Reflections: Energy dinosaurs
14/May/2008 08:25 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 10, Issue 20
PDF copy
I suppose using the term reflecting upon the future is a mixing of idioms, but such is the nature of the American language, for to look towards the future in someway must be rooted in the past. Hopefully that past is anchored in some sort of reality, rather than just some mystical illusion.
For the next few years I see a great deal of economic and other stresses in the world, but after that period I am quite optimistic. The basis for this outlook is that we have entered the winter of the end of cheap energy. That winter is going to change the way we look at things significantly, but after the winter comes the wonder of spring and that period of new growth will make the next few years of bleak darkness seem worth the time of passage. During this winter we will see the demise of the energy dinosaurs.
Wonder always springs from where we least expect. For a couple of decades now, the good life has become so common not only have we begun to expect and demand it, sort of as a right, we have also vastly cheapened the wonder of life itself.
That first winter impression will be the death of large motor vehicles whose true and only function really was to be a large status symbol with little utilitarian value other than what was sold at the dealership. “This is a great status conveyance by which you can haul or pull a bunch of your stuff you really don’t need, to and from a place you really can’t afford.”
However, what I am really talking about is the death of the larger dinosaurs of cheap energy that gave us this illusion that wealth was really simply the accumulation of expensive stuff, produced in someplace we would never want to visit, by people we have virtually nothing in common, other than being members of the human family.
During this winter the hype about global warming caused by fossil fuels will be frozen, perhaps in permafrost. As such this current speculative and market manipulation of the cost of fuel and energy will perish and we will enter a time of relatively stable prices. Rising slowly, all energy prices will be a reflection of actual demand rather than simply greed and monopoly market making by big oil speculators.
So really what we will see is the demise of the whole spectrum of energy dinosaurs that now dominate our economic and political landscape. To understand this new future we must first look at how this energy savannah was created in the first place.
In 1973 we entered into the state of what was called the “Arab oil embargo,” where oil imports from the Middle East were curtailed and gasoline for a short time became a rationed commodity. This stark reality took some time to work its way through society, but beginning around 1980, cheap oil returned and thus began our current cycle of material prosperity that really has no counterpart in all human history.
Conservative Republicans in this country give all the credit to their messiah of that era Ronald Reagan. They still hope that he will be reincarnated in some other personality to take us again to that material utopia, but they spin their prayer wheels from their mountain top estates in vain. For really much if not most of the prosperity of the Reagan years was built upon an unsustainable energy policy as well as unsustainable deficit spending.
However, to his credit Reagan did cut the growth of government social programs that should be no business of government. The business of government should be to provide infrastructure by which free people can freely trade goods and services. Thereby all people can have access to the means of the pursuit of happiness which includes material prosperity, but is not limited only to material stuff.
What has happened in the ensuing years however is that the demand for social services has taken over the political spectrum and true development and maintenance of all true community infrastructure has collapsed. Therefore today at the national level there is no national concept of a development plan for the country, only special interest earmarks or political pork barrel projects allotted to those with special interest powers. Government is no longer accountable to the people, but manipulated by those with the resources to lobby for really special socialist monetary allocations, which restrict true personal and market freedoms.
All these are the cheap energy dinosaurs that will perish during the coming winter. Let me explain.
What we are seeing now dramatically with the run up of oil prices is the renaissance of natural controls over the affairs of humanity.
“Natural controls? I don’t believe in natural controls!” This sort of reminds me of the evangelistic skit. “Hell? I don’t believe in hell!” The unity of both concepts go to the heart of this economic winter and why much of what we see today is not able to withstand the freezing temperatures of a prolonged winter season.
Dinosaurs once roamed the earth. The best answer to when that occurred is found in young earth creation science, but if you feel more comfortable with millions of years ago, do your thing. The only question I would ask before you pursue that course is if you believe in millions of years, do you also believe in hell?
So in this era after the global Genesis flood thousands of years ago, it was a time of true global warming. It really was a perfect environment for dinosaurs, warm and humid, but not that hot, for all the water vapor in the air has a very moderating effect upon the climate. In more upland regions and temperate latitudes mammoths and similar creatures were also doing quite well.
