194 comments on Entropy and Empire
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
194 comments on Entropy and Empire
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Personnel
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
A brilliant analysis IMO. The author recognizes that food is stored solar energy and lays out the thesis that energy vulnerability contributed to Rome's fall. It's easy to see the foreign parallel with the USA. Less obvious to some is the internal parallel in the USA. California is the de facto center of culture and science, the source of much innovation and progress. It is also an energy island, partly of its own making, just at the central government has isolated itself from the larger world with its energy policies. IMO much of the anti ethanol rhetoric found here comes from California and its realization that it may be so vulnerable as to lose power to the hinterlands. The Midwest is held in contempt just as Rome viewed the barbarians as uncultured and backwards. From its de facto control of science it develops arcane and irrelevant theories like EROEI to maintain its position of power. But the barbarians know the center energy island is vulnerable and keep up the pressure. Over time the power shifts. The bright side for California is that there is still a Rome and there will always be a California, just not as arrogant and powerful.
irrelevant theories like EROEI
Right. 1 unit consumed to produce 100 units (99 net) in the early days of oil. 1 unit consumed to produce (maybe) 1.3 units (0.3 net) for corn ethanol. No relevance whatsoever. Sheesh!
Ethanol: work harder, not smarter.
EROEI is irrelevant as long as its positive - which it is.
The Petroleum Input Ratio or PIR is all that matters there after.
...and we have an infinite amount of land to grow things.
There is a perspective on eroei that renders the fossil-fuel-proportion argument irrelevant in objective discussion. Instead of considering individual fuels, consider the _average_ eroei of fuels available to civilization. This average eroei is currently about 10. (Robert Kaufman), about the same as the current eroei of fossil fuels.
The implications of a much lower average eroei are clear and stark. The eroei is the ratio of the energy obtained to the energy that must be dissipated to obtain it. If the average eroei of all energy sources is 10, then out of every 10 units of energy we produce, we get to keep 9 units of energy for uses other than energy production (or 0.9 out of 1). If the average eroei of all energy sources is 3, then out of every 3 units of energy we produce, we get to keep 2 units of energy for uses other than energy production (or or 0.67 out of 1).
Consider what this means for total energy production. The society with an eroei of 10 produces 1.1 units of energy for each 1 unit of energy needed for purposes other than producing energy. The society with an eroei of 3 produces 1.5 units of energy for each 1 unit of total energy needed for purposes other than producing energy, 1.5/1.1 = 1.36, 36% more total energy production per unit of energy needed for purposes other than producing energy than the society with an eroei of 10.
Maybe I'm just a total idiot, but this appears to be a rationalization that eroei of newer fuels is irrelevant because the rest of society's non-energy producing eroei will make up for whatever the eroei is for newer non-fossil fuels.
That may be true if the energy producing eroei remains positive. But what makes you think that civilization is going to increase its non-energy producing eroei ENOUGH to make up for a declining energy producing eroei? Nice comfy theory, but where is the data?
And once net energy producing eroei becomes negative, is that still okay as long as society can make up for it in other areas? It all nets out? This sounds like gobble-de-goop rationalization to me. I hope you feel better, but I don't.
You can eternally run faster to stay in place, but that sounds pretty tiring to me.
Hi. As a new TOD member, I can't seem to find a
way to message posters, but I'd be interested in
being in touch with the several who hie from the
big isle, where I'm planning to move for PPO-
related reasons.
Great discussion in this string, BTW.
email me if you like, at dj@hawaii.rr.com
best
An easier way to say this is:
It's all about energy flow
If the net energy flow into civilization decreases (due to a declining average eroei), and this is not compensated by efficiency gains in energy consuming activities, civilization will decline.
JoulesBurn
I think that depends upon how you define civilization, almost the opposite statement seems to be the case.
Gandhi on Western Civilization, "I think it would be a good idea"
EROEI of less than 1 works for me. All energy is not equal. Some are dispatchable others are not. Some are easily transported others are not. I'll trade 100 units of "lousy" energy for 99 units of "quality" energy and do very well.
We can choose energy units or petroleum units or economic units ($) to compare input and output. If we use economic units (and we have a free market) we will see the best use of resources. Markets aren't free but they are still smarter than the politicians that everyone seems willing to turn their lives over to.
