[Andre Jute[_2_]]

Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

First the dumbo Dersu Uzala referred us to:
http://dieoff.org/
and provided two quotations. The first is from David Price:
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and
it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have
helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of
their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective,
the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to
redress the planet's energy balance. David Price

David Price is rather obviously not too bright, in the Californian
manner of those who confuse moral relativity with Einsteinian
relativity. Let's follow the steps in a manner even David Price will
understand, though I doubt his acolyte the dumbo Dersu Uzala
ever will:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system. Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

2. David Price has incompetently grasped the middle meaning of
disorder or randomness in the system, and then tripped even more
incompetently over the third meaning of inefficient communication. For
instance, he no fewer than three times in a single short paragraph
imputes volition to a law of physics (e.g. "evolved in the service of
entropy"); laws of physics are distinguished from sentient beings by
having no volition. And even then he gets it arse about end: human
beings didn't "evolve" (another technical word of which Price doesn't
understand the meaning) in the service of this randomness which Price
confuses with entropy in energy, human beings were evolved *by* the
randomness of the Darwinian process.

3. In true California guru style, Price then goes into an ecstacy of
inconsequentiality: "the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a
transient episode that acts to redress the planet's energy balance".
Say what? Surely, Price's case, and the case of all the other
doomsayers, is that humans *created* an energy imbalance? Now we hear
at the same time that humans are the solution to the earth's
imbalance.

4. And note the volitional implication of the full sentence from which
I took the above piece of crap. Let's savour it: "Human beings like to
believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of
life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens
is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet's
energy balance." Gaia willed it, did she then? Oh, Earth Mother,
forgive us our sins! Let's see if I have this right: Gaia suffered an
excess of energy, like a boil. Therefore she used entropy to bring up
homo sapiens to use as a lance. Right, Mr Price? Hmm. All that energy
was dormant anyway. On the Price analysis, California guru style, it
seems Gaia is even more wasteful than humans. Perhaps we should spank
her with a few underground nuclear explosions.

5. There is so much wrong with Price's short paragraph that I could go
on several reams more about the silly linkages, but why raise the
profile of a clown who convinces only the most stupid of the already
committed? The most important conclusion is that Price is too thick
and too humourless to see that if we agree to his case that "Homo
sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the
planet's energy balance" the logical conclusion is that it is the
moral thing (if you think the Earth is more important than the humans
on it, as Price implicitly does) is to drive a 22ft car with a 8.5
liter engine and monstrous tailfins, to keep your heating *and* you
air condition running full speed ahead 24/7, and to burn, burn, burn.

The other quotation, even dumber, provided by the dumbo Dersu Uzala
is from one Joseph Tainter:

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.
The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is
cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about
through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one
or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.
The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary
change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and
less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested
above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial
nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter

Tainter is more subtle and insidious, but no less dumb and
inconsequential. He is however a lot more vicious, to the point of
being murderous:

1. He axiomatically assumes an energy shortage. That gets him tidily
around the truth that here is no such thing as an energy shortage. The
market adjusts to demand, price rises, demand falls to match it, as we
have seen recently. There is now more oil in the known reserves than
there was at any time in a century of energy scares. Anyone who thinks
that in another century we will still burn oil underrates human
ingenuity.

2. Tainter has as poor a grasp of history as Price. Is he really
claiming in "energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity"
that there were no family or larger groups before humanoids mastered
fire? That is obvious bull****. One of the depressing things about
these clowns is their unfamiliarity with history. For instance, can
Tainter really be unaware that the Neanderthals, who died out in the
Darwinian process, were magnificent environmental managers whereas our
own ancestors, who clearly survived, drove species to extinction over
cliffs, and so on? (Any of you guys have red hair? That's a
Neanderthal trait that has survived, from when the Cro-Magnon took
pity on contemporary greens and impregnated one of their women.
Gentlemen preferred blondes even then...).

3. Anyone with a map can see that the basis of the cultural complexity
of our world is distance; it was thus before travel and it was thus in
the era of the sailing ships (The Age of Renewable Power, surely!).
Ours is the age of communication, whether by travel or by ether, and
that has reduced rather than increased cultural diversity. Tainter is
full of crap.

4. Next, having made the unfounded assumption that we are in trouble,
Tainter jumps to the conclusion that we must do something about. He
tells us with lipsmacking relish of "much violence, starvation, and
loss of population". Malthus lives! Actually, things are better in
Africa and the Middle East now than they ever were. Millions fewer
infants are dying every year than as recently as 1950. The WHO, a
branch of the UN, publishes the numbers. Tainter should visit a
library occasionally. We *are* doing something about it, dickhead. If
you want us to do it faster, go help rather than sitting in an ivory
tower whining.

5. Tainter really gives the game away in his proscription for a
solution towards "a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will
come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations
makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology". Yup, Good old Uncle Joe Stalin,
sorry, I mean good old Uncle Joe Tainter wants us to remove the engine
of the good life -- and what pays for the salvation of all those
hungry Africans -- which is market capitalism. The only way that
"economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of
ideology" is by appointing a dictator. Without knowing another thing
about Tainter except his short paragraph quoted above, one can see
that he is a leftover Marxist who, his creed having self-destructed,
is now latching onto ecology to satisfy his consuming urge to control
his fellow humans, whom he sees not as individuals but en masse. A few
million necessary murders, eh, Mr Tainter? "Proscription" in the first
line of this paragraph is not an error -- it is a deliberate pun; it
says much for the low level of intelligence and education of the
people carrying on this sort of discussion on the net that I have to
explain such an obvious pun.

One flipper offered as his opinion on the
quotations by Price and Tainter the succinct one-word summary:
Crap

This, predictably, sent the original poster, the dumbo Dersu Uzala
, into a mouthfoaming rage:
I say, not crap! Does that mean I'm correct?

I bow to your superior rhetorical skills. Such a level of persuasive logic,
especially supported by the facts you present, can only leave myself in awe,
quiverting under the shadow of your most excellent denial, you fool. If you
were to jump off the Empire State building, I'm sure you'd say "everthing
fine, so far!" as you passed the mid-point of you descent. Did you read
anything at the website? Is there any claim there that you contest? What part
of 'finite resources' do you not understand?

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything at http://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing. Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC. For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient. And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

****
Anyone who wants to respond angrily to my analysis should note that I
am probably a better environmentalist than he is. For instance, I
haven't owned a car since 1992; of course nothing is wasted in my
house, everything is recycled. And, unlike the loudmouths, I have done
something for the starving, fighting in their wars, running a food
convoy in Africa, showing them how to rise against their oppressors,
suchlike; read all about it in my books. But I hate the slack thinking
and the vicious control-freakery of the clowns at dieoff and their
nasty little fellowtravellers like Dersu Uzala . If
trash like that are environmentalists, I don't want the name attached
to me; I'm happy to let the market and democracy look after me.

Andre Jute
Besporyadok, Prince of Chaos

[Peter Wieck]

On Sep 2, 7:30*pm, Andre Jute wrote:

Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

And

You have already reached that condition - it is just that your fingers
haven't caught up with your brain and are still dribbling out tripe
despite the emptiness behind them.

As I understand it, you do not drive mostly because you cannot afford
it what with petrol prices, insurance prices and even the price of
vehicles in that part of the world you distress with your presence.
That last part is likely because you cannot get a license to operate a
motor vehicle - it is against the law in most jurisdictions to license
those who present a danger to themselves and others as their natural
state.

As to your claim to being an "environmentalist" by virtue of not
owning a motor vehicle - and making a virtue of necessity by claiming
to recycle - it is just one more distortion of the fact that you more-
or-less might follow existing law. Somehow I do not perceive even the
smallest scintilla of altruism anywhere in your character, just acute
self-interest honed over many years of playing the chameleon so as not
to have to take a stand on much of anything, ever, anywhere. Were you
even slightly as you often claim to be the very dead last thing you
would do is brag about it.

Much smoke, many mirrors, damned little substance.

Go back to your bicycles - they don't know you so well in those groups
- you have more traction there, pun intended.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[Tom Sherman]

Andre Jute wrote:
Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

Useless eaters such as myself, obviously.

[...] And, of course, nuclear power is truly infinite.[...]

And I was under the impression that the Universe contained a finite
quantity of mass/energy.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken /
She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 4:52*am, Tom Sherman
wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

Useless eaters such as myself, obviously.

[...] And, of course, nuclear power is truly infinite.[...]

And I was under the impression that the Universe contained a finite
quantity of mass/energy.

Wherever did you learn that? Engineering school? You shoulda gone to
California for your education. There everything is possible, including
the impossible.

But, seriously, the finite quantity of mass/energy is just a light in
your eyes, intended to blind you when wielded by these necrotic
scrotums at dieoff.org. There is so much energy that what is important
is its interchangeability.

Finite is a quantity that matters nothing whatsoever unless it is
limited to mere decades of use or has no interchangeability. (Chrome
is one such, not because it is in short supply but because the ores
lie in areas of chronic political instability, that is, in permanent
war zones.)

Andre Jute
Economist. I leave the other sophisters to the politicians.

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 4:29*pm, still just me wrote:
On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:52:02 -0500, Tom Sherman

wrote:

[...] And, of course, nuclear power is truly infinite.[...]

And I was under the impression that the Universe contained a finite
quantity of mass/energy.

We can just tap into another universe when ours runs out.

Pass up the Black & Decker drill and raise the ladder a coupla
notches, will you.

AJ

[Michael Press]

In article
,
Andre Jute wrote:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work.

Excellent. The more degrees of freedom over which the energy
is dispersed, the greater the entropy.

For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system.

Best to dispense with that hoary misstatement; and anyway it
can only be charitably given any weight at all in
equilibrium thermodynamics.

Temperature is energy per degree of freedom.
Entropy is proportional to the log of the volume of
phase space compatible with the macro-state.

Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

Their mathematical formulations can be made to be similar.
Best not to extrapolate the metaphor beyond the point it
can bear up; and that is not very far.


Suppose a channel carries a stream of characters.
Each character is either A or B. The probability that
at each clock tick the character is A equals p
(and therefore the probability of B equals 1-p.)

The information rate of the channel is

(-p.log(p) - (1-p).log(1-p)).

The logarithm is take to base two and
the channel rate is given in bits per clock tick.

Observe that if p = 1 or p = 0, the rate is zero.
We get no information when we know exactly
what is coming down the channel. The rate is greatest
when p = 1/2.

There is a subtlety in the definition.
How is the probability assigned?

--
Michael Press

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 5:37*am, Michael Press wrote:
In article
,
*Andre Jute wrote:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work.

Excellent. The more degrees of freedom over which the energy
is dispersed, the greater the entropy.

For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system.

Best to dispense with that hoary misstatement; and anyway it
can only be charitably given any weight at all in
equilibrium thermodynamics.

Hah! But the environmentalists specifically posit a closed system,
which they would furthermore like to return to some static state that
never existed except in their fevered imaginations.

Temperature is energy per degree of freedom.
Entropy is proportional to the log of the volume of
phase space compatible with the macro-state.

Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

Their mathematical formulations can be made to be similar.
Best not to extrapolate the metaphor beyond the point it
can bear up; and that is not very far.

This isn't about the math, Michael, as is surely signalled by
"ironically". This is about malicious jerks like David Price either
stupidly or deliberately confusing morality and the laws of physics,
and thinking it clever to drag in important-sounding irrelevances.
This California guru brand of conservationism should be merely
laughable but because of the machinations of the IPCC, jerks like
Price and Tainter get standing and then a following and perhaps soon
some hysterical pol starts believing. All this is pretty dangerous,
and has already cost trillions, with the Kyoto Agreement as only the
most gross example so far.

Andre Jute
The last rationalist



Suppose a channel carries a stream of characters.
Each character is either A or B. The probability that
at each clock tick the character is A equals p
(and therefore the probability of B equals 1-p.)

The information rate of the channel is

(-p.log(p) - (1-p).log(1-p)).

The logarithm is take to base two and
the channel rate is given in bits per clock tick.

Observe that if p = 1 or p = 0, the rate is zero.
We get no information when we know exactly
what is coming down the channel. The rate is greatest
when p = 1/2.

There is a subtlety in the definition.
How is the probability assigned?

--
Michael Press

[Dersu Uzala]

Andre spewed:
But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything at http://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing.

I don't know about you, but I live on the planet Earth. Trust me, neglecting
the small increase in mass due to meteorites, it is a finite planet, and I
haven't read about any inter-planetary ore ships docking here.




Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC.

