THE END OF THE (internet) WORLD!!! OH NOES!

[|iR|Focalor]

Yepperooni! According to AT&T, the internet will DIE in 2010!

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/90339

I'm gonna have to toss out my bullshit card on this one. Decades ago with the anti-trust laws, the government forced AT&T to split up. In recent years, they've managed to buy back all their sub-companies and are now once again THE communications entity. Seems to me like they're offering up a shiny silver platter adorned with liberal amounts of bullshit and garnish in an attempt to "pre-bullshit" us all into blindly accepting a large increase in communications costs. I'm not sure yet, but that's what it smells like to me.

[quadz]

I dunno about the end of the "(internet) world", but...

Has anyone considered "Peak Oil" vis-a-vis the rest of the planet??????????

I recently watched a documentary entitled, "A Crude Awkening..."

...and then checked accepted scientific facts......

We're currently at something like 80 million barrels of oil per day...

And we're just about at peak oil production limits globally...

...What replaces oil at the down-slope of the curve?  (BTW... I'm not meaning to imply that NO other energy substitutes will become available; but rather, WHEN the current 6.x billion people on Earth willl have sufficient...production...)

[reaper]

based on reasonable expert opinions we should be just fine.  we are drilling oil in much much deeper parts of the ocean, and for many other reasons we should never reach a point of catastrophy.

I wish I had a better explanation, but this months popular mechanics magazine has a great article on deep sea drilling, and why and how we will mitigate any problems with shortages in supply.

it was interesting , one prominent university professor predicated some dooms day year, and it was debunked by various experts from different backgrounds.

[quadz]

based on reasonable expert opinions we should be just fine.  we are drilling oil in much much deeper parts of the ocean, and for many other reasons we should never reach a point of catastrophy.

errm.. "peak oil" is fairly scientific... Unless you are making the case that oil magically regenerates faster than we can suck it out of the ground...? Peak_oil

I wish I had a better explanation, but this months popular mechanics magazine has a great article on deep sea drilling, and why and how we will mitigate any problems with shortages in supply.

Unless you are arguing that the oil reserves in the ground are self-replenishing faster than we can draw them out (at 80+ million barrels per day) ...

it was interesting , one prominent university professor predicated some dooms day year, and it was debunked by various experts from different backgrounds.

That seems to miss the point.



 

[UUD-40]

I followed a link in the article and read this:

"In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."

Thats when I stopped reading...

[peewee_RotA]

About the oil thing. We are not currently drilling in all available known oil sites, let alone the locations we have not yet discovered. Advanced refining techniques to make "dirty crude" useful are only a couple years from economic feasability. Other technologies like extracting oil from shale are also well on their way.

Don't forget about market driven forces. Once sweet crude is more expensive than these other refining techniques we'll use those refining teqniques. The oil wells will never actually dry up. They'll get to expensive to use and we'll move on to other things. I'm assuming you're using the same credible scientific sources that anti-ANWR drilling groups use. Let me put it this way. Scienctists opinions on economic problems usually mean as much as Guns & Ammo doing a study on gang violence. Related topics but conflicts of interest and general ignorance to the concepts of econimics, governmental influence, and the future productivity don't exactly factor into the scientific method.

Most gloom and doom assumptions of oil production are politically motivated. For example the ANWR drilling at it's peak production will save 1 cent per gallon. Well that's the line. Fact is that drilling in ANWR was never meant to be concurrent with the aliaskan pipeline it was meant to replace the current drilling site because it was predicted to run dry within the next decade (which turned out to be another false politically motivated study). But assume it would run dry and there was no alternative drilling site. How much would that cost you? So if gas raised by 50 cents or a dollar because there was no alternative? That means the study was atleast 5,000% off! 5,000% wrong is pretty wrong.

Also the original study that turned out to be false on the limit of the aliaskan pipeline was used by similar and some of the same groups that now use the 1 penny study against ANWR. It puts the lie to the idea that they care about the environment, or the wildlife of the area. It's not because it's a wildlife refuge. It's because these groups are quite frankly anti-oil. It's pretty well known about the proposed windfall taxes and government forced development of alternative fuels. It doesn't mater what the means are. The end is to eliminate oil. It's foreign oil when it's convenient. It's baby seals when it's convenient. It's the rain forest when it's convenient. But the theme through the years is anti-oil and a concerted effort to force it out of production even though there's not logical or scientific reasons for it. (i.e. before there was oil there was coal, so should we really go back to coal power in order to end gasoline emissions?)

Lastly assumption on current and peak oil productions absolutely always ignore the concept of productivity and ability. Cuba, for example, has plenty of off shore drilling sites, however the country, mostly due to it's economic structure, does not have the ability to drill it. This has been true for many years in regard to russia and it's satellites. So was it taken into account the oil in the sites that are known but are currently under governments unproductive enough to use it?

In closing there really are several points to always take into account when hearing scientists opinions on oil production.
 - Are they taking into consideration known and undrilled sites as well as the prediction of additional unknown sites?
 - Does that scientist even have a basic understanding of supply and demand?
 - Are any alternative refinements or improved refinement methods currently under development ever considered. (or their implementation based on supply and demand that that scientist already didnt understand)
 - Is economics really an issue for a biologist, geologist, or chemist to answer?
 - The easiest way to draw attention away from your faults is to accuse someone else of it. Like calling someone else greedy or politicaly motivated when you in fact are.
 - Gloom and doom studies about oil production have been systematically wrong before.
 - Scientists are generally not political science majors

[The Happy Friar]

it's like 1998 all over again, isn't it?  A decade ago the world was going to end because all computers WERE going to crash, guarantied.  Not the internet is going to crash.  WTF?

it could be said that getting rid of AT&T would solve the problem.  Eliminate a company that uses a good chunk of the bandwidth in the world & you have that bandwidth free.  Cell phones & the like use up a good chunk ya know. 

