Maurice Re: "tiny changes" Despite all the Wall Street and "futurist" propaganda to the contrary we keep gobbling up every kind of industrial feedstock and raw material at an increasing rate, and at a rate which exceeds the worlds rate of population growth.
All of those things I cited, synthetic rubber, portland cement, plastics, paper, fibers, chemicals, ceramics, glass, metals, textiles, everything is being used at an increasing rate and all of this stuff is being produced in essentially the same way it was decades ago. Nothing has changed. I am still on the mailing list for whole bunches of different types of processing equipment and this stuff is all being made in the same manner as before. It is not because we are stupid or lazy, it is that industry is up against some hard and fast physical limitations that will never change.
You mention airline travel. Back in the 1960's I had a thermodynamics lab with a Pratt and Whitney turbofan as a project. By the 1960's turbofan design was a mature technology. I looked at an online image of a new GE turbofan and it is essentially the same device, but I suppose better metallurgy has allowed more boost and so maybe you have picked up a few more points of efficiency since then. But mainly you now cram lots more people in the airplane than the late 1970's. but the planes are mostly the same, some exactly the same with the same wing airfoils and the rest. That is another pretty mature technology. So with the cramming maybe you get twice the passanger miles per gallon of fuel. It is still lots of fuel. But SO WHAT. In the meantime you have vastly increased the number of people flying around, wiping out any savings from increased engine efficency and cramming. Maybe this has ACTUALLY made the consumption problem worse. A similar effect happens with higher milage cars, folks just drive around more.
And I just don't get it with the cyberspace stuff. What do you expect people to do, sit around naked (so they consume no raw materials) and jabber on the cell phone all the time?
Slagle |
