So your argument is that since we have never done it before, then do not try. If everyone have your reasoning, there will never be any progress in the world.

If North Korea is able to safely manage a nuclear reactor, why is Australia less able to manage one.

That just does not appear to be a strong argument

Dovif1, nuclear embodies everything that we ever did wrong. It is the most colossal Heath Robinson arrangement, guaranteed to burn up the last of the free (stored) energy that nature endowed to us.

The main difference between humans and dinosaurs is that we REALISE we are dinosaurs. What will we do with that gift?

Roll-on Little Kev, and roll out the fibre optics.

- and don't accept no wooden dimes from the cigar store indian masquerading as a Telco CEO.

Peter,

You say: "this building of a new social (information) infrastructure will require some sponsorship by government"

But that is precisely why Howard and Costello are dumbing down our education systems, strengthening Media Monopolies and privatising everything from school principals to food and water and even women and childbirths. They don't want your social enlightenment, they want CONTROL. With high immigration to destabilise communities and garner ever higher GST revenues and vote gerrymanders they can run the country into the ground and at the end of the day, about 2025, when oil runs dry they will have enough consolidated power to legislate 'people restrictions' where certain people are turned off like in water restrictions to conserve energy for the rich and nepotistic.

AFAICS information technology is primarily being exploited by the rich and by cynical global governments and corporations in the name of the "SHAREHOLDER" in order to NOT provide the information infrastructure you propose.

The overriding sentiment in Washington, London and Canberra is that future wars are winnable and that culling of unnecessary or excess human populations can be planned for in Pentagon war games. War games I might add whose emerging scenarios lack the imagination to come up with anything other than the old pioneer versus the Indian savages stratagem. The more you genocide the more savage they become and the less you feel guilty. Such is the mind addling addiction to money and power of CEOs who are paying themselves more than they're worth. Meanwhile the Israelis have just created Anthrax bombs for God's sake. Only the minority of monopolist corporate and government filter feeders, privatisers and funnellers have planned to survive after oil runs out.

Continued ...

Shareholders hold the key. If they refuse to invest in a shaky future, if they look to the long term picture they may be able to topple CEO monsters now and bring them in to line with community expectations. Like the Mr Bigs in the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, their greatest threat and our greatest salvation is exposure by the common touch.

"Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat"

"Not that trick Bullwinkle, that trick NEVER works! Why don't we vote for High Speed Broadband, provided by a fair dinkum alternate agency to Telstra."

Hi Peter,

I will need to split up this comment into two posts because of length:
______________

A very interesting article but there are a number of problems with it as I see it.

It is not commonly understood (even by many scientists) that high complexity/information requires high energy availability. You can read about this in Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”. This means that, as energy availability declines with declining oil extraction, we will be unable to maintain current levels of complexity.

Our current globalised economy is a good example of how abundant energy supports complexity. Currently, manufacturing of the components of high tech devices occurs at a vast variety of locations and these are then drawn together using real time transport logistics to create the finished product before it is distributed. Each of those component manufacturing locations in turn is operated using apparatus assembled from a vast variety of other manufacturing locations. While the number of different component manufacturers is great, the number of manufacturers for any specific component is not – there will only be a few in the world. (A good example of this is how most of the mobile phones made in China all use chips from a very few factories. Another example is the thousands of materials and processes required to manufacture something as “simple” as a photovoltaic cell. See:
http://www.homepower.com/files/pvpayback.pdf )
In other words, the manufacturing of any high tech device requires a vast and intricate web of manufacturing interdependencies with critical components only being available from a few sources. If any part of the manufacturing world happens to be cut off from the rest (e.g. say that a catastrophic event/conflict involving Germany made manufactured goods from there unavailable) you would see rapid knock-on effectsw to the availability of high tech goods from anywhere else in the world. As transport problems and conflict increase with decreasing oil availability, it will become very difficult to maintain high tech manufacturing.

(continued in later post)

(comment continued from previous post)
_____________

A related problem with your idea is that it is based on the common assumption that the current global information infrastructure is robust and not very energy dependent. This is quite untrue. The rate of hard drive failure in a PC is high (a computer tech at my workplace told me that he sees one in ten hard drives fail every year) and if supply of parts for maintaining computing becomes problematic we will see a rapid decline in the availability of this technology. Another point unappreciated by many is the extreme technological challenges that are involved in producing modern computer chips. The factories/clean rooms required to make these devices cost literally BILLIONS of dollars each to build and the manufacturing process itself requires materials of incredible purity. You can read an excellent essay on the vulnerability of computer chip manufacturing (“The Fragility of Microprocessors” by Alice Friedemann) here:

http://www.energybulletin.net/19131.html

What all this means is that, as energy production declines, so will globalisation and so will the ability to manufacture advanced technology. If this year is the peak of oil extraction, then my guess would be that the internet will be seriously degraded/unavailable to most by 2025. So what will we do for a “high-information society” then?

