Who will Preserve Knowledge Post-peak?

Knowledge is, by its very nature, transient and ephemeral. It exists as memory in the intricate synaptic paths of the brain. The conveyance of that knowledge down through generations can be accomplished by word of mouth and be compromised through layers of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Or that knowledge can be captured and recorded in a form that others no longer need physical access to the person with the knowledge but can get access to the knowledge through the recorded version of that knowledge, through books, papers and digitized media.

The preservation of recorded knowledge, however, requires a tremendous amount of energy, dedication and commitment by those who assume the resposibility of preserving it, protecting it and disseminating it to others, especially those others in future generations. The problem arises from the fact that the media in/on which that information is recorded, though more permanent than synaptic networks, are only permanent relative to human longevity. Paper and the various magnetic and other information-recording media are sensitive to deterioration over time. In order for that knowledge and information recorded using such media to persist down through time they must be regularly transcribed and recorded - always with the risk of error, misinterpretation or misrecording. There must be an ongoing use of energy in order for that knowledge and information to survive over time.

Today we must be forgiven for the impression that knowledge is permanent. Our generations are committed to its preservation, to the discovery and restoration of the knowledge from ages past. And yet even much of that ancient knowledge has been understood and restored and preserved only because of the fortuitous discovery of the rosetta stone that allowed scholors to understand the ancient languages in which much of that knowledge was written.

Today we rely very heavilly upon magnetic and other digitized media to help us preserve much of that ancient knowledge and, indeed, our own contemporary knowledge. Paper, even of the very highest quality, is very sensitive to deterioration without exceptional environmental controls. Virtually all written media in human society is rapidly being preserved onto digital media with the intent that such media can more readilly and accurately be preserved and transfered and re-recorded in the future.

But such digital recording requires modern technology to be workable. The recording for preservation of all of that written information involves, and requires, millions of computers throughout the world. Data is recorded on millions upon millions of disks, CDs, tapes and other recording medium which is also subject to deterioration over time.

Simple question..... What happens when the technology fails? When the electricity grids go away? When the information networks go offline... permanently? What happens to all of that information and knowledge in those computers that no longer exists in written media, is no longer recorded on paper or some other medium than those computers and their digital storage devices?

There has been a virtual explosion of information and knowledge over the past century. Knowledge grows, like the population, exponentially, only faster. There has been more new knowledge developed in the past century than in all the previous history of man on earth. And it is all being uploaded to computers as fast as we can manage. And if our society were to be able to continue for the next century in the same way as the past century we would double human knowledge again. If, as many expect, especially we in the peak oil movement, we are approaching a global peak in oil production, in energy production, in energy availability, our high-tech society will not continue unchecked for the next century.

Do we record it all back on paper? On clay tablets? On papyrus? If our high-tech information storage abilities are about to disappear or become severely degraded, what other alternative recording media do we have or will we have in order to save all of that accumulation of human knowledge? More importantly, from where will come the commitment and dedication to do so? Who will shoulder the responsibility, as did so many cloistered monks in the middle ages, of preserving that knowledge? And what criteria will they use if they must be selective because it is impossible to preserve all knowledge? What will they decide to salvage and preserve? Who among us has the right to make such decisions?

Think about it.

Is there any alternative to Powerdown? And the sooner the better?

How can there any longer be any question that peak oil will occur in the relatively near future? Even one of the most persistent and officially-appreciated cornucopeans (Cambridge Energy Research Associates or CERA, and its founder and leader, Daniel Yergin), despite the fact that their latest ridiculously expensive report (at $1000 a pop) claims to debunk peak oil, concedes that oil will peak within the next 25 years and go into decline within 50 years. Even for CERA, therefore, it no longer seems to be a question of if but rather when.

The big difference between CERA, in this latest report, and ASPO (the Association for the Study of Peak Oil) centers on the amount of unextracted oil remaining in the world. ASPO's estimates for the global production peak are based on an original endowment of 1.92 trillion barrels of oil. The CERA projections are based on an endowment of 2.93 trillion barrels of conventional oil and a total of 3.61 trillion barrels including unconventional oil like tar sands, and oil shale.

Does it really matter who is right? I totally discount CERA's numbers but does it matter, in the end, whether they are right or wrong? The simple reality is that both the optimists and the so-called doom-n-gloomers believe the global oil production will peak some time in this next quarter century.

Our current societal infrastructure has evolved for hundreds of years. More importantly it has been transformed into its present structure over these past two centuries thanks to our profligate use of fossil fuels and mineral resources. Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Berlin, London, Dresden and many more cities have been risen from the ashes and rebuilt since the end of WWII. But that was over sixty years ago.

The physical and social infrastructure that are going to be needed as we proceed down the decline slope of global oil production are going to be as different to that of today as our current society is from that before the industrial revolution.

It took, based on ASPO's global oil estimates, the first have of our oil endowment and 200 years to transform society from pre-industrial to the present. It will take the last half of our oil endowment to retransform society from that which presently exists to a post-industrial, post-fossil fuel structure. Even an optimist of the first order cannot possibly believe that that process will be sufficiently under way by the time we reach peak oil that we can complete the job before the remaining fossil fuels are, for all practical purposes, depleted. And yet that is exactly what must be done.

If we are to avoid social chaos, or at least a worsening of the social chaos that now exists, and if we are to avoid a massive human die-off (it is estimated that the maximum human carrying capacity without fossil fuel inputs is 2-billion people) on the post-peak downslope, we will have to put in place before that time the foundations of the infrastructure that will have to sustain us when the fossil fuels eventually run out.

I personally see no alternative before us other than now beginning a voluntary powerdown with a massive reduction in our global fossil fuel usage and, most particularly, our fossil fuel dependence. Anyone who underestimates the amount of work it will take to transform our society to one that can survive and be sustainable without fossil fuels is living in a dream world.

It's time to stop the arguing and name calling. It is time to stop the oil and resource companies from spreading the lie, directly and indirectly through organizations like CERA, that there is no problem ahead, that technology will save the day, that there are untold resources yet to be discovered and exploited. That is, as Energy Bulletin has defined it, peak-oil prozac and they are doing no one good by continuing to supply it.

Face reality.

Refuse the prozac.

Move on.