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The Failure of Networked Systems
Posted by aeldric on January 6, 2008 - 11:00am in TOD: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: complex systems, networks, peak oil [list all tags]
There are those among the Peak Oil community who suspect that we could be facing a failure of our interdependent society that may be sudden, profound, and complete. I have repeatedly said that I am not numbered among them. My opinion is that our way of life will have to change significantly, but slowly. I don’t expect to be clubbing anybody with a femur in any foreseeable future. This opinion is on record in both print and electronic media, and I don’t expect to be issuing a retraction any time soon.... but a recent event forced me to admit that I may have to hedge a little.
Our internal network here has been having problems. My email (and more importantly my access to TOD) has been very unreliable over the last two days. The network regularly flicked from "working" to "failed" in the blink of an eye. I was reminded that the speed of collapse in a network is often a function of the natural frequency (speed) of the network, while the breadth of failure depends on a number of factors, including load and the degree of interdependence within the network.
The problem was eventually traced to a problem with one piece of software on one machine on our intranet. The software drivers for the network interface card on one machine were corrupt.
This raised a question in my mind: The Internet Protocol was originally designed to be a robust, reliable, redundant system. How does one piece of software on one machine bring down a network with thousands of nodes?
The answer is easy: Cost efficiencies.
Our Intranet network could have been built to be reliable, but instead it was built to be "efficient". Far from being a network of fail-safe systems, our network is a network of interdependencies. When the system was loaded, a single failure brought the whole system down. "Business Efficiency" has brought our network to its knees for two consecutive days.
I have seen this pattern a lot recently. Last year the power went out in my city. The power transmission system was heavily loaded one afternoon, when a single failure brought the whole system down.
Academics have studied failures of complex systems with interesting results. One of the experiments they did will be familiar to anyone who has ever played with sand-castles as a child. Build a sand pile by gradually adding grains of sand. After a while, avalanches start to run down your pile. Sometimes they are minor, while other times they affect the whole pile. There is seemingly no way to reliably predict the outcome.
However Per Bak, in his book “How Nature Works” shows that there is an instructive way to look at this question.
There is a critical angle for piles of sand - a level of steepness that the slope cannot go beyond without sand starting to roll down the slope. Imagine that, as you add sand, you colour red all of the areas of the pile that achieve this critical angle (and are thus on the verge of an avalanche). You will notice that the red patches appear as tendrils running down the side of the pile. As you add sand to the pile it gets higher and wider – the pile gets steeper and more little tendrils of red appear. Eventually you will see the tendrils of red start to interconnect.
If you drop a grain of sand on a red area then you will precipitate an avalanche. If the red area is interconnected with other red areas then all these areas will be drawn into the avalanche. If the red area is isolated, then the avalanche will be confined to one red tendril running down the side of the pile.
This basic principal can be applied to my network problem. If one route on the network gets loaded to capacity (i.e. turns red), the system detects that it has reached maximum capacity and it delays traffic (piles it higher) or switches traffic to other routes (spreads wider).
If the other routes were new, unloaded and redundant parts of the network then this would not be a problem. But they are not. The other routes are simply other parts of the old, heavily loaded network. Pretty soon all routes are red, and they are all interconnected. So when one part of the network fails it passes the traffic to another part of the network, which fails and your avalanche starts. With all networks connected, all of them are vulnerable and all fail.
Our network operates at electronic speeds, and it failed with the same rapidity.
Understanding how this happened is critically important. There are four parts to creating the complete meltdown of a network:
1. Create a network by building connections between systems.
2. When a particular part of the network approaches overload (goes red), recognise that this is happening and use the connections you have created to allow you to switch load to another part of the network.
3. Continue doing this until all areas are red.
4. Now add more load.
When we poured sand on our sand pile we allowed the sand to fall randomly, and thus the avalanches seemed random. But once we had the ability to monitor (see our potential “avalanche” areas coloured red), we were able to carefully divert the sand into other areas. This delays the avalanche, but in the long run the avalanche is going to be much worse, because it will occur when all areas are red.