Then something happened. While humans were around at that time, they didn’t bother to write it down, because they soon became more interested in survival than material and cultural comforts. This could have been a severe volcanic eruption, or maybe decreased solar activity, or maybe an asteroid crashed into the earth as some speculate.
Whatever the reason some of the solar radiation no longer reached the surface of the earth and a global cooling trend developed. At first it didn’t seem as that big of a deal, even though global temperatures had not risen for a decade. There were still those who believed that global warming would soon make vast areas of the earth into deserts.
Then late one November day, some white stuff started to fall from the sky. It was cold outside, but this white stuff was something new. Those English speaking people called it snow. It only snowed a few feet that winter, but because that snow reflected a lot more solar radiation than grasslands, swamps, and green forests, the snows increased dramatically each year.
Soon many humans, who realized something significant was happening, decided to move to more southern climates. The dinosaurs and mammoths, not so blessed with being created in God’s image just couldn’t understand that things had changed. These creatures continued as nothing was happening, Then one day, one cold January day the reality of freezing cold descended and instead of snowing a few feet, it snowed a few hundred feet and the iced age was born. It lasted until several thousand years ago.
Today we are somewhat familiar with lake-effect snowfall. This however was warm ocean-effect snowfall that began a natural, centuries long winter season where Christmas was never a thought on people’s minds.
The place where I am writing this, in northeast Washington State was buried under several thousand feet of ice maybe eight thousand years ago. That estimate comes from evolutionary geologists. If you look truly at those glacial deposits and the ensuing melting period with somewhat of an open mind you realize that what you are currently seeing here in the natural environment might be a lot younger than that, perhaps as few as four thousand years.
Therefore whether you believe in evolution or Biblical creation, things at this spot were not conducive to materialistic consumerism all that long ago. The thing to remember however is that humans adapted and so did most of the other animals, other than large dinosaurs and mammoths.
Large dumb animals ruled only by instincts did not survive this ice age. In a similar vein, dumb, cold-blooded, corporations ruled only by the instinct to devour all the financially liquidity they can, will meet the same fate.
Wonder springs from natural creation, and these affect the outlook of man. There will never be another ice age, because God promised there will never be another Genesis flood. However, lest we forget, as we have recently, true change is the only constant in the world, and it naturally occurs outside human society even though we attempt vainly to control it’s influence.
In the last few weeks the news has been filled with devastating cyclones, earthquakes, and tornados. Somewhere in the world there are also floods. All this should remind us that life is not really about money, stocks, and the accumulation of stuff, but rather the wonder of life itself. In this dinosaur age of cheap global energy we have forgotten truly what makes life worth living.
At the top of the Wonder Springs Front Page is a photograph of a buttercup. Other than this remaining photograph, buttercups are gone until next spring. This year buttercups bloomed here in late April, many years they bloom in early March. The thought to remember however is that buttercups are one indicator that winter is over and other diverse flowers and growth will continue until fall and then winter, then spring again.
Outside my cabin windows hummingbirds line up each day for and easy meal of sugared water. There are at least three different species, all so tiny. The frequency of their rapidly moving wings create a sound that seems to be amplified by the window glass, so their humming seems to be more like an airplane high overhead.
Since sin entered the human condition in the Garden of Eden, mankind has sought to construct his own utopian plan for life. The main thrust of that endeavor is to somehow control nature to serve our desires. However, contrary to what you might be told in church, mankind does not naturally seek God. Rather we run and try to hide within a secure sanctuary we have created by our own efforts.
For a couple of decades we have been quite adept at this charade. But the limitations of natural creation were ignored as we have vainly attempted to create an egalitarian society by governmental means, falsely considering growth only in terms of largeness rather than increasing true natural diversity.
With the demise of cheap energy, the dinosaurs that created this material infrastructure will have to adapt or perish. Historically they have perished, because a big cold-blooded reptile has different natural requirements, than what was present during the ice age, or this dryer, more temperate climate that has followed.