Finally, any solutions for our energy/information problems based on current economic structures (e.g. competing companies owned by shareholders) are very questionable since the entire economic paradigm (and our fiat currency/banking system) relies on continuous economic growth to survive. Efficiency gains aside (since these are subject to diminishing returns) reduced energy availability due to reduced oil availability must mean reduced economic activity (negative economic “growth”).

Unfortunately michael_in_adelaide, your "Home Power" link doesn't appear to want to work. Can you check it out and re-do if necessary please?

Yes I see. Sorry - a crappy html version of this document is available
at:
http://tinyurl.com/3xqzqj
(For this document, Google search for
"Knapp", "Jester" and "PV payback"). You could write to the authors for a .pdf copy. Regards, Michael.

See the latest Howard Headline?

"No rabbit out of the hat for PM"

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/no-rabbit-out-of-the-hat-for-pm/2007/05/22/1179601412703.html

Duh Bullwinkle! As usual Howard is telling those venial Tampa porkies. His not so secret rabbit in the hat is his bloated boasting that no one else could manage the economy the way he has.

The truth: the economy has been about the resources boom for the last 10years and the resources BOOM is not a one off blip as Howard falsely prophesises. It is here till oil runs dry in around 2025 because technology of materials usage will have to be totally reworked over the coming 18 years as the impact of oil loss is fully appreciated. That means raw material prices will skyrocket from here.

That all but makes economic management of Australia a non-issue. It won't matter who wins the next election as far as the economic security of this country is concerned.
That means that Howard's Immigration program and his Privatising of everything in this country apart from the army and the Federal bureaucracy as the main planks of sound economic management is nothing short of a retarded kiddy giving his lolly stash to every vagrant and loser in his neighbourhood.

The problem with Howard is he has a need, a need to to be liked. But he should buy that love and respect with his own lolly stash and not OURS. And not at the expense of the environmental integrity of this nation by allowing privateers like Captain Midnight Desal Co and 140,000 immigrants a year, to come here and nod-nod-wink-wink, ruthlessly exploit the nation's fragile landscape for fast bucks, water guzzling ethnic enclaves and insidious Euro-Gambling and gaming fetishers.

The other problem with Howard is his exacerbation of the drought by immigrating 140,000 souls every year all of whom are gungry for sucess and that means hungry for dwindling energy and water supplies.
The logical solution zero population growth till the drought is over. With a guaranteed future mining boom we can afford to forgo a net zero economic contribution program and a net drought promoter like immigration.

Latest Howard Headline?

"No rabbit out of the hat for PM"

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/no-rabbit-out-of-the-hat-for-pm/2007/05/22/1179601412703.html

Duh Bullwinkle!

As usual Howard is telling those venial Tampa porkies. His not so secret rabbit in the hat is his bloated boasting that no one else could manage the economy the way he has.

The truth: the economy has been about the resources boom for the last 10years and the resources BOOM is not a one off blip as Howard falsely prophesises. It is here till oil runs dry in around 2025 because technology of materials usage will have to be totally reworked over the coming 18 years as the impact of oil loss is fully appreciated. That means raw material prices will skyrocket from here.

That all but makes economic management of Australia a non-issue. It won't matter who wins the next election as far as the economic security of this country is concerned.
That means that Howard's Immigration program and his Privatising of everything in this country apart from the army and the Federal bureaucracy as the main planks of sound economic management is nothing short of a retarded kiddy giving his lolly stash to every vagrant and loser in his neighbourhood.

The problem with Howard is he has a need to be liked like Menzies was. But he should buy that love and respect with his own lolly stash and not OURS. And not at the expense of the environmental integrity of this nation by allowing privateers like the Captain Midnight Desal Co and 140,000 immigrants a year, to come here and nod-nod-wink-wink, ruthlessly exploit the nation's fragile landscape for fast bucks, water guzzling ethnic enclaves and insidious Euro-Gambling and gaming fetishers.

The other problem with Howard is his exacerbation of the drought by immigrating 140,000 souls every year all of whom are hungry for success and that means hungry for dwindling energy and water supplies.
The logical solution is zero population growth till the drought is over. With a guaranteed future mining boom the economy can afford to forgo a net zero economic contribution program and a net drought promoting program like immigration.