In a finite set(Earth), all sub-sets(oil) are finite. Can you handle this
math? Or do you believe new oil is made everyday? Abiotic like? How's the
North Sea's production going? Isn't the UK a net importer now? Even though the
North Sea oil fields have the most modern equipment, and easiest capital
access?


For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient.

How does one "refine" hydrogen from water without losing energy? Entropy, ya
know. A Nobel awaits you upon you answer. Zero point energy doesn't count.

And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports your insult
or apologize.


CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports this insult
or apologize. Really, I know you can read and work the internet. I don't care
if you have had a stroke, you should not be acting the fool when it is obvious
that your ability to reason is still present.

[Tom Sherman]

Dersu Uzala wrote:
Andre spewed:
But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything at http://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing.

I don't know about you, but I live on the planet Earth. Trust me, neglecting
the small increase in mass due to meteorites, it is a finite planet, and I
haven't read about any inter-planetary ore ships docking here.[...]

For you doubters of alien life on Earth, do a Google Groups search of
rec.bicycles.tech for "datakoll".

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
Gene Daniels for President!

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 5:57*am, (Dersu Uzala) wrote:
Andre spewed:

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything athttp://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing.

I don't know about you, but I live on the planet Earth. Trust me, neglecting
the small increase in mass due to meteorites, it is a finite planet, and I
haven't read about any inter-planetary ore ships docking here.

Which ores are in short supply? It is widely known, and leading
environmentalists were deeply embarrassed when they took a bet that
ore prices would skyrocket and lost the bet, that the prices of metals
and other commodities are in long-term decline through over-supply.

Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC.

In a finite set(Earth), all sub-sets(oil) are finite. Can you handle this
math? Or do you believe new oil is made everyday? Abiotic like? How's the
North Sea's production going? Isn't the UK a net importer now? Even though the
North Sea oil fields have the most modern equipment, and easiest capital
access?

Your manner of speaking, and your entire though-pattern, is
conditioned by your failure to grasp the human spirit, by the in
humanity of people in your camp.You speak as if there is some natural
law that we have to use petroleum forever. We don't have to. We have
coal and peat and nuclear energy and water energy -- and above all we
have human ingenuity. Long before the last oil is exhausted you won't
be able to give the filthy stuff away, except to the poor nations,
because we will have so much energy from other sources that it won't
be worth digging for oil, except in low-tech economies.

For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient.

How does one "refine" hydrogen from water without losing energy? Entropy, ya
know. A Nobel awaits you upon you answer. Zero point energy doesn't count..

The cost-benefit analysis considers the cost of extraction versus the
income from the use plus the indirect benefits to society (including
its environment).

And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports your insult
or apologize.

You posted the link, Dumbo, in which Tainter licked his lips about the
violent death of tens of millions and the removal of energy from
politics, which can only mean in the institution of a dictator and an
energy police on the model of the Gestapo. If that isn't giving
undeserving jerks like Tainter -- and by extension you, his acolyte --
control over your fellows, what is? You guys are a walking, talking
Stalinist nightmare.

CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports this insult
or apologize.

You already posted the link with the evidence, Dumbo: http://dieoff.org/.
You further posted the relevant quotations. If you don't agree with my
analysis, you must show us how energy policy can be removed from the
market and effectively policed without massive force. You must further
show how central planning will work better than it did in the
Communist Soviet Union or in China. The rest of us know the answer: it
can't work without mass murder.

Really, I know you can read and work the internet. I don't care
if you have had a stroke, you should not be acting the fool when it is obvious
that your ability to reason is still present.

Oh, I had a stroke almost forty years ago. I don't know where you ever
got the idea I am in any way impaired. As for my ability to reason, it
is precisely my analysis of the material you supplied which has
stopped you influencing impressionable minds with the lies of Price
and Tainter. I would call that a victory for reason over the enemies
of society.

Andre Jute
Nil carborundum illegitimi

[Dersu Uzala]

In article
,
says...

And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports your ins=
ult
or apologize.

You posted the link, Dumbo, in which Tainter licked his lips about the
violent death of tens of millions and the removal of energy from
politics, which can only mean in the institution of a dictator and an
energy police on the model of the Gestapo. If that isn't giving
undeserving jerks like Tainter -- and by extension you, his acolyte --
control over your fellows, what is? You guys are a walking, talking
Stalinist nightmare.

Licked his lips? I don't see it. If these 'green nazis' are so 'Stalinist'
(what? huh? rather strange conjunction of politics) I'd think that it would be
easy to cut and paste ONE sentence demonstating this. You can write hundreds
of lines, but not one quote to back your opinion.

Maybe you are thinking of Pentti Linkola, but he's rather obscure.

[Dersu Uzala]

Andre does understand, at some level.

Andre Jute:"All animals are locusts until famine weeds them."

[Dersu Uzala]

Amazon reviews of Tainter's work:

http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Compl...logy/dp/052138
673X

Tainter's project here is to articulate his grand unifying theory to explain
the strange and disturbing fact that every complex civilisation the world has
ever seen has collapsed.

Tainter first elegantly disposes of the usual theories of social decline
(disappearance of natural resources, invasions of barbarians, etc). He then
lays out his theory of decline: as societies become more complex, the costs of
meeting new challenges increase, until there comes a point where extra
resources devoted to meeting new challenges produce diminihsing and then
negative returns. At this point, societies become less complex (they collapse
into smaller societies). For Tainter, social problems are always (ultimately)
a problem of recruiting enough energy to "fuel" the increasing social
complexity which is necessary to solve ever-newer problems.

Complexity, writes Tainter, describes a variety of characteristics in a number
of societies. SOm aspects of complexity include many differentiated social
roles, a large class of administrators not involved in the production of
primary resources, energy devoted to different kinds of communication,
centralised government, etc. Societies become more complex in order to solve
problems. Complexity, for Tainter, is quantifiable. Where, for example, the
Cherokee natives of the U.S. had about 5,000 cultural artifacts (things
ranging from recipes to tools to tents) which were integral to their culture,
the Allied troops landing on the Normandy coast in 1944 had about 40,000.

Herein, however, lies the rub. Since, as Tainter writes, the "number of
challenges with which the Universe can confront a society is, for practical
purposes, infinite," complex societies need to keep on increasing their level
of complexity in order to survive new challenges. Tainter's thesis is that
these "investments in aditional complexity" produce fewer and fewer returns
with time, until eventually society cannot muster enough energy to fuel
complexity. At this point, society collapses.

Consider this example: A simple hunter-gatherer society with limited
agriculture (i.e. garden plots) is faced with a problem, such as a seasonal
drop in food production (or an invasion from its neighbours who have the same
problem and are coming over for food). The bottom line is, this society faces
an energy shortage. This society could respond to the food crisis by either
voluntarily declining in numbers (die-off, and unlikely) or by increasing
production. Most societies choose the latter. In order to increase production,
this society will need to either expand territorially (invade somebody else)or
increase agricultural production . In either case, this investment can pay off
substantially in either increased access to already-produced food or increased
food production.

But the hunter-gatheres of the above example incur costs as they try to solve
their food-shortage problem. If they conquer their neighbours, they have to
garrison those territories, thus raising the cost of government. If they start
agriculture on a larger or more intense scale in their own territories, they
have to create a new class of citizens to man the farms, distribute and store
the grain, and guard it from animals and invaders. In either case, the
increases in access to energy (food) are offset somewhat by the increased cost
of social complexity.

But, as the society gets MORE complex to confront newer challenges, the
returns on these increases in complexity diminish. Eventually, the costs of
maintaining garrisons (as the Romans found) is so high that both home and
occupied populations revolt, and welcome the invaders with their simpler way
of life and their lower taxes. Or, agricultural challenges (a massive drought,
or degradation of soils) are so great that the society cannot muster the
energy reserves to deal with them.

Tainter's book examines the Mayan, Chacoan and Roman collapses in terms of his
theory of diminishing marginal returns on investments in complexity. This is
the fascinating part of the book; the disturbing sections are Chapter Four and
the final chapter. In Chapter 4, Tainter musters a massive array of statistics
that show that modern society has been facing diminishing returns on
investments in complexity. There is a very simple reason for this: we solve
the easiest problems first. Take oil, for example. In 1950, spending the
energy equivalent of one barrel of oil in searching for more oil yielded 100
barrels in discovered oil. In 2004, the world's five largest energy companies
found less oil energy than they expended in looking for that energy. The
per-dollar return on R&D investment has dropped for fifty years. In education,
additional investments in programs, technology etc. no longer produce
increases in outcomes. In short, industrial society is looking at steadily
fewer returns on its investments in both non-human and human capital.

When a new challenge comes, Tainter argues, society will eventually be unable
to muster the necessary resources to deal with the crisis, and will revert--
in a painful and unhappy way-- to a much simpler way of life.

In his final chapter, Tainter describes the modern world's "arms race of
complexity" and makes some uncomfortable suggestions about our own future.
(...). In an age where, for example, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has yielded net
negative returns on investment even for the invaders (where's that cheap
oil?), and where additional investments in education and health care in
industrialised countries make no significant increases in outcomes, the
historical focus of Tainter's work starts to become eerily prescient.

The scary thing about this deeply thoughtful and thoroughly researched book is
its contention that the future, for all our knowledge and technology, might be
an awful lot like the past. Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to
you? (Report this)




71 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
A Landmark Study in Why Societies Collapse, January 22, 2006
By Allen B. Hundley (Midway, AR) - See all my reviews


To get an idea of the impact this book has had both among scholars and on the
general public one has only to look at its publishing record. It was written
by an academic for academics and published by a university press (Cambridge no
less) yet it is now in its fourteenth printing since its initial release in
1988.

Tainter argues that human societies exist to solve problems. He looks at a
score of societal collapses, focusing on three: Rome, the Maya, and the
Chacoan Indians of the American Southwest. As these societies solved problems
- food production, security, public works - they became increasingly complex.
Complexity however carries with it overhead costs, e.g. administration,
maintaining an army, tax collection, infrastructure maintenance, etc. As the
society confronts new problems additional complexity is required to solve
them. Eventually a point is reached where the overhead costs that are
generated result in diminishing returns in terms of effectiveness. The society
wastefully expends its resources trying to maintain its bloated condition
until it finally collapses into smaller, simpler, more efficient units. (Does
this sound like any contemporary societies we know?)

One of the powerful attractions of this book is that, although written by an
academic for a scholarly audience, the author is fully aware of his theory's
relevance to the future of our own society, comments upon which he reserves
for the final chapter. While Tainter states explicitly (writing in 1988) that
he does not believe the collapse of our civilization is imminent, in a
remarkably candid passage he characterizes the survivalist movement in the
U.S. (excluding the lunatic fringe element) as being a rational response to
concerns about the viability of our current political system. The same goes
for those in the self reliance, grow you own food movement. "The whole concern
with collapse and self-sufficiency may itself be a significant social
indicator, the expectable scanning behavior of a social system under
stress..." (p.211).

Keep in mind that Tainter is writing before the first Gulf War, Y2K, 9-11 and
before our current involvement in Iraq. New energy sources are the key, he
says, to maintaining economic well-being. "A new energy subsidy is necessary
if a declining standard of living and a future global collapse are to be
averted." By subsidy he means the development of new forms of energy. This
"development must be an item of the highest priority even if, as predicted,
this requires reallocation of resources from other economic sectors." (p.
215).

Almost twenty years have passed since Tainter wrote those words. I leave it
for you the reader of this review to judge the capability of our current
political system to respond to such a grave and obvious crisis.

I have given this book 5 stars not because it is the final answer to the
question of how civilizations or societies collapse but because it represents
an important step along the way to that answer. As Jared Diamond correctly
points out in his new "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,"
complex societies would be expected to be the best at staving off collapse
because they are by definition the most highly organized, with the best
information, resource and administrative structures to deal with new
challenges. Clearly other factors must be at work. Tainter however dismisses
all previous theories of collapse, calling many of them `mystical'. Included
in this latter group are many of the world's greatest thinkers from Plato and
Polybius to Gibbon and Toynbee.

What Tainter really means is that their explanations are not quantifiable,
therefore not scientific, and therefore unworthy of further consideration.
This is a most unfortunate mistake. Insight is insight regardless of whether
or not it is quantifiable. If a scientific approach to societal
decision-making always worked Robert McNamara's faith in body count statistics
should surely have resulted in a U.S. victory in Vietnam.

At one point Tainter states that individuals can never alter the course of
world history, only powerful long-term societal forces. This flies in the face
of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, from the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae
to Lee's bungling at Gettysburg, to Winston Churchill and Lord Dowding in the
Battle of Britain. (See my review on the latter.) The fact that at critical
junctures in history a handful of individuals have made a huge difference is
extremely frustrating to those in the `social science' community. They would
like to believe that with enough good statistics you can predict the future
with precision. This has never been and likely never will be the case, a
reality I came to terms with many years ago and the main reason I never
completed my doctoral studies in `political science'.

