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  1. TopTop #1
    Zeno Swijtink's Avatar
    Zeno Swijtink
     

    Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable
    NewScientist, 02 April 2008
    Debora MacKenzie
    The changing shape of society



    DOOMSDAY. The end of civilisation. Literature and film abound with tales of plague, famine and wars which ravage the planet, leaving a few survivors scratching out a primitive existence amid the ruins. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different?

    Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a massive asteroid, all-out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic (see "Will a pandemic bring down civilisation?"). Yet there is another chilling possibility: what if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later?

    A few researchers have been making such claims for years. Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at which even a relatively minor disturbance can bring everything crashing down.

    Some say we have already reached this point, and that it is time to start thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to keep disaster at bay.

    Environmental mismanagement

    History is not on our side. Think of Sumeria, of ancient Egypt and of the Maya. In his 2005 best-seller Collapse, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed environmental mismanagement for the fall of the Mayan civilisation and others, and warned that we might be heading the same way unless we choose to stop destroying our environmental support systems.

    Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC agrees. He has long argued that governments must pay more attention to vital environmental resources. "It's not about saving the planet. It's about saving civilisation," he says.

    Others think our problems run deeper. From the moment our ancestors started to settle down and build cities, we have had to find solutions to the problems that success brings. "For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies," says Joseph Tainter, an archaeologist at Utah State University, Logan, and author of the 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies.

    If crops fail because rain is patchy, build irrigation canals. When they silt up, organise dredging crews. When the bigger crop yields lead to a bigger population, build more canals. When there are too many for ad hoc repairs, install a management bureaucracy, and tax people to pay for it. When they complain, invent tax inspectors and a system to record the sums paid. That much the Sumerians knew.

    Diminishing returns

    There is, however, a price to be paid. Every extra layer of organisation imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts, from building canals to educating scribes. And increasing complexity, Tainter realised, produces diminishing returns. The extra food produced by each extra hour of labour - or joule of energy invested per farmed hectare - diminishes as that investment mounts. We see the same thing today in a declining number of patents per dollar invested in research as that research investment mounts. This law of diminishing returns appears everywhere, Tainter says.

    To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved means more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle - and, ultimately, less bang for your buck.

    Eventually, says Tainter, the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. Then when the climate changes or barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses. What emerges is a less complex society, which is organised on a smaller scale or has been taken over by another group.

    Tainter sees diminishing returns as the underlying reason for the collapse of all ancient civilisations, from the early Chinese dynasties to the Greek city state of Mycenae. These civilisations relied on the solar energy that could be harvested from food, fodder and wood, and from wind. When this had been stretched to its limit, things fell apart.

    An ineluctable process

    Western industrial civilisation has become bigger and more complex than any before it by exploiting new sources of energy, notably coal and oil, but these are limited. There are increasing signs of diminishing returns: the energy required to get each new joule of oil is mounting and although global food production is still increasing, constant innovation is needed to cope with environmental degradation and evolving pests and diseases - the yield boosts per unit of investment in innovation are shrinking. "Since problems are inevitable," Tainter warns, "this process is in part ineluctable."

    Is Tainter right? An analysis of complex systems has led Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the same conclusion that Tainter reached from studying history. Social organisations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from neighbouring societies that are also becoming more complex, Bar-Yam says. This eventually leads to a fundamental shift in the way the society is organised.

    "To run a hierarchy, managers cannot be less complex than the system they are managing," Bar-Yam says. As complexity increases, societies add ever more layers of management but, ultimately in a hierarchy, one individual has to try and get their head around the whole thing, and this starts to become impossible. At that point, hierarchies give way to networks in which decision-making is distributed. We are at this point.

    This shift to decentralised networks has led to a widespread belief that modern society is more resilient than the old hierarchical systems. "I don't foresee a collapse in society because of increased complexity," says futurologist and industry consultant Ray Hammond. "Our strength is in our highly distributed decision making." This, he says, makes modern western societies more resilient than those like the old Soviet Union, in which decision making was centralised.

    Increasing connectedness

    Things are not that simple, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and author of the 2006 book The Upside of Down. "Initially, increasing connectedness and diversity helps: if one village has a crop failure, it can get food from another village that didn't."