Welcome to the real world where you will never get anywhere close to that deal. Anyway, EROEI is more the issue with the initial production (or harvesting) of the 100 units of "lousy" energy. If that gets less than one, then it matters not how much money you throw at it.
Are you saying that an EROEI of 0.99 is too good of a deal in the real world? I use "lousy" and "quality" as relative terms. Energy production at any step of the process can make sense if the EROEI is less than one. Fuel should be characterized on several dimensions (BTUs, weight, volume, stability/volatility, transportability, etc.). To say that the relative values of fuel can only be represented by BTUs ignores other elements of value. The monetary value of fuels is the market's attempt to balance all of these characteristics.
Oh, please. One of the biggest debunkers of ethanol is from Cornell, hardly in California. There are no energy islands in America. California, unlike some other parts of the country, recognizes that the globe, not just California, is in trouble, and is taking steps to pursue alternative energy sources. Any ethanol rhetoric found here comes from places like Montana (Rapier) and elsewhere. This has nothing to do with California. Your analysis reflects some sort of weird, reflexive hate of California that has nothing to do with reality.
As far as stored solar energy in the form of food, most of the country is heavily dependent on California, not the reverse.
Thank you.
There are no energy islands in America
Hawai'i. :)
Seriously, though, it's not yet, but it could be: You've got a relatively low population density, a 12-month growing season, a climate suitable for sugarcane, and really, really good soil in some areas. And recently, a political climate that is taking alternative energy seriously.
"Relatively low" is many times the number that it supported in the days of the ancient Hawaiians. And they were up against Malthusian limits.
Also, I suspect that it's unwise to pin all your hopes on a small island chain who's largest landmass is an active volcano...
-best,
Wolf
Yep, but that fits in with those that don't want to die slowly. Kaboom and it's over in short order.
The volcano is not really a problem, except that land overrun by lava takes a long time to become fertile again. So it could be bad news for farmers. And it can be heck on infrastructure, but they've sort of adapted to that. Lava used to destroy miles of roads, because it would hit the highway and then just follow it down to the sea. Now they design the roads on the Big Island with periodic dips, so the lava will flow across the road rather than along it, and destroy only small segments. (They do the same thing elsewhere in the world, in areas prone to flooding.)
Hawaiian volcanos have fairly low-pressure, liquid magma. They don't explode like Mt. St. Helens. I remember one time when the lava was crossing a highway. Everyone ran to go see. My uncle brought a trowel and was scooping up the hot lava and dropping coins in it, making souvenirs. Everyone was begging to borrow it.
You'd never do that at Mt. St. Helens.
The point that you are making is good, and the contrast with Mt. St. Helens is meaningful, but volcanoes are very unpredictable beasts. Explosive eruptions have occurred on Hawai'i. Large blasts simply don't appear to be the most common outburst from volcanoes built up from less-viscous (and therefore less-steam-trapping) sources of magma.
Take a look at: Explosive Eruptions at Kilauea Volcano, Hawai'i?
-best,
Wolf
Now darnit Leanan, I'm trying to scare everyone away.
Don't worry, once the aggressive homosexual pirates seize the Kona side and go to battle with the aggressive lezbian pirates who will have seized the Hilo side, people will stay away.
You forgot, "not that there's anything wrong with that," and change the z to s.
That's a relief.
A good friend whose wife works for the University of Hilo, and who contributed to the excellent tome, "Atlas of Hawaii," relayed the information that their geologists expect the next eruptions to be violent, similar to Mt. St. Helens, only they expect it to be the volcanoes on the WEST side of the island, not Kilauea. He said they expect the whole side of the island from North of Kona to Hawaiian Ocean View Estates at the south end to be blown to kingdom come. Now of course, if this happens, the immense VOG cloud and toxic fume clouds will likely kill everything on the island, so being on the east side won't help much. But for a few seconds, it might be the most incredible experience of a lifetime to see mother nature at work. Ultimately, she RULES and we are but her pawns.
So I recommend that everyone stay away, and 2/3 those that are here need to consider leaving.
