Letters to the Editor

• @cdunlea... there's no free lunch.

  [Read the article: Stocks plunge as investors flee risk]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Cdunlea got an editor's red star for the following:

  I wrote:

  "The industrial/technological/population growth of the human species has been fueled by oil, and nothing else. Take away oil, we're all back to the bronze age."

  And cdunlea wrote:

  That statement is so obviously untrue it calls into question the rest of your analysis. Oil had nothing to do with the First Industrial Revolution (1800-1870), so without oil we'd at least be living at a mid-nineteenth century standard. Furthermore, the question of sustaining our population and living standards has almost as much to do with escaping the Malthusian trap by improved sanitation, medical knowledge and food supply as it does with oil. Yes, part of that last statement depends on the mobility of the food supply, but hydro, wind and solar power can generate the power required to keep transport and communications going.

  **********

  Your first sentence betrays you. Give me a little quantitative analysis that shows my first statement is "obviously untrue."

  In 1850, there were just over 1 billion people on this planet. Oddly, the number most analysts come up with when they suggest the maximum sustainable population of the earth at some standard of living above the bronze age.

  Last time I checked, the population of the planet is SIX TIMES that. So, tell me, without sufficient fossil fuels, just how we're going to feed and shelter 6 billion people? Hmm?

  If we had the population of 1850, even at our present level of technology and affluence, I might agree that a fall to the Bronze age is unlikely. But with 6 BILLION? I think my statement is actually optimistic. We get to live in the bronze age only in the absence of nuclear war for energy. Bronze Age living would be a blessing.

  You make the mistake that way too many people make: you mistake technology for energy. I'll assume you're smarter than that, and you really didn't mean it. But that's what it sounds like. Without oil we cannot grow anything like the amount of food we grow now. Look around you. EVERYTHING comes from oil, directly or indirectly. Without oil, we're back to 1795, if we're LUCKY, and then we need a population reduction of 5 billion people.

  Below is a measure of population growth since the Renaissance. Note how a skyrocketing population exactly matches the discovery and use of fossil fuels. Take those fuels away, you can't sustain the population.

  1500 450 million

  1650 500 million

  1750 700 million

  1804 1 billion

  1850 1.2 billion

  1900 1.6 billion

  1927 2 billion

  1950 2.55 billion

  1955 2.8 billion

  1960 3 billion

  1965 3.3 billion

  1970 3.7 billion

  1975 4 billion

  1980 4.5 billion

  1985 4.85 billion

  1990 5.3 billion

  1995 5.7 billion

  1999 6 billion

  2000 6.1 billion

  2005 6.45 billion

  2006 6.5 billion

  2010 6.8 billion

  2020 7.6 billion

  2030 8.2 billion

  2040 8.8 billion

  2050 9.2 billion

  Contrary to your post, there is nothing else with which to replace fossil-fuels. Probably not ever, and certainly not in time to avoid some pretty ugly shit. If you compare energy density of fossil fuels to *anything* else, everything else pales utterly.

  And even if some combination of alternative energy sources, and declining fossil-fuels could sustain us at some level of affluence above the early Industrial age, it'll likely be too late to develop that combination, in the mad, violent scramble for the last of the fossil-fuels.

  With all due respect--and I mean that--when you've taken eight years to really get your head around this, come back and we'll talk some more. Right now you don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Read the links and articles at www.dieoff.org. Check out warsocialism.com. Then let's talk.

  Permalink Thursday, July 26, 2007 04:48 PM

• @cdunlea...yer startin' to bug me.

  [Read the article: Stocks plunge as investors flee risk]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  you wrote:

  The original poster stated without oil we'd be in the Bronze Age, ie. technology ca. 1500 BC. I called BS on that overstatement. Yes, we'd be in trouble, but we got along just fine without oil in the Eighteenth Century, thank you.

  ********

  You haven't proven that it's BS yet, dude, and moreover, your last sentence above proves you dismissed my second post out of hand. Sure, without oil we got along fine in the 18th century. But check it out. Most people didn't live past 40, and there were fewer than a billion people on the planet at the time. Not 6 billion. You can't compare then, and now, because we have so many more people on the planet now.

  You also slipped badly when you said we'd fall to the *technological* level of 1500 BC. Nope. We'll slip to the *energy* levels of 1500 BC. Which may well amount to the same thing. You try running a modern civilization on the energy levels of 1500 BC.

  Again, technology is NOT energy. Energy is energy. Without some kind of dense energy source, we cannot support a population of 6 billion, even at some minimal level of survival, let alone a minimal level of affluence.

  You're dreaming man. There is no "alternative energy package." What you propose is no different than the millenial rapture, only you seem to think some kind of technological rapture will save us. The brutal physics of energy and population growth say otherwise.

  I suggest you make a close study of the first two laws of thermodynamics. They are instructive in this context.

  And come back when you've actually studied the matter a bit. Right now you're just pulling a bunch of beliefs and hopes out of the air.

  Permalink Thursday, July 26, 2007 07:11 PM