[oiless]

I'll buy all your arguments. They're cogent and have the possibility of being correct.
I will say that my vision of agrarian society is different than yours. Mine doesn't have internet connected prototyping plants. It has a collapsing industrial base and people doing simple tasks with ageing equipment. It has people building equipment that hasn't been manufactured in close to a hundred years, and modifying existing equipment to perform tasks it wasn't truly intended for.
I have a hunch that the difference in our visions is an effect of the difference in our experience.
Blacksmiths, at one time every town had one. They are a requirement if you use horses. The modern day farrier is a desendant of the blacksmith.
Nowadays there are few horses, and farriers commute around in pick-ups to do shoeing.

Pops, as I recall the story, Lester Pelton was working for a mining company as a millwright when he invented the Pelton wheel. Chances are he built it himself, at least in the prototyping stages. I take your point about drawing on scraps of paper though. When I'm discussing a project with someone I explain my ideas with soap stone drawings on my welding table, or scratches in the dirt, or whatever. I'm a great believer in face to face communication, makes things so fast, ideas exchange, then you can get something done.
Interestingly my father used to be in the printing business. He was a monotype casterman, but he saw the writing on the wall and got out in the mid-sixties.

Oh well, if no farmers want leaf springs turned into sickles, or wind mills built, I'm sure I can make a living off building replacement bits for the survivalists weaponry.

[cube]

I see myself as a doomer however the idea of a massive population decline due to hunger never really caught my interest. The fact is only a very very small percentage of our total energy use goes to agriculture. The primary energy drain is of course personal vehicles. The second would be heating and air conditioning (not 100%).

However that's not to say there won't be a massive "dieoff".....but if it does happen it will be due to war (which leads to famine b/c of supply disruptions)...and not because we ran out of energy to make fossil fuel based fertilizers.

that's my $2 (hyper inflation)

[xerces]

"xerces, how quickly do you see this near-complete reordering of society occuring?"

Giving the recent and accelerating trend of companies getting rid of large offices and front desks for smaller data centers and remote(at home) customer support. I think we can do it in 25-30 years. And keep in mind this is not a reordering of society, it's simply a continuation of current trends applied to a service-based economy.


"Sorry, I lost track of what these other 9 people are supposed to do for a living...can you clarify?"

Think about what almost everyone does nowadays, are they all blacksmiths or carpenters, no. Most of the un-educated people work low-paying service jobs(Kmart, walmart, customer support, secretarial, security, Malls....etc) while the educated people work in high-paying service jobs like (engineering, analysis, banking, law, medicine....etc). In effect over 85% of our current workforce are already working service jobs. And the vast majority of these jobs can be ported into corresponding virtual jobs.

There could be virtual malls with avatars of real-people serving as virtual store clerks or virtual customer support.

So after the virtual service economy that leaves around 2% farmers(working in agro-biz) and another 5% unemployed people.

So that's effectively 92% of the U.S population, the other 8% can work at highly efficient manufacturing plants located near small to medium sized cities across the country.


This is almost a perfect mapping of the current U.S economy into this cyber-agrarian civilization that can survive and grow on 5%-10% of the petrol energy that is used today.

[xerces]

"I have a hunch that the difference in our visions is an effect of the difference in our experience. "

I think that must be the reason.

As I said, I'm a cautious optimist. I think society, to survive PO, simply needs to find ways to use far less energy without significantly reducing living standards. And if one thinks about it, we're really just pissing energy away and not even reaping many benefits from such waste.

Consider the following examples:

1.
Heating a 5-bedroom shoddy house for a family of 2
VS
Heating a well insulated 2 bedroom house for a family of 2.

That's roughly 10:1 in terms of energy expended without signifcant differences in living standards.

2.
Driving 30 miles to work a job as a telephone customer service rep
VS
Working the job at home on your PC

That's roughly 100:1 in terms of energy expended, and the guy driving is actually worse off than the guy staying at home, because he's just wasted like an hour a day commuting.


3.
Driving the car to the supermarket to buy groceries for the week
VS
Ordering the groceries on an online supermarket and having it delivered for you

That's roughly 30:1 in terms of energy expended. And the guy who orders online is actually better off because the food is cheaper and he doesn't have to drive there to get it.

4.
Eating Beef/Pork steak for dinner
VS
Eating Tuna/Salmon steak for dinner
VS
Eating Soy steak for dinner

That's roughly 5:2:1 in terms of energy expended. Each dinner is providing the same amount of protein. And the guy who eats the beef statistically lives about 7 years less than the dude who ate tuna. And he lives about 12 years less the guy who eats tofu steak.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', '
')
So after the virtual service economy that leaves around 2% farmers(working in agro-biz)

[holmes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', 'T')he food problem can be easily solved with coal based fertilizers and rail-based transportation. Additionally, changes in diets(less red meat, more seafood/tofu) will multiple our total food supply many times again. And it's far cheaper to transport bulk grains than it is people.

The beauty of this system is that energy-expensive physical transportation of people is reduced to almost zero. All that extra energy is freed for the exclusive use of food-production, manufacturing, and communications.

