Wednesday 24 November 2010

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.



Sunday 21 November 2010

A Musical Interlude

Sunday 7 November 2010

Why Material Scarcity is an Issue for Energy scarcity

Dr AndrĂ© 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.

Monday 1 November 2010

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'.