    As connections increase, though, networked systems become increasingly tightly coupled. This means the impacts of failures can propagate: the more closely those two villages come to depend on each other, the more both will suffer if either has a problem. "Complexity leads to higher vulnerability in some ways," says Bar-Yam. "This is not widely understood."

    The reason is that as networks become ever tighter, they start to transmit shocks rather than absorb them. "The intricate networks that tightly connect us together - and move people, materials, information, money and energy - amplify and transmit any shock," says Homer-Dixon. "A financial crisis, a terrorist attack or a disease outbreak has almost instant destabilising effects, from one side of the world to the other."

    For instance, in 2003 large areas of North America and Europe suffered blackouts when apparently insignificant nodes of their respective electricity grids failed. And this year China suffered a similar blackout after heavy snow hit power lines. Tightly coupled networks like these create the potential for propagating failure across many critical industries, says Charles Perrow of Yale University, a leading authority on industrial accidents and disasters.

    Credit crunch

    Perrow says interconnectedness in the global production system has now reached the point where "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere". This is especially true of the world's financial systems, where the coupling is very tight. "Now we have a debt crisis with the biggest player, the US. The consequences could be enormous."

    “The networks that connect us can amplify any shocks. A breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere”

    "A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism," says Bar-Yam, "random damage is like lopping a chunk off a sheep." Whether or not the sheep survives depends on which chunk is lost. And while we are pretty sure which chunks a sheep needs, it isn't clear - it may not even be predictable - which chunks of our densely networked civilisation are critical, until it's too late.

    "When we do the analysis, almost any part is critical if you lose enough of it," says Bar-Yam. "Now that we can ask questions of such systems in more sophisticated ways, we are discovering that they can be very vulnerable. That means civilisation is very vulnerable."

    “We are discovering that networked systems can be very vulnerable. That means civilisation is very vulnerable”

    So what can we do? "The key issue is really whether we respond successfully in the face of the new vulnerabilities we have," Bar-Yam says. That means making sure our "global sheep" does not get injured in the first place - something that may be hard to guarantee as the climate shifts and the world's fuel and mineral resources dwindle.

    Tightly coupled system

    Scientists in other fields are also warning that complex systems are prone to collapse. Similar ideas have emerged from the study of natural cycles in ecosystems, based on the work of ecologist Buzz Holling, now at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Some ecosystems become steadily more complex over time: as a patch of new forest grows and matures, specialist species may replace more generalist species, biomass builds up and the trees, beetles and bacteria form an increasingly rigid and ever more tightly coupled system.

    "It becomes an extremely efficient system for remaining constant in the face of the normal range of conditions," says Homer-Dixon. But unusual conditions - an insect outbreak, fire or drought - can trigger dramatic changes as the impact cascades through the system. The end result may be the collapse of the old ecosystem and its replacement by a newer, simpler one.

    Globalisation is resulting in the same tight coupling and fine-tuning of our systems to a narrow range of conditions, he says. Redundancy is being systematically eliminated as companies maximise profits. Some products are produced by only one factory worldwide. Financially, it makes sense, as mass production maximises efficiency. Unfortunately, it also minimises resilience. "We need to be more selective about increasing the connectivity and speed of our critical systems," says Homer-Dixon. "Sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits."

    Is there an alternative? Could we heed these warnings and start carefully climbing back down the complexity ladder? Tainter knows of only one civilisation that managed to decline but not fall. "After the Byzantine empire lost most of its territory to the Arabs, they simplified their entire society. Cities mostly disappeared, literacy and numeracy declined, their economy became less monetised, and they switched from professional army to peasant militia."

    Staving off collapse

    Pulling off the same trick will be harder for our more advanced society. Nevertheless, Homer-Dixon thinks we should be taking action now. "First, we need to encourage distributed and decentralised production of vital goods like energy and food," he says. "Second, we need to remember that slack isn't always waste. A manufacturing company with a large inventory may lose some money on warehousing, but it can keep running even if its suppliers are temporarily out of action."

    The electricity industry in the US has already started identifying hubs in the grid with no redundancy available and is putting some back in, Homer-Dixon points out. Governments could encourage other sectors to follow suit. The trouble is that in a world of fierce competition, private companies will always increase efficiency unless governments subsidise inefficiency in the public interest.

