For me the vital question that calls cultural materialism into question is why people started sticking seeds in the ground in the first place. It seems evident in Genesis mythology and in the explosion of symbolic representation that preceded mass-scale agriculture that some change in the culture occurred first, but no one knows for sure.

That could be as simple as how they could best understand it, the same way we today think anti-Semitism had something to do with why the Holocaust happened, and not just how. We generally ascribe to ourselves far more autonomy and free will than we really deserve. It certainly seems that the origins of agriculture had a good deal to do with settlement, sunk costs, and changing climate, and very little to do with ideology.

Oh, I don’t question that — I guess I’m looking at it back further in time. Who chose to stay put instead of follow the game? Sunk costs always have a beginning point, a person deciding to sink resources into something, who made that decision originally and why? If food was getting scarce, wouldn’t it have made more sense to move on rather than gamble on investment in a location suffering resource decline?

The proliferation of symbolic activity that preceded agriculture suggests a change in the culture. Is this change what caused people to start planting things? If so, then in this instance the culture would have created the material conditions — settlement, sunk costs, and possibly to some degree climate change — that eventually gave rise to agriculture. But no one can say for sure.

Technology already exists to separate this uranium from seawater, but currently its cost far exceeds the cost of conventional uranium mining. Nonetheless, the potential for such seawater uranium extraction holds considerable interest for countries like Japan where other sources of energy are lacking.¹

The recovery cost was estimated to be 5-10 times of that from mining uranium. More than 80% of the total cost was occupied by the cost for marine equipment for mooring the adsorbents in seawater, which is owning to a weight of metal cage for adsorbents. Thus, the cost can be reduced to half by the reduction of the equipment weight to 1/4. Improvement of adsorbent ability is also a problem for future research since the cost directly depends on the adsorbent performance.²

So, even if this works (and the study ignores the fact that making the cage lighter also makes it more prone to breaking), you’re still talking about reducing it by half, which is still 2.5-5 times more expensive than mining. These kinds of things matter a great deal, because it’s EROEI that matters more than simply how much material you can pull out. Tar sands and oil shale can provide sources of petroleum, too, they just cost too much. Sounds like seawater uranium falls into the same category. Mined uranium just barely breaks even for EROEI when all inputs are fully considered (it seems like a great energy source now only because it’s subsidized by fossil fuels, and most of the inputs are ignored); increase the cost by 2.5-5 times, and nuclear gets a very negative EROEI.

…even with the whole extracting from seawater possibility…

There’s extremely little uranium in sea water to extract. It really doesn’t change much.

…before the depletion of fossil fuels, the nuclear ball will be rolling well enough so that when fossil fuels ARE depleted, electric vehicles can pick up where internal combustion left off and we’ll be able to use uranium (through nuclear power) to obtain more uranium.

Considering that uranium production has already peaked, no. Uranium production has been dropping since the 1980’s, so the idea that you could ramp up a peaked resource is a little silly.

“An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s proved that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was feasible).” Does anyone have a rough guess how long that much uranium could help to maintain the status quo? Seems like there’s a lot of uncertainties to me.

You hear statistics like this all the time, and 99.999% of them are completely bunk. If it were really so profitable, why hasn’t it been done? We have a highly competitive society. That kind of edge would make someone a fortune. If we look a little deeper, that statement on Wikipedia has two sources: one is broken, and the other has some pretty suspect arithmetic.

It is estimated that there is 4.7 million tonnes of uranium ore reserves (economically mineable) known to exist, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction).[32] An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s proved that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was feasible).[33][34]

Exploration for uranium is continuing to increase with US$200 million being spent world wide in 2005, a 54% increase on the previous year.[32]

Australia has 38% of the world’s uranium ore resources - the most of any country.[35] In fact, the world’s largest single uranium deposit is located at the Olympic Dam Mine in South Australia.[36] Almost all the uranium is exported, under strict International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards to satisfy the Australian people and government that none of the uranium is used in nuclear weapons. As of 2006, the Australian government was advocating an expansion of uranium mining, although issues with state governments and indigenous interests complicate the issue.[37]

The largest single source of uranium ore in the United States was the Colorado Plateau located in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. The U.S. federal government paid discovery bonuses and guaranteed purchase prices to anyone who found and delivered uranium ore, and was the sole legal purchaser of the uranium. The economic incentives resulted in a frenzy of exploration and mining activity throughout the Colorado Plateau from 1947 through 1959 that left thousands of miles of crudely graded roads spider-webbing the remote deserts of the Colorado Plateau, and thousands of abandoned uranium mines, exploratory shafts, and tailings piles. The frenzy ended as suddenly as it had begun, when the U.S. government stopped purchasing the uranium.” A quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#_note-stanfordCohen

Is this wrong? I read your”Splitting the Atom” article. Still not sure.

What I’ve read on this site and elsewhere has me pretty convinced that the agricultural revolution was a mistake from the point of view of our species and the planet generally. Will it be undone by the depletion of fossil fuels? Not yet convinced.

I don’t think I’ve ever ignored a good argument, though. “You just refuse to budge even when people make good arguments.” I don’t see that at all. I don’t budge when people make bad arguments, but good arguments? I’ve changed because of good arguments frequently, often in ways that have cost me a great deal personally. I don’t see materialism as a “reduction” or constriction, either, any more than, say, gravity. But obviously these are the kinds of disagreements you’re having trouble with. As I said, I’ve always valued disagreement, and I’ve always valued your contribution, so I’m sorry to see you go. But ultimately, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, so I wish you all the best.

For one thing, I feel highly uncomfortable with any way of thinking that seeks to reduce human anything to simple formulas, which is what cultural materialism, as I understand it, does.

Second, Jason, discussing things with you feels like being run over by a truck. Honestly. You just refuse to budge even when people make good arguments. I’m not just talking about the one at hand, and I am not just talking about other discussions/debates that you and I have had, but also about just about any debate of yours that I’ve followed, even when I didn’t participate at all except as a reader. It’s a stile, and in fact, there are some goods things to be said for it, but I don’t want to deal with it. I am certainly not telling you to change anything: this is your blog, and the content and stile of your posts should be the way you think is best. Just as this is my time and my energy, and I should be spending them the way I see fit. And under the circumstances, I simply cannot justify to myself spending any more of either on this blog.

I’m not saying I haven’t gotten quite a bit out of reading your work; I have, but now it’s time to move on.

I wish you all the best. For a variety of reasons, I’ve never been convinced that you’ll make it as a hunter-gatherer. I do, however, hope that you will: the world needs a lot more wild (or feral, whatever) humans than it’s got.

Farewell.