Allowing that Tainter's complexity model really does have considerable
explanatory power, the important question is can you have an advanced society
that is immune to complexity's dangers? The answer in this reviewer's opinion
is a qualified `yes' but such a society would have to be organized very
differently with far less interdependence, and hence fragility, than anything
we now know. If world events (terrorism, Iran, North Korea, etc.) continue
along the track they have taken in recent years, we may soon, for better or
worse, have the opportunity to find out. Comment | Permalink | Was this
review helpful to you? (Report this)




16 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Utterly brilliant work of genius, joins Allott's Health of Nations, August 9,
2007
By Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews


This is an utterly brilliant stunning work of genius. It begins with a
comprehensive review of what appears to be every work in English relative to
the topic being considered. The author has done a phenomenal job of both
dissecting and then discussed the varied authors contributing to each of the
following lists explanations for prior collapse of civilizations (from page
42):

1) Depletion or cessation of a vital resource
2) The establishment of a new resource base
3) The occurrence of some insurmountable catatrosphe
4) Insufficient response to circumstance
5) Other complex societies
6) Intruders
7) Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement or misbehavior
8) Social dysfunction
9) Mystical factors
10) Chance concatenation of events
11) Economic factors

This book is exceptionally well organized, well presented, and well spoken.
The complex discussion is delivered in easy to read and absorb constructs.
After a review and elegant dismissal of all of the prevailing theories, the
author leads us into his approach by positing the collapse of civiliazations
as resulting from the collapse of the larger systemic process for processing
information to effect the increasingly complicated system of systems. In the
author's words, at some point the cost of micro-managing a complex system is
so high, and yields such poor returns on investment, that the natural and
beneficial response of the whole is to collapse into more readily sustainable
and resilience smaller parts.

I am reminded of Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk
Technologies, in which he discusses how simple systems have single points of
failure easy to diagnose and correct; sophisticated systems have multiple
points of failure that interact in largely unforeseen ways and are very
difficult to diagnose and correct; and the finally, Earth and Humanity, a
system of systems so complex that "Intelligent Design" is failing us, and a
natural Darwinian selection is kicking in.

For America to have 27 robust secessionist movements and a plethora of "Home
Rule" regimes springing up local levels, while the Bush-Cheney regime runs the
nation into bankruptcy with their elective war in Iraq that has cost half a
trillion dollars that could have been better used to restore our failing
infrastructure and our failed schools, tells us all we need to know: the
federal government has collapsed, and the Republic as a whole is next absent
draconian public engagement and mandated electoral reform prior to 2008.

The author concludes that "complexity is a problem-solving strategy" and that
when it fails to solve the high-level threats or challenges, then the society
collapses so that smaller and more resilient parts might be more innovative
and adaptive, and hence survive better without the burden of inept "guidance"
from above.

In the context of this book, the 27 secessionist movements in America are
clearly what the author calls "resistance" to the now unaffordable higher
costs and lower results of the federal mismanagement of the nation, best
depicted by the grotesquely inept and even inhuman lack of effectiveness with
respect to New Orleans and the Katrina hurricane.

There are gems throughout the work, which joins that of Philip Allott, also of
Cambridge, who in his The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
suggested that the Treaty of Westphalia was a huge mistake, and we should have
elevated and recognized peoples instead of sovereign states, as the latter
have been too easily corrupted into aided the global elite to loot every
commonwealth. A few that I noted:

Military expenditures and arms races suck the health out of nations. See my
review of The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Cornell Studies in Security
Affairs), a book in which one author discusses the consequences of allowing
the military to dominate what passes for strategy in the budget, while the
politicians pander to domestic interests bereft of any grasp of international
reality, and the intellectuals posit solutions that have no political,
military, or overall holistic integration of all the sources of national power
over time and space. The books on War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by
America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and
Photographs from the Horror of It and The Folly of War: American Foreign
Policy, 1898-2005 are mounting in influence today.

The author notes that the physics of time and space make an extended dominance
of distant cultures and places impossible when relying solely on the force of
arms. I am of course reminding of Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World:
Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People as well as Derek Leebaert's The
Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World.

The author notes that no strategy can be considered viable that steals from
the future to support the present. This observation is in perfect harmony will
all that has been done by Herman Daly in Ecological Economics: Principles And
Applications and Paul Hawkins in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in
the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, among other works.

Collapse is cultural, systemic, a collapse of process, not of any discrete
event, institution, or location. The information processing becomes impossible
for a complex system that does not adapt from an industrial-era model of
command and control to an information era model of distributed localized
resilience. I think of The Sorrows of Empi Militarism, Secrecy, and the End
of the Republic (The American Empire Project) and The The Global Class War:
How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win
It Back on the one hand, and the varied books on the "wealth of knowledge,"
wealth of networks.

Although others including myself in my US Institute of Peace paper on virtual
diplomacy have expressed concern over the growing gap between people with
power and people with knowledge, this author has provided us with what may
well be the most erudite focused diagnosis of the coming collapse of the West,
a lumbering industrial era mammoth whose small elite brain cannot compete with
the sleeker Third World "tigers" that are using leap-ahead technologies to
avoid our legacy of ashes.

In my view, the West can be saved only if America achieves electoral reform
and restores the constitution, with a draconian reduction of federalism and
the federal budget, while restoring to the states all of the powers not
explicitly assigned to the three branches. Open Carry, Open Spectrum, all of
the "opens" must prevail against the rule of secrecy and the use of scarcity
to impoverish rather than enrich what should be "seven billion billionaires
(forthcoming from Medard Gabel)."

This is a righteous book. I have loaded two images from my own earlier work
(at my web site under the photo in Early Papers) and am now working on War and
Peace in the Digital Era. This book here is Ref A. Comments (17) | Permalink

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 6:38*pm, (Dersu Uzala) wrote:
Andre does understand, at some level.

Andre Jute:"All animals are locusts until famine weeds them."

Andre not only understands at all levels, he refuses to run with the
impressionable, thoughless herd of lemmings to which the anonymous
Dersu Uzala belongs.

Andre Jute
Himself. Thinking for himself.

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 6:29*pm, (Dersu Uzala) wrote:
In article
,
says...



And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports your ins=
ult
or apologize.

You posted the link, Dumbo, in which Tainter licked his lips about the
violent death of tens of millions and the removal of energy from
politics, which can only mean in the institution of a dictator and an
energy police on the model of the Gestapo. If that isn't giving
undeserving jerks like Tainter -- and by extension you, his acolyte --
control over your fellows, what is? You guys are a walking, talking
Stalinist nightmare.

Licked his lips? I don't see it. If these 'green nazis' are so 'Stalinist'
(what? huh? rather strange conjunction of politics) I'd think that it would be
easy to cut and paste ONE sentence demonstating this. You can write hundreds
of lines, but not one quote to back your opinion.

This is kindergarten debating trade tactics, to demand the same proof
over and over until the respondent tires of supplying it, and then to
claim a "victory".

I have already twice pointed out that the reference is Tainter, and
was supplied by the dumbo Dersu Uzala himself. Here, once more, is
Tainter's lipsmacking relish about the lingering death of tens of
millions:
a genuine collapse over a period of one
or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.

[Dersu Uzala]

Licked his lips? I don't see it. If these 'green nazis' are so 'Stalinist=
'
(what? huh? rather strange conjunction of politics) I'd think that it wou=
ld be
easy to cut and paste ONE sentence demonstating this. You can write hundr=
eds
of lines, but not one quote to back your opinion.

This is kindergarten debating trade tactics, to demand the same proof
over and over until the respondent tires of supplying it, and then to
claim a "victory".

I have already twice pointed out that the reference is Tainter, and
was supplied by the dumbo Dersu Uzala himself. Here, once more, is
Tainter's lipsmacking relish about the lingering death of tens of
millions:
a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much
violence, starvation, and loss of population.

I think we can all agree that the death of millions is a bad thing, but this
quote doesn't show any relish or lipsmacking. You may be projecting here, I
don't know. If a Doctor were to tell you that "You have cancer, and you will
suffer terribly, and your tumor is inoperable", would you claim the Doctor is
evil, and relishes your pain? The above line from Tainter is without any
emotional affect. It is just a simple statement of his views, and, as far as I
can tell, does not imply any desire for it to happen. Why is this so diffcult
for you to understand or admit? A kindergarten tactic is to repeatedly claim
proof has been provided where none has been offered.



Tainter then proceeds to offer what he has the cheek to call
a utopian alternative that...
will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial
nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter

He calls it utopian because it doesn't look like it will happen, not because
it will be perfection. I thought you fancy yourself to be 'literary', Andre,
you should understand the allusion. He's saying changes aren't going to happen
to address the need for alternative energy sources until reality smacks the
leaders of the world up against the side of their heads with a crises. He is
not saying that a disaster is desired, or to be encouraged to trick the world
into 'going green' as a smokescreen for totalitarian control. Jeez...talk
about giant dense globs of matter...


That's a prescription for central planning with violence, fascism as
practiced under Hitler, communism as practised under Stalin, Mao and
Pol Pot.
I have invited Dersu Urzala several times now to describe an
alternative mechanism for this murderous "utopia" that doesn't involve
"a few million necessary murders" but he appears not even to
understand the historical references.

Please, insult me on my actual errors, not assumed ignorance. I know the
reference.


Doesn't have to be murderous. How about tax credits for alternative energy?
How about similar infrastructure projects along the lines of the interstate
highways, waterways, etc., how about R&D along the likes of the Apollo and
Manhattan projects. (All centalized planning by, gasp!, governments)
Also, assuming that a severe energy crises does occur, central planning along
the lines that WWII nessecitated in the western democracies would be called
for.



Andre Jute
Bored with this fool

Repeated obtuseness and failure is boring, isn't it?

[Lord Valve]

Andre Jute wrote:

On Sep 3, 5:57 am, (Dersu Uzala) wrote:
Andre spewed:

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything athttp://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing.

I don't know about you, but I live on the planet Earth. Trust me, neglecting
the small increase in mass due to meteorites, it is a finite planet, and I
haven't read about any inter-planetary ore ships docking here.

Which ores are in short supply? It is widely known, and leading
environmentalists were deeply embarrassed when they took a bet that
ore prices would skyrocket and lost the bet, that the prices of metals
and other commodities are in long-term decline through over-supply.

Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC.

In a finite set(Earth), all sub-sets(oil) are finite. Can you handle this
math? Or do you believe new oil is made everyday? Abiotic like? How's the
North Sea's production going? Isn't the UK a net importer now? Even though the
North Sea oil fields have the most modern equipment, and easiest capital
access?

Your manner of speaking, and your entire though-pattern, is
conditioned by your failure to grasp the human spirit, by the in
humanity of people in your camp.You speak as if there is some natural
law that we have to use petroleum forever. We don't have to. We have
coal and peat and nuclear energy and water energy -- and above all we
have human ingenuity. Long before the last oil is exhausted you won't
be able to give the filthy stuff away, except to the poor nations,
because we will have so much energy from other sources that it won't
be worth digging for oil, except in low-tech economies.

For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient.

How does one "refine" hydrogen from water without losing energy? Entropy, ya
know. A Nobel awaits you upon you answer. Zero point energy doesn't count.

The cost-benefit analysis considers the cost of extraction versus the
income from the use plus the indirect benefits to society (including
its environment).

And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports your insult
or apologize.

You posted the link, Dumbo, in which Tainter licked his lips about the
violent death of tens of millions and the removal of energy from
politics, which can only mean in the institution of a dictator and an
energy police on the model of the Gestapo. If that isn't giving
undeserving jerks like Tainter -- and by extension you, his acolyte --
control over your fellows, what is? You guys are a walking, talking
Stalinist nightmare.

CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports this insult
or apologize.

You already posted the link with the evidence, Dumbo: http://dieoff.org/.
You further posted the relevant quotations. If you don't agree with my
analysis, you must show us how energy policy can be removed from the
market and effectively policed without massive force. You must further
show how central planning will work better than it did in the
Communist Soviet Union or in China. The rest of us know the answer: it
can't work without mass murder.

Really, I know you can read and work the internet. I don't care
if you have had a stroke, you should not be acting the fool when it is obvious
that your ability to reason is still present.

Oh, I had a stroke almost forty years ago. I don't know where you ever
got the idea I am in any way impaired. As for my ability to reason, it
is precisely my analysis of the material you supplied which has
stopped you influencing impressionable minds with the lies of Price
and Tainter. I would call that a victory for reason over the enemies
of society.

Andre Jute
Nil carborundum illegitimi

Hail, good Jute-fellow! And well met.

I see you're up to your usual sensible shenanigans. I'm not sure
why you'd want to argue with another in the endless series of commie
****heads who seem to pollute the online world, but...communism
it is, and not even presented in a shiny new wrapper (as by Obama
et al) at that. And I can't help but notice the myopic focus of those
who insist on considering the Earth as a closed system...which it
may indeed be on the micro level; however, on the macro level (which
this particular type of clod seems to be completely incapable of
perceiving) there are quadrillions of tonnes of resources floating
around waiting for some enterprising businessmen to snap them up,
and that's just in this solar system alone. Metals, organics, gases,
water, unlimited solar power...and most of it eminently accessible
using technologies which have existed since the 1950s. And anyone
who thinks that's balderdash should consider the reaction of someone
from, say, 1910, confronted with the prospect of obtaining petroleum
from a hole drilled a mile beneath the surface of the ocean: "Absolutely
impossible - never happen." Sure...only now, it's routine - and has been
for quite awhile.

Right about here is where the scoffers will boil out of the woodwork,
****ing and moaning about impossibilities and huge infrastructure
investments and whatnot. Just like that dude from 1910. These are
nearsighted people, and they will continue to **** on each other's
shoes.

At any rate, wherever you find someone advocating massive
control of any natural resource, you can bet your sweet arse
you've encountered a commie. And that commie will almost
certainly be painted green, for within the green movement is
where most of them currently reside...although the Bear is
grumbling of late. Perhaps it was just hibernating, eh? ;-)

Well - gotta go do my exercises. I severed my quadriceps
tendon a little more than a couple of months ago, and I'm currently
in the process of stretching the sewed-together remains
of it back into a functional system which will allow my knee
to bend more than the 90 degrees it is currently capable
of. I fear that at some point I shall have to take up bicycle
riding as a form of rehabilitation; fortunately, that is at least
on the other side of the coming winter. Until then, I shall
be content with hobbling around with my cane...when I'm not
styling through Denver in my Sprinter, an 11-foot high monster
which I can easily walk around in. (I don't think I could drive
anything smaller, since my right leg would have to be much
more functional than it currently is to work the pedals in
one of those miniature green-weenie things which pass
for automobiles these days.) I can, however, work the
pedals underneath my Hammond/Roland keyboard rig,
and I do have more time these days to practice... ;-)

Be well.

Lord Valve
alias Willie the Gimp

[Clive George]

"Lord Valve" wrote in message
...

when I'm not styling through Denver in my Sprinter, an 11-foot high
monster which I can easily walk around in.

Chortle. It's a delivery van. About as stylish as brown paper.

[Lord Valve]

Clive George wrote:

"Lord Valve" wrote in message
...

when I'm not styling through Denver in my Sprinter, an 11-foot high
monster which I can easily walk around in.

Chortle. It's a delivery van. About as stylish as brown paper.

Chortle all you'd like, asswipe...

It's a magnificent vehicle, a Mercedes van. Many of them
are in use as limousines, ambulances, etc. And the CRD
turbo-diesel power plant will smoke tires - and get 27 MPG
on the highway, which ain't too shabby for something rated
to carry 1500 kg. 20 in the city. Enjoy your Smart Car or
your Vespa, Clive. It's "you."

http://www.dodge.com/en/2008/sprinte...ngr/index.html

Real Men Drive Sprinters. ;-)

Lord Valve
Stylin'

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 8, 5:04*pm, "Clive George" wrote:
"Lord Valve" wrote in message

...

when I'm not styling through Denver in my Sprinter, an 11-foot high
monster which I can easily walk around in.

Chortle. It's a delivery van. About as stylish as brown paper.

You have a dumb "talent" for picking on the wrong guys, Clive. It must
come from being such a British Blimp. Having an opinion is one thing,
being rudely opinionated is another. -- Andre Jute

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 8, 4:55*pm, Lord Valve wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Sep 3, 5:57 am, (Dersu Uzala) wrote:
Andre spewed:

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything athttp://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing.

I don't know about you, but I live on the planet Earth. Trust me, neglecting
the small increase in mass due to meteorites, it is a finite planet, and I
haven't read about any inter-planetary ore ships docking here.

Which ores are in short supply? It is widely known, and leading
environmentalists were deeply embarrassed when they took a bet that
ore prices would skyrocket and lost the bet, that the prices of metals
and other commodities are in long-term decline through over-supply.

Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC.

In a finite set(Earth), all sub-sets(oil) are finite. Can you handle this
math? Or do you believe new oil is made everyday? Abiotic like? How's the
North Sea's production going? Isn't the UK a net importer now? Even though the
North Sea oil fields have the most modern equipment, and easiest capital
access?

Your manner of speaking, and your entire though-pattern, is
conditioned by your failure to grasp the human spirit, by the in
humanity of people in your camp.You speak as if there is some natural
law that we have to use petroleum forever. We don't have to. We have
coal and peat and nuclear energy and water energy -- and above all we
have human ingenuity. Long before the last oil is exhausted you won't
be able to give the filthy stuff away, except to the poor nations,
because we will have so much energy from other sources that it won't
be worth digging for oil, except in low-tech economies.

For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient.

How does one "refine" hydrogen from water without losing energy? Entropy, ya
know. A Nobel awaits you upon you answer. Zero point energy doesn't count.

The cost-benefit analysis considers the cost of extraction versus the
income from the use plus the indirect benefits to society (including
its environment).

And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports your insult
or apologize.

You posted the link, Dumbo, in which Tainter licked his lips about the
violent death of tens of millions and the removal of energy from
politics, which can only mean in the institution of a dictator and an
energy police on the model of the Gestapo. If that isn't giving
undeserving jerks like Tainter -- and by extension you, his acolyte --
control over your fellows, what is? You guys are a walking, talking
Stalinist nightmare.

CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

An assumption without evidence. Please post a link that supports this insult
or apologize.

You already posted the link with the evidence, Dumbo:http://dieoff.org/..
You further posted the relevant quotations. If you don't agree with my
analysis, you must show us how energy policy can be removed from the
market and effectively policed without massive force. You must further
show how central planning will work better than it did in the
Communist Soviet Union or in China. The rest of us know the answer: it
can't work without mass murder.

Really, I know you can read and work the internet. I don't care
if you have had a stroke, you should not be acting the fool when it is obvious
that your ability to reason is still present.

Oh, I had a stroke almost forty years ago. I don't know where you ever
got the idea I am in any way impaired. As for my ability to reason, it
is precisely my analysis of the material you supplied which has
stopped you influencing impressionable minds with the lies of Price
and Tainter. I would call that a victory for reason over the enemies
of society.

Andre Jute
Nil carborundum illegitimi

Hail, good Jute-fellow! *And well met.

I see you're up to your usual sensible shenanigans. *I'm not sure
why you'd want to argue with another in the endless series of commie
****heads who seem to pollute the online world, but...communism
it is, and not even presented in a shiny new wrapper (as by Obama
et al) at that. *And I can't help but notice the myopic focus of those
who insist on considering the Earth as a closed system...which it
may indeed be on the micro level; however, on the macro level (which
this particular type of clod seems to be completely incapable of
perceiving) there are quadrillions of tonnes of resources floating
around waiting for some enterprising businessmen to snap them up,
and that's just in this solar system alone. *Metals, organics, gases,
water, unlimited solar power...and most of it eminently accessible
using technologies which have existed since the 1950s. *And anyone
who thinks that's balderdash should consider the reaction of someone
from, say, 1910, confronted with the prospect of obtaining petroleum
from a hole drilled a mile beneath the surface of the ocean: *"Absolutely
impossible - never happen." *Sure...only now, it's routine - and has been
for quite awhile.

Right about here is where the scoffers will boil out of the woodwork,
****ing and moaning about impossibilities and huge infrastructure
investments and whatnot. *Just like that dude from 1910. *These are
nearsighted people, and they will continue to **** on each other's
shoes.

At any rate, wherever you find someone advocating massive
control of any natural resource, you can bet your sweet arse
you've encountered a commie. *And that commie will almost
certainly be painted green, for within the green movement is
where most of them currently reside...although the Bear is
grumbling of late. *Perhaps it was just hibernating, eh? *;-)

Well - gotta go do my exercises. I severed my quadriceps
tendon a little more than a couple of months ago, and I'm currently
in the process of stretching the sewed-together remains
of it back into a functional system which will allow my knee
to bend more than the 90 degrees it is currently capable
of. *I fear that at some point I shall have to take up bicycle
riding as a form of rehabilitation; fortunately, that is at least
on the other side of the coming winter. *Until then, I shall
be content with hobbling around with my cane...when I'm not
styling through Denver in my Sprinter, an 11-foot high monster
which I can easily walk around in. *(I don't think I could drive
anything smaller, since my right leg would have to be much
more functional than it currently is to work the pedals in
one of those miniature green-weenie things which pass
for automobiles these days.) *I can, however, work the
pedals underneath my Hammond/Roland keyboard rig,
and I do have more time these days to practice... *;-)

Be well.

Lord Valve
alias Willie the Gimp

Yah, sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when I had a firing squad
all of my own to deal with commies and fellow travellers (what Lenin
described as "useful idiots") sans the wear and tear on my patience
that accompanies talking to these slow-learning congenital idiots.
Things really have come to a pass when a libertarian like me is more
liberal than the eco-lefties -- or perhaps my patience is just
shortening as I grow older, perhaps it always was like that.

Andre Jute
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/B...20CYCLING.html

[Peter Wieck]

Lemme see...

Three answers to the same issue.

Medication slipping again, Andre? Certainly your wit has failed
miserably if this is the best you can do.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[Michael Press]

In article
,
Andre Jute wrote:

[...]

Yah, sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when I had a firing squad
all of my own to deal with commies and fellow travellers (what Lenin
described as "useful idiots") sans the wear and tear on my patience
that accompanies talking to these slow-learning congenital idiots.
Things really have come to a pass when a libertarian like me is more
liberal than the eco-lefties -- or perhaps my patience is just
shortening as I grow older, perhaps it always was like that.

Edward? Is that you?

--
Michael Press

[John Byrns]

In article ,
Lord Valve wrote:

Hail, good Jute-fellow! And well met.

I see you're up to your usual sensible shenanigans. I'm not sure
why you'd want to argue with another in the endless series of commie
****heads who seem to pollute the online world, but...communism
it is, and not even presented in a shiny new wrapper (as by Obama
et al) at that. And I can't help but notice the myopic focus of those
who insist on considering the Earth as a closed system...which it
may indeed be on the micro level; however, on the macro level (which
this particular type of clod seems to be completely incapable of
perceiving) there are quadrillions of tonnes of resources floating
around waiting for some enterprising businessmen to snap them up,
and that's just in this solar system alone. Metals, organics, gases,
water, unlimited solar power...and most of it eminently accessible
using technologies which have existed since the 1950s. And anyone
who thinks that's balderdash should consider the reaction of someone
from, say, 1910, confronted with the prospect of obtaining petroleum
from a hole drilled a mile beneath the surface of the ocean: "Absolutely
impossible - never happen." Sure...only now, it's routine - and has been
for quite awhile.

Right about here is where the scoffers will boil out of the woodwork,
****ing and moaning about impossibilities and huge infrastructure
investments and whatnot. Just like that dude from 1910. These are
nearsighted people, and they will continue to **** on each other's
shoes.

At any rate, wherever you find someone advocating massive
control of any natural resource, you can bet your sweet arse
you've encountered a commie. And that commie will almost
certainly be painted green, for within the green movement is
where most of them currently reside...although the Bear is
grumbling of late. Perhaps it was just hibernating, eh? ;-)

Well - gotta go do my exercises. I severed my quadriceps
tendon a little more than a couple of months ago, and I'm currently
in the process of stretching the sewed-together remains
of it back into a functional system which will allow my knee
to bend more than the 90 degrees it is currently capable
of.

Didn't your surgeons have one of those special tools that punches a special
pattern of holes into the tendon that allows it to be lengthened and then the
holes grow/fill in permanently lengthening the tendon?

--
Regards,

John Byrns

Surf my web pages at, http://fmamradios.com/

[Patrick Turner]

John Byrns wrote:

In article ,
Lord Valve wrote:

Hail, good Jute-fellow! And well met.

