Life(tm) theories, is in more or less fixed supply.
Some of the theories are pretty crazy. For example, the Brazilians are under this bizarre mass delusion [wikipedia.org] that they're using around 25% renewable oil in their cars.
There have been lots of peaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Peak Whale Oil, for example. Of course, the rising cost of whale oil led to the development of new technologies and new sources of energy - like kerosene.
There are many, many, many examples of people pointing out the impossibility of then-present trends continuing. Of course, if trends can't continue, they won't.
If you want an American patriot as an example instead of Engels (communism! gasp, shock, horror) take a look at Gifford Pinchot. An early leader of the Conservation movement, first Chief of the US Forest Service, quite a guy. Peak timber, peak ore, peak coal - he wrote about 'em all, back in the day.
While it's well and good to be aware of these things, and the market tends to reward those who make some smart bets on that basis - human beings have always found ways to satisfy their wants. Some are more sustainable than others, but necessity is the mother of invention, and sustainability/entropy is really only a concern when faced with a finite "universe." Technology is the key that gets us out of that box, and if we have to consume resources in order to make new ones available to us, well - such is, has been, and will be life.
Re: There have been lots of peaks (Score:3, Funny)
Peak Whale Oil, for example.
Should we be worrying about peak porn?
Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:5, Interesting)
Any time these conversations come up, the only real solution (reducing the population to about 2 billion) is ignored by everyone.
Which means, we really are not going to solve the problem before it blows up in our face.
Reduce the population to 2 billion and the earth becomes verdant and rich within 50 years.
It's possible to peacefully reduce the population to 3 billion in 50 years. Just stop saving people who have more than 1 child per 2 parents and stop providing tax incentives for second children.
But it's not going to happen. We are going to 9 and probably 11 billion people with all the hell that results from that.
By my current math, it happens a little while after I die.
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem is not the growing population, but rather the growing demands of a small segment of the population.
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine in a few generations a single great grandchild will have to support his parents and their parents and considering life expectancy
That would be 6-10 people plus him/her self.
To add to that, it is western society that desperately needs more youth. Third world countries are having population problems.
Finally the earth has ample resources to go on if only we where fair and efficient. Australia can support 200 million on the coast alone. 2 billion if you green the desert. You can green the deset if you have energy. You can get clean energy from nuclear fuel. This at the cost of the natural environment, but then the aboriginees changed that ahead of us as well.
The above is oversimplifying it, but the solution will find us do not worry. We will probably damadge the environment before we do so
PS: I may be guilty of what I accuse you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Amm ... a society with one child per family may not be sustainable. You are making the same mistake everybody that thinks that there is an obvious solution.
Imagine in a few generations a single great grandchild will have to support his parents and their parents and considering life expectancy ... maybe some of his great grand parents.
No, you, sir, are making the mistake everyone makes. In game theory, it's called the Horizon Effect: where you fail to make the move that produces the best long-term result, because you aren't looking far enough ahead to see the disaster that will ensue if you keep on minimizing short-term losses.
Yes, lowering birthrates will mean that the generation that decided to have only one child per couple will have fewer children and grandchildren to take care of them. *Not* lowering birthrates leads to a world wh
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Odds are pretty good that a major pandemic will prove to be the solution. I'm convinced that the collective intelligence of the viral and bacterial comunnities exceeds that of our species.
Actually, if that happened, they'd have proved themselves equal, at best. Shortly after, the viral and bacterial communities would be having discussions on "peak human."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, they may all starve to death or kill each other because of excess population, but let's not offend anyone to prevent it.
My wood is peeking right now. (Score:3, Funny)
Out of my underpants. Thanks and good night.
Wood vs. Oil - Bad Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
You can plant trees and reap the timber in just a few decades. You can plan to create new oil, but the process takes 50 million years. There's a slight difference in practicality between the two.
We've become exceedingly good at forest management (except in California where they're so concerned about saving the poor underbrush that they'd rather burn down the entire forest, along with San Diego, than properly manage their forests). Timber is a renewable resource, whereas we are pretty sure oil is not.
We can manage timber to avoid "peak wood," but we cannot manage oil to avoid "peak oil," if such a thing exists.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"You can plan to create new oil, but the process takes 50 million years."
Why would it take that long? How inefficient is your oil production plant?
Hydrocarbons is still the best way to move energy around. And the molecule is basically carbon and hydrogen. No crazy elements needed. Why not make our own?
The reason this hasn't been looked into, is because it's far cheaper to mine it out of the ground or extract it from coal and shale. Assuming those processes become impossibly expensive, then making our own us
Re:Wood vs. Oil - Bad Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes and no.
