[Rockhounds] Question

[jbacko]

Kreigh Tomaszewski wrote:
> John,
>
> If it is not grown, it must be mined. Plants are at the bottom of the 
> food chain; plants do their own mining. People need knowledge of 
> minerals, and technology, to survive, given our number on planet 
> earth. Knowledge needs to be shared to survive; knowledge makes 
> technology possible. Mineralogy and geology are the key sciences; 
> rockhounding is the associated hobby. We help the future by actively 
> supporting rockhounding.
>
Some people do need knowledge of "minerals and technology" to survive; 
but only those who actively exploit them and make them available to the 
rest of us. We, the users, do not particularly care where they came from 
or how the manufactured articles came to be, only that they are there. 
And even that is opportunism to a degree. If they weren't there, would 
we really miss them? Living in the gulag proved to many that all one 
really needed was a spoon and a bowl as utensils, and some clothing to 
protect against the cold and rain.  Therefore we should know about how 
to make pottery with clay and how to carve a wooden spoon, how to spin 
lint into thread and tan a hide.  Farming in Egypt has been a 
subsistence activity that has followed the natural patterns of the Nile 
for 6000 years or more. The cultures of Atlantis, the Dynasties, the 
West, and who knows what others have come and gone, yet the methods 
persist. ( I exaggerate of course but not much).  We are probably 
prudent to be cautious of what is true for us who live in an industrial 
and technological society as being universal to the needs of all of 
humanity. Especially as it applies to "survival".

I suppose there are some that would disagree with you about Mineralogy 
and Geology as being the "key" sciences in favor perhaps of Physics. 
Just as Theology was the "Queen of Sciences" in the Middle Ages and 
Alchemy occupied a somewhat more lowly place. We build skyscrapers and 
libraries; they built cathedrals and monasteries.  But you point about 
knowledge that it must be shared and extended is well-taken. We believe 
in the education of Everyman, perhaps the first persistent culture to 
try such a thing. And it is a relatively recent thing, dating in force 
only from the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. One of the tenets 
of the philosophy of science, and education,  is that these truths 
gained through observation of reality are for everyone, to be shared and 
shared- alike. We have a responsibility as those who have benefited and 
partaken of these things to pass them on intact to all succeeding 
generations, lest they have the pain of re-discovering them all over 
again! I am not sure how one does this other than always making the 
information permanent and indelible ( in as much as we can) and making 
it freely available to all who are curious about it. The rub comes in 
finding the ways that make people curious about it. To you and I, it was 
never a problem because we were always into discovering these things for 
ourselves; it is our natural inclination and talent. But to most it is 
not.  Unless there is a demonstrable benefit -- hence the great and 
almost mystical reverence for technology.

As near as I can tell, The explosive rise in the standard of living 
since the Industrial Revolution has been caused by the availability of 
abundant cheap energy, mostly in the form of fossil fuels. There  are 
really only two sources of wealth -- land and labor. The land provides 
raw material and labor, i. e. someone's invested time, develops that 
material into something attractive or useful, including food, clothing 
and shelter. Abundant energy transferred that labor function to machines 
and multiplied the effect to the point where we now have a considerable 
amount of idle time in a large portion of the world.  Which we use in 
various ways, some of which are  extending our own intellectual 
curiosities into areas we might not do otherwise. Like rockhounding and 
radio and playing in a band and volunteering at the hospital. Removing 
the source of that energy would force us all back into the mold of using 
our labor to produce the same effect; that is an improbable supposition. 
It is patently impossible to produce the same standard of living for as 
much of the world as it now enjoys by human labor alone.  But it would 
be relatively easy for a few to direct that labor to their own benefit, 
a clear danger, and history shows this to be the common mode.  We are in 
the uncommon era. Because we have abundant energy. Not because we have 
a  corner on technology or science or anything else.

> Our planet needs to support an ever growing human population, with an 
> improving standard of life, without significantly damaging the total 
> environment (locally or globally). We need to be thinking about how to 
> expand beyond our planet (Earth First, mine the other planets later). 
> We mostly have the technology "off the shelf".
>
There are two factors that cannot be ignored here. One is entropy. 
Inevitably it becomes more and more expensive for any closed system to 
extract useful work from it as useful work is being done by it.  Though 
the Earth in the solar system is an open system, the pass-through of 
energy is on a much much longer time scale  than is our present use. We 
are using it as a closed system to support our standard of living. We 
have to present to everyone the idea of geological time. That is, the 
accumulation of "fossil energy" takes an incredible amount of time which 
is totally unrelated to real ordinary time, and however slowly we use it 
up we cannot reach a sustainable level that is consistent with present 
standards, much less those extended throughout the whole of the world. 
And there is no way that the streaming of energy in geological time can 
support it either. When we speak of the building of mountains or the 
movement of continents,  or the creation of a crystal,  or how old a 
given shell really is, we should convey that awesome numerology of time. 
We have to teach that free energy is limited, and that we should use it 
as wisely as possible. I believe that alone would bring us into a more 
sane and rational approach to living life. After all, we don't really 
need much more than a bowl and a spoon and a safe place to take shelter. :)

The second factor is your supposition of expansion. To other planets and 
beyond. It is an easy one for we Americans to come by. It is precisely 
what we have been doing for the last century or so. We have moved the 
exploitation of resources further and further away from us while 
collecting the benefits.  Now we worry about the Amazon rain forest. 
Because we use their wood and not our own. We refuse to mine our own 
mineral needs, Because we mine and use the minerals of others. Never 
mind the environmental costs to the others. We, at least, can gain 
comfort that we are protecting our own nest. All the while having all 
the toys and benefits that go along with it.  It seems to me that it 
does no good to push the basic activity out of the picture and onto 
others. We have to learn how to use the Earth when and where She is, 
with minimal disruption to be sure, but with true use to support our own 
needs (and desires). Also, along with that exploitation of other planets 
and such is the greater cost of doing it, the entropy factor at work. 
Unless of course, we migrated en masse to the new place. Think of what 
that would cost!


> Think globally, act locally. Resist movements that prevent making life 
> better for everyone.
>
> Kreigh
>
>

I am not quite sure what movements you have in mind here. The things 
that ultimately prevent making life "better for everyone" are hard-wired 
into the physics of the universe.  We can make life better for everyone 
but not at a very high level for a very long time unless we can come up 
with a truly cheap and universal energy source. But as far as I know 
every energy source has side effects. Even too much waste heat is an 
unpleasant side effect, and I can not see how we would not fall to 
temptation and overuse any other energy source as we have those now in use!
The cheaper it is, the more we would (potentially) abuse it. Do I sound 
too pessimistic? I hope not. What we do have is an incredible capacity 
to learn how to do things right. Maybe not always the first time. But we 
do find a way to make things work in pretty short order. Maybe because 
we are naturally inclined to the better way. Maybe because we are 
basically lazy. Who knows? I do know that our children and their 
children will find a way to make the whole thing work. We may not 
recognize the result, just as a medieval scholastic would be totally 
amazed at the modern world, but it will satisfy them.

 

Thank you Kreigh.


(I think maybe we have flogged this subject enough).

john