I heard NASA is getting shut down. Will HM be next to go?

[Bryan]

I don't think the revolution will take place in our life time.

It's a really neat trick to be able to predict scientific revolutions.

(maybe an extremely efficient way of producing hydrogen cells?)

Before you worry about good ways to produce hydrogen cells, you better worry about good ways to produce hydrogen (which means: alternative sources of energy)!

 

[Bryan]

I agree with Bryan... his projection is correct, but I think its a bit further down the pike time wise before the end of the oil age is upon us. Maybe a few generations away.

I didn't mean to imply that I think it's something that's going to happen within our lifetime. Especially MY lifetime. But I think it's inevitable.

Bryan... out of curiosity, have you/do you read any Kunstler?

James Howard Kunstler? No, but I've seen some of his writings available on the Web, and scanned through some of it. I've spent more time reading Matt Savinar. Do you recommend Kunstler?

 

[CCS]

Bryan I think he is talking about untapped resources which depending on who you want to believe is massive.

I believe the accepted figure is that the US has less than 3% of the world's oil reserves (not even taking into consideration that that oil is difficult and costly to obtain). Would you consider that to be "massive"?

I'm not debating anything...I am merely trying to decode CCS who is hard to read at times.

When you consider Canada (who I think CCS was including), off shore and everywhere else that is in the US zone its massive "depending on who you want to believe." Also...untapped resource is a different subject than "reserves."

I heard North (or was it South?) Dakota has a lot. And so does Alaska. I don't know who to believe. But I heard that there is more untapped oil here than in Saudi Arabia. They can't touch it because endangered species live there, or they are afraid of environmental damage. Though Nancy Pelosi also said we must save it for future generations. Yeah, obviously we don't have a ton in Texas or California.

 

[The Gardener]

But I heard that there is more untapped oil here than in Saudi Arabia.

That's just not true. We may have more coal, but not oil.

But all these claims of how much oil are "in reserve" completely miss the point. Once again, "peak oil" is NOT about the earth running out of oil. Well, it does, but that's really a secondary issue. Peak Oil is predominatly about the human demand for oil outstripping the volume at which we can extract it.

Let me put it another way... you could have a Hoover Dam with tons of water behind it, but if the valve at the bottom of the dam doesn't allow enough water to pass through it each day to meet humanity's daily demand for water, then you have "peak water". Well, same goes with oil. It makes NO DIFFERENCE how much more oil might be behind that dam, the crux of the issue is that the remaining water cannot be extracted at a rate high enough to meet humanity's ever increasing demand.

All of these "untapped reserves" have been untapped for a reason. Its because the volume at which oil can be extracted from them is insufficient. These pocket reserves, i.e. South Dakota, offshore Caribbean, oil sands, etc.. they are all small potatoes, literally pea shooters, as compared to rate at which oil extraction is declining in Saudi Arabia, Cantarell in Mexico, and in most ALL other major oil fields. There might be gazillions of oil sands in Alberta, but if oil can't be extracted from these sands at a daily rate which is comparable to the rate at which oil extraction is done from places such as Saudi Arabia, then there is no net impact on Peak Oil.

 

[Bryan]

But I heard that there is more untapped oil here than in Saudi Arabia. They can't touch it because endangered species live there, or they are afraid of environmental damage.

Absolutely, positively untrue. Claims along those lines seemed to be made routinely by Republicans during the election, with such corny sayings as "Drill, baby, drill!" making the rounds. I was incredulous that anybody actually believed them. What they wanted the public to believe, of course, was that there is SOOOO much oil floating around our very own country, but those mean ol' tree-hugging Democrats just won't let us go in and suck it out of the ground, totally replacing all that nasty A-Rab oil!

 

[Old Baldy]

Yes, T. Boone Pickens said it well when he said the reserves (i.e., oil and natural gas) are finite and someday we will have to find alternative sources. Just the way it is IMHO.

Who knows guys, maybe we will find a way to contain the fusion reaction or some such technology? Wishful thinking now, but who knows for sure?

Bryan and Gardener: Won't populations have to severely shrink for us to go back to an agrarian based society as you guys opine? I wonder how that will be "achieved"? :freaked:

 

[s.a.f]

Bryan and Gardener: Won't populations have to severely shrink for us to go back to an agrarian based society as you guys opine? I wonder how that will be "achieved"? :freaked:

Probably when wars are waged over the last reserves of these natural resources.

