PeakOil is You
"Can Collapse of Global Civ. Be Avoided?" by P&A Ehrlich
Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by onlooker » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 15:42:59
Oh no plenty of drama with just peak oil and its consequences!
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
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Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by Tanada » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 15:54:24
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')ctually I am much less of doomer than most here. I truly believe (and can debate the issue endlessly) that peak oil will trump AGW. The chance that runaway or abrupt climate change event will occur in the near future is actually rather slim. Long before then peak-oil collapse will drive folks out of remote areas and back into cities. I know from experience here in timber country, that resource extraction even a few miles off main roads requires incredible amounts of fuel.
A single 32' douglas fir log weights more than your car (6,000 lb.) and is worth quite a bit less, perhaps $600. Many gallons of diesel are required to get such a trivial bit of income from deep within remaining forests all the way to a saw mill and market. No different in the Amazon anymore.
Resource extraction today, now, in this day and age of poor-quality material is barely worth it. When economies and construction industry collapse then it will be worth no ones time and effort to get into the forests for anything. Not timber, not copper, not cattle, not bush meat. Not even petroleum. There will not be the fuel and road-maintenance to get there. People who have never lived in the country have no idea how energy intensive it is. Timber road maintenance is more expensive than city road maintenance. Back-to-landers burn petroleum like hippies burn buds lol Folks will run back to the city for their daily bowl of gruel. And warm cot. Thanks to the Government Ration Plan.
A single 32' douglas fir log weights more than your car (6,000 lb.) and is worth quite a bit less, perhaps $600. Many gallons of diesel are required to get such a trivial bit of income from deep within remaining forests all the way to a saw mill and market. No different in the Amazon anymore.
Resource extraction today, now, in this day and age of poor-quality material is barely worth it. When economies and construction industry collapse then it will be worth no ones time and effort to get into the forests for anything. Not timber, not copper, not cattle, not bush meat. Not even petroleum. There will not be the fuel and road-maintenance to get there. People who have never lived in the country have no idea how energy intensive it is. Timber road maintenance is more expensive than city road maintenance. Back-to-landers burn petroleum like hippies burn buds lol Folks will run back to the city for their daily bowl of gruel. And warm cot. Thanks to the Government Ration Plan.
I believe you have created a false dichotomy Pete. When the fuel gets expensive the price of everything hauled with fuel has to go up step by step as much as the market can bare. Most Douglas Fir cut and hauled today is wasted on trivial things like tearing down perfectly sound existing housing with all the lumber shipped off to the landfill or the incinerator just to build a bigger McMansion on the same lot. I see it developing in multiple ways, but up until the modern super waste era people did not frequently tear down sound buildings just to replace them with something more extravagant. Up until 1900 or so if you tore down a house you literally tore it apart piece by piece to salvage as much of the frame as you could. Now we go in with a backhoe or power shovel and smash it into pieces small enough to fit in a roll off dumpster, then ship it off to a landfill where we bury it. Sometime the pipes and wiring are stripped out for the copper value, sometimes not, and it is very rare today for carved woodwork or other built in portions to be salvaged even if the house is old enough to have such things.
Take away the cheap fuel running those heavy machines and suddenly deconstruction becomes a much more rewarding way to deal with an old house. Plasterboard isn't worth a whole lot, but the lumber that is in that frame can be reused in your new house project at the McMansion factory for 'store credit' on your new pre framed wall sections or roof rafters. On the other hand if you are going to have a wood stove/fire place and they are from the era before pressure treated arsenic filled lumbar you could always chop them into 24" sections and use them for cozy firewood already nice and dry and seasoned for your warmth.
The other thing to keep in mind is, if the exurbs and suburbs actually do fold back into the urban centers like so many people seem to think will happen, there will develop quite and industry in suburb deconstruction. All those McMansions too far from a viable city or town will become economically valueless except as a source of reclaimed materials. By the same token while large buildings of apartment blocks are more efficient to heat and cool than individual homes there will still be demand for fuel to do one or both depending on the local climate. If you look at a city like Detroit, Michigan, Toledo, Ohio or Gary, Indiana many ir even most of the apartment structures that once housed the city population have been abandoned and torn down to vacant lots over the last 50 years. All of that real-estate will have to be reconstructed to house those former suburbanites moving back into the urban centers. Hopefully the new construction will be greatly more efficient in energy demand than the old stuff that has long since gone, but either way if the Urban believers are right there will be the biggest apartment building boom seen since the 1920's.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by Tanada » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 16:20:38
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'I') used to talk about deconstruction also. I even invented (in my mind) a entire product-line of DeWalt Deconstruction Tools. All branded and colorful yellow. But Tanada, you are talking about Powerdown and a World Made By Hand. I don't see that happening anymore, just chaos . . . but a nice kind of chaos that will stop AGW dead in its tracks. Along with 5-6 billion humans lol
I am sort of convinced the only way to stop AGW is with that kind of chaos, and I don't think that would actually stop it because so long as there are people on the planet we will be burning stuff to stay warm, or cook, or any number of other reasons.
It doesn't actually take all that high of technology to extract fossil fuels, a pick and shovel and persistence will suffice for much of the coal we now extract with open pit mining and heavy machinery. They did it in 1850 I don't see why they can't still do it in 2050 or 2150 until they get all the accessible coal. The rate of use will go way down without the machines, but it won't stop unless the population falls so far the remainder are back to be hunter gatherers burning biofuels exclusively in a sustainable rate.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Tanada
- Site Admin
- Posts: 17094
- Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
- Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA
