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[irishcarguy]

I would say that in fifty or less years from now most of our homes will be self sustaining, IE, off grid . it is already happening here. I wonder what the utility companies & governments will do to steal money from us when that happens ?. I predict that there will be no power or phone wires attached to most houses by that time. I have been 3,500 feet under ground here where potash is mined & the constant temperature is 72 degrees F. even when winter temp drops to - 50F below zero. It might be smart to build underground like they do in Australia where they mine in very hot areas. We get about 300 days of sunshine where I live (Alberta, Canada) & the technology is already there to use this energy, but utility companies will either try to control it or curtail any research in developing it if they can get away with it. Mick B.

[Norseman]

Mick, Your taxes will change with the new technologies. You will be taxed for having them and fined for not having them. The energy companies will move into ownership and control of new technologies and the law will require inspection regimes that you pay the licencesed companies to do or fines to the government for failing to do.

Re - we'll all live better generation upon generation - for my money it isn't sustainable ad infinitum in a closed system - so that rosy future cannot ultimately be true for everyone. There are already thirsty and hungry kids in the world who won't even survive the reading of this post.

My kids Transatlantic flight is slower than it was for our generation, no one is going to the moon anymore, space labs are closing, space shuttle retired, and more importantly the tennis skirts have gotten no shorter at all QED

Dave

[dodgy geezer]

Several responses - find your own!

"I think with several billion more people on this planet further down the line .... something has to give somewhere"

We have documented complaints about overpopulation and 'something has to give somewhere' from the Greek City States of 400 BC. At that time there were around 100m people on Earth. Nothing 'gave' during all the history since then, in spite of continuous and dire warnings. Of course, world population growth rates have been slowing ever since the 1970s, and are expected to become negative in a couple of centuries....

"I would say that in fifty or less years from now most of our homes will be self sustaining, IE, off grid.."

If so, I would say that most energy will be generated very uneconomically....

"We'll all live better generation upon generation - for my money it isn't sustainable ad infinitum in a closed system.."

We are NOT living in a closed system! You have obviously not read or understood any of the references I gave. I enclose an excerpt which covers your point. Simon is answering the question of how, in an apparently limited system, we have been able to provide expanding resources for an apparently limitless population throughout ALL recorded history:


The paradox is that those abstract principles and speculative analyses seem so very logical and believable, whereas the facts themselves, the story of what has happened, appear wholly illogical and impossible to explain. After all, people are fruitful and they multiply but the stores of raw materials in the earth's crust certainly don't, so how can it be possible that, as the world's population doubles, the price of raw materials is cut in half?

It makes no sense. Yet it has happened. So there must be an explanation.

And there is: resources, for the most part, don't grow on trees. People produce them, they create them, whether it be food, factories, machines, new technologies, or stockpiles of mined, refined, and purified raw materials.

"Resources come out of people's minds more than out of the ground or air," says Simon. "Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths. Human beings create more than they use, on average. It has to be so, or we would be an extinct species."

The BIG mistake is to look at a current economic resource, created by current human ingenuity, and assume that it will remain constant while everything around it changes. 200 years ago Malthus predicted disaster using that theory, and it never happened, because human ingenuity created resources from things Malthus simply did not realise were available. Yet, in every age, people insist on repeating those provably wrong predictions....

[Norseman]

We are NOT living in a closed system! You have obviously not read or understood any of the references I gave.

Sorry DG but though I respect your views, you are mistaken in two areas; Firstly I did read your references and in fact I went further afield, Secondly I did understand (most) of what I read. I just failed to agree with it's ultimate conclusion. It doesn't make me correct, but merely decided upon my personal view.

The issue of a closed system - can't we just agree to disagree on what we mean by that phrase please? I mean simply that apart from the energy of the sun and the odd meteorite, our resources pre space travel are limited to those of the Earth's confines. The sun will become lethal at some point in any case and if we are still confined here that will be and end to it all anyway

To finish for now DG - You say 'the BIG mistake is to look at a current economic resource ....' I say in terms of no time or population constraints attached to his statements that the big mistake is not to look at the ultimate resource.