I've been trying to feed one politician per day to Pele. When we had the big earthquake last fall, I really thought Pele was angry that we hadn't fed her nearly enough corrupt politicians as they just kept oozing out of the woodwork. It's so hard to get them to cooperate as you drag them to the point of offering.
Politicians and weathermen = Volcano food!
I remember St Helens...we live south and the ash was plenty thick enough but not like the downwind folks - egads. I have a jar of ash and it still smells of sulfur - 17 years later.
Depending on the winds, there are days when we get some pretty hefty whiffs. It is quite unpleasant and I usually leave. That will get more difficult as peak oil ensues.
Malthus was wrong--he made everything up. Seriously.
See the real story: http://www.monthlyreview.org/1298jbf.htm
Might make the argument for Texas also. Its got its own grid, it still produces oil and NG(plus has refineries for both), and has coal. The beginnings of a Wind industry are coming into place, and out west are large swaths of desert lands ripe for solar farms. I'd have to double check but I believe there are also some potential uranium mines out in the coastal plains that operated in the 1950s, but closed down later due to lack of demand and the political climate surrounding it.
Growing seasons are pretty long and due to the simple fact its large, can grow a variety of crops ranging from food stuffs such as wheat, corn, rice, and many types of fruits and vegatables as well as industrial crops such as cotton.
Population Density is about 90 people per square mile though certainly some areas are more weighted while others have less than 1 person per square mile.
Granted Texas is plugged into the rest of the American infrastructure, but if I had to place a bet on which continental state could go it alone with minimum impact, I'd put my money on Texas in a heart beat.
Texas is HORRIBLY HOT in the summer. Like being in a toaster oven. Texas also has the problem of the depletion of the Aquifer and not much in the way of other water sources. There is even talk of the return of the Dust Bowl.(and I'm not talking football) Do you realize how much of texas is just plain desert?
A toaster oven is being nice... Along the gulf coast its more like a steamer. A dry heat would be so much more preferable. But we also have the energy infrastructure to handle that AC load in the summer. The reverse logic also works, btw... in the winter we require very little energy for heating and frankly I'd be more worried about freezing to death than being heated to death.
That said, West Texas does indeed have water supply issues, but then almost nobody lives out there. East Texas is hill country with lakes, rivers, decent rainfall, and forests. Its not like the whole state is a desert.
All that said, I didn't say Texas was problem free, just that from an energy and food standpoint we are in pretty good shape(compared to many of the neighboring states).
My position remains unchanged, I'd put my money on Texas in a heart beat.
Do you realize how much solar and wind potential that could be?
Shhhh! Do you want them to come here?
Do you realize that should we get to the point where "you're putting you're money" on indiviidaul localities that means globalization will have broken down?
And with that will go the 5,000 mile supply chains necessary for your solar and wind machines?
No, I didn't think so.
True. That was driven home for me when we drove past the wind farm at South Point, in Hawaii, a couple of years ago.
It's only 20 years old, but most of the turbines are no longer working. They're missing blades, or just aren't spinning. They're just rusting hulks.
And Hawaii doesn't have any natural sources of steel or aluminum to build replacements.
Texas does have oil (still), and that will probably help. And I think being connected to the rest of the world is, overall, a good thing. The immigration may well be going the other way across the border.
It's weather that's the biggest concern for Texas, IMO. Not just the heat, but the changes that global warming will bring. Drier, in areas that are already pretty dry. And hurricanes.
That's very true and the climate here is extremely harsh on anything made of metal. It's almost astounding how quickly metal becomes part of the earth again...
Leanan,
I remember when you posted this photo (or one similar to it) about a year or so ago. It certainly made an impression on me, as the wind debate here in Vermont is a lively one, and all we usually see are photos of brand-spanking new turbines, not derelict ones.
How did these turbines, which must have been the subject of much fanfare when they were built, end up in such a terrible state? Was there simply not enough electricity resulting, not enough infrastructure to get the power where it mattered, a financial collapse of the owners? Or... what? Surely replacement parts could be shipped in?
The wind turbines migrated across the island on their own.
=)
All joking aside, Leanan you must expand. I'm curious too.
I'm not sure what happened. From the timing, I suspect the project was born out of the oil crises of the '70s. When oil got cheap, there was probably not much interest in maintaining the turbines.