I see you're up to your usual sensible shenanigans. I'm not sure
why you'd want to argue with another in the endless series of commie
****heads who seem to pollute the online world, but...communism
it is, and not even presented in a shiny new wrapper (as by Obama
et al) at that. And I can't help but notice the myopic focus of those
who insist on considering the Earth as a closed system...which it
may indeed be on the micro level; however, on the macro level (which
this particular type of clod seems to be completely incapable of
perceiving) there are quadrillions of tonnes of resources floating
around waiting for some enterprising businessmen to snap them up,
and that's just in this solar system alone. Metals, organics, gases,
water, unlimited solar power...and most of it eminently accessible
using technologies which have existed since the 1950s. And anyone
who thinks that's balderdash should consider the reaction of someone
from, say, 1910, confronted with the prospect of obtaining petroleum
from a hole drilled a mile beneath the surface of the ocean: "Absolutely
impossible - never happen." Sure...only now, it's routine - and has been
for quite awhile.

Right about here is where the scoffers will boil out of the woodwork,
****ing and moaning about impossibilities and huge infrastructure
investments and whatnot. Just like that dude from 1910. These are
nearsighted people, and they will continue to **** on each other's
shoes.

At any rate, wherever you find someone advocating massive
control of any natural resource, you can bet your sweet arse
you've encountered a commie. And that commie will almost
certainly be painted green, for within the green movement is
where most of them currently reside...although the Bear is
grumbling of late. Perhaps it was just hibernating, eh? ;-)

Well - gotta go do my exercises. I severed my quadriceps
tendon a little more than a couple of months ago, and I'm currently
in the process of stretching the sewed-together remains
of it back into a functional system which will allow my knee
to bend more than the 90 degrees it is currently capable
of.

Didn't your surgeons have one of those special tools that punches a special
pattern of holes into the tendon that allows it to be lengthened and then the
holes grow/fill in permanently lengthening the tendon?

Yeah, them tha doctors can do some real geewhiz things these days.

But hope is at hand, and LV can always consult a better expert.

I snapped a cruciate ligament in one knee 42 years ago which made the
joint sloppy,
and eventually it wore a bit, and became chronically inflamed after a
week of
climbing ladders with buckets of cement in one hand for roof tile
repairs.
Then the good knee followed suit, so I hade 2 legs with less than 90D
bend.
The condition went on for years until I had a minor op to trim the
cartlidges,
and for the last 2 years I've been riding a bike 200km a week, and
making a lot of younger men look weak
and slow.
I've got 135D bend now, which is enough.
My weight went from 102Kg to 81Kg in 6 mths after changing diet to that
of the keen athlete
and doing the hard work on the bicycle.

If you don't keep fit, you pay a price, **** happens when the body
cannot
keep the appointments the brian makes for the body.

One has to chuck out all the BS and addopt a New Way to stay fit and
active.

And the older you get, the better you was.

Patrick Turner.

--
Regards,

John Byrns

Surf my web pages at, http://fmamradios.com/

[Dersu Uzala]

Hail, good Jute-fellow! And well met.

I see you're up to your usual sensible shenanigans. I'm not sure
why you'd want to argue with another in the endless series of commie
****heads who seem to pollute the online world, but...communism
it is, and not even presented in a shiny new wrapper (as by Obama
et al) at that. And I can't help but notice the myopic focus of those
who insist on considering the Earth as a closed system...which it
may indeed be on the micro level; however, on the macro level (which
this particular type of clod seems to be completely incapable of
perceiving) there are quadrillions of tonnes of resources floating
around waiting for some enterprising businessmen to snap them up,
and that's just in this solar system alone. Metals, organics, gases,
water, unlimited solar power...and most of it eminently accessible
using technologies which have existed since the 1950s. And anyone
who thinks that's balderdash should consider the reaction of someone
from, say, 1910, confronted with the prospect of obtaining petroleum
from a hole drilled a mile beneath the surface of the ocean: "Absolutely
impossible - never happen." Sure...only now, it's routine - and has been
for quite awhile.

At any rate, wherever you find someone advocating massive
control of any natural resource, you can bet your sweet arse
you've encountered a commie. And that commie will almost
certainly be painted green, for within the green movement is
where most of them currently reside...although the Bear is
grumbling of late. Perhaps it was just hibernating, eh? ;-)

Be well.

Lord Valve
alias Willie the Gimp


I enjoyed reading Heinlein, Niven, Pohl, Brin, etc, when I was eleven.
Oh no! Commies hiding out at the recycling center! Save us!
If you want a real commie, look no further than Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson, his recent action is third in magnitude after Lenin's 1917 Russia,
and Mao's glorious people's revolution.
My bike has Shimano 600 gearset from the eighties, and a Brooks copper rivet
leather saddle from 1975, so liking tubes for audio is unexpected.

Don't let ideology blind you to reality.

[Patrick Turner]

Andre Jute wrote:

Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

First the dumbo Dersu Uzala referred us to:
http://dieoff.org/
and provided two quotations. The first is from David Price:
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and
it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have
helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of
their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective,
the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to
redress the planet's energy balance. David Price

David Price is rather obviously not too bright, in the Californian
manner of those who confuse moral relativity with Einsteinian
relativity. Let's follow the steps in a manner even David Price will
understand, though I doubt his acolyte the dumbo Dersu Uzala
ever will:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system. Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

2. David Price has incompetently grasped the middle meaning of
disorder or randomness in the system, and then tripped even more
incompetently over the third meaning of inefficient communication. For
instance, he no fewer than three times in a single short paragraph
imputes volition to a law of physics (e.g. "evolved in the service of
entropy"); laws of physics are distinguished from sentient beings by
having no volition. And even then he gets it arse about end: human
beings didn't "evolve" (another technical word of which Price doesn't
understand the meaning) in the service of this randomness which Price
confuses with entropy in energy, human beings were evolved *by* the
randomness of the Darwinian process.

3. In true California guru style, Price then goes into an ecstacy of
inconsequentiality: "the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a
transient episode that acts to redress the planet's energy balance".
Say what? Surely, Price's case, and the case of all the other
doomsayers, is that humans *created* an energy imbalance? Now we hear
at the same time that humans are the solution to the earth's
imbalance.

4. And note the volitional implication of the full sentence from which
I took the above piece of crap. Let's savour it: "Human beings like to
believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of
life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens
is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet's
energy balance." Gaia willed it, did she then? Oh, Earth Mother,
forgive us our sins! Let's see if I have this right: Gaia suffered an
excess of energy, like a boil. Therefore she used entropy to bring up
homo sapiens to use as a lance. Right, Mr Price? Hmm. All that energy
was dormant anyway. On the Price analysis, California guru style, it
seems Gaia is even more wasteful than humans. Perhaps we should spank
her with a few underground nuclear explosions.

5. There is so much wrong with Price's short paragraph that I could go
on several reams more about the silly linkages, but why raise the
profile of a clown who convinces only the most stupid of the already
committed? The most important conclusion is that Price is too thick
and too humourless to see that if we agree to his case that "Homo
sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the
planet's energy balance" the logical conclusion is that it is the
moral thing (if you think the Earth is more important than the humans
on it, as Price implicitly does) is to drive a 22ft car with a 8.5
liter engine and monstrous tailfins, to keep your heating *and* you
air condition running full speed ahead 24/7, and to burn, burn, burn.

The other quotation, even dumber, provided by the dumbo Dersu Uzala
is from one Joseph Tainter:

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.
The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is
cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about
through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one
or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.
The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary
change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and
less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested
above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial
nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter

Tainter is more subtle and insidious, but no less dumb and
inconsequential. He is however a lot more vicious, to the point of
being murderous:

1. He axiomatically assumes an energy shortage. That gets him tidily
around the truth that here is no such thing as an energy shortage. The
market adjusts to demand, price rises, demand falls to match it, as we
have seen recently. There is now more oil in the known reserves than
there was at any time in a century of energy scares. Anyone who thinks
that in another century we will still burn oil underrates human
ingenuity.

2. Tainter has as poor a grasp of history as Price. Is he really
claiming in "energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity"
that there were no family or larger groups before humanoids mastered
fire? That is obvious bull****. One of the depressing things about
these clowns is their unfamiliarity with history. For instance, can
Tainter really be unaware that the Neanderthals, who died out in the
Darwinian process, were magnificent environmental managers whereas our
own ancestors, who clearly survived, drove species to extinction over
cliffs, and so on? (Any of you guys have red hair? That's a
Neanderthal trait that has survived, from when the Cro-Magnon took
pity on contemporary greens and impregnated one of their women.
Gentlemen preferred blondes even then...).

3. Anyone with a map can see that the basis of the cultural complexity
of our world is distance; it was thus before travel and it was thus in
the era of the sailing ships (The Age of Renewable Power, surely!).
Ours is the age of communication, whether by travel or by ether, and
that has reduced rather than increased cultural diversity. Tainter is
full of crap.

4. Next, having made the unfounded assumption that we are in trouble,
Tainter jumps to the conclusion that we must do something about. He
tells us with lipsmacking relish of "much violence, starvation, and
loss of population". Malthus lives! Actually, things are better in
Africa and the Middle East now than they ever were. Millions fewer
infants are dying every year than as recently as 1950. The WHO, a
branch of the UN, publishes the numbers. Tainter should visit a
library occasionally. We *are* doing something about it, dickhead. If
you want us to do it faster, go help rather than sitting in an ivory
tower whining.

5. Tainter really gives the game away in his proscription for a
solution towards "a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will
come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations
makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology". Yup, Good old Uncle Joe Stalin,
sorry, I mean good old Uncle Joe Tainter wants us to remove the engine
of the good life -- and what pays for the salvation of all those
hungry Africans -- which is market capitalism. The only way that
"economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of
ideology" is by appointing a dictator. Without knowing another thing
about Tainter except his short paragraph quoted above, one can see
that he is a leftover Marxist who, his creed having self-destructed,
is now latching onto ecology to satisfy his consuming urge to control
his fellow humans, whom he sees not as individuals but en masse. A few
million necessary murders, eh, Mr Tainter? "Proscription" in the first
line of this paragraph is not an error -- it is a deliberate pun; it
says much for the low level of intelligence and education of the
people carrying on this sort of discussion on the net that I have to
explain such an obvious pun.

One flipper offered as his opinion on the
quotations by Price and Tainter the succinct one-word summary:
Crap

This, predictably, sent the original poster, the dumbo Dersu Uzala
, into a mouthfoaming rage:
I say, not crap! Does that mean I'm correct?

I bow to your superior rhetorical skills. Such a level of persuasive logic,
especially supported by the facts you present, can only leave myself in awe,
quiverting under the shadow of your most excellent denial, you fool. If you
were to jump off the Empire State building, I'm sure you'd say "everthing
fine, so far!" as you passed the mid-point of you descent. Did you read
anything at the website? Is there any claim there that you contest? What part
of 'finite resources' do you not understand?

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything at http://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing. Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC. For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient. And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

****
Anyone who wants to respond angrily to my analysis should note that I
am probably a better environmentalist than he is. For instance, I
haven't owned a car since 1992; of course nothing is wasted in my
house, everything is recycled. And, unlike the loudmouths, I have done
something for the starving, fighting in their wars, running a food
convoy in Africa, showing them how to rise against their oppressors,
suchlike; read all about it in my books. But I hate the slack thinking
and the vicious control-freakery of the clowns at dieoff and their
nasty little fellowtravellers like Dersu Uzala . If
trash like that are environmentalists, I don't want the name attached
to me; I'm happy to let the market and democracy look after me.

Andre Jute
Besporyadok, Prince of Chaos

Nice analysis Andre, and doncha worry, you'll be attacked for it.

But doncha ever get some inklng that homo sapiens is a rather temporary
species of life form?

Its the one that comes onto a farm, and leaves it in far worse shape
them when it goes off the farm.

But the younguns will maybe not care much and not worry either, just as
long as a there's a market
economy to keep em able to all be middle class, with aspirations to be
top class,
and own the biggest house in town.

I won't be around long enough to see if anything I think about the
future might come true,
but I do reckon **** will keep happening.

Patrick Turner.

[Peter Wieck]

On Sep 3, 2:16*am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:

A great deal of crap.

Patrick,

Sadly, the vapid creature that passes for what once was Andre Jute
tends to expound these days only for the purposes of character
assasination - and when doing so, only with anecdotes of doubtful
veracity entirely unsupported by any independently verifiable source.

Lots of words, empty of substance. Sure, it has its internal logic -
but that fails with the slightest of investigation.

Yes, he will be and is being attacked for it. Not just because it
seems to be his entire purpose in life these days, but because the
content is without substance. This entirely apart from his being a
braggart, liar, poseur and charlatan in his own right.

That he is attacking someone whose world-view is not one that I share
makes no nevermind. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a very,
very dangerous view of the world. Irrational, ignorant, pretentious
fools remain such whether they agree with you or not.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[Patrick Turner]

Peter Wieck wrote:

On Sep 3, 2:16 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:

A great deal of crap.

Patrick,

Sadly, the vapid creature that passes for what once was Andre Jute
tends to expound these days only for the purposes of character
assasination - and when doing so, only with anecdotes of doubtful
veracity entirely unsupported by any independently verifiable source.

Lots of words, empty of substance. Sure, it has its internal logic -
but that fails with the slightest of investigation.

Yes, he will be and is being attacked for it. Not just because it
seems to be his entire purpose in life these days, but because the
content is without substance. This entirely apart from his being a
braggart, liar, poseur and charlatan in his own right.


That he is attacking someone whose world-view is not one that I share
makes no nevermind. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a very,
very dangerous view of the world. Irrational, ignorant, pretentious
fools remain such whether they agree with you or not.


Well, I just left the man alone while considering the ball game.

There are a lot of people you can attack, but I just ain't got the time,
and if I did have the time, and I did attack or counter attack more,
I'd have less time to make amps and ride a bicycle, and less time to
get old ungracefully.

People are welcome to think the very opposite of what I think.
My reaction might be
"Yeah, how about that", but without fully understanding it,
or changeing my life's course.

Change to human conditions during our occupation of the planet is
certain, and just how exactly
is uncertain.

So, be happy, and don't worry.

Morgan Jones has a design of amp which uses balanced FB from an OPT sec
to an input diff pair. There is a balanced input, but the OPT sec
than has to float on a CCS.

That's a real bother because if there's a short from B+ to OPT sec, the
input pair cop the B+, and the speakers also go to the B+ voltage, so
its an unsafe design.

But suppose we have a 3 stage amp, with two LTPs for input and driver.
If there is not a secondary winding with CT, it can be centre tapped
with two x 150 ohm low R, and a 470 ohm taken to ground.
each end of the sec might have +/-8Vrms and be all applied to the the
driver LTP
to get a wanted amount of global NFB but around only 2 stages.
The 470 ohm is the common Rk for biasing the drive stage.
Drive voltage might then be +/-10Vrms to each driver LTP grid.
Input LTP can have a CCS for the cathodes, and can be set to take a
balanced or unbalanced input
and THD will be low without any FB if say 6CG7 is used.
So its a simpler way to do what many high end makes have tried; ie,
provide
balanced and unbalanced input provisions.
Since all my amps have active protection if Ek goes too high on any OP
tube, the
dc at the OPT sec can also be monitored, and if too high will trigger
the same
protect circuit to turn off the amp.
So the driver tubes are also actively protected.

Its win-win all the way.

Luckily the tube amps I make are a very extremely tiny % of world
production,
so I don't feel too guilty about making things that are environmentally
unsound
in every way possible.

I ride a bicycle to make up for such ill doings in my workshop.

No offspring of mine will have to suffer consequences of what I have
done,
or have not done, because I have not produced any children.

We could do with a world where more folks treated their work and
thoughts as their children,
and without actually having any real children. No need for anyone to
feel unfulfilled if they have
not managed to have a family of their own creation.

Christ didn't get around to having a family either.
He didn't even get old enough to say,
"The older I get the better I was"

Patrick Turner.


Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[Tom Sherman]

Patrick Turner wrote:

[...]
No offspring of mine will have to suffer consequences of what I have
done,
or have not done, because I have not produced any children.

We could do with a world where more folks treated their work and
thoughts as their children,
and without actually having any real children. No need for anyone to
feel unfulfilled if they have
not managed to have a family of their own creation.[...]

butbutbut, I love children. Baked, broiled, deep fried, its all good.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken /
She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

[Patrick Turner]

Tom Sherman wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

[...]
No offspring of mine will have to suffer consequences of what I have
done,
or have not done, because I have not produced any children.

We could do with a world where more folks treated their work and
thoughts as their children,
and without actually having any real children. No need for anyone to
feel unfulfilled if they have
not managed to have a family of their own creation.[...]

butbutbut, I love children. Baked, broiled, deep fried, its all good.

I was always uncertain about having children, but welcomed the prospect
were it to arrive under suitable conditions.

First you need a good relationship, and for one reason or another,
getting that far wasn't possible. I did marry one girl, and live with
5 others for over a year, but never did I plead with them to stay
and have children, especially after they'd behaved like utter bitches.

Like a true gentleman, I'd just hold a door open when the bitchiness
began.

I knew myself, so why didn't they know themselves?

The very few girls who were remotely attractive, and sensible about kids
all married
a variety of men different to myself. Some were complete arsoles,
some were rich, but none were me. They all said I was the best in bed of
course.
They say that to all the guys they ****.
Getting sex is no achievement, and sex does NOT bond you well to any
woman for very long.

Its the willingness to be a slave, and to be a martyr, and to gently
pass fist-fulls of dollars
to your gal that really impresses.
Plus behave in 1,001 ways which are absurd, to relieve boredom.

But even this brief summation seems quite wrong though because while
young I witnessed many a man
with a short dick and ugly features, and terrible personality get a
pretty
girl with brains, and then go one to treat her like poo for 20 years.

My wife deserted me because she felt inadequate. She sure was.
Seeing other females having kids frightened hell out of her.
I thought I'd have to be patient about her, but she saved me having to
ever be patient.

Others I found were better BJ experts than the others, better or worse
cooks,
some were faithful for slightly longer, or not as long, but all
couldn't be like their mothers or mine. The 1960s generation of young
shielas copped a
lot of criticism from their mothers who'd not had the Pill, and maybe
had felt forced to
stay with a drunken ******* for 20 years.

The 60s gals all thought travel, shopping, and rooting a string of
fellas to be
just fine. None I knew thought marriage was a good thing.
Those women who did think it good were often 3 feet in diameter,
and didn't know what a BJ was.
Or would be really upset by one when they found out.

Or they had the tremendous charms of Germaine Sneer.
How could any man get a hard on with Germaine?
So maybe more than 1/2 the planetary shielas repelled me.
I happily washed my own clothes, and cooked my own meals.
Much less drama and expense.

Now the experts tell us that there is a bonding chemical that is exuded
more by men who have successful marriages, so staying married
depends upon your genes, not your socialisation skills.

But the same newspaper articles don't say what bonding chemical is
released
into the air for men to smell from women.

I used to think it was the Smell Of The ****, but I was never totally
hooked by that.

Its nice other folks had kids. There are nice young doctors and dentists
as a result.

I would have liked to have children, and would have made a good father,
and I bought a nice house and extended it so if the right gal appeared,
she'd have done well, but all they told me was that I was boring after
awhile.
They'd told all the previous guys the same thing after awhile.
They'd go on telling future guys they were boring after awhile.
After living with the first girl, and watching her
behave so badly, and with other men while she lived with me, I
distrusted all women
after age 22. They'd have to prove themselves. None did.
They all expected freedoms greater than what they'd grant me,
and none were ever happy. Before children, all this **** must be well
sorted,
or I'll sleep on the sofa.

Now I see the old hags of 60, about my age, and they still whinge and
moan and
are impossible to live with, and a BJ is totally unthinkable. They are
so glad they divorced.
Thousands line up on Internet introduction and dating venues, saying
they want a man, and when I even
just say hello, they runaway like a frightened old chook.
I met a few, and boy, they are so ****ed up.

So why did they marry?

I'm happy I am not a grandfather either.

I like working for people to improve their experience of music via
vacuum tubes.

I don't need close relationships that cost huge sums of money,
challenge sanity, and ruin your heart condition, and ruin your focus
upon your trade or craft.

The world has far too many people. I didn't increase the numbers.
For those who love children, my missing children have left your children
with more
world to have, so there is no validity in sneering at me for not being a
dutiful lad and not breeding.
Because my kids I didn't have don't clutter the roads, your children
will
get from A to B faster.
Some ppl I know of my age with kids between 20 and 30 have a love hate
relationship with their kids.
Its often hate mostly, and the kids just want money.

I have lots of friends though, and I prefer a female doctor and dentist,
because unlike the ****ed up males out there, the youngish female
professionals are more conscientious about their work like I am about my
work.

And I share my house with a female boarder, a rare pleasant person,
and no hassles.

I worked out about 35 years ago that a man didn't have to marry and
breed to feel complete.
An old guy of 60 told me when I was 20 in 1968 it didn't matter who you
married, you'd make the best of it.
A few people actually used to do that. People went through whole lives
without understanding much.
He didn't understand that in the post 1965 world there wasn't a female
alive who thought it
didn't matter who you marry, nor did he realise that a woman would leave
you at the drop of a hat
no matter how wonderful you were, even in her own stated terms.

Nearly all the old tradesmen who taught me so much lived in a dream, and
waited
patiently for retirement, and the pension, and not working, and enjoying
grandchildren,
but most died of cancer or heart attack well before they got to the
dream.

The dreams merge into a sham sometimes, and I could see the sham all too
plainly.

If things ain't right at home with the missus, keep the dick out of the
fanny.
Most men can't, at 25.
Kids will only make things worse.
But the Pill changed so much. It saved us from ourselves.

So now, 35% of all females born are unlikely to have kids.

I am very happy that they become doctors instead of mothers.

Patrick Turner.










--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken /
She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 7:16*am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:

Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

First the dumbo Dersu Uzala referred us to:
http://dieoff.org/
and provided two quotations. The first is from David Price:
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and
it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have
helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of
their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective,
the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to
redress the planet's energy balance. David Price

David Price is rather obviously not too bright, in the Californian
manner of those who confuse moral relativity with Einsteinian
relativity. Let's follow the steps in a manner even David Price will
understand, though I doubt his acolyte the dumbo Dersu Uzala
ever will:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system. Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

2. David Price has incompetently grasped the middle meaning of
disorder or randomness in the system, and then tripped even more
incompetently over the third meaning of inefficient communication. For
instance, he no fewer than three times in a single short paragraph
imputes volition to a law of physics (e.g. "evolved in the service of
entropy"); laws of physics are distinguished from sentient beings by
having no volition. And even then he gets it arse about end: human
beings didn't "evolve" (another technical word of which Price doesn't
understand the meaning) in the service of this randomness which Price
confuses with entropy in energy, human beings were evolved *by* the
randomness of the Darwinian process.

3. In true California guru style, Price then goes into an ecstacy of
inconsequentiality: "the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a
transient episode that acts to redress the planet's energy balance".
Say what? Surely, Price's case, and the case of all the other
doomsayers, is that humans *created* an energy imbalance? Now we hear
at the same time that humans are the solution to the earth's
imbalance.

4. And note the volitional implication of the full sentence from which
I took the above piece of crap. Let's savour it: "Human beings like to
believe they are in control of *their destiny, but when the history of
life on Earth is seen in perspective, *the evolution of Homo sapiens
is merely a transient episode that acts to *redress the planet's
energy balance." Gaia willed it, did she then? Oh, Earth Mother,
forgive us our sins! Let's see if I have this right: Gaia suffered an
excess of energy, like a boil. Therefore she used entropy to bring up
homo sapiens to use as a lance. Right, Mr Price? Hmm. All that energy
was dormant anyway. On the Price analysis, California guru style, it
seems Gaia is even more wasteful than humans. Perhaps we should spank
her with a few underground nuclear explosions.

5. There is so much wrong with Price's short paragraph that I could go
on several reams more about the silly linkages, but why raise the
profile of a clown who convinces only the most stupid of the already
committed? The most important conclusion is that Price is too thick
and too humourless to see that if we agree to his case that "Homo
sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the
planet's energy balance" the logical conclusion is that it is the
moral thing (if you think the Earth is more important than the humans
on it, as Price implicitly does) is to drive a 22ft car with a 8.5
liter engine and monstrous tailfins, to keep your heating *and* you
air condition running full speed ahead 24/7, and to burn, burn, burn.

The other quotation, even dumber, provided by the dumbo Dersu Uzala
is from one Joseph Tainter:

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.
The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is
cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about
through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one
or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.
The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary
change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and
less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested
above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial
nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter

Tainter is more subtle and insidious, but no less dumb and
inconsequential. He is however a lot more vicious, to the point of
being murderous:

1. He axiomatically assumes an energy shortage. That gets him tidily
around the truth that here is no such thing as an energy shortage. The
market adjusts to demand, price rises, demand falls to match it, as we
have seen recently. There is now more oil in the known reserves than
there was at any time in a century of energy scares. Anyone who thinks
that in another century we will still burn oil underrates human
ingenuity.