The mistake you're making is treating all timber the same. The timber that 'peaked' in the 19th century (and is now nearly vanished) took centuries to grow. The timber we harvest every few decades today, well it took only a few decades to grow.
The differences between the woods are immense. Wood from virgin forests (as opposed to modern managed farms) is extremely dense, with many more growth rings per inch. Wood from such forests, both hardwoods and softwoods, are much stronger and longer lasting. (Even taking into account selection bias, this is the key reason we still see wooden structures from decades and centuries ago still standing.) Not to mention the wood varieties that take centuries to grow in the forest aren't available from managed tree farms at any price.
This mattered a great deal back then, when wood filled so many niches that steel, concrete, and plastic fill today.
So yes, it's a valid analogy. Don't be mislead by how we take poor quality wood as the norm today.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
only to those too stupid to leap ahead with out thinking.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's this "we" you're talking about? I am not exploiting anyone; it's the corporate overlords who are abusing both first- and third-world workers and future generations to increase their profits.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not exploiting anyone;
So I guess you're a fruitarian, living in a self-built log cabin on public land utilising only sustainable, natural, locally sourced products and self-generated power. O is that a computer you're posting from . . . ?
We in the west can't help but be exploiters by dint of our wealth . . .
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Exploitation by itself is not a problem.
Even wild animals "exploit" nature. Hunting and foraging both take away resources, and animals breathe out CO2 all the time.
Ever seen a beaver dam?
Nature was designed to be exploited, within reason, since she has mechanisms for restoration and recovery.
The problem comes when we exploit too much and hamper recovery efforts.
Similiar to how you start having cash flow problems when you raid revenue-generating capital.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That quote reveals much about the author. Much like the "exploitation of nature" comments above.
The anthropomorphism of "nature" and placing in it an adversarial role with humans is very... Disneyesque.
And much like Creationism, it is a not a good vector from which to deal with management of natural resources and legislation.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Interesting)
No, ultranova is right. Those in control do the exploiting. We, the powerless, don't exploit anybody and most of us are exploited ourselves, just not as badly as the poor sods in the overseas sweatshops. Just because I buy a product from an exploititive company, particularly when that's the only option, doesn't make me an exploiter.
Stop making excuses for evil people.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A great many of the things today that we cannot think of doing without were once considered luxuries.
EVERYTHING but food was once considered a luxury. Sanitation, indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, transportation... but the fact is you can't make a living or even stay alive in today's world without those things.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Interesting)
So what do we do then ? We all know our parents (or "babyboom generation") and their parents are responsible for the really excessive "borrowing" from nature. When they started, world population was less than 1.5 billion people. Worse : those 1.5 billion people lived a lot more efficiently than us (not that they knew, there just wasn't sufficient energy. Nothing makes a man quite so frugal as an empty wallet), so "efficiency" increases, barring getting nuclear fusion plants operational, aren't going to help us get above that 1.5 billion.
If this is true :
For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first.
Then we're about to lose 3 out of 4 people worldwide to genocide, war or hunger. Including 1 out of 2 Americans. But the countries that would be truly fucked in this case would be Europe and Africa.
What I don't get is how this can even get discussed ? Surely anything -anything- is preferable to losing the large majority of world population ? Add to that, the "sticky" question : who dies ? We all know how the question of "who dies" is going to be answered, since it's just the same as ever : with wars. If you lose, you get exterminated. If you don't fight, and are lucky enough not to get attacked, you starve to death. Anyone in favor of that ?
And before anyone says birth control, please remember "birth control" will only have real results in 50 years, and 90 or-so if birth control is done in a sustainable manner (meaning there is both an upper and a lower limit to how many babies we get to have). And even if you do compulsory birth control, who gets to have babies, and what do you do about "over the limit" babies ? Or perhaps more directly : how do you kill "over the limit" babies ?
Seems to me that unless you want every state world-wide to start it's own holocaust, you'd advocate the solution of funding every man with an idea about power generation. Funding it, not just through academia (who have a somewhat tarnished track record here), but more along the lines of : if a dog comes with a napkin with an idea, give him 1000$ for it and see where it goes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No doubt there are plenty of examples of leaping without looking, and leaping while knowing everyone else behind is going to get screwed.
But there are also a lot of times when the full impact of an act can't be known in any practical way. Nature is extraordinarily complex and many very high order interactions can have serious long term consequences. For instance, farmers are finishing up planting here in the midwest. Once again the guy I lease my farm ground to cannot bring himself to understand why I make
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone came up with a grand unified theory, you'd say, "so, the universe functions a certain way. wow."
and this isn't merely that "shit happens." It's "short-sightedness causes shit that could be prevented from happening."
