The End Of The World, Part 5,235

[chris_gerrib]

I was looking at CNN online, and read this interesting article about making diesel fuel from e.coli poop. Although the title is cute, the concept seems sound enough, and more then a few companies are working on similar concepts.

Now, don't pop the champagne corks just yet - we're two or three years out from a pilot plant and optimistically ten from any significant production volumes, if these schemes work. But assuming one or more of these schemes get this scaled up sufficiently, we may be able to solve fuel and carbon problems with one shot.

Which makes this entry from ClusterFuck Nation even more ludicrous. For those not clicking through, the author, Jim Kunstler, thinks that $4 / gallon gas means that Civilization As We Know It is Over. This Kunstler fellow is dead serious! Now, the British SF writer Charles Stross, who provided the pointer, thinks Kunstler's "over-egging the pudding," which is a wonderfully British expression that I shall have to steal borrow. (Stross was paying $11 / gallon in the UK, and hadn't seen the backside of $8 / gallon for years.)

More generally, Kunstler seems to be making a living spreading his message of doom and gloom, so this post is not a one-off. Don't get me wrong - we have plenty of problems in the world, but panic is not helpful. Especially since, as far as I can tell, Kunstler has no technical training or expertise to evaluate our economic or technological future. I'm reminded of a line in Frank Herbert's book Dune, "fear is the mind-killer."

Comments

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

Poking around Kunstler's site, I found a trailer () for his latest novel World Made by Hand about a "post-oil future". The trailer is like a romantic cross between Ken Burns' Civil War and Road Warrior.

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

Wait ... I viewed the trailer. Gas gone, electricity isn't flowing, the county in the book is isolated from the world, which is only a rumor.

"There may be a president and he may be in Minneapolis but it's little more than rumor. The world outside Washington County is unknown territory."

Okay, fine.

I don't know where 'Washington County' is but a religious group flees Virginia and buys a high school there? I can buy okies fleeing Virginia (so to speak). Except that south of Richmond it's darn rural.


If there is no economy who do they pay for the high school? With what? It's all but stated there isn't a functioning county government so ... why not just move in?

Also referenced is a Hudson River trading boat ... why sounds like someone is doing something. At the very least a trading boat will bring news, rumor, people and goods to the county. This might put the kibosh on 'little more than rumor'.

Ugh. If you an spot potential plot holes in the trailer ....

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. We live in a world of “smoke and squabble and constant news,” where the only uncertainty comes from 'spin.' What Russia is up to, what Washington id doing, the latest Hollywood celebuzz - it's all reported as it happens, and we're used to that. If a hemisphere-spanning EMP pulse blew out everything that makes or uses electricity, including cars - the world would suddenly end at the horizon. The transmission of news would resume the form it's had throughout history, as a game of “telephone.” The crew of that riverboat could only relate what they remembered of what they had heard, and even they are not likely to hear news much beyond the county. As for “national politics,” forget it.

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

As for “national politics,” forget it.

Not 'national politics' as practiced in 2008. National politics can exist across the continent without electricity - we did fine here with news being carried along on horseback.

Granted, if all the toys suddenly went away, I don't know if our current system could devolve to an 18th century mode of operation. I guess a story where that happened wouldn't make for a good dystopia.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure he's the Johnnie who was saying that all the Moslem fundamentalists have to do, to achieve final victory over the Great Satan, is to wait: The end of cheap oil will be the end of the United States of America. Flat-out, straight-up, no kidding.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

People in a dead panic (like Kunstler) tend not to let mere facts get in the way of their opinions. Facts like the United States once ran a continental government with horse and buggy technology, and managed to get newspapers distributed.