    Homer-Dixon doubts we can stave off collapse completely. He points to what he calls "tectonic" stresses that will shove our rigid, tightly coupled system outside the range of conditions it is becoming ever more finely tuned to. These include population growth, the growing divide between the world's rich and poor, financial instability, weapons proliferation, disappearing forests and fisheries, and climate change. In imposing new complex solutions we will run into the problem of diminishing returns - just as we are running out of cheap and plentiful energy.

    "This is the fundamental challenge humankind faces. We need to allow for the healthy breakdown in natural function in our societies in a way that doesn't produce catastrophic collapse, but instead leads to healthy renewal," Homer-Dixon says. This is what happens in forests, which are a patchy mix of old growth and newer areas created by disease or fire. If the ecosystem in one patch collapses, it is recolonised and renewed by younger forest elsewhere. We must allow partial breakdown here and there, followed by renewal, he says, rather than trying so hard to avert breakdown by increasing complexity that any resulting crisis is actually worse.

    Tipping points

    Lester Brown thinks we are fast running out of time. "The world can no longer afford to waste a day. We need a Great Mobilisation, as we had in wartime," he says. "There has been tremendous progress in just the past few years. For the first time, I am starting to see how an alternative economy might emerge. But it's now a race between tipping points - which will come first, a switch to sustainable technology, or collapse?"

    “It's now a race between tipping points - which will come first, a switch to sustainable technology or collapse?”

    Tainter is not convinced that even new technology will save civilisation in the long run. "I sometimes think of this as a 'faith-based' approach to the future," he says. Even a society reinvigorated by cheap new energy sources will eventually face the problem of diminishing returns once more. Innovation itself might be subject to diminishing returns, or perhaps absolute limits.

    Studies of the way cities grow by Luis Bettencourt of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, support this idea. His team's work suggests that an ever-faster rate of innovation is required to keep cities growing and prevent stagnation or collapse, and in the long run this cannot be sustainable.

    The stakes are high. Historically, collapse always led to a fall in population. "Today's population levels depend on fossil fuels and industrial agriculture," says Tainter. "Take those away and there would be a reduction in the Earth's population that is too gruesome to think about."

    If industrialised civilisation does fall, the urban masses - half the world's population - will be most vulnerable. Much of our hard-won knowledge could be lost, too. "The people with the least to lose are subsistence farmers," Bar-Yam observes, and for some who survive, conditions might actually improve. Perhaps the meek really will inherit the Earth.
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  2. TopTop #2
    Lenny
    Guest

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Reads like typical Celtic-Teutonic DOOM and gloom. They can't even spell 'civilization' correctly!
    Study closed loop static systems, then try to make them 'stable' and guess what you get? DOOM, GLOOM THE END IS NEAR.
    Fits well with the other thread around here, what with the Eco-Millennium DOOM, GLOOM.
    Now go and have a NICE day!
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  3. TopTop #3
    PeriodThree
    Guest

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    The book looks fascinating, I will add it to my queue.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Zeno Swijtink: View Post
    Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different?
    But this statement is not really correct. For example, the Roman empire collapsed, but Roman civilization didn't really collapse.
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  4. TopTop #4
    Braggi's Avatar
    Braggi
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Zeno Swijtink: View Post
    ...
    The stakes are high. Historically, collapse always led to a fall in population. "Today's population levels depend on fossil fuels and industrial agriculture," says Tainter. "Take those away and there would be a reduction in the Earth's population that is too gruesome to think about." ...
    The author misses a significant point here, as do some Wacco posters in another thread: populations begin to decrease when women reach a certain level of education. That's all we need to do to guarantee a slow, non-catastrophic reduction in population levels. We need to educate as many women as possible. I'm not talking about any particular ideology either, so don't start flaming me for some liberal agenda here. General education is good enough and most especially if it includes health care.

    Educated, empowered women have children later in life when they are more mature, which is a good thing for families. They generally have fewer children. As education rates rise, population growth falls until a negative rate is reached as in most industrialized nations.

    The least catastrophic method of stabilizing and eventually reducing population levels is to educate and empower women.

