At one time, cavemen were dependent on the mastodon for food. When the mastodon became extinct, did mankind end? No, we learned to find other sources of food. What this author identifies as a "long emergency" has actually been happening for eons.

So...

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What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about?

So nothing. Just food for thought. Surely this guy is completely insane and there is nothing to worry about...

I don't think it's quite as bleak as this guy may think, but changes are on the horizon, maybe not even in our lifetime. I do think they will be more drastic than running out of mastodon and learning how to plant some seeds though. The cave men may have fought over some corn seeds or something but I'm pretty sure they didn't launch nuclear missiles over it. The comparison is valid but the scale and magnitude of the potential disaster are far greater now.

I wish I could remember where I read that we expect Science to solve all our problems, so why worry? What if they can't solve this one? What if the economics of the solution make many modern conveniences like travel too expensive for the masses? Will the country move to mass transit? Will people ride bikes like in China? If our children are impacted negatively what kind of parents have we been?

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Way back at the turn of the century (1900) people thought that human progress was inevitable, that, thanks to science and mathematics, we "knew" we were living in an orderly universe and that there was no limit to what humanity could accomplish.

An assassination in 1914 changed everything.....


(edited for spelling)

I have heard that sometime around or just before the turn of the 20th century, the US Patent Office thought it was going to go out of business because everything that could be invented already had been invented.

[reply]
At one time, cavemen were dependent on the mastodon for food. [/reply]

This is not a true statement.

Shouldn't you be out giving the president his SS plan? I mean all you have to do is google it, right.

Without doubt we will be impacted by lessening oil reserves. The problem is as with almost anything most people have the "that's a long ways off" attitude. Not until things become a crisis do people want to do something about it.

Although I think the author overestimates the downsides and underestimates what we can do about it, I do agree with his idea of overall trend. The part that is frightening is that once again we sit idolly by and do very little.

In my mind there is large progress to be made in many of the fields he claimed are "dead ends". But like most things people won't start really putting the ax to the grindstone until there are no other options.

There are no simple solutions, but without trying to find them there will be no solutions.

~Matt

So? So!? This means you'll have to convert your car to run on cow dung or something....

~Matt

Then I guess the Colorado Museum of Natural History will have to change their display of cavemen hunting mastodons (unless those are Wooly Mammoths).

In order to make tracks to move the statue heads, the inhabitants of Easter Island cut down all the trees. The carrying capacity of the island declined substantially subsequently.

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iambigkahunatony.com

I can retune for Methanol and then run 7.xx's!!!!

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What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about?

"Hunting" and "were dependent on" are not synonymous terms.

The most valuable resource that we have is the human mind. Few people, even among the most advanced physicists in the world, would have believed it possible to split the atom in 1935. Ten years later, we could drop bombs that did so from airplanes that were not even on the drawing board in 1935.

Look at the difference between the world in 1900 and 2000. For that matter, compare a computer in 1990 with one in 2005. Or even a 2005 computer with one built back in 2000. Remember the movie Apollo 13 and how all the engineers were using slide rules to calculate equations. That was in 1970. They were using slide rules because they were more effective than any calculator in existence. But, slide rules became so obsolete so quickly that I don't think that I have even seen a slide rule since 1980.

Some of the technological advances that can occur during the next century are beyond the limits of our imagination today. By the time that oil reserves actually become low enough to become a significant problem, we will have moved onto some new form of propulsion. And the person(s) that invent the new form of propulsion will be richer than Bill Gates.