Regards Dave

[wullie/mk2]

and its still, raining  cats & dogs here,

[dodgy geezer]

Sorry DG but though I respect your views, you are mistaken in two areas; Firstly I did read your references and in fact I went further afield, Secondly I did understand (most) of what I read. I just failed to agree with it's ultimate conclusion...

Point taken   

The issue of a closed system - can't we just agree to disagree on what we mean by that phrase please? I mean simply that apart from the energy of the sun and the odd meteorite, our resources pre space travel are limited to those of the Earth's confines...

We are no longer pre-space-travel, or confined to the Earth. We are at the beginning of an expansion into a field which makes the Earth look very small indeed. But even if we stay on Earth alone for the next 500 years, we still can't predict what resources we will be using in that time...

To finish for now DG - You say 'the BIG mistake is to look at a current economic resource ....' I say in terms of no time or population constraints attached to his statements that the big mistake is not to look at the ultimate resource.
Regards Dave

As far as we currently know (leaving aside todays announcement from the LHC!) the ultimate resource is the Universe. We currently believe that to be about 46bn LY across. In 1900 we believed that it was around 30,000 LY across. So, exactly as Simon predicts, our understanding of resources grows continually throughout time. Simon also points out that nobody at any one point in time can specify a 'total resource'. For instance, if you had listed the current population size and their possessions to a human in the 1700s, he would have pointed out that there simply wasn't enough material in the world to make all those items. Simplifying things, he might assume that they would be made out of wood, which was getting short by the 1700s. He would not have heard of plastics, because they didn't exist then, and they couldn't have figured in his view of what the total material resource was. That's why we can NEVER define an ultimate resource, even limiting things to the Earth.

The one thing that inclines me towards Simon's view of resource is a study of history. People throughout recorded history have continually said that we were going to run out of things - it's not just been an issue since the 1970s. And yet we never have - the warnings have ALWAYS been incorrect, and for the reasons that Simon gives. Did you see Monbiot's piece in the Guardian yesterday, where he suddenly realises that Peak Oil isn't going to happen? Simon's point in a nutshell...

[essex2visuvesi]

and its still, raining  cats & dogs here,

where does that phrase come from?

[wullie/mk2]

Its a saying,that was often used in the past, but not by the younger generation of today,..see here for explanation

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/raining%20cats%20and%20dogs.html

[Norseman]

Still used here in Liverpool Wullie .................every beeping day

'The Guardian' DG I never read newspapers. I just prefer the radio these days, I even cancelled my New Scientist subscription a few years ago. With the radio you can get on with something else as you listen. Plus debates seem less slanted. Take your 'Simon Says' chap - the articles I read generally put his views forward but failed to state and then refute any opposing views. I would have been more impressed had the journalists been competent to explore the issue. Perhaps I found poor examples. Not to worry

Hey DG - if my son ever discovers what you have said, and that there is a scientific basis to his lifestyle, he will expect more resources than I could ever hope have.

Dave

[polaris]

Dear Wullie,

Hello again, no comm. dir. for a while... hope you keep well.

Now, it seems we have had a bit of wet down here one way and another (don't forget Wales it does exist in GB!). Not sure how Bonnie Scot. has faired, so, one is either up to one's top end of Kilt in the stuff, or the Still has run dry... and one is making whiskey out of something we do not want to know about! Might be a good year... who knows..........

As to wet, weeeel. Happend before, happened now, and, guess what, it will happen again! - prob. more reg. than before, but this has happened on a reg. basis very regularly over the last 200 years... so, nothing new.

What do the media make of all this.......... well.... lot's and lot's and lot's... nothing to sell better than bad news, and, guess what, lot's and lot's seem to fall for it time, after time, after time, after time.............

Who is and are the fools in all this................................................................................??????????????????????? LOL

Take no offence, just fun.

Regards, Bernard

[dodgy geezer]

'The Guardian' DG I never read newspapers.....

You are quite correct that newspapers no longer provide sensible comment on anything. However, if you want to find out what Monbiot (the darling of the environmentalists) is saying you have to read the Guardian, because that's where he publishes....

Hey DG - if my son ever discovers what you have said, and that there is a scientific basis to his lifestyle, he will expect more resources than I could ever hope have.

As, I suspect, you have consumed more resources than your father, as did he compared to your grandfather...