Last I heard, they were going to raze them all, and replace them with newer, more efficient ones. (Probably inspired by the recent spike in oil prices.) But they were only going to do it if they could get tax credits, and that wasn't guaranteed. It wouldn't be profitable without the tax credits.
Hawaii is very environmentally-minded, and they're always willing to try renewable energy. But it never really seems to work out. The wind farms are only profitable if they are subsidized. The ocean thermal plant has been shut down. The geothermal plant was supposed to be one of many, but has been so expensive and caused so many problems that they are no longer planning to build any more.
When I was growing up, we had a solar water heater. But when my parents built their dream home in a better neighborhood, they didn't bother with solar. Without the tax credits, it wasn't worth it. And the solar heater was kind of a pain, too.
I guess this is why I have so many doubts about alternate energy. Even in Hawaii, which is in many ways ideal for renewables, they don't compare to oil. Which, in Hawaii, has to be shipped in. The economy depends on tourism, and there's lot of concern about oil spills...yet nothing compares to oil. Lots of sun, lots of wind, geothermal coming out the wazoo, no need for heating or air conditioning, really, and yet...they still can't get off the fossil fuels.
Maybe if oil gets really, really expensive, that will change. Or maybe the costs of the alternates will also increase, as the cost for raw materials, transportation, etc., increase with the price of oil, and we'll be chasing that receding horizon.
The problem is the tax on carbon, or the lack of same.
Wind is competitive if there is a carbon tax. The same is true of nuclear. It's not so much that coal is cheap, it's that coal doesn't pay the freight for the damage it does.
On solar water heaters, they work fine in many climates *if* you have a backup, for the cloudy periods.
For example in Greece I would say 90% have solar water heaters. And it's plenty cold in Greece in winter.
Great series of posts, Leanan, full of excellent points.
Thank you.
My brother worked on some of the early windmills in California in the 1980s.
There were a couple of problems plaguing the industry at that time. (1) Designs that were for lack of better term pure crap. Expensive to build, inefficient, undependable, expensive to repair and with significant parts availability issues. (2.) Operators that did not have either financial stability or the desire to make an economic return. Many wind farms were sold as tax shelters by people whose interests were almost exclusively in selling tax shelters and leaving no finger prints while doing so.
Why are the pictured machines sitting there rusting. Hard to say in this particular case but the problems generically are not hard to foresee if you wanted to pick up distressed wind farms on the cheap. Legal hassles up the wazzou with liens and ownership issues, uncertain state of repair, and at the end of the day machines that are probably inefficient, undependable, expensive to repair and with significant parts availability issues.
Wind power can work, but it has to be done right.
Worth remembering that that is also true of coal power stations, or diesel ones.
ie every technology brings with it a requirement for social and economic infrastructure.
Lots of oil fired capacity brought into Africa in the 60s and 70s sits rusting. Yet solar cells sell very well in places like Kenya: the grid power supply is expensive and unreliable, and a good solar collector can last 40 years.
you hit upon the kicker here leanon.
many of the mass scale wind and solar projects pitched here, would take 20 years to build. meaning at the late stage of construction one would have to go back and replace the turbines/pannels one put in at the start instead of finishing.
We are looking at the new Easter Island mystery. How did those towers get there, mommy?
Leanan,
Where did you find that great photo! Man, that's embarrassing, on the cover of those books about peak oil, the icon of the great crash, the end, is almost always a broken down rusting gas pump or well...and you up and find a classic picture of what was supposed to be the future....but already broken down rusty hulks....it could be an advertisement for the oil or nuclear energy...."Here is your future, and it's already in ruins! "Why you can't make it without us."
Seriously though, one wonders whether the windmills you show really suffered from a lack of steel or aluminium to build replacements, or more likely, a 25 year run of givaway cheap fossil fuels simply caused the investors to lose interest and walk away from them, creating the real shortages: WILL and INVESTMENT.
Leanan, I am so very seriously worried that this is what we may be facing now. If the "peak NOW, and we KNOW we are right this time!!" crowd are wrong, even by only a decade or so, and fossil fuel prices fall through the floor, we could see every serious effort at alternatives end up just like this.....rusting junk. It won't be from lack of materials, or lack of technology. It will be from lack of WILL and lack of INTEREST AND INVESTMENT.
