Entropy gets no respect

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.energybulletin.net/49964

The relation between modern industrial society and the scientific ideas that supposedly guide it is more complex than a casual glance will necessarily reveal. The ideology a society believes that it embraces and the assumptions about the world that actually underlie its actions and institutions are not uncommonly at odds with one another. It often takes the most strenuous sort of willed inattention to fail to notice the gap, but efforts toward that end can count on the support of public opinion as well as the more tangible backing provided by economic interests.

Consider the clash between the Christian and liberal values allegedly embraced by the great powers of 19th century Europe and the ruthless political and economic exploitation imposed by these same powers on the subject peoples of their huge colonial empires. The result was a rush to find some justification for European empires other than the obvious one, which was simply that Europeans wanted the wealth and power they could get by exploiting the rest of the planet. As Stephen Jay Gould chronicled in his engaging The Mismeasure of Man, generations of scientists thus spent their careers trying to argue that the “white race,” that imaginary and variously defined beast, was biologically superior to the other “races” on the planet.

These efforts fell afoul of a minor detail of anthropology. It so happens that people of European descent fall toward the middle range of a great many biological indices; people of African descent tend toward one end of most of these indices, and people of East Asian descent tend toward the other. Thus it proved impossible to argue, say, that Britons were superior to Africans without providing evidence that Chinese were superior to Britons, and claims that Britons were superior to Chinese ended up just as effectively proving that Africans were superior to Britons. Still, these efforts continued right up into the first half of the 20th century, because the alternative was to admit that European domination of the planet was a straightforward act of piracy backed by nothing more edifying than a temporary advantage in military technology.

[GliderGuider]

1. Time for another discussion of cultural narratives?

As well as the inviolability of the substitution principle in economic theory?

I love JMG - he cuts to the chase/bone with such elegant prose.

[Terry in Austin]

3. Rolling stones: a narrative for our times

JMG's image of rolling boulders downhill to illustrate our energy situation is very effective -- as well as having a certain cultural resonance with its rocky-rolly theme.

In a similar vein, my favorite passage in the "substitution" economic narrative is when Sheik Yamani says "The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of stones. Nor will the oil age end because we have run out of oil."

Wow, does this guy have a pair, or what!? Of course, the trope is too good to miss for the likes of Thomas Friedman, who picks up on it in his second installment of the "Flat Earth" story, Hot, Flat and Crowded:

{The Stone Age} ended because people invented alternative tools made of bronze and then iron. Yamani knew that if the oil-consuming countries actually got their acts together to produce renewable energy {etc.}... the oil age would end with millions of barrels of oil still underground, just as the Stone Age ended with a lot of stones still on the ground

And speaking of tropes -- on the very same page, we find the ever-popular favorite, "Econ 101"

"anyone who invokes markets and doesn't want to invoke a price signal failed Econ 101. We invoke the market in energy, but we don't use it. ...You have to have a price signal."

Here's a narrative with almost religious language -- invocation -- and "Econ 101" is the catechism. If we just send the right signals, God will reverse a whole bunch of entropy for us and things will keep running a while longer!

[tama]

7. Negentropy of ice

So who put those boulders on hill tops in the first place? Great masses of hard and cold water, melting...

[Terry in Austin]

2. John Michael Greer

Second-smartest guy on the web!

Not only does he have his science and economics fully sorted, he's got some wicked cultural insight. A couple of pearls from this piece:

...there’s a real question whether nuclear power is a net energy source at all. (Of course the further a nuclear technology is from actual implementation, the better it looks, and the ones that are still vaporware look best of all.)

...the particular kind of civilization we’ve built in the last three centuries will not survive the end of cheap abundant fossil fuels. ...one of the reasons so many people like to imagine an apocalyptic end to the industrial age is that sudden extinction is easier to contemplate than the experience of slowly waking up to the full extent of our own collective stupidity.

[GliderGuider]

4. OK, I gotta ask

#1???

[Terry in Austin]

5. Ah!

I confess, it's a cheap conflict-avoidance technique to proclaim a #2 rather than a #1.

Seems that people often have their own -- sometimes very strong -- opinion about who should be #1. Much safer to award a second place, which still doesn't suck, and spares you a lot of flak.

Plus, it's kind of fun to get people to think about their own #1 pick. Used to be a joke in my family, when a champagne cork popped, somebody would usually say "Ah! The second-sweetest sound in the world!"

That said, I'd probably pick Greer for the top spot, as well. But as ever, YMMV.

[GliderGuider]

6. I have a very high regard for him as well

though I will admit I've argued with him occasionally on his blog. Back when I thought it mattered whether one was sufficiently pessimistic or not I thought Greer was a hopeless polyanna, constitutionally unable to look the reality of collapse squarely in the eye. Fortunately I no longer think like that. He has a combination of breadth and depth that is very impressive, especially among those who write for a lay audience.

Who would my #1 pick be? I don't think I could pick one, though a couple of DUers are right up there with JMG, including Time for change and Octafish, but I may be biased because I resonate with their perrspective on events.