[kpeavey]

Bartlett's Third Law gives a time frame of 70 years to reach zero population growth. This is 2 doubling times. 3C and 3D imply that no efforts will be made to make the changes needed to reach zero population growth.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'S')O WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

[hillsidedigger]

I posted the Bartlett link on a couple of other boards yesterday.

It's amazing how rational suggestions can generate so much rage.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hillsidedigger', 'I') posted the Bartlett link on a couple of other boards yesterday.

It's amazing how rational suggestions can generate so much rage.

[Dr. Ofellati]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Ofellati', '
')Pie in the sky? Perhaps. But what are the alternatives?

[eastbay]

.... and an indefinite moratorium on all forms of immigration. No more refugees or asylees either. None of it.

[ralfy]

We can follow Bartlett's advice, but in the long run we will have to accept the fact that it will not be business as usual for a very long time, which means the likelihood that even national governments will fall apart. What will be left will be communities struggling to survive, armed groups, etc.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Ofellati', ' ')stuff

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', ' ')What will be left will be communities struggling to survive, armed groups, etc.

[tahoevalleylines]

We would also like to see Rep. Dr. Roscoe Bartlett's (R-MD) worklist for the Oil Interregnum. Richard Heinberg and James H. Kunstler make comments on railway mode, but both seem to use very vague generalizations leaving the average reader unmoved. Amtrak is a politically expedient place marker for rail passenger service, a fractional representation of National Passenger service requirements of a gas-rationing scenario.

As WWII neared its end, prior to Hiroshima, the military authorities called for 12,000 Pullman & chair cars to be assembled for troop transport to west coast ports for deployment to Japan. That allotment of rail passenger cars was about 10% or less of US pax railcar inventory. Amtrak now has a few thousand passengers cars total across the USA. That is how far the US is from the scale of passenger rail capacity circa mid-twentieth century. Buses have their proponents, and it is useless to feud over rail vs, bus transport. Railway has certain features of energy efficiency and sustainability that require deliberate build back of rail passenger capacity & reach, aside from the bus mode. Buses too, OK?

Rail expansion and extension must involve rehab program for dormant rail branch lines, capacity and extension of mains, and massive increase of enroute container and victuals handling facilities. Railway is a stand-alone mode of transport, with in-house capability to rebuild from disaster or accident or weather event. Military rail logistics planners call railway "Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform". Program to assign order of dormant rail line rebuild would meet need for victuals movement first, with agricultural branch line rehab & handling facilities emplaced concommitant with return to service.

Postings by tvl in this and other sites like TOD mention use of the Military as a given. Homeland Defense, Army/Guard Railroad Operating & Maintenance Battalions are natural players in program to rehab the dormant rail branchline inventory. Any reader in any US State can contact their respective National Guard Department HQ, and begin the conversation of reforming rail logistics capability. What are you doing that is more important than hedging against famine? Gold is fun to own, don't let the children mash their fingers if they play with the larger bars...

Gold is going to be called back when the Feds have trouble paying for oil imports with paper money. Anyone with substantial hoarded wealth is propably better off getting involved with railway rehab in their respective locale. Get copy of US Railway Map Atlas Volume (spv.co.uk) and refresh your County Planning Dept's knowledge of the dormant rail corridors. Find out which rr lines ran through the farm country, to smaller towns that would be players in agricultural & permaculture expansion. Another source to research for rail line and urban rail interface is your locale's Thomas Bros. City & County Map, circa 1920-1960, or so. Library & historical society collections may have 1950 or earlier "Official Guide Of The Railways", showing rail maps, and rr names.

See the GUIDE index in the back, for your town name, and the RR that used to run there. Look in the table of contents in the front of the GUIDE, for name of the RR you seek, and see what info is in that edition. usually there is a map. If not, use the GUIDE rr name info to research at library, historical society, utilty co., etc. Anyone can do this, individual effort across America can re-establish this body of RR knowledge at each and every of the 3000+ County Planning Bureaus. Most dormant rail branchlines did serve an element of farm produce traffic, with varying degrees of manufacturing thrown in.

Of course there is a bell curve for the rr rebuild in the Oil Interregnum; some places will build on existing lines and easily emplace the victuals connections, handling & storage interface with residential consumption, etc. Most will require varing degrees of effort to establish skeleton rail coverage in their locale, but adequate to stave off serious shortage of victuals, and sufficient container and package platform to maintain US Mail and manufacturing buildback.