And it will be too late when the real thing comes to create and implement a mitigation plan then, and get the rusty junk up and running...we won't get another chance like we have right now.
This IS the pivotal time.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, We are only one cubic mile from freedom
I took that photo. It's a little bit blurry because I took it from a moving vehicle. (A politically incorrect Ford Explorer. Though there were five people in it, and many roads on the Big Island do require off-road type vehicles. Before SUVs became so popular, almost everyone had a Scout or a Range Rover, for the backroads.)
In my travels in the Third World, most seem to drive a Toyota Landcruiser.
The Land Rover (now owned by Ford) has its constituency, particularly in former British colonies and with certain international aid agencies, but they were never particularly mechanically reliable (albeit robust).
Toyota seems the preferred, hard wearing, offroad capable roadster.
In my travels in the Third World, most seem to drive a Toyota Landcruiser.
The Land Rover (now owned by Ford) has its constituency, particularly in former British colonies and with certain international aid agencies, but they were never particularly mechanically reliable (albeit robust).
Toyota seems the preferred, hard wearing, offroad capable roadster.
True, the supply lines would be a bit botched up, but then that is where being rich in natural resources comes in useful. Texas still has a fair chunk of resources to draw upon.
Furthermore if we are down to the point of betting on individual localities due to chaos, then chances are, the political boundries of today, are probably not even relevant as new boundires will likely be drawn and fought for as new State entities arise, whether they be made up of fractional pieces of current states/provinces, or conglomerations of current states/provinces. And that applies to areas outside the US as well. I could easily see Canada, or Mexico doing similar fractionalizing/conglomerations, along with European countries.
In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that long ago that countries like Britain, France, and Germany were just a bunch of warring fuedal territories with each "county" having its own lord. We are already seeing the splintering of African countries into smaller warring tribal based faction due to resource constraints(compounded by bad government), and several South American countres while still maintaining a national "presence" are wrought with internal fighting between factional forces.
If resource depletion continues to march along, how long will it take for more modern countries to come under the same stresses, and culturally will we react the same way, or will we pick a different path?
To date, the two most successful countries in maintaining large national State for extended periods of time including before the presence of FF has been Russia and China, usually through strict autocratic rule and extreme centralization of power.
But then I suppose that kind of touches on the subject of the original essay... In resource constrained situations is Empire/Autocratic rule better(very subjective term I know) than Democracy?
Right up until it gets completely overwhelmed with refugees from Mexico.
Thank God for those Halliburton camps being built!
Those camps are for political prisoners. No refugees allowed.
Water.
Texas is water poor. And the Ogalla Aquifer is depleting very fast.
It's also entirely optimised around a petroleum rich existence-- huge spread out cities, public transport infrastructure is weak to non existent, the prevalent culture is anti conservation (almost a threat to personal liberty to abandon the SUV or the pickup), there is (by design) an extremely weak state government (the legislature is part time and amateur) so collective response is muted.
Conversely the Texas Rangers are effective. So a paramilitary government is not impossible.
And of course Texas is fast running out of oil and gas.
Add to that you have some of the worst inequalities of wealth and income and ethnicity in the US.
So call it a draw. There is much about Texas which is attractive: entrepreneurial spirit, wind and sun, space, dynamic demographics (all those Hispanics). And there is much which it lacks or which could lead it to future chaos.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/howard-waldrop/texasisraeli-war.htm
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/fritz-leiber/spectre-is-haunting-tex...
And the world's leader in wind energy, also using some geothermal and solar (lots of both of those). There is also potential to exploit the energy of the ocean via waves and tides.
Cheryl,
I wouldn't count on the island's wave and tidal power being available once TSHTF as the alt-energy infrastrucutre will likely be collatteral damage in the coming Homosexual-Lezbian Pirate war.
I keep forgetting about that. Guess I should just go clean my handguns and rifles again and do a few thou more reloads.
That is unless you decide to join them.
Back in the heydey of high piratery, the 1700 and 1800s, that was how the real pirates of the caribbean did most of their recruiing. They'd seize a ship or outpost, usually staffed by people who were for all intents and purposes slaves, and say to them "hey, you guys are being treated like shit by your overlords. why don't you consider becoming a pirate?"