[Norseman]

The difference being that the latest generation does not work - whereas his forebears always have

DG - any idea how my son's eventual offspring are going to be provided with a further improved living standard? State benifits shrinking etc.

Dave

[dodgy geezer]

The difference being that the latest generation does not work - whereas his forebears always have...

   True enough!  If you didn't work a few hundred years ago you died. I suspect that this is the first generation where living standards have improved so much that the option of doing little or nothing in your life exists for the general public....

DG - any idea how my son's eventual offspring are going to be provided with a further improved living standard? State benifits shrinking etc.

If we want to follow Simon's theory precisely, I have two answers:

1 - No, in detail I have no idea; and I can't know according to the theory! New resources and living techniques uncovered by future generations are by definition unknown by current generations. That's like asking someone from the 1600s how you could put a bridge over the Humber Estuary. A visionary from that period might believe it was possible, but would have no idea how...

2 - In general terms, Simon points out that resources are not just forests or coal deposits. They are what we do with them - in other words, what resources ARE depends on human ingenuity. And it is essentially human ingenuity that provides us with constantly increasing living standards. So long as human ingenuity remains limitless, children will continually enjoy a better living standard than their parents.

I did say that this was likely to produce a book-length discussion.... 

[Colin Bishop]

Fracking then....

[Nordsee]

Just one question?  Where is Engerland?  Never heard of Engerland.  Is it near Gelderland?   

I live in Gelderland and I have looked at a local map and there is no sign of any Engerland, maybe it is in the County of Hardask?

[wullie/mk2]

I live in Gelderland and I have looked at a local map and there is no sign of any Engerland, maybe it is in the County of Hardask?

Maybe you have been looking at a Black & White map England, or Engerland as they sometimes shout at a football match,is next to Scotchland for some, but for those that live here, Scotland,or to those in Germany Schottland,

[Norseman]

Fracking then....

  an observation? or a suggestion for discussion Colin?

Pre recent deluge - in the 'drought' and hosepipe bans - how much water would they have been willing to pump into the ground had fracking not been suspended due to the earthquake? Does it also pollute water as the American experience seems to suggest?

see you tomorrow lads - off to work in a few minutes.

[wullie/mk2]

No peace for the ******then,as for the drought,...drought conditions today up here, but back to monsoon conditions tomorrow",Roll on summer from a slot machine"as whatsisname used to say,and for those that don,t,....know,....purrrrrrr S

[Norseman]

Either your accent has broadened considerably Wullie, or good old Polaris is giving you secret lessons on posting

Last night I spent over an hour (near Alsager in Cheshire) under a deluge of tropical proportions - and no shelter to be had.

Dave

[wullie/mk2]

No Rain as yet, but flood warnings for most of England,Wales,and everywhere else except here,long may it continue,...not the flooding

[polaris]

Norseman, I think I might know what you are driving at re fracking. Others might not know the concept meaning of same. B.

[Colin Bishop]

Norseman, I think I might know what you are driving at re fracking. Others might not know the concept meaning of same. B.

Well, it's had plenty of publicity in the papers as a method of releasing vast quantities of gas for energy. Just google the term for more information.

Colin

[wullie/mk2]

Are we talking about Shale, i seem to remember something in the papers recently,that they wanted to drill some test holes around Blackpool,

[Colin Bishop]

Yes, release of natural gas from shale deposits. Seems to have really paid off for the USA.

[polaris]

Dear Wullie,

Whilst I told the Mayhem System not to respond it has. No matter.

Fracking is a tried and tested solution to obtain hydrocarbons from the ground. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept, it works. What is considered a problem, can be categorised. Oil shale in Scotland has been a long standing Ind., it could be a greater one indeed these days if it was allowed to b, and it would work very successfully there if applied.

There is not a problem anywhere with this tech., if 'they' told people what might happen what might happen in the short term. There will never be created 'major quake results'. Shakes maybe, but I would have no hesition in creating heavier shakes than there have been to create a significant oil or gas flow for GB. RIGHT.... for GB, anything that now happens oil/gas for GB should be for GB.... it has been Nationalised. Therefore, my only reservation is, that it is for GB. And, I include any North Sea Oil in this, we are GB, and in this I absolutely stand.

Regards, Bernard