In the world that is able to read this article on the Internet or receive it by email, we have been recently blessed materially beyond what any human personality has ever received. Is this really better or just different?
One of the talking points of this current world is that we are so advanced, just look at the stuff we have created to fill our world. Yes, and now in this highly complex developed world the concept of working 24/7 is not an illusion, but a distinct reality, maybe a necessity.
Call it by whatever fantasy or fairy tale you would like, but we really work to feed material idols, not to celebrate life. Therefore we consider people who enjoy life and don’t build stuff temples to be primitive.
As the housing winter of the subprime mortgage market in America continues, many have discovered that feeding the bank to keep the house is not worth the benefit. Those who claim to know something about this; say spring is still a couple of years off. What these people seem to forget or do not know is that most of these houses are not sustainable in the era beyond cheap energy and an aging population. It was mostly marketing hype, which believed that owning a large house was a prime asset for a secure retirement future.
Natural diversity will be the model for development after this uneven winter season, which is now beginning in our advanced culture. There are steps you can take now to prepare not only for the winter, but the coming spring shortly thereafter. The real question is whether you are willing to adapt your lifestyle to this new natural reality, or will you perish during the winter as an energy deficient dinosaur?
There really is only one true messiah in and through this time and that is the Savior of Biblical Christianity. Sadly today’s evangelical church instead of leading into this new era, is still trying to amass temporal heaven here and now. Therefore just as in ancient Israel in the time of Elijah, there is only a remnant that will see this approaching winter season and make plans for that time, and the spring that will follow.
Wonder Springs from the provision of God to provide, mostly through natural means. Most of you now have those means at your disposal. Will you make the changes necessary; to provide your own grubstake, or will you forgo this opportunity and think that you are the exception to the dinosaur principle? The choice is really yours. You can rely on what makes you feel good about yourself here and now. Or you can trust in the provision outside your own feeble intellect.
This time of cheap energy and material wealth has made us feel very good, and very gullible to believe a lie that we are somehow beyond the touch of natural reality. Think about it and act accordingly. Just what is really important and what is really only stuff? That choice makes all the difference.
PDF copy
I suppose using the term reflecting upon the future is a mixing of idioms, but such is the nature of the American language, for to look towards the future in someway must be rooted in the past. Hopefully that past is anchored in some sort of reality, rather than just some mystical illusion.
For the next few years I see a great deal of economic and other stresses in the world, but after that period I am quite optimistic. The basis for this outlook is that we have entered the winter of the end of cheap energy. That winter is going to change the way we look at things significantly, but after the winter comes the wonder of spring and that period of new growth will make the next few years of bleak darkness seem worth the time of passage. During this winter we will see the demise of the energy dinosaurs.
Wonder always springs from where we least expect. For a couple of decades now, the good life has become so common not only have we begun to expect and demand it, sort of as a right, we have also vastly cheapened the wonder of life itself.
That first winter impression will be the death of large motor vehicles whose true and only function really was to be a large status symbol with little utilitarian value other than what was sold at the dealership. “This is a great status conveyance by which you can haul or pull a bunch of your stuff you really don’t need, to and from a place you really can’t afford.”
However, what I am really talking about is the death of the larger dinosaurs of cheap energy that gave us this illusion that wealth was really simply the accumulation of expensive stuff, produced in someplace we would never want to visit, by people we have virtually nothing in common, other than being members of the human family.
During this winter the hype about global warming caused by fossil fuels will be frozen, perhaps in permafrost. As such this current speculative and market manipulation of the cost of fuel and energy will perish and we will enter a time of relatively stable prices. Rising slowly, all energy prices will be a reflection of actual demand rather than simply greed and monopoly market making by big oil speculators.
So really what we will see is the demise of the whole spectrum of energy dinosaurs that now dominate our economic and political landscape. To understand this new future we must first look at how this energy savannah was created in the first place.
In 1973 we entered into the state of what was called the “Arab oil embargo,” where oil imports from the Middle East were curtailed and gasoline for a short time became a rationed commodity. This stark reality took some time to work its way through society, but beginning around 1980, cheap oil returned and thus began our current cycle of material prosperity that really has no counterpart in all human history.