 

[HughJass]

[quote="Old Baldy":1gcg8cop]Bryan and Gardener: Won't populations have to severely shrink for us to go back to an agrarian based society as you guys opine? I wonder how that will be "achieved"? :freaked:

Probably when wars are waged over the last reserves of these natural resources.[/quote:1gcg8cop]

How many would actually sign up to a fight a blatant resource war though?

As we've seen, plenty of folk will go along a with a resource war that's fought the guise of liberty, anti-terrorism etc, but a blatant resource war where everybody knows what the objective is?

 

[s.a.f]

[quote="Old Baldy":2eancifx]Bryan and Gardener: Won't populations have to severely shrink for us to go back to an agrarian based society as you guys opine? I wonder how that will be "achieved"? :freaked:

Probably when wars are waged over the last reserves of these natural resources.

How many would actually sign up to a fight a blatant resource war though?

As we've seen, plenty of folk will go along a with a resource war that's fought the guise of liberty, anti-terrorism etc, but a blatant resource war where everybody knows what the objective is?[/quote:2eancifx]

Plenty of people when you look at the alternative. ie rich western countries economies collapsing. We may be rich but without oil/gas/coal/water... we're fucked and how hard would it be for a government to invent a new reason to invade. We may not have the natural resources but we have the bombs.

 

[BobbyChalfont]

[quote="Old Baldy":3rxkb64g]Bryan and Gardener: Won't populations have to severely shrink for us to go back to an agrarian based society as you guys opine? I wonder how that will be "achieved"? :freaked:

Probably when wars are waged over the last reserves of these natural resources.

How many would actually sign up to a fight a blatant resource war though?

As we've seen, plenty of folk will go along a with a resource war that's fought the guise of liberty, anti-terrorism etc, but a blatant resource war where everybody knows what the objective is?[/quote:3rxkb64g]

Don't overestimate Human compassion. When faced with a future without cars, LCD TVs, computers or any of the other consumer luxuries that have come to be a part of day to day life in the West, I'd imagine there'd be quite a lot of people willing to grind another "lesser" nation into the dirt in order to maintain it.

 

[CCS]

Yeah, and if you don't have a good job, you get to be the grunt who goes over there to fight hand to hand. If we actually got blood and just bombed cities, we could take over oil countries in less than a day. Unless they have nukes and we did not bomb those first. I wonder how a nuclear bomb detonated above an oil reserve would affect the oil beneath the ground.

I've been riding a bicycle most of my life, and could wear a jacket inside during winter. But with no cooking or refridgeration of food, and much more expensive food since we don't have tracters or semi trucks, and with cold water in the winter, it could get rough. Many people would bath once a week. Some would try to enslave others. Bicycles would be worth a lot since we would no longer have the power to fordge metal so well.

I say we get good at alternative energy somehow.
Oh, and we would have electricity for a lot of stuff. Coal and nuclear based mostly. Just no gas for cars. People would start working close to home again, taking electric trollies to work. Might not be too bad. I don't have an LCD anyway right now. No gas tractors to make houses might up the price though.

 

[HughJass]

Many people would bath once a week.

At least you'll have a bit more in common with the British then.

 

[optimus prime]

I don't think the revolution will take place in our life time.

It's a really neat trick to be able to predict scientific revolutions.

I didn't mean to imply that I think it's something that's going to happen within our lifetime. Especially MY lifetime. But I think it's inevitable.

It's a really neat trick to be able to predict scientific revolutions.

 

[optimus prime]

Many people would bath once a week.

At least you'll have a bit more in common with the British then.

I thought it was the French that don't wash?

 

[HughJass]

No they just eat a lot of chocolate and have moviesex heaps.

 

[squeegee]

Many people would bath once a week.

At least you'll have a bit more in common with the British then.

hahahahaha unk:

 

[ali777]

I don't think the revolution will take place in our life time.

It's a really neat trick to be able to predict scientific revolutions.

I didn't mean to imply that I think it's something that's going to happen within our lifetime. Especially MY lifetime. But I think it's inevitable.

It's a really neat trick to be able to predict scientific revolutions.

You haven't seen my powers yet :innocent:

In my opinion science and technology hasn't really progressed as much as we think it has since WWII. Most of the technologies we use today were known back then. The only difference is that we came up with new applications for the known technologies and technology is ubiquitous.