In summary: The ability to measure and monitor the system gives us the capacity to avoid small avalanches in individual areas. However, if we keep adding load without adding capacity we overload the entire network and thus make an all-encompassing avalanche inevitable.
If we can’t add capacity, then it would have been better to allow a series of small avalanches.
A look at the financial markets at the moment might illustrate the same point. When we look at the “sub-prime” issues that are emerging, we see that the market created a series of “Investment Vehicles” that allowed risk to be shared. A complex network of interdependencies was created to share this risk, but capacity was not added to deal with the possibility of default. The various institutions that bought these “Investment Vehicles” thought they were buying assets, not debts. The institutions failed to recognise that they needed to add “capacity” in the form of liquidity equal to the possible value of defaults on this debt. As a result, now that load is being applied (in the form of defaults) it threatens to bring down the entire network, rather than just the single “node” that originated the debt.
The critical concept is that monitoring and networking the system allows us to go right up to the edge of disaster, and then move load to another part of the network until it, too, is on the edge of disaster.
Now that the networking effects have been discussed, I would like to push the analogy a bit further and look at how this plays out from a Peak Oil perspective.
Several years ago, sweet light crude oil started getting a bit more difficult to obtain. In response, we stopped talking about “oil” and started talking about “liquids”. The word “liquids” covers Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), ethanol, heavy oils, tar sands, and an increasing number of other oil-substitutes.
Essentially the part of the network called “Sweet Light Crude” turned red, so we started connecting the "Oil Network" to other networks.
We connected oil to the “food” network by turning food into ethanol. Actually food was already connected because you need oil to make food in the modern world, but now the circle is complete – previously we used oil to create food, and now we use food (corn, sugar, palm oil, etc) to create oil (or oil-substitutes).
Adding LNG and CTL (Coal-To-Liquid) to the network connects oil to other energy sources. As this connection strengthens and load starts to be applied, a shortage of any of these sources would have an impact in each of the other sources. To some extent, this has already started to occur.
Adding tar sands and various other oil substitutes to the network has made a surprising connection between the environment and oil. This connection takes many forms, but the most interesting lies in the fact that oil substitutes are less efficient than light sweet crude – much more CO2 is produced for any given amount of work done. This connection is emerging, and could have interesting repercussions. The problem applies to virtually all the oil-substitutes, so the widespread adoption of substitutes (particularly CTL and tar sands) might cause an environmental disaster which in turn would suppress ethanol production and create knock-on effects in other parts of the network.
The financial system has an important role to play in this network. If energy, food and the environment can be considered 3 portions of the network, then our financial system can be considered to be both a form of network monitoring, and the communication medium that the network uses to pass signals around. Consider the financial system to be similar to the blue cable running out the back of your computer. Your computer’s blue cable isn’t likely to run hot, but our finance system is a network of networks, and it is glowing red. In addition to monitoring and communication, the financial system provides support for maintenance and upgrades of the energy systems, so capacity in the financial system is critical.
When one part of the network develops a problem (say production of LNG suddenly drops), then messages get sent via the financial system (in the form of increased prices), and the other parts of the system accept the load, if they can, by increasing production. When compared to an Internet Protocol network there are many faults in this system. High latency leads to slow responses. Poor monitoring leads to conflicting signals or a failure to detect faults. Bad messages are often not corrected, leading to incorrect responses, and so on.
The speed of a crash
The interesting point to note is that increasing demand past capacity will not immediately “crash” this system. Oil facilities that are working at capacity will not “crash” if demand exceeds the capacity, they will simply continue working at capacity. The crash may come, but it will come because demand heats up the financial system and crashes other systems that depend on finances. Since the oil production system is dependent on other systems, this could conceivably cause an eventual crash. Eventually lack of maintenance will degrade the capacity, but this is a process that occurs over a period of months or years.
Likewise, the process of adding capacity is exceptionally slow. Building CTL or NGL plants takes the best part of a decade.
The oil production system can certainly crash, but it would be a crash in slow motion.