I'd make a great pirate. Nearly blind in one eye, just need a patch. Already have one artificial joint, the next one will likely be a wooden peg-leg when high tech no longer reaches the island. Cool. Wonder if Johnny Depp (heart) will wander this way. Let's see, twice his age--but maybe I could teach him a thing or two....:-)
Frankly, I'm going to really miss high tech if the collapse is so fast that I don't get my next set of artifical joints here in our isolated outpost. We take so much for granted.
A while back, I told my dad (age 84) that I thought his generation really had the best of everything (excluding the wars). They had the world before pollution got really bad, before population got too overwhelming, and yet got to experience a lot of the wonderful things that the age of oil enabled. And yes, they had hard times too, but they still had the resources to pull out of those hard times. He will also probably die before it gets too horrible. He was always one of those people who thought the economy should trump everything -- especially green stuff. To my surprise, he agreed with me100% and thinks everyone else is pretty much screwed. He agrees we went too far in using/abusing the environment, using its resources, and putting too many people on the planet. It started to really hit him a few years backs when his previously life-filled fishing hole quit offering up fish and his once quiet rural street turned into a noisy highway.
You're twice Depp's age, and so is your dad? What gives?
Well, I'm not really twice Depp's age--I just feel like it sometimes. How old is he anyway since I can't remember? I'll be 58 in 2.5 weeks. I probably have a generation on him, but not 2 gens.
Hey, the older you get the younger everyone else looks.
43 wikipedia has a nice file on him
Hey, so I'm in the ballpark of a "slightly older woman."
Right, dream on you sully wench...
I heard that an 80+/- old friend of my folks thought I was really good looking. Not bad for a 42 yr old at the time...
My grandmother passed recently, was 86. She knew how bad things were getting. I showed her the Fortune article with Richard Rainwater . . . her reply, "looks like it's your problem. I'll be gone by the time that hits and thank God for that."
I agree regarding the "Greatest Generation". Yes, they had challenges and problems but they lived a time where things got better on pretty much all fronts from after WW II until about 1973-1979. Although if you had played your cards right you probably did not notice until recently and even then you may only have noticed by mostly watching the struggles of your Baby Boomer kids and "13ers"/Millenial grandkids.
And then she told you to sell the shop and buy a pirate ship?
Yep she did. "Arrgh matey!"
That's one hell of an exception.
World War I. Circa 20 million dead (on a population of c. 1.5 billion). Over 3 million French men alone ('the Lost Generation'). Then 20-40m dead in the subsequent flu (we don't really know how many).
The Great Depression. The US had 25% unemployment. That's unemployment of men (and probably not black men, at that). Women didn't count. The Dust Bowl blew away, and hundreds of thousands lived in refugee camps ('Hoovervilles') outside the major cities.
The Spanish Civil War. 1 million dead.
World War II. Closer to 80-100m dead. Opinions vary: 25m Russians for sure. Perhaps 5 million Germans. 6 million in the Holocaust. 100,000 died in Tokyo alone in *one night* from firebombs, and something like 70,000 in Dresden. At least 3m Indians starved to death in Bengal in 1943-44, the British were too busy fighting the Japanese to do anything about it. Probably at least 20m Chinese died between the 1936 invasion of China by Japan (really the beginning of WWII) and the end of the Civil War in 1949. Another 25m or so would die in the subsequent purges and then the starvation of The Great Leap Forward.
US dead in those 2 wars were of course far, far, fewer. Maybe a million in total.
If you are American, and male, of course you also had Korea and Vietnam. So your chances of serving in a war, if you were born anytime after 1921, were quite high.
If you were black and American, you had to live through the Civil Rights period and what came before it. If you were gay, what you did was actually illegal, and people went to prison for it.
Let's say our parents' generation was at times foolish with the environment (although the Clean Air Act passed in 1972). They used antibiotics too freely. They sprayed too much DDT (but they stopped). They shouldn't have invented Chloro Fluoro Carbons (CFCs).
There were plenty of warnings (The Limits to Growth in 1970, the Brandt Report etc.). Some were heeded, some were not.
