The Olduvai Theory of Industrial Civilization

http://www.oilcrisis.com/duncan/olduvai.htm
http://dieoff.org/page224.htm

The Olduvai Theory of Industrial Civilization



How much weight does this theory carry in the scientific community?
Basically Peak Oil right?

 

My gut feeling is that its crap. The basic assumption is that we wont find another source of energy. We already have found plenty of other sources of energy its just making the transition. This reminds me of a theory my Thomas Malthus who basically we would consume all our resources and then decline pretty much like your link, except Thomas Malthus never attempted a date.

Of course Thomas Malthus may in the long run prove to be correct, in the very long run of course we could hypothetically reach the limits of the universe, Asimoz discussed this. Though to back to science, I would have said this theory is worth very little. Its not a question of science, theres a plethora of new technologies we can use, though how much damage we'll do before we make the transition is another question.

 

Some would say that's a very reasonable assumption:

"What About All the Various Alternatives ​

to Oil? Can't We Find Replacements?"​

Many politicians and economists insist that there are alternatives to oil and that we can "invent our way out of this."



Physicists and geologists tell us an entirely different story.



The politicians and economists are selling us 30-year old economic and political fantasies, while the physicists and geologists are telling us scientific and mathematical truth. Rather than accept the high-tech myths proposed by the politicians and economists, its time for you to start asking critical questions about the so called "alternatives to oil" and facing some hard truths about energy.While there are many technologically viable alternatives to oil, there are none (or combination thereof) that can supply us with anywhere near the amount of net-energy required by our modern monetary system and industrial infrastructure. People tend to think of alternatives to oil as somehow independent from oil. In reality, the alternatives to oil are more accurately described as "derivatives of oil." It takes massive amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate and mine the raw materials (silver, copper, platinum, uranium, etc.) necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. It takes more oil to construct these alternatives and even more oil to distribute them, maintain them, and adapt current infrastructure to run on them.



Each of the alternatives is besieged by numerous fundamental physical shortcomings that have, thus far, received little attention:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

 

And wasn't Malthus proved correct?


Exponential Law?

 

I guess my question should be: Do you (and the scientific community) reasonably believe that humanity is reaching, has reached, or is about to reach it's technological peak?


Is it all downhill from here?

 

Well ive been doing physics for a while, well I say a while, im only 22, but I can reel off a fairly big list of potential power sources. My personal favourite is a combination of fusion and solar, but everyone has their own opinion on the best way to do it. It is true that consumption is increasing rapidly and I have no doubt that the effects of the industrial revolution will wear off. We have to remember in the scheme of even our modern history the last 200 years has been a boom period that probably will not continue. That said theres a world of difference between a boom and wholesale decline.

I think we will find the techhnology to continue to grow but the achievements of the 19th and early 20th century will not be something that happens all the time. Also there is no reason for power consumtion to continue to increase, personal electronics can be powered by kinetics etc I suspect as technology increases no only will our ability to produce energy increase but our efficieny will increase also.

 

I'd just like to know where industrial society began in the 1930's.
Here in Britain we have been an industrial society since at least the early 1700's
I think peak output was attained around 1950 and since then we have become a post industrial society which is based on the service sector rather than an industrial manufacturing base

 

"Industrial Civilization is defined to begin in 1930 when the leading-edge value of energy-use per person reached 37% of its peak value. "

and We are still in the industrial age.

 

Can any of you tell me what, exactly, this means. "leading-edge value of energy-use" ??
As opposed to what? I take it there are other measurements then?

 

It takes running out of something to spur the human animal on to something else. Our little monkey ancestors wouldn't leave the mango tree until all of the ripe mangos were eaten..then they would go look for another mango tree. England didn't make the wholesale change to coal until they had destroyed most of the available hardwood forests. I have books from the 1930's that said we would run out of oil by the 1950's (it didn't happen then of course but it WILL happen someday). One idea that was bantered around in the 60's was to place huge solar arrays in geo-synchronous orbit, convert the solar energy into electricty, then micro waves, then beam it to collectors on the earth where the micro waves would easily be converted back into electricty, but who wants to live under or next to a huge micro wave reciever of that power range???? One very cheap source of energy is the difference in temperature between the deep cold ocean water and the warm surface water. Boilers and "steam" turbins using a low boiling point medium instead of water could be used to generate electricty utilizing the temperature difference.

 

A post-industrial primitive society?!?
We're not going to be that lucky!!

Civilization is the result of a collective ubiquitous self-loathing and self-destructive inbalance of psycho-energy.

Every industry and technology we create advances the mentally ill death-drive of civilization's funeral-march to mass destruction.

Peak Oil can neither stop this process nor cause us to break through the mass psychosis of the collective delusions and denials of the drappery we call civilization.

This weekend at Stanford there is an international neuro-cognitive seminar called the Enhanced Human.

Neuro-cognitive psychology is on the brink of giving us breath-taking break-throughs in bio-technology that our insane impulses will be able to exploit to the fullest.

Post industrial?? Wishfull thinking!!

 

I'll point out that much of that article supports itself by using the same writers over, and over, and over again.