OrionWorks wrote:
It seems to me that Kunstler is simply being a realist.
Someone who thinks that people will not respond to a severe energy crisis
by by inventing new technology is not realistic. What does he think we are
made of? People have transformed the whole face the planet, and we have it
within our power to populate the whole solar system. We are going to roll
over and play dead just because we run out of chemical energy!
"A useful maxim in engineering states that when
something sounds too good to be true, it generally
is not true."
There is honor in being a realist.
I see nothing realistic about this. It is a-historical. It is a sort of
thing a person says when he is living in the present and has no concept of
change, or history, no memory or experience of the past.
People have devised millions of inventions that seemed too good to be true
at first. Many seemed downright miraculous, or the work of the Devil. Think
about how people reacted to anesthetics, railroads, airplanes . . . Looking
around my desk I see a number of objects that in 1950 would have been
considered either physically impossible or at best science fiction hundreds
of years in the future: personal computers, thin screen televisions, a
handheld GPS unit that works anywhere in North America, a 1.5 GB hard disk
weighing 50 grams, an Internet connection, a telephone that can reach Japan
for five cents a minute.
Whether something "sounds" good or "seems" good is a value judgment that
has no bearing whatever on whether something actually exists or not.
Michael Faraday's dictum is the only guide: "Nothing is too wonderful to be
true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." For that matter, nothing
is too horrible to be true. Thermonuclear weapons are real. For all anyone
knows, avian flu might cross the boundary to our species and kill 150
million people, starting next week.
OTOH, what Kunstler doesn't possess is an imagination.
He lacks not only imagination, but knowledge of history and some very basic
technical knowledge. He should have known that you can fly airplanes or
power cars with hydrogen or hydrogen based synthetic fuels generated by
nuclear fission. This is not a complicated idea, and it was first proposed
in the 1940s.
There is much irony is this. IMHO, Kunstler's predictions are likely turn
out to be reasonably accurate . . .
These predictions will only come true if hysterical naysayers such as
Kunstler, Horgan and Rennie run things. Or right-wing fools who deny there
is a problem. If traditional leaders such as Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt
or Kennedy lead us, we will find substitutes for oil that will be far less
polluting, and cheaper in the long run. See chapter 19 of my book.
They are willing to put more of their faith in their own imagination, in
exploring the possibilities of what CAN be, rather than trying to maintain
a very realistic perception of the dire situations that are about to unfold.
No one is more realistic about the severity of the technical difficulties
than I. But to assume that people will not respond creatively -- as they
have always done in the past -- is not realism. It is nihilism. You have to
assume that human nature has changed, and that the skills that drove the
scientific and industrial revolutions have mysteriously atrophied.
I will grant, the worst-case scenarios are not unthinkable. As Jared
Diamond pointed out in the book "Collapse," civilizations do sometimes
destroy themselves, and ours is at present headed toward destruction. If we
continue to elect fools, and be guided by ignorant nihilists, we will be in
very serious trouble. And no matter what happens, sooner or later our
civilization will run out of steam, and science as we know it will come to
an end. For that matter, sooner or later our species will go extinct. But I
see no reason why these things should happen now rather than 100 million
years from now. We are still the same people who developed steam engines
and nuclear weapons. Why should anyone think we cannot manufacture 30
million solar generators and wind turbines, and produce twice as much
energy as we now do, or ten times more? Solar generators and wind turbines
are made from concrete and steel which are available in vast amounts. We
have more than enough windy unpopulated areas and deserts to deploy these
machines. Anyone who can do the arithmetic can see that we could supply far
more energy than we now do using these simple, robust, renewable sources.
Yes, the energy would be more expensive than today's gasoline -- for 20 or
30 years, anyway -- but not catastrophically expensive. As I said, it would
cost ~$8 a gallon. We are not going to starve to death at that rate. Our
cities will not crumble.
As usual, Arthur C. Clarke put it best, in the quote I put in Chapter 19:
"The heavy hydrogen in the seas can drive all our machines, heat all our
cities, for as far ahead as we can imagine. If, as is perfectly possible,
we are short of energy two generations from now, it will be through our own
incompetence. We will be like Stone Age men freezing to death on top of a
coal bed."
- Jed
