[RickTaylor]

I have a couple of basic questions. I’m mostly ignorant about geology and metallurgy and chemistry, so if someone wants to answer my questions by referring me to basic texts or faq’s on those subjects, that would be fine.

I’ve heard that Buckminster Fuller once compared the oil reserves of the world to the yolk of an egg (does anyone know where he said this? I did a google search and couldn’t find much). Just as a chick embryo uses the nutrient in the yolk to grow and develop into a state where it becomes independent enough not to need it anymore, so humanity has the opportunity to use the earth’s fossil fuels to grow technologically to the point where we can develop a society that no longer needs fossil fuels. He went on to say that if humanity fails to do this, a technological society will never arise again on this planet, because the source of cheap energy will have been exhausted. He further said (or perhaps others said) we will fall back not into a pre-industrial society, but into the Stone Age, because the reserves of copper and iron and other important minerals in the earth will have been mined.

My first question is about the second statement. Presumably the minerals we’ve mined are still in the environment in landfills and buildings and such. Why couldn’t a future society recycle these? Does using these minerals to make things use them up in some sense so they can’t be recycled?

My second question is if humanity does fail to make the transition and ultimately dies off, would there be an opportunity for another intelligent race to evolve and to create a technological society in, say, a hundred million years or so? Is it reasonable to expect new oil deposits and fossil fuels to be created in that time? Would the missing minerals be replenished?

Thanks very much for your help,

Rick Taylor

[nailud]

Don't know about Buckminster Fuller, but as far as recycling iron and other minerals: Well, iron rusts. Sure, there could be some recycling, but it would be subject to the law of diminishing returns.

100 million years would probably be enough time for substantial petroleum reserves to accumulate, but I'm not so sure about iron. A lot of iron deposits accumulated before the earth had much oxygen in the atmosphere, which is why it could accumulate and not turn to rust, although there may be other deposits that are still buried and will eventually be exposed by erosion.

[EddieB]

I think given enough time - maybe 100 million years - maybe more, it is entirely possible that another dominating and intelligent species could arise. There's a slim chance that some humans will still be around... although it is pretty stinking unlikely if history is any guide for the future. I don't know much about geology but I bet 100 million years is long enough for some some new upheaval to lift ore deposits to the surface etc... maybe not all types of metals and minerals (limestone comes from shells of sea creatures building up for a long, long time - I think).
In the near term recycling will provide us with a lot of metal, or so I think. Just look around at all the old piles of scrap in any american city... 1000 years from now, I don't know how much unrusted iron and steel there will be. But I'll be dead and so will my great grandchildren.

[RickTaylor]

Well, I did find some information from Buckminster Fuller's "Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth." I missed it when googling originally because he didn't actually use the word "yolk," but the metaphor of a chick growing using liquid nutriment is here.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '5'). general systems theory
How may we use our intellectual capability to higher advantage? Our muscle is very meager as compared to the muscles of many animals. Our integral muscles are as nothing compared to the power of a tornado or the atom bomb which society contrived-in fear-out of the intellect’s fearless discoveries of generalized principles governing the fundamental energy behaviors of physical universe.

In organizing our grand strategy we must first discover where we are now; that is, what our present navigational position in the universal scheme of evolution is. To begin our position-fixing aboard our Spaceship Earth we must first acknowledge that the abundance of immediately consumable, obviously desirable or utterly essential resources have been sufficient until now to allow us to carry on despite our ignorance. Being eventually exhaustible and spoilable, they have been adequate only up to this critical moment. This cushion-for-error of humanity’s survival and growth up to now was apparently provided just as a bird inside of the egg is provided with liquid nutriment to develop it to a certain point. But then by design the nutriment is exhausted at just the time when the chick is large enough to be able to locomote on its own legs. And so as the chick pecks at the shell seeking more nutriment it inadvertently breaks open the shell. Stepping forth from its initial sanctuary, the young bird must now forage on its own legs and wings to discover the next phase of its regenerative sustenance.

My own picture of humanity today finds us just about to step out from amongst the pieces of our just one-second-ago broken eggshell. Our innocent, trial-and-error-sustaining nutriment is exhausted. We are faced with an entirely new relationship to the universe. We are going to have to spread our wings of intellect and fly or perish; that is, we must dare immediately to fly by the generalized principles governing universe and not by the ground rules of yesterday’s superstitious and erroneously conditioned reflexes. And as we attempt competent thinking we immediately begin to reemploy our innate drive for comprehensive understanding.

The architects and planners, particularly the planners, though rated as specialists, have a little wider focus than do the other professions. Also as human beings they often battle the narrow views of specialists-in particular, their patrons-the politicians, and the financial and other legal, but no longer comprehensively effective, heirs to the great pirates’-now only ghostly‹prerogatives. At least the planners are allowed to look at all of Philadelphia, and not just to peek through a hole at one house or through one door at one room in that house. So I think it’s appropriate that we assume the role of planners and begin to do the largest scale comprehensive thinking of which we are capable.

We begin by eschewing the role of specialists who deal only in parts. Becoming deliberately expansive instead of contractive, we ask, "How do we think in terms of wholes?" If it is true that the bigger the thinking becomes the more lastingly effective it is, we must ask, "How big can we think?"

One of the modern tools of high intellectual advantage is the development of what is called general systems theory. Employing it we begin to think of the largest and most comprehensive systems, and try to do so scientifically. We start by inventorying all the important, known variables that are operative in the problem. But if we don’t really know how big "big" is, we may not start big enough, and are thus likely to leave unknown, but critical, variables outside the system which will continue to plague us. Interaction of the unknown variables inside and outside the arbitrarily chosen limits of the system are probably going to generate misleading or outrightly wrong answers. If we are to be effective, we are going to have to think in both the biggest and most minutely-incisive ways permitted by intellect and by the information thus far won through experience.

Can we think of, and state adequately and incisively, what we mean by universe? For universe is, inferentially, the biggest system. If we could start with universe, we would automatically avoid leaving out any strategically critical variables. We find no record as yet of man having successfully defined the universe-scientifically and comprehensively-to include the nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping, micro-macro, always and everywhere transforming, physical and metaphysical, omni-complementary but nonidentical events.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RickTaylor', '
')P.S. Does anyone know of a link to someone who speaks about the possibility of humanity descending to the stone age when fossil fuels run out, if we continue on as we have up to now?

[lyrl]

I don't really have a reply to the original topic, but as a metallurgist, I feel compelled to step in here.

Rust is in NO way, shape, or form, an impediment to recycling of iron and steel. Oxygen is only one of many elements that heavily contaminate iron ore, and even rudimentary ironworking processes reduce these contaminants to acceptable levels.

[oli]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RickTaylor', ' ')He went on to say that if humanity fails to do this, a technological society will never arise again on this planet, because the source of cheap energy will have been exhausted. He further said (or perhaps others said) we will fall back not into a pre-industrial society, but into the Stone Age, because the reserves of copper and iron and other important minerals in the earth will have been mined.