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Gold/Mining/Energy : PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug R who wrote (289)	4/10/2005 9:35:17 PM
From: Mahatmabenfoo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1183

"'m normally proud of the four-billion year long slog our lineage has made out of the Archeaen depths" the idea that the civilization has been one long continuous climb is merely one of our myths. The Egyptions, The Mayans... and many others. Gone. The problem is this time before burning out we took all of the earth's easy to get metal ores and fossil fuels. This won't start up again. - Charles ============== energybulletin.net The first is called the progressivist myth. According to this story, all of human history is a drama of progress. From primitive ignorance and savagery, according to the progressivist myth, people climbed step by step up the ladder of civilization. Knowledge gathered over generations made it possible for each culture to go further than the ones before it. With modern times, progress went into overdrive, and it's still in overdrive today. The purpose of human existence is to make this upward climb possible so that our descendants can someday reach the stars. ... Everything necessary for industrial society, except a way to turn fossil fuels into mechanical energy, existed long before the industrial revolution. Renewable energy sources? Wind power, water power, and biomass were all used extensively in the preindustrial past. Scientific knowledge? The laws of mechanics were worked out in ancient times, and a Greek scientist even invented the steam turbine before the birth of Christ; without fossil fuels it was a useless curiosity. Human resourcefulness and ingenuity? People in past ages were as resourceful and ingenious as we are. Fossil fuels make the one crucial difference between ancient cultures and modern industrial society. As fossil fuels run out and the ecological consequences of their misues come home to roost, that difference will go away. As for those who simply insist that "we can't go back," that's easy to say, but we no longer have the resources to go forward, and soon we won't even be able to stand still. What other direction do they have in mind?