Re: DEATH OF THE INTERNET

On Feb 14, 12:45 pm, "bill" <ford_prefec...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 13, 2:27 pm, gaedhea...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:



Death of the Internet

I have not been spending too much time, almost none, considering the
consequences of oil depletion.

Then I ran into this article:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory
and reconsideredhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

So for the last few days I've been thinking about the fact that the
world's oil can not last forever. I mean, if the earth were a hollow
ball filled with oil, it would eventually be pumped out. Ah, but the
earth is not a hollow ball, it also contains a lot of rock, iron,
water and magma -- so it never was filled with oil.

The Olduvai Theory suggests that the peak oil production will soon
occur, if it has not already. After that, a few years will pass with
the oil supply beginning to lower, while demand continues to grow.
With demand still increasing but supply diminishing, the price will
rise.

With rising prices, increasing demand and diminishing supply,
something has to give. If you don't want to think about it, that's ok
with me, I avoided it as long as I could.

The primary use of oil is for energy -- electric energy. The internet
depends on electricity. Many, if not most, of the companies who
support the "backbone" do so as a secondary purpose. That is, the
primary reason they are in business is not to maintain the internet.

When the supply of oil (spell that 'electricity') diminishes to the
point that the cost of supply exceeds that which can be allocated by
companies for a secondary purpose, they will abandon the secondary
service.

I do not expect the internet to die suddenly on a given day, or at a
given oil price. I do expect the cost of internet service to rise, at
some point, with the cost of oil.

Internet connectivity and service will begin to diminish at that
point, and from then until blackouts begin to occur, due to failing
oil supply, at city and state levels.

Of course, by that time, there will be more severe collapse of
services to worry about.

owd

A little more research might benefit you, oil produces something
like 10% of world electricity, coal is something like 50-60, but is in
NO danger of running out. Oil is primarily used as a transportation
fuel, and that's what we need to look to replace *if* we're anywhere
nead peak oil.
Climate change is something totally different, if we want to
fight that battle, replacing those coal plants with nuclear/wind is
the thing to do.

Thanks for you comments, Bill.

Coal-fired steam cars?
Solar powered trucks?

I guess a small nuclear plant could be built to power freight trains,
but no airplane will fly powered by nuclear energy.



The problem with coal fired electricity generation is that so much oil
is required to produce and supply the coal that it is a near break-
even when energy cost is considered. And THAT is with plentiful and
cheap oil. What energy source will be used to mine coal when oil is
more expensive than the coal?

Can you mine enough coal to power the mining of coal?

The same with (only worse) nuclear energy: so much oil is required to
produce and supply the nuclear fuel that if the government were not
subsidizing it for weapons production there would be no nuclear
electric generation.

Have you considered the information available at
http://www.dieoff.com/


Bad news is not popular.


g



.

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