For example there has been no real breakthroughs in chemistry and physics since WWII. In IT, the real breakthrough came from shrinking the transistors, but then again the first transistor patent goes back to 1920s or something. Likewise, we still use the combustion engine, etc...

Our understanding of science and the universe is rather limited. I'll give you one example. We are all animals governed by our hormones, and sex is in a way our ultimate aim. Despite the importance we put on sex, there is actually limited understanding of the mechanics of sex. The presence of the G-spot is still disputed...

 

[tembo]

You gotta be kidding Ali. You need to read "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil.



A computer can now beat the World Chess Champion.

"Dolly" the cloned Sheep.

Genetically Modified crops.

Mapping of the genome.

Full face transplants.

Cell phones are now available to people such as the Masaai, and in Africa there are far more cell phones than land lines.

The Internet.

Online trading for no fees, online gaming, online p**rn, online shopping, online bill paying, online social networking, online second life, online poker, online everything...

v****.

Hybrid Cars.

Ipod.

Wind power now on par with conventional energy in terms of cost per kWh, and solar and fuel cells getting there.

Gastric bypass.

Ability to transplant almost any body organ now, with some form of hair cloning or hair multiplication to come.

Nanotechnology -- with nanonaterials already all around you (and some of these will probably lead to numerous lawsuits in the future a la asbestos).

Child sex selection.

All that and much more in the last 10-15 years (at least in terms of mass consumption, even if the invention occurred a few decades earlier).

 

[ali777]

You gotta be kidding Ali. You need to read "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil.



A computer can now beat the World Chess Champion.

"Dolly" the cloned Sheep.

Genetically Modified crops.

Mapping of the genome.

Full face transplants.

Cell phones are now available to people such as the Masaai, and in Africa there are far more cell phones than land lines.

The Internet.

Online trading for no fees, online gaming, online p**rn, online shopping, online bill paying, online social networking, online second life, online poker, online everything...

v****.

Hybrid Cars.

Ipod.

Wind power now on par with conventional energy in terms of cost per kWh, and solar and fuel cells getting there.

Gastric bypass.

Ability to transplant almost any body organ now, with some form of hair cloning or hair multiplication to come.

Nanotechnology -- with nanonaterials already all around you (and some of these will probably lead to numerous lawsuits in the future a la asbestos).

Child sex selection.

All that and much more in the last 10-15 years (at least in terms of mass consumption, even if the invention occurred a few decades earlier).

Dude, I am an engineer. I know the history of technology to a certain extent.

You say iPod, etc... I was a teenager when the mp3 technology first came out. But Shannon wrote a postgraduate thesis on Informatics back in the 1950s, and the concept of compression was known back then, ie Huffman coding. mp3 is just an extension of the same principles. That's what I mean by "we developed new applications for the known technologies".

Despite your perception of powerful and clever computers, computers are extremely static and dumb. A computer can go through billions of calculation per second, but it's all static and preprogrammed by us. A chess board has finite number (an extremely large number) of moves and the computer can remember certain moves and go through a certain static array to find the next move. It's rather boring and there is no intuition from computer's part. It's a mundane task and it's the brute power of the computer that beats the world champion, not the game play intuition that we humans posses. We don't have clever computers with intuition, and we have dumb boxes that listen to us.

It's the same with mobile phones. Marconi sent the first wireless trans-Atlantic message more than 100 years ago, the first digital data processor was the British code breaking machine in Blechley park and mobile phones are combination of those two, ie, "a new application of known technologies". The spread of the Internet was revolutionary, but not the technology in it.

The IT, as we know it, is an extension to what was known 50 years ago. In the last 50-60 years there is nothing fundamentally new or revolutionary in the IT (apart from shrinking the transistor, as I already said). The same goes for chemistry and physics. I will not dispute that the spread of technology has been revolutionary, which is a different subject.

In the last 20-30 years, there have been developments in pharmaceuticals and medicine in general. Medicine is the only field where there are ground breaking changes with cloning and stuff happening right now. I think the near future will belong to medicine, we might get lucky and gain another 10-20 years of life expectancy.

 

[tembo]

Of all my examples you picked Ipod?

Your exact quote was:

In my opinion science and technology hasn't really progressed as much as we think it has since WWII. Most of the technologies we use today were known back then. The only difference is that we came up with new applications for the known technologies and technology is ubiquitous.

My father and my grandfather think that the last decade was the most life changing in their life.