The only part of the system that can crash quickly is the financial system. The financial system provides monitoring, communication, maintenance and upgrades. So a profound, complete crash in this area could conceivably bring down the whole network.
However, could such a financial crash occur? An immediate halt to oil production would require a crash far more profound than the Great Depression. The response speed of our financial system has been improved by linking many of the sub-systems electronically, but there are still a number of choke points, circuit breakers, and sanity checks. The Great Depression emerged over a period of months or years. Even with the electronic linkages in place today, a complete breakdown of our financial institutions is unlikely to happen overnight.
If this system crashes overnight, it will be because the plug got pulled – a breakdown of society external to the system.
The natural frequency for events in the oil and oil-substitute network is in the range of months at least, or more likely years. Internal stresses cannot cause it to crash overnight.
The Breadth of a crash
The breadth of the crash depends on the degree of linkage and the degree to which each part of the network is loaded. This is where I start to worry.
Oil appears to be at or near peak capacity - exports are dropping. As for the food network - world grain reserves are at historic lows, and expected to drop a little more next year. And the environment? Climate change is clearly with us, indicating that the environment has already gone past its capacity.
When looked at in these terms it appears that the network is already in decline. Each of these three parts of the network is at or past capacity. If a span of years is the natural time-frame for a crash in this system, then it seems quite plausible that we are watching a very broad-based crash of our energy systems - right now.
Our actions in increasing the connections to the food and environment networks will not help, and may simply speed the crash.
The signals indicating the start of a crash would be seen in the monitoring and communication system – the financial systems. Prices for oil would go up. Which we have seen… Prices for food would go up. Which we have seen....We might expect perturbations, volatility, and attempts to “price” the environment.... Hmmmm.
Conclusion
I am forced to concede that a broad-based collapse is a possibility. I still maintain that a sudden collapse is unlikely, but if it is already happening, then it could certainly look sudden when we eventually notice it.
I think we have to distinguish between a crisis and a collapse. By definition, you do recover from a crisis, whereas you don't recover from a collapse.
I think a series of crises which make each-other worse is definitely possible, or actually probably. I think a series of crises which turn into a general collapse is very unlikely.
This article of mine talks about a possible kind of multiple-cause crisis, where the drought and natural gas scarcity combine to create blackouts in Victoria.
Now, this is easily avoidable, we just need electricity generation which doesn't depend on fossil fuels and fresh water. That's wind, solar cells, concentrated solar, and tidal; geothermal doesn't fit in here, unfortunately.
But most likely we won't avoid it, we're SimplyHoping it won't happen again. Instead we'll get blackouts. And those blackouts will have other effects. The planned desalination plant for Wonthaggi will stop without electricity. Industry will die off in the state if blackouts are frequent, leading to economic troubles. That'll mean less revenue for public expenditures, making maintaining existing power infrastructure difficult, making it less reliable, and so on.
But at no point is it unrecoverable.
Another danger is recent moves to keep petrol prices low. This removes the market signal to encourage more efficient use, or alternate means of transportation. That means when the fuel shortage does hit, it'll be more of a shock. Instead of going from $1.50/lt to $10.00/lt over ten years, we'll hover around $2.00/lt for nine years, then in one year it'll zap up to $10/lt.
Again, not unrecoverable. A crisis, yes. A collapse, no.
Good points. I loved your SimplyHoping post, and I agree that the future holds a series of rolling crisis, not a collapse.
At least I hope that is the case.
It is probably of concern when an optimist such as myself feels that a series of rolling crisis is the best future we can hope for.
We are marching forward with our leaders trying to select actions based on appearance, not substance. We need water - fine, we build a desalination plant. This action has the appearance of addressing the problem - the defect in this plan is only obvious if you stop, gather all the facts, and think about it (something few people have the time to do).
Contrary to popular opinion, the job of a democratic leader is to be elected, not to take actions with a view to the long-term good of the people. Getting elected is about appearance, not substance.
So we march forward SimplyHoping....
There are degrees of crises, though. For example, I would call the current subprime mortgage dramas an economic crisis, but they're not on the same scale as the Great Depression.