    -Jeff
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  5. TopTop #5
    MsTerry
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Jeff, thanks for your sexist comment.
    You are implying that men are smart and don't to be educated, but those stupid women would benefit from some schooling!
    The European countries that do have a negative growth rate are not to happy about it and in some instances (like Germany) will pay you money to have children.
    https://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms...6-29057136_ITM

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Braggi: View Post
    The author misses a significant point here, as do some Wacco posters in another thread: populations begin to decrease when women reach a certain level of education. That's all we need to do to guarantee a slow, non-catastrophic reduction in population levels. We need to educate as many women as possible. I'm not talking about any particular ideology either, so don't start flaming me for some liberal agenda here. General education is good enough and most especially if it includes health care.

    Educated, empowered women have children later in life when they are more mature, which is a good thing for families. They generally have fewer children. As education rates rise, population growth falls until a negative rate is reached as in most industrialized nations.

    The least catastrophic method of stabilizing and eventually reducing population levels is to educate and empower women.

    -Jeff
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  6. TopTop #6
    Braggi's Avatar
    Braggi
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by MsTerry: View Post
    Jeff, thanks for your sexist comment.
    You are implying that men are smart and don't to be educated, but those stupid women would benefit from some schooling! ...
    You know I'm arguing for equal opportunity, MsTerry. I'm not suggesting one sex is smarter than the other, but there are still a few social orders on this Earth that deny women the right to an education. Poverty is another force that interferes with education. It is in the interests of everyone to improve access to education.

    That's all.

    -Jeff
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  7. TopTop #7
    Lenny
    Guest

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by MsTerry: View Post
    Jeff, thanks for your sexist comment.
    You are implying that men are smart and don't to be educated, but those stupid women would benefit from some schooling!
    The European countries that do have a negative growth rate are not to happy about it and in some instances (like Germany) will pay you money to have children.
    https://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms...6-29057136_ITM
    I know I'm skewed, but I think Jeff may also mean that men aren't "stuck" with babies as much as women. And with Marriage being "advanced" the poverty level of woman is decreased even further.
    I wish America would pay folks to have babies as well!
    REALISTIC tax breaks are what's needed, not the paltry sum this government has allowed. And it should be tied to marriage just to enshrine a more positive model. But then I might as well be asking for more solar power, if not the moon.
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  8. TopTop #8
    Braggi's Avatar
    Braggi
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    ... But then I might as well be asking for more solar power, if not the moon.
    Lenny, do a google search on "megawatts of solar power."

    Just read the headlines. It'll only take a moment.

    -Jeff
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  9. TopTop #9
    Lenny
    Guest

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Braggi: View Post
    Lenny, do a google search on "megawatts of solar power."Just read the headlines. It'll only take a moment.-Jeff
    Jeff, I don't know about you. Your credibility went into the toilet for me after the Constitutional derivation and other such matters. Maybe you got something going for you on the tech side of life. A fellow I know, THE smartest techie, IEEE certified with degrees,etc, been with HP and Agilent for over 25 years, and in his younger days did R&D with them, now heads up about 20 guys that troubleshoot a couple of their systems which means he flies all over the planet to fix stuff. Got it? Smart guy. I've asked more than once, about solar and his view. Essentially he says, for idiots like me, that there's no such thing as a free lunch. One cannot get out of a system more than one puts into it, thermodynamic laws being stubborn and all. He says materials will get better, storage shall improve, but essentially for what's needed to run the big boy stuff, solar doesn't cut it. Can't cut it. Now he may be wrong, but I don't know of another that can prove him so. That said, I'll read your stuff, but it will probably be all Greek to me. And it's been 45 years since I studied Greek.
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  10. TopTop #10
    Philip Tymon's Avatar
    Philip Tymon
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    I believe it was Gandhi who, when asked what he thought of Western Civilization said "it would be a good idea".
    Last edited by Barry; 06-24-2008 at 11:10 PM.
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  11. TopTop #11
    Braggi's Avatar
    Braggi
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    Jeff, I don't know about you. Your credibility went into the toilet for me after the Constitutional derivation and other such matters. ...
    Lenny, I never discredited what you pointed to as source material for our Constitution. I pointed out another source document; one that is rarely credited and yet one that had substantial impact at the time. It's possible to acknowledge multiple sources. I do.