[|iR|Focalor]

it's like 1998 all over again, isn't it?  A decade ago the world was going to end because all computers WERE going to crash, guarantied.  Not the internet is going to crash.  WTF?

it could be said that getting rid of AT&T would solve the problem.  Eliminate a company that uses a good chunk of the bandwidth in the world & you have that bandwidth free.  Cell phones & the like use up a good chunk ya know. 

Throwing a big switch and shutting down AT&T won't solve this "problem" (...and I emphasize the quotes). Apparently, their equipment which brings connectivity to the internet is becoming used more and more, and AT&T doesn't have the money to expand their networking capacity to allow for the larger transmissions of data that comes along with more and more people using higher speed broadband connections. According to THEM, the demand on their network equipment will eventually become so great that they won't have the ability to provide service to everyone. The system will become overloaded and crash, leaving all of the world in complete and total internet darkness! 

This is why I call it bullshit. When a company reaquires all of it's old sub-companies, obviously they have a large bank account. A company is not going to shell out that much cash if they don't anticipate making a sufficient profit to make such a move worth their while. There are more than enough people paying AT&T (in one form or another) for service to continue to run and upgrade the services they provide.

Remember what the government said after Hurricane Katrina? The price of gasoline is rising because the pumping station is damaged. Well.... prices are continuing to rise. Several other "reasons" have been given as to why this is happening.

Appears to me as though we are entering an era in which corporations will assume the role of government, something which was supposed to be prevented by anti-trust laws. Keeping these giant corporations fat, happy, and afloat will be the primary economic goal. All other economic problems (including the economic woes of the masses of middle-class) will be subordinate to those interests.

[jägermonsta]

just power cycle the internet when it goes down.

that south park was awesome 

[|iR|Focalor]

Are you sure the internet is going to crash?

  I'm not just sure... I'm HIV positive.

[QwazyWabbit]

Peak oil? The greatest impediment to our economic reformation is the current "low" price of oil. Europe is paying upwards of twice the price for gasoline as the U.S. The market prices are not associated with "production costs" but speculation and premiums on availability. This is why oil company profits are up. Consumption is fixed, supply is controlled, this is why prices are "unstable". The peak oil phenomenon may work for individual wells and fields but exploration and exploitation of existing reserves will mitigate the decline. Further, yes the world IS full of oil. It was produced when the planet was formed out of the primordial gasses. One only has to look at Titan to know that methane (natural gas) and hydrocarbons (oil) are abundant where no life exists.

The economies of the world need to back off the idea that you can live in the suburbs and commute 40 miles to work and back every day and they don't have to fly coast to coast for a 2 hour meeting anymore. Internetworking is the key to solving these problems and only increasing the cost of transportation will control the "rationing" of it for things like food, real material goods fabrication of plastics and polymers. Burning it is BAD. It's time we learned that. Air transportation needs to decline, cars need to become more efficient, even to the point of them becoming "luxury" items. Decentralization of industries and investment in public transportation are paramount and these things won't happen until they become cheaper in comparison to continuation of the status quo.

QW

[quadz]

About the oil thing. We are not currently drilling in all available known oil sites, let alone the locations we have not yet discovered. Advanced refining techniques to make "dirty crude" useful are only a couple years from economic feasability. Other technologies like extracting oil from shale are also well on their way.

On the other hand, the discovery of new oil resources peaked decades ago.

Related topics but conflicts of interest and general ignorance to the concepts of econimics, governmental influence, and the future productivity don't exactly factor into the scientific method.

Thankfully, it seems to be possible for scientists to accurately model oil production without becoming confused by a bunch of extraneous factors.  Looking at Hubbert's 1956 prediction of US oil production against the actual measured data, we can see a very precise fit:

(click for larger version)

I suggest we go place a little asterisk on Hubbert's tomb stone explaining how useless the scientific method was because he was generally ignorant of economics, governmental influence, and future productivity.




Regards,

quadz

[reaper]

i'm inclined to degree with this guy, there are so many solutions, i'm not going to worry, when the solutions are cheaper, we just won't use oil..

"
"The overall U.S. supply is gradually decreasing, but that rate of decline will be slowed by contributions from deepwater reserves in the whole Atlantic basin, from the gulf to Nigeria, Angola and Brazil." Jackson sees oil production reaching a plateau, rather than a sharp peak, but not for decades. "And that means we'll have time to mitigate and make some plans and legislate, and that's very different from saying there's going to be a peak in, say, 2010, followed by a precipitous decline."

"

the AT&T guy is just smoking crack, the problems on the internet should be talked about rationally, and that guys just on another planet.

here's the full article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machines/4255407.html?page=3

[peewee_RotA]

(click for larger version)

I suggest we go place a little asterisk on Hubbert's tomb stone explaining how useless the scientific method was because he was generally ignorant of economics, governmental influence, and future productivity.

Yes I'm sure that there's accuracy to the data. I'm just harshly suggesting that the interpritations and opinions based on the findings have consitantly followed the rule of journalism. All headlines are untrue and over half of every news story, no mater what the author, is false and opinion. I'm really just ticked at how easy it is for the Anti-ANWR crowd to lie about the facts, their true intentions, and just how political their, and similar, movements are. In fact the Anti-ANWR crowd is associated closely with an organization that "CREATES" grass roots movements. In other words it practices in creating false impressions because the original concept couldn't survive the arena of ideas nor the democratic process.