The real danger is a combination of crises. It's not widely-appreciated that when the Depression hit, most farmers kept their farms - the bank isn't in the business of owning property, it just wants money, and even a small amount from a farmer in trouble is better than foreclosing and selling at a loss. But then the Dustbowl hit. What drove the farmers off their land was the combination of the economic and environmental crises. One was fixable and the other was temporary, so it worked out alright in the end, there was just a lot of suffering first.
What we have to remember is that it's not the new state that hurts, but changing from the old to the new. People are very adaptable given time. In economic crises they deveop alternate currencies (cf Austria in early 1930s and Argentina in 2000s), in environmental crises they develop new methods of growing things, and so on. But they have to have time.
As to our elected representatives, the thing to remember is that they're not actually leaders - they're followers. They follow public opinion. Even the unelected ones have limits, Hitler could not have converted Germany to Islam, nor Stalin made everyone speak French. But in a democracy they follow the public, not the other way around. So if we want change we must change ourselves - and the elected guys will follow along reluctantly.
Between 1930 and 1935, about 750,000 farms were lost through foreclosure and bankruptcy sales. No small number. To say that most farmers kept their farms is an example of happy talk often used by the media. When using such an indeterminate modifier as "most," you essentially imply that "few" farmers lost their farms.
Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many. Farmers came together and blocked roads to farms up for auction, declared farm holidays (much like bank holidays) where they refused to participate in auctions, and generally threw monkey wrenches in the machinery of the corporation and its banks. The second reason there were not more foreclosures was due to the Frazie-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act (1934) which suspended farm foreclosures for five years.
As far as your declining to equate the subprime crisis with the Great Depression, you are right, so far. Remember, the full effects of the Great Depression did not settle in the day after the crash on Oct. 29th but developed over a year and a half. I have a feeling that, not withstanding the happy talk, we will see further problems in the banking sector, housing sector, and the level of consumerism. In short, all the ingredients for a spectacular crash.
Will we adjust? Of course. All of life, every second of it, is an adjustment. To say "we will adjust" is as meaningless as saying the sun will rise. The real question is how many will suffer and to what degree. The secondary question is who is responsible and to what degree must they pay. For the wing-nuts, the little guy is to blame for being so dumb as to take on such onerous loans. To the little guy, the bank is to blame for suckering him. What you will see in this corporate world is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss. Corporations hate welfare when it goes to anyone but themselves.
There was a phenomenon known as a penny sale however:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iacalhou/1930.html
I don't know how many of these took place, but my Dad remembered similar such things while growing up in Minnesota.
LeMars is an hour and a half southwest of here. My mother's parents lost most of their farm in the Great Depression to a local banker. That fellow is long dead and the grandchildren farm the family land ... but everyone still remembers how they came by the property.
Cherenkov, great points once again.
Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many.
That what gov’s (I know it is in the US) fear the most. Millions of people in the street and radicalized. All the repeals of laws on demostrating, Marshal law changes, etc.
Listen to a lesson learned by the establishment put into words by G. Gordon Liddy in his reply to Timothy Leary.
"We're not about to let it happen again.
THAT'S when the start of the control of all media to a few companies became an objective of the people who Liddy was talking about.
Notice how we in the states NEVER saw on nightly news nearly ANYTHING on demonstrations on BUSH around the world a few years ago.
Radicalized people in the streets are their greatest fear.
There is a grid don't forget - SA geothermal can feed through to Victoria.
There is also some geothermal exploration going on in the Geelong area.
First up, geothermal requires water. How much, I don't know - figures for water use of the different types of plants are bloody difficult to come by. But it's not nothing.
Second, currently SA's a net electricity importer by a pretty significant amount. Olympic Dam already uses 10% of their baseload power, and is expanding which will require 30%. So unless SA really goes sick on the geothermal, wind, etc, most of their increased capacity will be used by Olympic Dam, and of course their own domestic power requirements, which like everyone's are increasing steadily. They look to continue being net electricity importers for some years yet. Not much help to Victoria if we bollocks it up.