Conservative Republicans in this country give all the credit to their messiah of that era Ronald Reagan. They still hope that he will be reincarnated in some other personality to take us again to that material utopia, but they spin their prayer wheels from their mountain top estates in vain. For really much if not most of the prosperity of the Reagan years was built upon an unsustainable energy policy as well as unsustainable deficit spending.
However, to his credit Reagan did cut the growth of government social programs that should be no business of government. The business of government should be to provide infrastructure by which free people can freely trade goods and services. Thereby all people can have access to the means of the pursuit of happiness which includes material prosperity, but is not limited only to material stuff.
What has happened in the ensuing years however is that the demand for social services has taken over the political spectrum and true development and maintenance of all true community infrastructure has collapsed. Therefore today at the national level there is no national concept of a development plan for the country, only special interest earmarks or political pork barrel projects allotted to those with special interest powers. Government is no longer accountable to the people, but manipulated by those with the resources to lobby for really special socialist monetary allocations, which restrict true personal and market freedoms.
All these are the cheap energy dinosaurs that will perish during the coming winter. Let me explain.
What we are seeing now dramatically with the run up of oil prices is the renaissance of natural controls over the affairs of humanity.
“Natural controls? I don’t believe in natural controls!” This sort of reminds me of the evangelistic skit. “Hell? I don’t believe in hell!” The unity of both concepts go to the heart of this economic winter and why much of what we see today is not able to withstand the freezing temperatures of a prolonged winter season.
Dinosaurs once roamed the earth. The best answer to when that occurred is found in young earth creation science, but if you feel more comfortable with millions of years ago, do your thing. The only question I would ask before you pursue that course is if you believe in millions of years, do you also believe in hell?
So in this era after the global Genesis flood thousands of years ago, it was a time of true global warming. It really was a perfect environment for dinosaurs, warm and humid, but not that hot, for all the water vapor in the air has a very moderating effect upon the climate. In more upland regions and temperate latitudes mammoths and similar creatures were also doing quite well.
Then something happened. While humans were around at that time, they didn’t bother to write it down, because they soon became more interested in survival than material and cultural comforts. This could have been a severe volcanic eruption, or maybe decreased solar activity, or maybe an asteroid crashed into the earth as some speculate.
Whatever the reason some of the solar radiation no longer reached the surface of the earth and a global cooling trend developed. At first it didn’t seem as that big of a deal, even though global temperatures had not risen for a decade. There were still those who believed that global warming would soon make vast areas of the earth into deserts.
Then late one November day, some white stuff started to fall from the sky. It was cold outside, but this white stuff was something new. Those English speaking people called it snow. It only snowed a few feet that winter, but because that snow reflected a lot more solar radiation than grasslands, swamps, and green forests, the snows increased dramatically each year.
Soon many humans, who realized something significant was happening, decided to move to more southern climates. The dinosaurs and mammoths, not so blessed with being created in God’s image just couldn’t understand that things had changed. These creatures continued as nothing was happening, Then one day, one cold January day the reality of freezing cold descended and instead of snowing a few feet, it snowed a few hundred feet and the iced age was born. It lasted until several thousand years ago.
Today we are somewhat familiar with lake-effect snowfall. This however was warm ocean-effect snowfall that began a natural, centuries long winter season where Christmas was never a thought on people’s minds.
The place where I am writing this, in northeast Washington State was buried under several thousand feet of ice maybe eight thousand years ago. That estimate comes from evolutionary geologists. If you look truly at those glacial deposits and the ensuing melting period with somewhat of an open mind you realize that what you are currently seeing here in the natural environment might be a lot younger than that, perhaps as few as four thousand years.
Therefore whether you believe in evolution or Biblical creation, things at this spot were not conducive to materialistic consumerism all that long ago. The thing to remember however is that humans adapted and so did most of the other animals, other than large dinosaurs and mammoths.
Large dumb animals ruled only by instincts did not survive this ice age. In a similar vein, dumb, cold-blooded, corporations ruled only by the instinct to devour all the financially liquidity they can, will meet the same fate.
