Most Important Lecture on Growth & Sustainability

The following lecture video of Geoffrey West (Santa Fe Institute) is crucial for understanding the process, laws and limits of socio-economic growth like human societies.

In case the embedded video does not work, you can watch the video off Yahoo Labs page at : http://labs.yahoo.com/node/274 .

In the words of Geoffrey West, "This system is destined to collapse."

Some math is included in the presentation, but not crucial for understanding the argument.

A Musical Interlude

Why Material Scarcity is an Issue for Energy scarcity

Dr André Diederen (TNO) has researched the issue of minerals scarcity and it's relevance to energy security and geopolitical stability.

Below you will find a three part presentation my Dr Diederen on the issue titled

Materials Scarcity, Managed Austerity and the Elements of Hope

Unfortunately the audio is of quite bad quality, so here's a taster of the main points in the presentation.

Most inside the earth is not producedable. Flow matters. Not stocks

Resources are not Economic reserves. Only economic reserved matter.

Metals scarcity => Wind Energy scarcity.

Scarcity for Other Alternative Energy Production Systems.

Solution: Simplify (less exotic materials) and compromise performance

Summary: Performance Maximization is Dead. Frugal Optimization is Back.

In short, there is a systemically positive feedback loop with very negative consequences between the energy and materials scarcities.

If you are a materials-wisened inventor with understanding of basic and rare earth metals, you better get started if you haven't already. Time to optimize & save.

Talking sense about Finance Bubbles, Energy, Oil & Transition

Nicole Foss of the excellent Automatic Earth blog gave a presentation recently about a Century of Challenges.

It's only available as an audio stream/mp3 file on the net, but very well worth listening to, if one is trying to wrap his/her brain around the double-headed monster that is Energy Transition & Financial Crisis.

Download the mp3 file of the presentation : Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil (77 MB)

Here's a short preview of five minutes. To get the slides, one can also buy a right to view the whole video at the Automatic Earth / Post Peak Education site.

Oh yes, file this under 'analytical & doomish crystal-ball gazing'.