Those are words of people in desperate need of mental hospitalization.

Every single one, the most important being oil, topsoil and water.

At the very least, if human ingenuity had never failed us, there wouldn’t have been dozens of civilizations who collapsed due to ecological overshoot.

RESPONSE:
Please illuminate us as to which civilization has collapsed because of lack of oil? I am not aware of any. And if any failed because of loss of topsoil or water, they failed not because of human ingenuity but rather because they lacked enough human ingenuity, which includes not just technology but
trade as well.

Finally, we don’t know for certain that human ingenuity will always come to the rescue, but we can be confident that if human ingenuity won’t, nothing else will. That’s why we should be open to human ingenuity, and its possibilities. And that is why rejecting technological possibilities such as genetically modified crops or nuclear energy based on religious or environmental taboos only makes it harder for civilizations to be sustained.

There may be cultures so noxious that people within them will ignore signs of overuse, such as may have happened on Easter Island and the great Mayan city-states. Draining the aquifers of the country to provide water for golf courses and retirement communities in Arizona may have hubristic consequences. But I hope not.

Although there are environmental cultists who preach a Calvinistic strain of eschalology, in the process weirdly comforted by the notion that billions of people deserve to die because of the way their lifestyles have so rudely treated Gaia, I’m not one of them.

Humanity has developed over the last 100,000 years standards of conduct that provide for values I cherish, not least ones that ennoble what we can do by helping release the best, most civic potential in every individual. This is not idle chatter. Contrast the fate of a woman born in Hastings, England in 1067 with the fate of a woman born in Lincoln, Nebraska today.

Human ingenuity, for all of its ability to wreak havoc, is also wonderfully poised to serve as a steward for, literally, a more enlightened world. And it is quite capable of learning from the 2nd Law (economists notwithstanding), in the process converting energy into power in ways accessible to and affordable by all while minimizing the impact to the most sensitive ecosystems and wild nature.

Best wishes, GM.

There is little doubt that we could not return to functioning as a hunter/gatherer society unless we began by hunting each other first.

So, when southern plantation owners depleted the carrying capacity of soil by rapaciously growing cotton and when the Civil War took away their slaves, the cheapest possible human power sources, people there had to cultivate other sources of energy, and convert them to power in order to keep up their–uh–standard of living. So they now mine coal and pump oil and natural gas, trading these for other sources of energy by which to convert into power.

Frankly, I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, the 2nd Law, which assures that even Black Holes can’t maintain their “closed” systems, will also assure that, if we use certain fuels beyond their replacement capacity, we will reach a point where they will no longer be available for power conversion. But we already know how to avoid reaching this point.

The power from the energy density of nuclear fission will buy humanity a lot of time from the imperious limitations of the 2nd Law, and allow all of humanity to share in the prosperity we in the West now take for granted. And, perhaps, one day, the knowledge of how to harness nuclear fusion at relatively low thermal energies, will give us access to power undreamed of today.

None of this provides any assurance that humanity won’t one day, sooner or later, achieve the fate of the Australopithecines. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I’m convinced it will. But on the other days, mostly, I’m hopeful that human ingenuity ingenuously will allow us, in some way or another, to prevail. It would be a grace note if this could be achieved while preserving individual freedoms across a range of activity, in the process extending our potential for ingenuity.

In my previous post to this article, I discussed entropy a bit. The concept as embedded in the 2nd Law does require a closed system and it does require, for every energy to power conversion, ever increasing entropy. So, yes, one can–and does–run out of particular fuel sources. But since the ability to do work (energy) can neither be created nor destroyed, there will ALWAYS be energy sources around that can be converted to power, even if this going back to axes and oxen.

It is strange that that kind of statement comes out of the mouths of economists (I guess you lean towards that kind of animal, if you aren’t officially). Ignorance of physics, geology, biology and ecology are among the defining characteristics of the species, but innumeracy is typically not, while that’s exactly what you are displaying here.

How much power exactly do you think can you get from axes and oxen and how does it compare to the energy needs of humanity? Given that the power of axes and oxen is really derived solar energy passed through many transitions and dissipations….

Our ingenuity as a species has been honed by hard experience. After depleting the land through ignorant agricultural techniques (think, Fertile Crescent), after devastating millions of acres of forests (the USA, Canada, Europe), after poisoning thousands of aquifers, etc, etc, we’ve more recently sought “fuels” with greater energy density, allowing much more bang for the buck while attenuating the risk. Hence, our love affair with coal, natural gas, and oil. Given our desire for prosperity, I daresay that the future will be bound up with nuclear technology, after a long wallow in ideological purgatories and some scares over depletion of fossil fuels, since nuclear, in terms of human time spans, seems to defy the 2nd Law–or at least holds it at bay.

As for economics, I agree it is a wannabe discipline and, for many reasons, its practitioners should not be given (who’s best) prizes, for the same reason that subjectively judged sports should not be awarded gold, silver, and bronzed medals. On the other hand, I don’t think you should throw this baby out with the muddied bath water, despite its voodoo qualities.

For me, the value of economics stems from its analytic methods, which allow for a rational means to share ideas and evaluate them in a variety of ways across a range of values. Economics, broadly applied, is a kind of metaphysics, but one that should, ultimately, engage the empirical world of evidence. To test its hypotheses, one can make probabilistic predictions. However, given all the complex factors that must be incorporated and properly assessed, including the cultural/political/social, it is not at all clear that economics can achieve anything beyond being an assessment tool.

Much like climate “science”….

At the very least, if human ingenuity had never failed us, there wouldn’t have been dozens of civilizations who collapsed due to ecological overshoot.

Anger and emotion works against you and is not what this blog is about. Empirically, what minerals have failed the human ingenuity test in free-market settings as far as cost, price, or quantity?

(Data, not emotions please)