    For more details I highly recommend Jerrry Mander's "In the Absence of the Sacred." Yes, that's really his name. You'd like him.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    ... Maybe you got something going for you on the tech side of life. A fellow I know, THE smartest techie, IEEE certified with degrees,etc, ... he says, for idiots like me, that there's no such thing as a free lunch. One cannot get out of a system more than one puts into it, thermodynamic laws being stubborn and all. He says materials will get better, storage shall improve, but essentially for what's needed to run the big boy stuff, solar doesn't cut it. ...
    Lenny, here's another case where you're really going black and white on me. I never said we must immediately turn over all power generation to solar. I do believe it's possible for most of our power to come from solar ... eventually. I also believe an oxy-acetylene torch cuts plate steel really well and that's hard to do with solar power. Now, the oxygen and the acetylene could be concentrated into those handy bottles with solar power, but now I digress. The point is that solar power is enough to power most homes ... now. Large thermal solar installations can power small cities and even cities with appreciable industry. I've posted links to 500+ megawatt installations that will be online within three years here in California. That's big stuff. Tell your friend about it. Send him the links. He'll appreciate it. I hope you do to.

    Don't be locked into thinking photovoltaic is the only way to get electricity from the sun.

    -Jeff
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  12. TopTop #12
    PeriodThree
    Guest

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    I've asked more than once, about solar and his view. Essentially he says, for idiots like me, that there's no such thing as a free lunch. One cannot get out of a system more than one puts into it, thermodynamic laws being stubborn and all. He says materials will get better, storage shall improve, but essentially for what's needed to run the big boy stuff, solar doesn't cut it. Can't cut it.
    If your friend actually invoked TANSTAAFL than your friend is probably trying to gloss over details in simplifying his explanation, or he is an idiot.

    The sun gives us energy. From where we sit on earth, that is a free lunch. No violation of the laws of thermodynamics required.

    It currently costs two to three times as much to generate electricity with solar than with natural gas, and six to ten times more to generate electricity with solar than with coal. But those are engineering and economic numbers, to be balanced by the value we place on a cleaner environment, not a 'Free Lunch.'

    There are lots of claims and counter claims being made about the potential for different alternative energy systems. When people like your friend use language like 'the big boy stuff' to dismiss alternatives they are usually talking about 'Base Load.'

    The common argument is that Solar can lower the need for 'peaker' plants (plants which can increase and decrease their output very quickly) but that alternative energy can't ever touch our Base Load.

    Those arguments seem to me like the arguments of the Mainframe manufacturers in response to the PC revolution. First they argued that only centralized organizations needed computers, then there was the slow chipping away as more and more of the tasks of the mainframe were taken over by personal computers. But always was the claim that those PC's couldn't touch the Mainframe for whatever their argument was...

    But then one day we woke up and realized that most computing had left the mainframe. There is still a role for mainframes, just as I believe there will be a role for our fantastic electrical production and distribution system, but decentralization of decision making, production, computing, and energy seems to be what is currently driving economic efficiencies.

    To me the most interesting advantage of decentralized systems is that they push control out to the edges of the system.

    With a central power plant (or mainframe) a few specialists make all of the decisions. They probably make very good decisions based on their information, but they don't have all of the information which is available on the edges.

    When you control at least part of your own energy generation than you can apply your knowledge to the system. Doing things like not running energy intensive tasks when the system is already at peak production.

    Zeno recently posted an article which argues that the increasing complexity required by our systems, especially increasingly decentralized but interconnected systems, makes them more brittle, more prone to outage, but I disagree :-)

    (edit: whoops - that is _this_ thread, sorry!)

    I'll stop here, but the interconnections of the systems we are creating are a key intellectual challenge we face right now.
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  13. TopTop #13
    Lenny
    Guest

