"...if growing and maintaining complexity costs energy, then energy supply is the master platform upon which all forms of complexity depends."-david korowicz_____________________________________________________________________slavic peoples are noted for their pessimism ( this may be an over-generalization...there must be optimistic slavs somewhere...and ozzie spengler was pretty pessimistic for a german...with good reason, but that's another post ) and david's surname strikes me as being deeply polish in origin ( i am of carpatho-rusyn extraction personally, on the enate side...anglo-irish on the other ) and this statement will strike some as being an unconscionable assault on the holy writ of growth and, additionally inconsequential environmentalist prating because technology will provide the answer...they are, of course, twenty-first century cargo cultists in need of a good dose of catton's book "overshoot" ( if i can make may way through a book by daniel yergin certainly they can read that )...no we aren't running out of energy completely...and probably won't...but it is getting to be more difficult and expensive to come by petroleum product and the alternative do not have anywhere near the energy density or ease of transport those products do...so to maintain current energy use levels extraction and transport and processing of lower grade materials has to become more complex...you have to do more tomorrow to get the same results as yesterday...entropy setting in...it's fourteen below zero ( fahrenheit ) as i write this sitting in a technology bubble that keeps me warm, tells me what the temperature is outside, lets me write on the interweb ( doubtless some will call it "opinionating' and still others "ranting"...you are, i suppose, legally and constitutionally entitled to that...you don't have the intellectual tools necessary to convince me to change my views however...and if it offends your worldview that deeply i am sure you can find philosophical solace with a click of your mouse )and, by extension, drive to work and to the supermarket where i can find stuff from all over the world to eat...a very complex web of producers and consumers trading goods and services across the world and all based on high quality energy...anyone see an achillies heel here? joseph tainter defines collapse ( in his book "the collapse of complex societies"...an slim academic book full of information )as an economic and cultural readjustment to a less complex system...a return to a simpler and more local way of life...as i sit here in a warm, well-lit room with the outside temperature now reading 15 below i wonder how long this complex system...so interconnected and so subject to the increasing likelihood of cascade failures can go on and how much of a "readjustment" on the part of people...especially people used to having light at the flick of a switch and heat on demand...the end of that abundant high quality energy will entail...i find pondering this on line deeply ironic...this machine is inert plastic ( petrochemicals ) and metals ( from ores that had to be mined , transported, smelted, refined , transported again, reconfigured into wires and electronic components, assembled, shipped again, purchased, transported again, programmed, and finally plugged into the grid...and that's just me and just one facet of one life...somewhere there are limits...my concern is that we have already passed them.