[Licho]

Erm, Europe had same population before age of oil. We have only few tens of million people more than in the beginning of the 20th century.
If people could feed themselves back then, we can do it again, with all the extra knowledge and technologies..

USA has far lower density than Europe, I do not doubt that USA will be able to feed self too, without any problem..

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Licho', 'E')rm, Europe had same population before age of oil. We have only few tens of million people more than in the beginning of the 20th century.
If people could feed themselves back then, we can do it again, with all the extra knowledge and technologies..

USA has far lower density than Europe, I do not doubt that USA will be able to feed self too, without any problem..

[Licho]

Regarding resources and "outbidding" - it can work for something like oil, when there is peace and free market, but it never worked for grain. China cannot simply outbid europe to starvation, even if food has to be rationed so that people can afford it.. Why do you think that EU invests 50% of it's budget into uneconomical farming? (CAP policy) It's safeguard, to stay food self-sufficient during crisis. Some farmers dont even have to produce, they just need to care about land, so that it's ready for actual farming.

Yeah, there has been more local farming back then, and about 30% of population have been working in agriculture, so I guess there wont be lack of work during recessions.

Regarding "growth" - growth can continue in a limited way, economy can keep producing stuff that doesnt need much energy (bio technologies, software etc). So after economy shrinks to fit new energy reality, it can continue it's growth.
(EU energy input is growing, but efficiency is improving. That means we can do "more" (in economic terms) from less -> even overall growth is possible during era of declining energy inputs)

Blackouts in USA were not caused by lack of energy inputs, but by the lack of extra capacities. This is normal, if utilities are only market driven private enterprise and are using volatile oil & gas. Companies don't feel urge to build up extra capacities.
Few govermental interventions can fix it..

[xerces]

"This is a theory world. Has absolutely no valiidity in a REAL WORLD situation."

How is this theory? You can see this type of energy rationing today in densely populated countries like China and India. There the bulk of society's energy is geared towards food production/transportation of food, and telecommunications.

And in the case of India, they are supporting 4 times our population on 1/10 of our oil consumption without massive die-offs.

Thus, we know that we can at least support a population 4x as much as our current population on 10% of our current petrol supply. And even most doomer peakoil curves will show that by the time energy supplies(just petrol) dwindle to 10% of what we have now, it'll be at least after the 2060s.

Thus we know that a massive population die-off due to PO-related food shortages is not possible in the medium term(at least not in the U.S).


"Maybe after overshoot colpase. where the population is in propartion to resources left."

Do you not see that the whole point of making everything virtual is to buy our civilization some more time. Time to figure out more potent sources of energy(fusion, zero-point). Maybe you want to see a collapse of our high-tech civilization but I don't. And this is a way for us to get through PO without compromising too much on our standard of living.



"More "stuff" from folks behind a desk."

Well keep in mind that the vast majority of this nation's wealth and innovations are generated from these "folks behind a desk."

[xerces]

"2% of the population cannot support a locally-based, low-energy agriculture. Or does your scenario posit continuing an oil-based agriculture? For a local food supply, a much higher percentage of the population must be engaged in agriculture."

I completely agree with you here. And if you've read my post, the agro-business of the U.S will get the more than it's share of the remaining petrol production.

Yes many families may have small gardens/farms to SUPPLEMENT their diets, but bulk grains/soy/legumes will still be farmed using fossil fuel based fertilizers/pesticides and delivered by rail.

The point is that scaling back of long-distance travel, climate control of large houses, and just in time delivery of goods from around the planet, frees up roughly 85% of the current petrol supply consumed nationally each year.

And if we count out the oil savings of bulk transportation of goods by rail + more coal/nuke/hydro plants rather than petrol power plants, then we're talking about no more than 10% of our current annual consumption of oil going towards the agro-industry.

Now lets consider what happens if we take out the bulk of our meat producing industries(cattle, pigs, chickens), and replace them with more efficient protein generation technologies (soy, aquaculture).

If we did that, the total food that the agro-industry produces will be enough to feed our population 6 times over(right now we can feed twice our population). This means that to adequately feed our current population, we as a country need no more than 2% of our current annual oil consumption.

So when will such a cyber-agrarian culture become unsustainable? When the total oil production(natural extraction + coal liquification + other methods) by the world falls to under 15% of current annual capacity(assuming a population doubling rate of 30 years). And this could happen sometime around the late 21st century(2080s - 2100s) or early 22nd century.

But here's the point. If we fail to transition to this kind of society(or another varient of an energy-efficient hi-tech civilization), then we'll be facing collapse much sooner say (2030s - 2040s). This "cyber-shire" scenario is the only kind of near-future society on the table that doesn't require a drastic decline in population whether by population control or just natural die-off. It's the only future society that allows us to maintain all of our technological base in the near to medium term. And finally it's the only future society that can maintain a similar standard of living as we enjoy right now.