If HFR geothermal is successful in SA there is no reason why it can't expand rapidly (there is a large region of hot rock to mine) and produce significant amounts of power - more than Olympic Dam or Adelaide need.
Water can come from the Artesian basin or from desalination plants on the coast if necessary - but I still haven't seen any numbers on water requirements and the Kalina cycle stuff is supposed to be water efficient.
Admittedly this is all 5-10 years out at a minimum.
Big Gav, IMO investment in desalination plants is just more investment in complexity. It requires a huge capital investment, lots of maintenance (replacement of RO membranes) and a steady feed of electricity.
There is already talk of desalination plants to provide the huge amount of water that will be required if Olympic Dam goes to open pit. It goes something like this: increased nuclear power plants require increased fuel which requires more uranium which requires Olymic Dam to go to open pit which requires more water which requires deslination which requires more electricity which requires more muclear power plants. This is a towering edifice of interdependency which seems, IMHO, to be just begging for something to go wrong somewhere.
PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
Errol in Miami
I agree here - complexity is the enemy. Anything we can't build right now is likely not going to ever be finished at the rate things are going. We have to go hard and go at what we already know we can do. Its mindsets and vested interests that constrain us, not the technology necessary to remediate.
There is no gurantee that ODX will happen. They are still doing feasibility which is a four year project due 2009. I wonder how much diesel it takes to remove 350m rock cap? And what price the copper/gold and uranium need to be to make that investment stack up. The ore won't be reached for about four years after they start the thing which by my estimates means 2014 at the earliest.
Gold and uranium might be still looking good by then, but copper could be in the hole if the Mother of All Recessions/Depressions has kicked in by then.
SA is an energy distributers nightmare. I love Adelaide but firmly believe that they must become an energy producer or self sufficient. I cant see geothermal being a reasonable option. It might work for minning operations but I dont see it supplying the grid. There are also some serious environmental concerns with geo-therm that need to be addressed on a case by case basis.
Why can't geothermal supply the grid? It does in other countries. Ever heard of Iceland?
What are the environmental concerns, and are these greater or lesser than other ways of generating electricity and hot water?
Invalid argument.
Do you think the native Americans at Chaco Canyon were unable to alter their course? Of course they were but did not. Do you think that Rome was unable to alter its course? Of course it could have but it did not.
You make collapse sound as if it is unavoidable. It's always avoidable, if people make the right decisions. Rome did not make the right decisions. Chaco Canyon did not make the right decisions.
And we are not making the right decisions.
This is why I've always said this is not a technological problem, but is instead a psychological/sociological/political problem. In other words, it's about decisions that people make, individually and collectively, not about technology specifically. We have all the technology we need to solve these problems but do we have the individual and collective wisdom? So far the answer appears to be a resounding "NO!"
Rome did not collapse overnight. Neither did Chaco Canyon. Both experienced crisis after crisis. I suggest that your original premise is flawed, and should be revised.
GreyZone you have not fully internalized the fact that humans are NOT smarter than yeast.
When things are not going well, CARVE A BIGGER STONE HEAD.
FLEAM!!!!
That is BEAUTIFUL!!!
Carve a bigger stone head. Wow.
I see a t-shirt fortune in your future.
That completely sums up the entire techno-attitude. If that tech don't work, let's make more of it, with fins, and bells, and whistles, with secret x-ray vision, and sea monkeys.
Anyone here familiar with the Heechee?
Oh yes, excellent little worker drones. Just have to open an airlock now and then to keep the herd thinned out, lol.
GreyZone,
An increasing number of venture capitalists are making right decisions on energy. Look at A123Systems, Nanosolar, and other companies the VCs have funded.
Granted, it would help if governments made far better decisions. But even there I see hopeful signs.
The UK government has decided to do a big build on offshore wind and will probably announce a big nuclear power plant program shortly. The UK government also is looking at its coal reserves in hopes that will cushion the shock.
I suspect some governments have cottoned onto the problem with Peak Oil. But they are using Global Warming as their justification for policies that they want to do for other reasons. Again, I think the UK government thinks that the Russian natural gas can't reliably replace North Sea natural gas for example. Hence the big push in wind, nuclear, and coal.
