<DrumBeat: May 16, 2007 The Oil Drum A Political Storm Over Canadian Energy Security>

333 comments on Ecological Footprint, Energy Consumption, and the Looming Collapse

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GreyZone on May 16, 2007 - 4:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We have never produced food on a wide scale that comes from anything other than "agricultural photosynthesis". If you believe otherwise, please document the case.

As for quantities and durations, yes that matters far more in reality than human abstractions about freedoms. So far as the universe is concerned it does not matter whether we are "free" or not. What matters is that there are N resources and we can never use more than N, no matter how much you cry about "freedom".

Finally, your assumption that life at Cuban levels of energy consumption must be bad seems to ignore the US itself from about 1776 to about 1940. People then seemed to live fine "free" lives without living in concentration camps. Your "concentration camp" argument is a strawman intended to invoke an emotional reaction. It has failed, probably because you fail to understand the physics of the problem.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

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PaulS on May 16, 2007 - 8:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Well yes, call it what you want, but absolutely it was meant to provoke an emotional reaction. There's more to life than the mere survival that is all there is to be had under an ugly, brutal tyranny such as Cuba, Zimbabwe, etc. After all, any bacterium, plant, or animal can merely survive as some sort of pointless automaton - so what?

One way or another, the "US itself" has been supplementing agricultural photosynthesis with other processes on an increasing scale throughout its entire history (there were water wheels and sails from earliest days). And that really took off in the early 20th century, well before 1940. And it took off in many places, not only the US. And one way or another it will go on doing so - if less so with oil, then more so with something else. And if not to as lavish an extent as some would like, most likely nonetheless to a greater extent than primitivists seem to want.

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GreyZone on May 17, 2007 - 1:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

First you go on about food, then make crazy claims about not using photosynthesis for food, and now you are trying to shift the game by asserting it has to do with other energy sources?

You appear to be rather confused.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

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Kevembuangga on May 17, 2007 - 4:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

an ugly, brutal tyranny such as Cuba, Zimbabwe

Entirely disingenuous!
Both are "tyrannies" but Zimbabwe much much more so and for absolutely no reason but the whim of a madman.
And while Cuba is making its best while being short strapped for ressources, partly thanks to the US, Zimbabwe is a total waste of PLENTIFUL ressources, if not for the delirious mock up of occidentalisation by the "elites" it would at least as rich as South-Africa and probably more.

Intellectual dishonesty is the hallmark of trolls or morons (or of both qualities).

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333 comments on Ecological Footprint, Energy Consumption, and the Looming Collapse

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