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by PeriodThree: View Post
    If your friend actually invoked TANSTAAFL than your friend is probably trying to gloss over details in simplifying his explanation, or he is an idiot. The sun gives us energy. From where we sit on earth, that is a free lunch. No violation of the laws of thermodynamics required.It currently costs two to three times as much to generate electricity with solar than with natural gas, and six to ten times more to generate electricity with solar than with coal. But those are engineering and economic numbers, to be balanced by the value we place on a cleaner environment, not a 'Free Lunch.'
    As an outcome for "cleaner environment" I cannot argue with that objective relative to an energy plan. The two ends to that balance being economics and engineering seem to dictate how things are really done, and thus the conundrum. The bonafides of my friend indicate that idiocy did not lie in his direction but rather mine. After googling Jeff's 'megawatts of solar power' I found mostly PR work and very expensive, government subsidized or sponsored works, since the return on the $ could only be absorbed by me and all the other sucker tax payers.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by PeriodThree: View Post
    There are lots of claims and counter claims being made about the potential for different alternative energy systems. When people like your friend use language like 'the big boy stuff' to dismiss alternatives they are usually talking about 'Base Load.' The common argument is that Solar can lower the need for 'peaker' plants (plants which can increase and decrease their output very quickly) but that alternative energy can't ever touch our Base Load.
    "The big boy stuff" is my language. As I recall, he indicated the demands of industry could not make it with alternative energies. He did say homes could be made solar with simple deep cycle batteries, and fair amount of capital outlay. As I recall that was in contrast to 'the big boy' notion.
    So I gather the Base Load is produced continiously but on days that 'brown out' like during heat spells, other plants kick up their base load? Are those other plants also a built in redundancy factor in case one plant goes down?
    I noted during the tour of Hoover Dam there were several redundant power supplly stations that could generate juice, EXCEPT if the damn were removed.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by PeriodThree: View Post
    To me the most interesting advantage of decentralized systems is that they push control out to the edges of the system. With a central power plant (or mainframe) a few specialists make all of the decisions. They probably make very good decisions based on their information, but they don't have all of the information which is available on the edges.
    I imagine Hoover Dam being a central plant, the Petaluma power sub station is happily huming along, while the sub-substation over on Meecham & Stony Point is keeping me and mine jucing. As long as Hoover is putting out, all is OK. Truck hits Mecham & Stony Point, and we are in the dark for days.
    However when there IS a minor problem there, we usually get lights in a moment due to redundancy from Petaluma or other points out there. Under this decentralized plan, if the lights go out, they stay out due to non-redundancy. Is that about it?
    Sorry, but you probably see why my friend dumbed it down for me to understand.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by PeriodThree: View Post
    When you control at least part of your own energy generation than you can apply your knowledge to the system. Doing things like not running energy intensive tasks when the system is already at peak production. Zeno recently posted an article which argues that the increasing complexity required by our systems, especially increasingly decentralized but interconnected systems, makes them more brittle, more prone to outage, but I disagree :-)
    (edit: whoops - that is _this_ thread, sorry!)
    I'll stop here, but the interconnections of the systems we are creating are a key intellectual challenge we face right now.
    Z may be right, but that may be applicable to more complex systems than the electrical grid of US and Hoover Dam.
    I know they are for me, just based on this post!
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  14. TopTop #14
    Braggi's Avatar
    Braggi
     

    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    ... After googling Jeff's 'megawatts of solar power' I found mostly PR work and very expensive, government subsidized or sponsored works, since the return on the $ could only be absorbed by me and all the other sucker tax payers. ...
    Lenny, what the Hel were you reading? I found one link to a "program" in Canada that talked about tax incentives. All the rest were projects under construction that are commercial plants. These will make money. Lots of money. They will pay for themselves.

    Do you have any idea how much taxpayers are paying to keep the outdated fossil fuel and nuclear energy systems going? Do you realize the nuclear industry has been invented, promoted, financed and insured by the taxpayers since day one?

    I gotta stop. On to solar issues.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    ... As I recall, he indicated the demands of industry could not make it with alternative energies. He did say homes could be made solar with simple deep cycle batteries, and fair amount of capital outlay. ...
    Is 500 megawatts not enough to run his electric motor? What is he thinking? Deep cycle batteries? They aren't needed unless the home is off the grid like mine. Most aren't. They feed power into the grid during the day when city electrical demands are greatest and feed off the grid at night when demands are the least. That's not so complicated. No batteries needed. This is getting redundant because I've explained that one before.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    ... Under this decentralized plan, if the lights go out, they stay out due to non-redundancy. Is that about it?
    ...
    No Lenny. Decentralized power sources mean less likelihood of lights ever going out because there are so many sources of power feeding into the grid.
    Redundancy. That's the benefit not the risk.