Making the right decisions can be a problem. Just yesterday, we were discussing the advisability of a big push in nuclear power. It was not clear to me that such a push by UK met with universal approval of the peal oil masses. Here it is being mentioned as an example of good government planning. Only after the fact can one get away to happy talk about making the right decisions. We don't know what kept the Easter Islanders from building boats and leaving before the last tree was gone. Maybe some of them did build boats and leave, but the record is incomplete.
geek7,
Britain's problem is that it is far enough north and overcast that solar power isn't very attractive. Britain's two main non-fossil fuels energy sources strike me as wind and nuclear. Wind by itself isn't enough to shoulder the entire load.
Does Britain have any prospects for geothermal energy?
I don't know about geothermal, but we do have an enormous wave energy potential which is currently in the research stage. Wave energy is about 10 years behind wind energy.
I really hope you are right. The Pelemis developers are suggesting wave farms with 30mw of generating capacity deloyed per km2. In the celtic sea right now the waves are 10 feet plus. As they are in the irish sea. For the Uk I believe wave power is the only long term source that has the potenital to meet all our needs (unless fusion is cracked)
As for Australia I understand the Bight is 'big wave' all year round.Ok further away from the demand than in the case of Europe but I could envisage wave power supplying a significant proportion Of Perth, Adelaide, and Melbournes power.
Greyzone,
I think you're right, but, surely a central question is, what are the right decisions, how do we identify them and agree on how to proceed? How do we adapt and change, and what if the right decisions come up against the vested interests of powerful groups in society who are satisfied with the way things are, and are not particularly enamoured with the idea of change?
Most crisis situations result in conditions that are averse or at least not advantageous to the existing elite in the current social order. Professor G. obliquely referenced this just a few days ago. Even a "successful" transition past peak oil is likely to disrupt the existing social order. That's not a guarantee but is often true as you can see by the change in power from the prior feudal order to a coal fired society and then again with the rise of oil power. Some older elites stayed in power. Some fell by the wayside. And those were all successful transitions.
Collapse, or unsuccessful transitions, generally wipe out almost all of society's elite because the elites are operating under a specific set of premises that no longer apply. Very few of those adapt sufficiently rapidly to avert losing power. Instead new power elites arise, adapting to the new conditions. Witness after Rome, after the Mayans, after Chaco Canyon, etc.
As for what is "right" and what is "wrong", we won't know until we try something and succeed or fail. We can guess. We can model. We can hypothesize. But we won't know until after the fact whether we've succeeded or not. A key decision before you decide on what is "right" or "wrong" though is what is the basis for deciding "right" and "wrong"? If your goal is to continue the existing civilization as-is, maybe that's the problem in the first place?
So tell me again, what's the "right" choice here?
GZ, I think I have to agree.
The problems we have now are global, PO, GW and Economic. Solutions will not be global.
Our attempts at mitigation, start at national levels and continue down by state, corporation, large and small business, county and family. We have forgotten how to cooperate. We have reared our children to be individuals and selfish.
When decisions are made at the national level there will be division and dissent. This division and dissent continues down through the various levels of collectivism until you reach the individual.
We no longer have a need for territorial defence and cooperation, we rely of government security. We are not like schools of fish, penguins, ants or bees or even a herd of eland that work for the common good.
Technology alone can't save us because we are jealous. We will not make sacrifices because most will think they deserve more, are more entitled or just plain better than another ethnic group, country or person.
Hardships forced upon us are not sacrifices. We would, albeit reluctantly abandon luxuries, if we believed everyone was giving them up.
Everyone won't accept sacrifice and give up luxuries though, and it will give rise to the insidious black markets.
As life becomes even harder we will still be looking out for number one until......cooperation out of necessity, becomes an actual survival mechanism once more.
The very sad affair is that we are enslaved by the compulsion to over consume. If we stop investing, using services and buying the myriad of fashionable items ranging from clothing, electronics, travel and personal transport, we doom the economy and our way of life anyway
Do we as humans have the ability to initiate, implement and seriously enforce hard decisions for the common good?