Some places in America will become ghost towns, inhabited by vagrants and thugs who will attempt forays into the more prosperous areas until picked off by authorities and vigilantes. It is safe to say the ghost town areas will be at least a day's walk from de minimus rail connection. Planning authorities of 150 years ago called railways "Guarantors of Societal & Commercial Cohesion. This before cars & trucks & buses & outlying paved roads. The railways proved capable thru WWII to maintain US ability to prosper as a lending not a borrowing nation, Energy Independent.

Railway logistics experts like Gen. James A. Van Fleet gave railways the moniker: "Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform", stand alone & apolitical transport assets. Dated but useful book by Van Fleet is the AAR "RAIL TRANSPORT AND THE WINNING OF WARS", get from AAR librarian (202-639-2100). Eerily prescient warnings of homeland attack, and folly of reliance on imported oil... Update the General's 1950's work with "ELECTRIC WATER" from Christopher C. Swan (New Society Press, 2007).

In the (peakoil.net) website, see the newsletter icon for Newsletter 42, article 374; also Newsletter 89, article 1037. These are for policy level discussion, but may help individuals with gaining larger view of rail issues. There are organizations like The American Regional Rail Association, with ability to form partnerships with locales wishing to add rail inventory to the National Rail network. Standard generic 4' 8 &1/2" standard gauge track, with interchangeable rolling stock across the US, Canada & Central America is the name of the game here, not vanities like Mag-Lev...

The Pacific Electric is a useful operation methodology for branchline rehab where a regional railway with limited interface with the Trunk trans-continental routes is the goal. Efficiencies of the long-haul rail lines should be maintained, with very carefully planned junctions with the rehabbed branch lines. Railway scoping sessions should supply citixens with easy-to understand public planning documents. The 1995 CalTrans Reno/Tahoe I-80/US50 (unabridged with full US50 element) is helpful to understand methodoligies for rail line study. upgrades (I-80) and brand new corridor (US 50). The Pacific Electric was a robust, high capacity freight (night) and daytime passenger rail operation, electric powered by Hoover dam hydropower.

As an aside, electric railway advocacy groups would do well to exhaustively research the 1960's NAWAPA Water & Hydropower engineering features, mucho hydrovolts for railways here, and adequate Columbia River flow for aquifer recharge: CA Central Valley & Midwest Ogallala included. Energy savings by raising & maintaining water tables is significant!

Doomers to the back of the class please. Teaching staff, why not have interested students get rail savvy, learn the the rail line footprint in their region, and do class project on Swan's "ELECTRIC WATER". It is useful to examine the Chinese and EU Railway engineering now under way and planned. We can do likewise.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('tahoevalleylines', 'G')old is going to be called back when the Feds have trouble paying for oil imports with paper money.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Ofellati', 'T')hat's a start. I have a whole bunch more that don't amount to such irrelevant grayisms as "impart numeracy to the masses."

[Dr. Ofellati]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I')n other words, eliminate the Constitution. We're more than halfway there already, better get busy on the rest of the destruction of the United States of America. Who needs rights anyway? They just get in the way of stopping population growth.
<<<takes government money in the form of roads, power infrastructure, sheriff, etc. Doesn't have kids.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Ofellati', 'I')f I had to estimate how much government stuff I've gotten back from the tax money I've put in, I'd put it at less than 20%, rough estimate, over the course of my life.

[Dr. Ofellati]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'L')ooks like you work way too hard if you're paying so much in taxes. And yeah, I'm a total sheeple. Ask anyone.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Ofellati', ' ')If you look at roads as a government gift to you, then baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

[Dr. Ofellati]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', ' ')I see them as other taxpayers' gift to me. I didn't pay for them. I didn't pay for the interstate highway system, that's for damn sure. I'm not that old!

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Ofellati', 'n')o breed line.

[Dr. Ofellati]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I')'m already in the "no breed line."

[dorlomin]

CU-Boulder campus mourns death of longtime, celebrated physics professor Al Bartlett

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')lbert Allen Bartlett, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, was remembered today as a revered teacher who had a major impact on his students, the university, Boulder and far beyond.

Bartlett died on Sept. 7 at the age of 90.

“Al Bartlett was a man of many legacies,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. “His commitment to students was evidenced by the fact that he continued to teach for years after his retirement. His timeless, internationally revered lecture on the impacts of world population growth will live beyond his passing, a distinction few professors can claim. And we can all be thankful for his vision and foresight in making the Boulder community what it is today.”

[PeakOiler]

RIP Dr. Bartlett!

Very sad news. The doctor was a true realist.

Thanks, dorlomin, for posting this news.