We need to give ourselves time to work out newer and more potent ways of generating energy. If we and push off collapse to 80 years instead of 30, then we drastically increase our chances of figuring out new forms of energy generation and rebounding our energy usage. But if our society simply collapsed to a simpler state(completely agrarian or even feudal) then we would lose huge amounts of technological knowledge, all of which would have to be re-discovered.

[Ludi]

I feel so stupid, but I'm still not seeing what all the unemployed people in your scenario - the ones who work in the food processing industries - are going to do for a living.

Sorry, brain death. Can you clarify very briefly?

[airstrip1]

Check out how much energy a blade server farm consumes. The electricity bill for these places is quite an issue in the IT business at the moment. Computers have got more efficient but many are still the electronic equivalents of SUVs

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh022304-story01.html

Add into the calculation the energy used in actually manufacturing the equipment and you will see that IT is as likely to be seriously impacted by Peak Oil as any other area of life. Looking at the way that the technological infrastructure in New Orleans fell apart in the wake of Hurricane Katrina I can not see the cyber economy surviving in an essentially agrarian economy.

[oiless]

A brief point about aquaculture: What do you think fish farms feed their fish? Slaughterhouse offal and ground up pelletized diesease-kill domestic farm animals. This is the reason why many farmed fish are so god-awful high in PCBs and other persistant enviromental toxins. We've made them (in this particular case) the apex predator of a bunch of herbivores that are feeding off land that is contaminated.
Wild fish are not a whole lot better, but they are better.
Also, net pen fish farms tend to spread disease to wild stocks.

As for Soy, I might eat it if I was starving, but I'd be more likely to boil up some tree bark soup. I don't poison myself unless I have to.

[xerces]

Total Energy consumed by ALL computers on earth(800,000,000) per year:
1.25 trillion kilowatt-hours => 1.25x10^12 kWh

Lets call this Ecom

Total energy consumed by cars in the U.S per year:

(19 billion barrels x 1,700 kWh) => 1.9 x 10^10 x 1.7 x 10^ 3

=> 3.23 x 10^13 kWh

Lets call this Ecar

So Ecar/Ecom = 25.84


Which means that even if there were 3 computers for every person in the entire country, we would still be using only 4% of the energy that we currently use on automobile transport.

[xerces]

"A brief point about aquaculture: What do you think fish farms feed their fish? Slaughterhouse offal and ground up pelletized diesease-kill domestic farm animals. This is the reason why many farmed fish are so god-awful high in PCBs and other persistant enviromental toxins. We've made them (in this particular case) the apex predator of a bunch of herbivores that are feeding off land that is contaminated."

One reason why fish meat is so efficient to produce is that fish food is generally composed of things that humans can't or won't eat. Yeah you can eat cattle offal if you're desparate enough, but that's not generally the case. Insect droppings contain significant nutriments but ppl tend to not eat them(but fish can). Now with that said however, most fish feed(70%+) is composed of other fish/marine biomass that are either inedible or too foul tasting for human consumption.

Another major reason is that fish, being cold-blooded animals, have much more efficient metabolisms. They can significantly slow down their own metabolic processes in colder temperatures, unlike a pig which needs to constantly burn off energy to maintain body temp(plus a large brain).


"As for Soy, I might eat it if I was starving, but I'd be more likely to boil up some tree bark soup. I don't poison myself unless I have to."

I find that soy products are really not too bad. Tofu and soy burgers are entirely platable. And they are by far the most efficient generators of protein(7x as efficient as chickens, 5x as efficient as cows and pigs, 2x as efficient as fish).

[Carmiac]

I like soy. The cook at the local chineese restaurant makes a really good fried tofu and brocolli dish.

[Ludi]

xerces, do you see this scenario happening spontaneously, or do you have a plan to encourage our politicians and/or other people in positions of influence to bring it about?

Personally, I don't see much point in spinning scenarios unless you're planning to make them reality, or using them to plan to deal with future problems. Spinning happy scenarios you don't plan on trying to bring to reality is just playing pretend, as far as I can see. Nothing wrong with playing, mind you.

So, I guess what I'm asking is, xerces, what is your purpose in spinning this scenario?

[oiless]

xerces, you miss my point, I think.
My point is that fish farms are unsustainable, the way they are done right now. Yes, large portions of fish food are other wild marine stocks, (that's a whole other point, we've fished out all the good eating wild stocks, now we're depleting the ones we don't eat) however slaughterhouse offal does comprise a component of fish feed. I've built fish feed mills, I do know something about them. Feeding slaughterhouse offal and disease kill animals implies that they are there as a fish food source.
Oil is not our only usustainable activity, almost everything we do is unsustainable. Oil is just the one that gets covered here.

Tofu, wasn't talking about taste. Tree bark soup isn't that tasty either. Was talking about this:
http://www.mercola.com/2005/aug/30/soy_ ... h_food.htm
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/soy.htm
http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/soy_controversy.html

[Ludi]

Soy the way it's currently grown isn't sustainable, as our current agriculture isn't sustainable. You can grow soy in a sustainable way, but most people who are growing it, don't grow it that way.

Any "sustainable future" scenario needs to address our very unsustainable agriculture first of all. It all comes down to food.