Is cooperation still a possibility?
Are our religious beliefs a help or hindrance?
Greyzone,
As Kunstler is wont to tell us technology and energy are not the same thing. And I would argue that the Roman empire did not callapse at all and is still with us today. It is now more diffuse and it's influence more subtle, but we still have institutions i.e the Roman Catholic Church that can trace their roots to the Caesars. No one in AD 400 set out to continue the empire as it once stood, but the collective memory persisted and influenced the decisions of many individuals as they adpated to a new world order.
The same goes for the British Empire. I's heyday is long gone, but the dominace of the English language ensures that it's influence will persist in the same proportion as it dominated the world.
The American empire too will fall, but that won't diminish the influence of Americanism. The broken, the corruption, the greed, the gun culture and the avarice will be swept away as the energy for which the system was built to channel, eventually depletes.
But the American founding principal of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a sense of duty to God and a pioneering and enterprising spirit are the enduring influences that will persist into history.
Unfortunately though, there is nothing that can save the empire as it stands. The only decisions we absolutely have to get right are the ones that avoid all out nuclear war. Every other mistake on the descent can and will be corrected eventually and attenuated by the enduring influences of empires passed.
This is very contentious, you know. A good argument can be made that the Romans could NOT alter their course. Rome was a complicated balancing act: an extremely rapacious Senatorial class, an Emperor who might be able to restrain them from self-destructive excess perhaps temporarily if that, an army with its own complex dynamics, a number of powerful external enemies ... so yeah, maybe they sometimes had the choice to swim a couple of yards left or a couple of yards right, but they could not swim upstream, and eventually they went over the falls, as they were bound to do.
A common theme on this site is that we 'should have' made certain decisions thirty years ago. But that was never going to happen given our economic and political system of the time. We couldn't have made those decisions, so it is no surprise we did not. Now we will be forced to make those decisions. Is it too late? Who knows.
Path dependence. Human beings are smarter than yeast, but sometimes don't get much more in the way of choice.
You are arguing that there is no choice, that once a path is set upon that the results are a foregone conclusion. Yet as Diamond and Tainter have pointed out, that's not always true. Some societies do make the choices that let them alter their course and then survive. Perhaps they succumb later to another crisis but they survived others before that. Why is it that some societies can make those choices and others cannot?
I agree that there is a form of social inertia that makes such changes hard but I disagree that they are impossible. The Byzantine empire was proof that they are possible.
Yes, there is choice- but there are also points where choices made have unavoidavle consequences.
It is one's choice to jump off a cliff, but once done, the choice cannot be unmade.
This choice was made by our ancestors.
As for the Byzantine Empire, that fire continued burning because there was still fuel
for it to burn and the heat of its flame was enough to keep the combustion going.
(I could talk for a very long time about the byzantine empire, but i would save that for a
separate thread.. but the situation of the greek east was quite different and separate from that
of the latin west.)
Dmitri Orlov's analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union is instructive:
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
http://www.energybulletin.net/23259.html
As he points out, civilizations fail rarely, but economies fail routinely.
See also http://www.cluborlov.com/ClubOrlov/index.html.
Brilliant stuff! The Russians were better prepared because they were USED to things not going well.
I used to do a sport which didn't take a lot of strength, but I learned the benefits of hitting the weights - because when you travel, you've always got to do stuff like pick up a bag in each hand and run the 1/4 mile to make your connecting flight and stuff like that, as well as being in good shape helps you handle the time differences better too. Not necessary for the sport. Very necessary for the intermittant "emergencies" caused by the ordeals of travel a few times a year.
This video spoofs just such such a cascade as you are describing. Very Funny! (But, not if it really happened.)
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data
These forms of generation are indeed dependant on fossil fuels for their manufacture, emplacement, maintainence, and is the same as relates to the grid for the same reasons. Time to go back to the drawing board with these additional facts in mind to reassess your crisis scenarios.