Those of you concerned about Y2K may not realize a potential bigger threat looming in the near furtuer. As most people know, Y2K is a threat to the global oil supply, but there may be even a bigger threat. This threat concerns the total world supply of oil. There is a must see site that describes the problem. I encourage everyone to read it. http://www.dieoff.org/page125.htm

-- newlurker (newlurker@lurk.com), July 03, 1999

Answers

Exponential growth, exponential decline. That's it.

Ok... Show of hands, please. How many of you folks understand this?

Critt

-- Critt Jarvis (ot@critt.com), July 03, 1999.

Really interesting--mostly the part about Fred Hoyle's theory. Yes! However, Y2K either obviates this theory or fulfills it. They are not at odds.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWAyne@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

More fun than the "M-Curve"...



Critt

-- Critt Jarvis (ot@critt.com), July 03, 1999.

For several years now, I have been a fan of Jay Hanson's efforts in organising those eye-opening essays on his dieoff site (www.dieoff.org). That whole energy section is quite illuminating. If ever you need to put Y2K in perspective, this is a great place to elevate your vantage point and understand things and events from a broader outlook.

I have recommended dieoff.org more than a few times in my year-and-a-half at this forum, most recently on the "Oil, Denial and Y2K" thread and on a recent economics thread. Jay's site saves a lot of running around. And the links and references are invaluable.

Hallyx

"Life will let us do as we will, and insists only in consequences."---Lance Pierce

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

We could slow the decline if we converted to production for use, (human need) rather than for profit which is inherently wasteful. Let's put the needs of people ahead of the need for profit.

-- Brian McNeill (brian.mcneill@cwix.com), July 03, 1999.

PERMACULTURE---GREENHOUSES---SOLAR POWER---PONDS--LOCAL ECONOMY. SIMPLER--LIFE.----HYDROPONICS.

-- hopefull (hope@zianet.com), July 03, 1999.

Excerpt:

"But prudence isn't our forte. 'Even our success becomes failure.' And, in a way, it's not our fault. Long ago Natural Selection dealt us a bad handwe're sexually prolific, tribal, short-term and self-centered. And after thousands of years of trying, Culture hasn't changed that.

-- mabel (mabel_louise@yahoo.com), July 04, 1999.

It certainly rings true to me. I've said for too many years that I didn't think we were smart enough as a species to rise for very long above the village level.

It is such a shame. The resources are available off planet. But it would require a goal rather than a process oriented movement to achieve access to them. Or really cheap spaceflight due to some "breakthrough" I don't see happening.

-- Jon Williamson (pssomerville@sprintmail.com), July 04, 1999.

Are you sure this isn't about Y2K? I notice that Duncan writes at one point, "Let the chips fall." :)

Duncan's theory certainly isn't new, but he presents and supports it in some interesting ways.

I, too, found the references to Fred Hoyle interesting. As a fairly serious amateur astronomer since adolescence, I remember Hoyle well. He and another Brit, Thomas Gold, proposed the Steady State Theory of the universe, wherein it was argued that if a hydrogen atom were somehow generated out of "nothingness" once every hundred years in each volume of space roughly equal to that occupied by the Empire State Bldg., then the universe would maintain its equilibrium forever. The Steady State Theory was offered in the 1960s as a challenge to the dominant (and today almost universally accepted) Big Bang/Expansion Theory and also to the Oscillating Theory; the Big Bang Theory contended that the universe would expand forever from its origin in the "ylem" (Gamow's term for the infinitely small, infinitely dense, infinitely hot origin point of the universe), thereby dissipating itself, while the Oscillating Theory (really a variation upon the Big Bang) contended that there was enough mass (hence gravitational force) in the universe to eventually slow and stop this expansion, then cause the universe to collapse back into the ylem, whereupon there would be another big bang "explosion" (more accurately, an infinitely powerful spacetime "singularity"), thereby starting the cycle of expansion and contraction all over again. Being true-blue Brits, Hoyle and Gold abhorred the violent, disordered pictures of the universe offered by the Big Bang and Oscillating theories, and so they proposed the Steady State Theory, which put up a valiant fight for acceptance among cosmologists but gradually (steadily!) died the death. Maybe there's a way to work current "dark matter" speculations into a new Steady State Theory!

Kindly forgive the self-indulgent trip down the cosmic lane.

Hoyle was also a rather good writer of science fiction, incidentally. (Some wags might have suggested he was writing sci-fi when he developed the Steady State Theory!)

It's intriguing but dark that what Hoyle and now Duncan are suggesting with regard to the course of human history is anything but "steady state": a meteoric rise, probably followed by a meteoric fall. Goin' up at an ever faster pace; goin' down at an ever faster pace. Or as Duncan puts it, "Exponential growth, exponential decline." (There might also be a model here for the U.S. stock market, I fear!)

It's hard to assess this theory, because you never know what new energy sources will be discovered or developed. Still, it does fit many people's sense of what has been happening in recent decades. 'Tis a great pity that Pons and Fleischmann were not right about cold fusion.

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), July 04, 1999.

Superimposing your own fragile existence upon a geological timeline is silly. Yes, you are ephemeral. This is not new information.

The average human has 22-25 thousand days. That's it. People here are attempting to simply extend their existence beyond the current crisis. I personally could care less about the perpetuity of my species at this time. Ah, now there's a thought, the most advanced society on earth returns to it's most base instincts, survival.

-- Black Elk (young@heart.com), July 04, 1999.

Despite what, e.g., Christians say, we are animals first and foremost, and subject to the laws of nature just like all other animals. This includes rapid population increase such as we have experienced. And it will include the catastrophic die-off. If not due to Y2K, then due to something else. UNLESS humankind gets smart and starts reducing population in a rational way. I'm not holding my breath. For every one person that "gets it" there are tens of thousands that have no more awareness than their cats.

-- A (A@AisA.com), July 04, 1999.

Jay Hanson has an excellent site. Have you seen the picture of the three fat guys at a lunch counter on his site? Great picture.

A you are right about overpopulation. The entire issue of E: The Environmental Magazine is devoted to the subject as the world reaches 6 billion this year. The population has doubled in my lifetime, and it's made me a recluse. The highways are jammed, the stores are jammed and the roadsides are littered with trash.

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), July 04, 1999.

The ones who control will simply switch to antigravity technology. Flying saucer anyone? Time to brush up on the new physics. Checkout overunity devises.

-- Army Girl (aGirl@ag.com), July 04, 1999.

Sniff.........Sniff........Do I smell "Club of Rome" here??

Or am I showing my age again??

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), July 05, 1999.

"Club of Rome" wasn't the first group to understand this, Chuck, just the first to get wide publicity.

Jon, we have the resources available ON-planet. What we don't have is the 1)worldview 2)solidarity 3)will. Lacking any one of those three condemns us to the trash-heap of history.

While it is not too late to prevent a resource/environmental crash, bear in mind that, once we crash, lack of energy and resources will most likely prevent a resurgence or recovery to the technological and intellectual level we enjoy today.

OK...now let's hear from the believers in Technism, one of the new secular religions along with Governmentism and Economism.

Hallyx

"If you can't even manage to to force your own presumably democratic governments to allow you to do good things for yourselves, then you probably deserve to become extinct."---Ishmael (My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn)

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), July 05, 1999.