2. Tainter has as poor a grasp of history as Price. Is he really
claiming in "energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity"
that there were no family or larger groups before humanoids mastered
fire? That is obvious bull****. One of the depressing things about
these clowns is their unfamiliarity with history. For instance, can
Tainter really be unaware that the Neanderthals, who died out in the
Darwinian process, were magnificent environmental managers whereas our
own ancestors, who clearly survived, drove species to extinction over
cliffs, and so on? (Any of you guys have red hair? That's a
Neanderthal trait that has survived, from when the Cro-Magnon took
pity on contemporary greens and impregnated one of their women.
Gentlemen preferred blondes even then...).

3. Anyone with a map can see that the basis of the cultural complexity
of our world is distance; it was thus before travel and it was thus in
the era of the sailing ships (The Age of Renewable Power, surely!).
Ours is the age of communication, whether by travel or by ether, and
that has reduced rather than increased cultural diversity. Tainter is
full of crap.

4. Next, having made the unfounded assumption that we are in trouble,
Tainter jumps to the conclusion that we must do something about. He
tells us with lipsmacking relish of "much violence, starvation, and
loss of population". Malthus lives! Actually, things are better in
Africa and the Middle East now than they ever were. Millions fewer
infants are dying every year than as recently as 1950. The WHO, a
branch of the UN, publishes the numbers. Tainter should visit a
library occasionally. We *are* doing something about it, dickhead. If
you want us to do it faster, go help rather than sitting in an ivory
tower whining.

5. Tainter really gives the game away in his proscription for a
solution towards "a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will
come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations
makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology". Yup, Good old Uncle Joe Stalin,
sorry, I mean good old Uncle Joe Tainter wants us to remove the engine
of the good life -- and what pays for the salvation of all those
hungry Africans -- which is market capitalism. The only way that
"economic growth and consumerism can be *removed from the realm of
ideology" is by appointing a dictator. Without knowing another thing
about Tainter except his short paragraph quoted above, one can see
that he is a leftover Marxist who, his creed having self-destructed,
is now latching onto ecology to satisfy his consuming urge to control
his fellow humans, whom he sees not as individuals but en masse. A few
million necessary murders, eh, Mr Tainter? "Proscription" in the first
line of this paragraph is not an error -- it is a deliberate pun; it
says much for the low level of intelligence and education of the
people carrying on this sort of discussion on the net that I have to
explain such an obvious pun.

One flipper offered as his opinion on the
quotations by Price and Tainter the succinct one-word summary:
Crap

This, predictably, sent the original poster, the dumbo Dersu Uzala
, into a mouthfoaming rage:
I say, not crap! Does that mean I'm correct?

I bow to your superior rhetorical skills. Such a level of persuasive logic,
especially supported by the facts you present, can only leave myself in awe,
quiverting under the shadow of your most excellent denial, you fool. If you
were to jump off the Empire State building, I'm sure you'd say "everthing
fine, so far!" as you passed the mid-point of you descent. Did you read
anything at the website? Is there any claim there that you contest? What part
of 'finite resources' do you not understand?

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything athttp://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing. Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC. For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient. And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this isn't about energy, is it, you nasty little
necrosis, it is about giving undeserving jerks like you control over
their fellows.

CONCLUSION:
The "order" that the scum at dieoff.org want to introduce is death, as
it was in Communist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and China under
Mao. Even today's Chinese are smarter than that. If we give in to
these necrophiliac creeps, for the first time in history we will have
a manmade energy catastrophe. I know who should die off before we
permit them to create a disaster, and it is those dangerous jerks at
dieoff.org.

****
Anyone who wants to respond angrily to my analysis should note that I
am probably a better environmentalist than he is. For instance, I
haven't owned a car since 1992; of course nothing is wasted in my
house, everything is recycled. And, unlike the loudmouths, I have done
something for the starving, fighting in their wars, running a food
convoy in Africa, showing them how to rise against their oppressors,
suchlike; read all about it in my books. But I hate the slack thinking
and the vicious control-freakery of the clowns at dieoff and their
nasty little fellowtravellers like Dersu Uzala . If
trash like that are environmentalists, I don't want the name attached
to me; I'm happy to let the market and democracy look after me.

Andre Jute
Besporyadok, Prince of Chaos

Nice analysis Andre, and doncha worry, you'll be attacked for it.

Oh, I don't see why anyone would wish to attack me for merely telling
the truth. (The triumph of hope over experience!)

But doncha ever get some inklng that homo sapiens is a rather temporary
species of life form?

Of course. And that our species burned so much brighter than the
others is equally likely to be a reason for the species burning out
faster than the others. Man is after all the only animal that plays
with fire.

However, that is not to agree that an imminent apocalypse has reached
the bottom of the High Street.

In fact, quite the opposite. It is a clear indication that in the
perspective of history it is hubris (the pride of considering yourself
above the gods, i.e. natural laws) for the Greens to try to preserve
this particular moment in time and he earth's development on the
utterly arrogant tartuffian assumption that they have created the
perfect moment and now should fossilize it in amber.

Its the one that comes onto a farm, and leaves it in far worse shape
them when it goes off the farm.

Crap. All animals are locusts until famine weeds them. In Africa I saw
dongas (erosion channels) forty miles long, worn by a handful of
wildebeest grazing on the same space for decades while only five miles
away over easy land was a grassland that stretched for hundreds of
miles. The minute the agriculturalists and rangers arrived, the
erosion was stopped.

But the younguns will maybe not care much and not worry either, just as
long as a there's a market
economy to keep em able to all be middle class, with aspirations to be
top class,
and own the biggest house in town.

It always amazes me that people who claim that Man did all this damage
(which is such a secret rite that most of us can't even see it) or is
at least capable of massive damage to the structure of the planet,
then want to junk the only mechanism we have that works to allocate
resources, the smoothly self-adjusting and ruthlessly impersonal
market, and install instead some ecological dictator, a man with some
fixed agenda. Your proposed remedy doesn't square with your analysis.

I won't be around long enough to see if anything I think about the
future might come true,
but I do reckon **** will keep happening.

The world is a much better place now than when we were born, Patrick.
At least part of that is due to pressure by Jeremiahs like you. You
lot were wrong all along, but the law of unintended effect works on
the wrongoes as well, and the **** that happens is sometimes the good
manure. Homo sapiens, I have concluded, has a talent for falling with
its arse in the butter.

I salute those who think they're about to die! Keep smiling!

Andre Jute
Immovable rigour -- Gaius Germanicus aka Caligula

[[email protected]]

On Sep 2, 6:30 pm, Andre Jute wrote:
Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

First the dumbo Dersu Uzala referred us to:http://dieoff.org/

and provided two quotations. The first is from David Price:

The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and
it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have
helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of
their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective,
the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to
redress the planet's energy balance. David Price

David Price is rather obviously not too bright, in the Californian
manner of those who confuse moral relativity with Einsteinian
relativity. Let's follow the steps in a manner even David Price will
understand, though I doubt his acolyte the dumbo Dersu Uzala
ever will:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system. Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

2. David Price has incompetently grasped the middle meaning of
disorder or randomness in the system, and then tripped even more
incompetently over the third meaning of inefficient communication. For
instance, he no fewer than three times in a single short paragraph
imputes volition to a law of physics (e.g. "evolved in the service of
entropy"); laws of physics are distinguished from sentient beings by
having no volition. And even then he gets it arse about end: human
beings didn't "evolve" (another technical word of which Price doesn't
understand the meaning) in the service of this randomness which Price
confuses with entropy in energy, human beings were evolved *by* the
randomness of the Darwinian process.

3. In true California guru style, Price then goes into an ecstacy of
inconsequentiality: "the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a
transient episode that acts to redress the planet's energy balance".
Say what? Surely, Price's case, and the case of all the other
doomsayers, is that humans *created* an energy imbalance? Now we hear
at the same time that humans are the solution to the earth's
imbalance.

4. And note the volitional implication of the full sentence from which
I took the above piece of crap. Let's savour it: "Human beings like to
believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of
life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens
is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet's
energy balance." Gaia willed it, did she then? Oh, Earth Mother,
forgive us our sins! Let's see if I have this right: Gaia suffered an
excess of energy, like a boil. Therefore she used entropy to bring up
homo sapiens to use as a lance. Right, Mr Price? Hmm. All that energy
was dormant anyway. On the Price analysis, California guru style, it
seems Gaia is even more wasteful than humans. Perhaps we should spank
her with a few underground nuclear explosions.

5. There is so much wrong with Price's short paragraph that I could go
on several reams more about the silly linkages, but why raise the
profile of a clown who convinces only the most stupid of the already
committed? The most important conclusion is that Price is too thick
and too humourless to see that if we agree to his case that "Homo
sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the
planet's energy balance" the logical conclusion is that it is the
moral thing (if you think the Earth is more important than the humans
on it, as Price implicitly does) is to drive a 22ft car with a 8.5
liter engine and monstrous tailfins, to keep your heating *and* you
air condition running full speed ahead 24/7, and to burn, burn, burn.

The other quotation, even dumber, provided by the dumbo Dersu Uzala
is from one Joseph Tainter:

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.
The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is
cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about
through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one
or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.
The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary
change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and
less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested
above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial
nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter

Tainter is more subtle and insidious, but no less dumb and
inconsequential. He is however a lot more vicious, to the point of
being murderous:

1. He axiomatically assumes an energy shortage. That gets him tidily
around the truth that here is no such thing as an energy shortage. The
market adjusts to demand, price rises, demand falls to match it, as we
have seen recently. There is now more oil in the known reserves than
there was at any time in a century of energy scares. Anyone who thinks
that in another century we will still burn oil underrates human
ingenuity.

2. Tainter has as poor a grasp of history as Price. Is he really
claiming in "energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity"
that there were no family or larger groups before humanoids mastered
fire? That is obvious bull****. One of the depressing things about
these clowns is their unfamiliarity with history. For instance, can
Tainter really be unaware that the Neanderthals, who died out in the
Darwinian process, were magnificent environmental managers whereas our
own ancestors, who clearly survived, drove species to extinction over
cliffs, and so on? (Any of you guys have red hair? That's a
Neanderthal trait that has survived, from when the Cro-Magnon took
pity on contemporary greens and impregnated one of their women.
Gentlemen preferred blondes even then...).

3. Anyone with a map can see that the basis of the cultural complexity
of our world is distance; it was thus before travel and it was thus in
the era of the sailing ships (The Age of Renewable Power, surely!).
Ours is the age of communication, whether by travel or by ether, and
that has reduced rather than increased cultural diversity. Tainter is
full of crap.

4. Next, having made the unfounded assumption that we are in trouble,
Tainter jumps to the conclusion that we must do something about. He
tells us with lipsmacking relish of "much violence, starvation, and
loss of population". Malthus lives! Actually, things are better in
Africa and the Middle East now than they ever were. Millions fewer
infants are dying every year than as recently as 1950. The WHO, a
branch of the UN, publishes the numbers. Tainter should visit a
library occasionally. We *are* doing something about it, dickhead. If
you want us to do it faster, go help rather than sitting in an ivory
tower whining.

5. Tainter really gives the game away in his proscription for a
solution towards "a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will
come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations
makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology". Yup, Good old Uncle Joe Stalin,
sorry, I mean good old Uncle Joe Tainter wants us to remove the engine
of the good life -- and what pays for the salvation of all those
hungry Africans -- which is market capitalism. The only way that
"economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of
ideology" is by appointing a dictator. Without knowing another thing
about Tainter except his short paragraph quoted above, one can see
that he is a leftover Marxist who, his creed having self-destructed,
is now latching onto ecology to satisfy his consuming urge to control
his fellow humans, whom he sees not as individuals but en masse. A few
million necessary murders, eh, Mr Tainter? "Proscription" in the first
line of this paragraph is not an error -- it is a deliberate pun; it
says much for the low level of intelligence and education of the
people carrying on this sort of discussion on the net that I have to
explain such an obvious pun.

One flipper offered as his opinion on the
quotations by Price and Tainter the succinct one-word summary:

Crap

This, predictably, sent the original poster, the dumbo Dersu Uzala
, into a mouthfoaming rage:

I say, not crap! Does that mean I'm correct?

I bow to your superior rhetorical skills. Such a level of persuasive logic,
especially supported by the facts you present, can only leave myself in awe,
quiverting under the shadow of your most excellent denial, you fool. If you
were to jump off the Empire State building, I'm sure you'd say "everthing
fine, so far!" as you passed the mid-point of you descent. Did you read
anything at the website? Is there any claim there that you contest? What part
of 'finite resources' do you not understand?

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything athttp://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing. Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC. For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient. And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this ...

read more »


Dear dumbass,

When Tainter speaks of 'cultural complexity' he is not talking about
'family groups.'