But in the 1980s and 90s the world, and particularly America and the UK, went on a personal greed kick.
I find my parents are much more community spirited and conservation minded than my generation. You don't have to explain to my father about using low energy lightbulbs or not leaving the door open. He's always driven an economical car.
Whereas my peers drive me to distraction with their waste.
Yes, the wars were huge exceptions. My dad served in the military in WWII and still agrees that his generation had it the best. But their values were generally better, the planet was in better shape, etc. I dare say that were we to face the great depression again, I don't believe for a second that people would work together and help each other as much as they did in the 30's. This time it will be eat or be eaten. Our society has gotten very rude and greedy.
Not all of the above applies to ONLY his generation--it applies to several generations. And there's a good chance we will experience nuclear war in our lifetimes. The sheer horror of that pretty much trumps everything.
It is probably not a coincidence that those wars happened at the same time as the good things that you mentioned. Churchill blamed the horrors of World War I, compared to the elitist colonial wars he served in, on "technology and democracy." You also can't fight total war without a public-spirited citizenry willing to make sacrifices... unless you figure out a way to do it with credit cards, which our leaders are currently attempting.
Believe me, better (so far) to have been born in 1960, than in 1900, or 1926. Almost anywhere in the Western World, let alone the Eastern.
Our problems we can do something about. World War I, and II, and the Holocaust, and the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression, people were just caught in the middle and had to make do.
I wondered sometimes why my parents were so conservative. But when you had uncles dead in World War I, cousins and classmates dead in the second world war, who had marched into Belsen and Auschwitz, when you yourself had served in a grotty jungle war in South East Asia...
when you had seen your parents' business wiped out by Depression, and lived on public handouts of food, when you had seen your mother feed men who came to back porch, asking for a cup of soup, men just like your father, who had lost everything...
We are a blessed generation.
"My granddad was a pirate, my dad built ships, I'm an attorney for a shipbuilding conglomerate, my son will be a pirate."
Attorney, pirate, what's the difference?
One of? Who would that be tstreet? Pimentel?
90% of the scientific community have proven him wrong on corn ethanol and yet you continue to propagate his fallacious assertions... nice work.
The point of the comment was that the skepticism about corn ethanol is not a California centric phenomenon. I wasn't propagating anything regarding the validity or invalidity of Pimental's analysis. Robert Rapier, of course, can speak and has spoken for himself on this site.
But as long as you've brought it up, I personally believe that corn ethanol, at least, has a rather small positive impact on our net fuel liquid resources considering its impact on corn resources. Considering that the American public is bearing direct subsidies for the ethanol and indirect subsidies in higher crop prices, for a rather minimal improvement in fuel resources, the program does not seem like a good one in its present form.
It remains to be seen how useful cellulosic ethanol will be. I think it is premature to conclude that it will fair better than corn ethanol.
You, Snytec, are a malicious fool, a leech to boot. You have no concept of how an economy functions, apparently self-contented in a bovine notion that EROI doesn't matter. This notion indicates you haven't a clue about the function of investment.
Mostly, I just ignore your nonsense, but to ignore your distortion regarding Pimental's place in the scientific community would be a discredit to TOD.
Where is your 90%? How many of those scientists who argue for a methodology that allows a claim of a small energy return for ethanol (North American ethanol), are independent of a political or commercial agenda?
Is it your personal mission in life to keep the ethanol industry latched onto the public teat? Is that why you haunt TOD, posting your endless misrepresentations and disinformation? Take a break. Keithster will fill in for a while.
If you can't debate me empirically without the ad hominem attacks... then don't bother.
I've posted the literature to back up all my assertions -including those that destroy Pimentel's claims- time after time.
I challenge you Toiler to prove me wrong.
Prove me wrong that Pimental's claims re: the EROI of corn ethanol, are anathema to the results found by 90% of the scientific community.
And California gets its food by pumping water from somewhere else (if only intra-state).
It's likely California will give up on agriculture (at least southern California) and in our lifetimes.
The water is too valuable for other activities.
I thought the flyover states were arcane and irrelevant.
And the majority of the USA, and determine who is president and who controls the Congress, and hence the Courts, military, police, etc.