An earthquake, a volcano, a hurricane, an asteroid strike...these things are "shit that happens." Deforestation, global warming, pollution...these things are made to happen.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, rats will push a button that sends an impulse to their pleasure center, and ignore food, sex, etc... Monkeys will easily get addicted to alcohol, some drugs, etc...
I think that the average human is still less likely that the average rat to die of hunger and bed sores because of an addiction. But now my girlfriend has gone to bed, and I better go play Mount & Blade while she cannot object.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
Gimme a break. That's because there's no such thing as a "cocaine lever" in the wild. If you did have piles of cocaine around (very small ones so it didn't kill them immediately), rats or any other animals would probably get addicted too. As someone else has pointed out, pets can become addicted to alcohol.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Interesting)
which appeared to demonstrate that addiction in rats was as much related of their being held in tiny cages, as to the inherent "addictiveness" of opiates
the funding was withdrawn, and doubt cast as to Alexander's integrity
one could speculate that it is not popular opinion that the way to reduce drug dependance in humans is to improve their general quality of life, such that they don't feel the need to compulsively take drugs in the first place
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I certainly don't believe that there's no choice in addiction, though some people do have much weaker wills than others. That's an interesting study, and I identify heavily with your last sentence. I find it sad that so many people feel they need to resort to heavy drinking to actually "enjoy" a night out. I even find it even more sad that so many people are addicted to sugary junk food. A lot of society today is so dull that people need to entertain themselves with what they ingest rather than what they do
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You end up w/ a bunch of (happily?) drowned gastropods.
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It doesn't work quite like that. There's lots of oil reserves that haven't been discovered, and also some that have, but are not cost-effective to exploit. As the price of oil increases, those reserves will be exploited. Tar sands are one example of this: they require a lot of energy to process and refine (unlike light sweet crude), so it's not as profitable as better-quality oil.
Of course, if the price of oil triples, making many of these reserves profitable enough to exploit, that price alone is going
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since, (barring extinct species with no DNA on file), one can always, at least in theory, restore a population back to its old levels, or above, and exceed the "peak", we can refer to it as a "local maximum" if you wish.
As for oil, it is actually pretty similar to other minerals. In many respects actually more convenient. Oil is, basically, a very convenient source of energy, and hydrocarbons in chemically convenient configurations. The entire planet is absolutely covered with at least one, often both, of those, just in less economic forms. Solar, wind, tidal, plants, worms, poor people, etc. The problem isn't that we are going to run out of energy, or run out of hydrocarbons; but that we will run out of convenient energy and hydrocarbons. This is pretty much exactly the same game as other minerals, where the problem isn't running out; but having applications that used to be viable being priced out.
"Scarcity" rarely means that there is literally no more of something. It just means that some people can't afford it. More scarce means that more people can't afford it. That's the problem. Supply isn't a binary thing "oil exists = all is well" or "neodymium has disappeared = apocalypse". Supply is a matter of degree. If the cost of the cheapest watt goes from X to X+1, the scope of activity that you can afford just shrank. If the cost of a gram of the element you need goes from Y to Y+1, the same.(worse, since most flavors of mineral extraction require energy, when the cheapest watt goes from X to X+1, the cost of every mineral will increase).
it's all relative (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's exactly the same, at least the comparison of mineral and oil deposits. There's lots of oil deposits that are too costly to exploit at the moment, but will become profitable as oil prices rise. It's the same with metals mining, where it's starting to become profitable to mine the ocean floor. There's all kinds of resources that aren't exploited because they're too costly.
Wood really is the same; sure, you can regrow it, but it takes a LOT of time to do so, and it takes investment. Forests don't just grow by themselves; it takes millenia without any disturbances for a few trees to reproduce into a forest. To regrow a whole forest in a generation or two requires a fair amount of work by humans (cultivating seedlings, and planting them) which costs money. It also takes up land that can be used for other things, like agriculture. So if you overharvest you run out of wood until a new forest grows 30 years later.
And yes, you can find oil in soil. It's called tar sands and oil shale.
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the notion of peak production has to do with sustainability: that is, the relative rates of production and consumption. Resource exhaustion is another topic entirely.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you're saying we're going to brick the planet?
Re:Lessons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because every single time our ass is in danger, miracle/breaktrough will happen. Right.
In related news, Easter Island had quite a lot of success with "new resource will come along that made all the worrying about the dwindling resource irrelevant." strategy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)