    -Jeff
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  15. TopTop #15
    PeriodThree
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    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Braggi: View Post
    They feed power into the grid during the day when city electrical demands are greatest and feed off the grid at night when demands are the least. That's not so complicated. No batteries needed. This is getting redundant because I've explained that one before.
    Jeff,

    You've explained that one before, but I've never actually understood what you mean.

    In the context of our current distribution system our relatively small amount of personal solar acts as a sort of distributed peaker plant. Those of us with solar who are on the grid sell our power back during the day. And we feed off of the grid at night.

    But that power we feed off at night is not coming from solar, and very little of it is coming from renewable sources. This is where it comes from:
    https://www.energy.ca.gov/electricit...tem_power.html

    (that doesn't specify night versus day production. It shows 41.5% of gross system power comes from Natural Gas. 19% large hydro, 15.7% coal, and 12.9% nuclear)

    But that 'grid power' you keep referring to is being generated almost totally by large centralized power plants. You keep pushing Solar as the ultimate answer to everything. While I love solar, and spent a considerable amount of my own money to have solar, we do not have any real energy storage solutions.

    If we could magically flip a switch and generate 294,865 Gigawatt hours of electricity from solar (that was our Gross System Power for 2006) unless we also magically got an efficient storage system we would still be S.O.L. at night and during cloudy weather.



    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Braggi: View Post

    No Lenny. Decentralized power sources mean less likelihood of lights ever going out because there are so many sources of power feeding into the grid.
    Redundancy. That's the benefit not the risk.

    -Jeff
    While being a strong proponent of decentralized power generation, I suspect that centralized systems are likely to be more reliable. Our big outages have historically been because of distribution issues rather than generation issues.

    The Grid is a massively complex system! Adding more inputs into the grid doesn't intrinsically make the grid more stable. There are other advantages to decentralization, but I _think_ that the decentralized system is not more reliable.

    Think about our other experiences with decentralization. Computers are my obvious example :-) Big data centers seldom go down. Random personal computers frequently go down. The advantage of the decentralized system is not the reliability, but the lowered costs, the increased flexibility, the ability to respond more quickly to change, etc.

    I think we will have a similar experience as we decentralize power.

    Cheers,
    Rich
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  16. TopTop #16
    PeriodThree
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    Re: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    After googling Jeff's 'megawatts of solar power' I found mostly PR work and very expensive, government subsidized or sponsored works, since the return on the $ could only be absorbed by me and all the other sucker tax payers.
    I believe in the power of government investment to advance technology. I can offer some examples where the investment has paid off: like aerospace, the Space Program, and the Internet.

    But you have a different perspective than I do on the importance of the various risks facing us as a society, and on the efficacy of government action.

    Deciding on a proper governmental role in industrial policy is important, but it is something where reasonable people can disagree...

    (ie. unlike my hot bottom issues, torture and gay marriage, where disagreement is intrinsically unreasonable :-)

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Lenny: View Post
    As I recall, he indicated the demands of industry could not make it with alternative energies. He did say homes could be made solar with simple deep cycle batteries, and fair amount of capital outlay. As I recall that was in contrast to 'the big boy' notion.
    So I gather the Base Load is produced continiously but on days that 'brown out' like during heat spells, other plants kick up their base load? Are those other plants also a built in redundancy factor in case one plant goes down?
    I noted during the tour of Hoover Dam there were several redundant power supplly stations that could generate juice, EXCEPT if the damn were removed.
    Homes can currently be made fully solar by effectively using 'the grid' as a big battery. It takes some capital, but compared with home prices it is close to reasonable to do.

    The basic 'win' is that solar generates the most power at the times when electrical consumption is highest - about noon to six pm in the summer.

    Rather than operate their 'peaker' power plants, which are more expensive to operate, the utility buys your excess solar production for 'peak' prices (about 30 cents per kwh). When you are not generating power you buy your power from the utility for off-peak prices. About 11 cents per kwh.

    A typical 'modest' home might use about 24 kilowatt hours of power a day. Say you have a 4 kilowatt solar system. On average you will generate that power for about 6 hours a day. 6 hours times 4 kilowatts = 24 kilowatt hours. If your load was an even 1 kilowatt hour per hour, then you would be using one kilowatt hour per hour and selling back 3 for 6 hours a day, at 30 cents each (18 kwh * 30 cents), then buying them back at 11 cents each.
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