[tubegarden]

Hi RATs!

I live in the USA. We use more energy sitting in traffic jams in an
hour than all the audio consumers, great and small, will use in the
entire history of the Universe, past, if there ever was one, and
future, if there ever is one ...

Our perception that energy is something real and measureble is as
stupid as Eyesore's mad claims that he knows, absolutely, all spirally
wound plastic capacitors of a given measured value sound exactly the
same in every circuit that has been, or ever will be, constructed.

Our tiny planet only receives a miniscule proportion of the sunshine
of the Sun, and even less from all the other stars which have ever
shown brilliance to a rather unimpressed void.

It is very fashionable to pretend there is not enough oil, nor Lowther
drivers, nor WE 300A tubes. Less hip is to suggest there are too many
people.

We sort of over simplify things. Not one of us will survive long
enough, nor accomplish enough. And then, when we are dead, none of
Them will, either.

The Universe is expanding ... even as a child, Woody Allen knew that
meant each of us will be less important in the future than even the
very greatest people in the past are, in the present. Nobody matters,
much, for long. No matter what she does for your mood ...

What we babble on and on about is what ever we can babble on and on
about.

What that has to do with anything but babbling is not a place any of
us should go.

Not for reasons we understand.

Simply because what we understand is never going to approach critical
mass.

So, we can only be a critical ass *,^D

Happy Ears!
Al

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 3, 3:24*pm, wrote:
On Sep 2, 6:30 pm, Andre Jute wrote:

Who should be first to die off in the "energy crisis"?

First the dumbo Dersu Uzala referred us to:http://dieoff.org/

and provided two quotations. The first is from David Price:

The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and
it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have
helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of
their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective,
the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to
redress the planet's energy balance. David Price

David Price is rather obviously not too bright, in the Californian
manner of those who confuse moral relativity with Einsteinian
relativity. Let's follow the steps in a manner even David Price will
understand, though I doubt his acolyte the dumbo Dersu Uzala
ever will:

1. "Entropy" has several meanings. Technically in physics it is the
thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. For those
incapable of grasping the math, it is often interpreted as the degree
of disorder or randomness in the system. Ironically the word is also
in information theory to name the logarithmic measure of the rate of
transfer of information in a particular message or language.

2. David Price has incompetently grasped the middle meaning of
disorder or randomness in the system, and then tripped even more
incompetently over the third meaning of inefficient communication. For
instance, he no fewer than three times in a single short paragraph
imputes volition to a law of physics (e.g. "evolved in the service of
entropy"); laws of physics are distinguished from sentient beings by
having no volition. And even then he gets it arse about end: human
beings didn't "evolve" (another technical word of which Price doesn't
understand the meaning) in the service of this randomness which Price
confuses with entropy in energy, human beings were evolved *by* the
randomness of the Darwinian process.

3. In true California guru style, Price then goes into an ecstacy of
inconsequentiality: "the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a
transient episode that acts to redress the planet's energy balance".
Say what? Surely, Price's case, and the case of all the other
doomsayers, is that humans *created* an energy imbalance? Now we hear
at the same time that humans are the solution to the earth's
imbalance.

4. And note the volitional implication of the full sentence from which
I took the above piece of crap. Let's savour it: "Human beings like to
believe they are in control of *their destiny, but when the history of
life on Earth is seen in perspective, *the evolution of Homo sapiens
is merely a transient episode that acts to *redress the planet's
energy balance." Gaia willed it, did she then? Oh, Earth Mother,
forgive us our sins! Let's see if I have this right: Gaia suffered an
excess of energy, like a boil. Therefore she used entropy to bring up
homo sapiens to use as a lance. Right, Mr Price? Hmm. All that energy
was dormant anyway. On the Price analysis, California guru style, it
seems Gaia is even more wasteful than humans. Perhaps we should spank
her with a few underground nuclear explosions.

5. There is so much wrong with Price's short paragraph that I could go
on several reams more about the silly linkages, but why raise the
profile of a clown who convinces only the most stupid of the already
committed? The most important conclusion is that Price is too thick
and too humourless to see that if we agree to his case that "Homo
sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the
planet's energy balance" the logical conclusion is that it is the
moral thing (if you think the Earth is more important than the humans
on it, as Price implicitly does) is to drive a 22ft car with a 8.5
liter engine and monstrous tailfins, to keep your heating *and* you
air condition running full speed ahead 24/7, and to burn, burn, burn.

The other quotation, even dumber, provided by the dumbo Dersu Uzala
is from one Joseph Tainter:

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.
The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is
cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about
through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one
or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.
The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary
change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and
less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested
above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial
nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter

Tainter is more subtle and insidious, but no less dumb and
inconsequential. He is however a lot more vicious, to the point of
being murderous:

1. He axiomatically assumes an energy shortage. That gets him tidily
around the truth that here is no such thing as an energy shortage. The
market adjusts to demand, price rises, demand falls to match it, as we
have seen recently. There is now more oil in the known reserves than
there was at any time in a century of energy scares. Anyone who thinks
that in another century we will still burn oil underrates human
ingenuity.

2. Tainter has as poor a grasp of history as Price. Is he really
claiming in "energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity"
that there were no family or larger groups before humanoids mastered
fire? That is obvious bull****. One of the depressing things about
these clowns is their unfamiliarity with history. For instance, can
Tainter really be unaware that the Neanderthals, who died out in the
Darwinian process, were magnificent environmental managers whereas our
own ancestors, who clearly survived, drove species to extinction over
cliffs, and so on? (Any of you guys have red hair? That's a
Neanderthal trait that has survived, from when the Cro-Magnon took
pity on contemporary greens and impregnated one of their women.
Gentlemen preferred blondes even then...).

3. Anyone with a map can see that the basis of the cultural complexity
of our world is distance; it was thus before travel and it was thus in
the era of the sailing ships (The Age of Renewable Power, surely!).
Ours is the age of communication, whether by travel or by ether, and
that has reduced rather than increased cultural diversity. Tainter is
full of crap.

4. Next, having made the unfounded assumption that we are in trouble,
Tainter jumps to the conclusion that we must do something about. He
tells us with lipsmacking relish of "much violence, starvation, and
loss of population". Malthus lives! Actually, things are better in
Africa and the Middle East now than they ever were. Millions fewer
infants are dying every year than as recently as 1950. The WHO, a
branch of the UN, publishes the numbers. Tainter should visit a
library occasionally. We *are* doing something about it, dickhead. If
you want us to do it faster, go help rather than sitting in an ivory
tower whining.

5. Tainter really gives the game away in his proscription for a
solution towards "a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will
come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations
makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be
removed from the realm of ideology". Yup, Good old Uncle Joe Stalin,
sorry, I mean good old Uncle Joe Tainter wants us to remove the engine
of the good life -- and what pays for the salvation of all those
hungry Africans -- which is market capitalism. The only way that
"economic growth and consumerism can be *removed from the realm of
ideology" is by appointing a dictator. Without knowing another thing
about Tainter except his short paragraph quoted above, one can see
that he is a leftover Marxist who, his creed having self-destructed,
is now latching onto ecology to satisfy his consuming urge to control
his fellow humans, whom he sees not as individuals but en masse. A few
million necessary murders, eh, Mr Tainter? "Proscription" in the first
line of this paragraph is not an error -- it is a deliberate pun; it
says much for the low level of intelligence and education of the
people carrying on this sort of discussion on the net that I have to
explain such an obvious pun.

One flipper offered as his opinion on the
quotations by Price and Tainter the succinct one-word summary:

Crap

This, predictably, sent the original poster, the dumbo Dersu Uzala
, into a mouthfoaming rage:

I say, not crap! Does that mean I'm correct?

I bow to your superior rhetorical skills. Such a level of persuasive logic,
especially supported by the facts you present, can only leave myself in awe,
quiverting under the shadow of your most excellent denial, you fool. If you
were to jump off the Empire State building, I'm sure you'd say "everthing
fine, so far!" as you passed the mid-point of you descent. Did you read
anything at the website? Is there any claim there that you contest? What part
of 'finite resources' do you not understand?

But, Dumbo, before we can believe anything athttp://dieoff.org/, you
first have to prove the underlying assumption of 'finite resources'.
You've done no such thing. Even petroleum isn't proven to be finite:
every year there are more reserves at the contemporary price: the
market is working brilliantly, despite the worst efforts of that
despicable cartel, OPEC. For practical purposes, for the century we
will still use petroleum before we perfect refining hydrogen from
tapwater, resources are sufficient. And, of course, nuclear power is
truly infinite. But this ...

read more »

Dear dumbass,

When Tainter speaks of 'cultural complexity' he is not talking about
'family groups.'

You are so right, my dear anonymous correspondent. It is quite
possible, though we shall probably never know for certain, that two
hominid males banded together the better to hunt prey. Or that before
that they huddled in troops.

However, when you have put your mind in gear, you will see that
"cultural diversity" cannot even start with only individuals on your
map. Culture can be given expression only in communication, and with
only individuals on the map, that is the bow-wow culture of
territorial warnings-off. Pretty limited culture, eh?

So, culture starts with a gathering of individuals into a group.

I was right the first time. That quack Tainter should visit a library
and read some history, and so should his thick acolytes, like you.

Andre Jute

[[email protected]]

Tainter is a historian.

You took an out of context quote and made all sorts of wacky
assumptions about Tainter and what he believes. His work on this
subject is history, not soothsayer. The book is called The Collapse of
Complex Societies. Maya, Romans, Anasazi, Etc.

[Peter Wieck]

On Sep 3, 9:57*pm, wrote:
Tainter is a historian.

You took an out of context quote and made all sorts of wacky
assumptions about Tainter and what he believes. His work on this
subject is history, not soothsayer. The book is called The Collapse of
Complex Societies. Maya, Romans, Anasazi, Etc.

Andre will never let facts, accuracy or common sense get in the way of
his fantasies. Attempting to make him hew to reality is about as
effective as nailing Jello - an activity of dubious utility yielding
questionable results. Further, arguing with him "on the merits"
changes nothing but does give him the opportunity for more spew.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[[email protected]]

On Sep 4, 2:57*am, wrote:
Tainter is a historian.

Then he should be ashamed to let those clowns at die0ff.org misuse his
work. And he should be embarrassed to make such sweeping assumptions
as in his quoted paragraph. And he should be firmly told to stick to
his last and not make economic and cultural prescriptions for the
entire world.

And, among other things clear from his single par, someone should take
him aside and point out that there is a difference between a culture
or even a civilization going down the tubes and a sentient species
being extinguished, two widely different matters he appears to confuse
to the detriment of his credibility.

You took an out of context quote and made all sorts of wacky
assumptions about Tainter and what he believes.

Crap. If Tainter allows the scum at die0ff.org to misuse him, I am
entitled when they put his extract before me to treat it in isolation.
I honestly didn't know anything more about Tainter when I did, and all
I know now in addition comes from skimming a part of the reviews on
Amazon which were provided to this forum -- which just confirmed my
suspicion that Tainter is leftover pinko commie fellow traveller and
trendy of unappetising aspect.

His work on this
subject is history, not soothsayer. The book is called The Collapse of
Complex Societies. Maya, Romans, Anasazi, Etc.

If Tainter has been properly represented to me, he's a bull****ter.
Anyone with the slightest Time-Life familiarity with the Mayan
civilization can guess they went under because the priests became
overbearing. Anyone who has been to Easter Island (I landed there when
I sailed around the world after one Cape to Rio race) can see how the
compulsion of their religion to put up those huge statues first of all
killed their trees (for rolling those big stones) and then them when
there was no one else for the laast guy standing to eat on that barren
island they created. I have personal experience of the fall of nations
and ideologies (my novel The Insurrectionist is widely used as a
handbook by revolutionaries, and the South African apartheid
government twice sent assassins after me for my books). It is obvious
to me, as to every serious thinker on the subject, that nations and
whole civilizations fall when the ruling class is forsaken by the
agencies of enforcement. That is the key: it may come as the result of
an imbalance between butter and guns, on the classic Soviet Union
model, or it may come when the army is corrupted by seeping capitalism
as in modern-day China, but in no case does it have anything to do
with the larger view of resource management as in the environmental
model, as in Tainter's model.

You'll forgive me if I just don't believe Tainter, given that he has
been faithfully represented to me, and suspect that only the committed
and the least thoughful of the trendies believe him.

Andre Jute
Permanent student

[Jon Yaeger]

Andre,

What happened to plain ol' fiultra? Fiultra3 is gonna make me create
another filter. Oh well, It was nice and quiet while it lasted.

Cheers

Jon