Wonder springs from natural creation, and these affect the outlook of man. There will never be another ice age, because God promised there will never be another Genesis flood. However, lest we forget, as we have recently, true change is the only constant in the world, and it naturally occurs outside human society even though we attempt vainly to control it’s influence.
In the last few weeks the news has been filled with devastating cyclones, earthquakes, and tornados. Somewhere in the world there are also floods. All this should remind us that life is not really about money, stocks, and the accumulation of stuff, but rather the wonder of life itself. In this dinosaur age of cheap global energy we have forgotten truly what makes life worth living.
At the top of the Wonder Springs Front Page is a photograph of a buttercup. Other than this remaining photograph, buttercups are gone until next spring. This year buttercups bloomed here in late April, many years they bloom in early March. The thought to remember however is that buttercups are one indicator that winter is over and other diverse flowers and growth will continue until fall and then winter, then spring again.
Outside my cabin windows hummingbirds line up each day for and easy meal of sugared water. There are at least three different species, all so tiny. The frequency of their rapidly moving wings create a sound that seems to be amplified by the window glass, so their humming seems to be more like an airplane high overhead.
Since sin entered the human condition in the Garden of Eden, mankind has sought to construct his own utopian plan for life. The main thrust of that endeavor is to somehow control nature to serve our desires. However, contrary to what you might be told in church, mankind does not naturally seek God. Rather we run and try to hide within a secure sanctuary we have created by our own efforts.
For a couple of decades we have been quite adept at this charade. But the limitations of natural creation were ignored as we have vainly attempted to create an egalitarian society by governmental means, falsely considering growth only in terms of largeness rather than increasing true natural diversity.
With the demise of cheap energy, the dinosaurs that created this material infrastructure will have to adapt or perish. Historically they have perished, because a big cold-blooded reptile has different natural requirements, than what was present during the ice age, or this dryer, more temperate climate that has followed.
In the world that is able to read this article on the Internet or receive it by email, we have been recently blessed materially beyond what any human personality has ever received. Is this really better or just different?
One of the talking points of this current world is that we are so advanced, just look at the stuff we have created to fill our world. Yes, and now in this highly complex developed world the concept of working 24/7 is not an illusion, but a distinct reality, maybe a necessity.
Call it by whatever fantasy or fairy tale you would like, but we really work to feed material idols, not to celebrate life. Therefore we consider people who enjoy life and don’t build stuff temples to be primitive.
As the housing winter of the subprime mortgage market in America continues, many have discovered that feeding the bank to keep the house is not worth the benefit. Those who claim to know something about this; say spring is still a couple of years off. What these people seem to forget or do not know is that most of these houses are not sustainable in the era beyond cheap energy and an aging population. It was mostly marketing hype, which believed that owning a large house was a prime asset for a secure retirement future.
Natural diversity will be the model for development after this uneven winter season, which is now beginning in our advanced culture. There are steps you can take now to prepare not only for the winter, but the coming spring shortly thereafter. The real question is whether you are willing to adapt your lifestyle to this new natural reality, or will you perish during the winter as an energy deficient dinosaur?
There really is only one true messiah in and through this time and that is the Savior of Biblical Christianity. Sadly today’s evangelical church instead of leading into this new era, is still trying to amass temporal heaven here and now. Therefore just as in ancient Israel in the time of Elijah, there is only a remnant that will see this approaching winter season and make plans for that time, and the spring that will follow.
Wonder Springs from the provision of God to provide, mostly through natural means. Most of you now have those means at your disposal. Will you make the changes necessary; to provide your own grubstake, or will you forgo this opportunity and think that you are the exception to the dinosaur principle? The choice is really yours. You can rely on what makes you feel good about yourself here and now. Or you can trust in the provision outside your own feeble intellect.
This time of cheap energy and material wealth has made us feel very good, and very gullible to believe a lie that we are somehow beyond the touch of natural reality. Think about it and act accordingly. Just what is really important and what is really only stuff? That choice makes all the difference.