more info on the pork: http://pando.com/2014/12/18/th...

Actually, no.
The current world will not end in a bang like some 2012 maya pipe dream, killing computers overnight. What we have at hands right now is the ongoing process of choosing by inaction not to create enough ways to harvest renewable energy. As the fossils run out, we will see a gradual shift away from our current global industrial world.
Cheap mass shipping to the other side of the world will be among the first luxuries to go, meaning we will need to start to produce most of our goods locally again, starting from the basics and working up to more complicated ones. Which is where the library kicks in. If we reasonably manage our inheritance from the industrial era, we will have quite a stretch of time available while which we can rig up a some power to a computer to read and transcribe the library. I mean, many a slashdotter will be able to rip apart that electric car into some wind generators, batteries included.
Now we can plot a simple graph with two lines - one of us exhausting and repurposing our current goods and infrastructure until we run out, the other line being us rebuilding our civilization on renewable and sustainable production and goods. What is still undecided is how low the valley will go, and whether we hit such a critical low of development that we will never come back up again.
How well this will go depends on a few factors. First, practicing any technology needs a society able to feed specialists. This ability will decline sharply everywhere, because our current agriculture is 100% about converting oil into food - there is a real possibility that billions will die of hunger. Second, some countries like the USA and GB will have to start pretty much from the beginning, having destroyed their industrial base through corporate looting and offshoring. Contrast that with China or Germany with their massive industrial base which only needs to get the power back on. Third is of course the availability of raw materials, on which point do also note the lack of plastics in a post-oil world.
And if this was too easy, expect mass migrations caused by sea level rises, thirst and hunger and wars of every size and reason to complicate matters further. Only a state with can comfortably secure it's territory, food and resources with a reasonable surplus will have a chance to actually think about a rebound. At this point we can only hope there will be one.
Or we could get off our collective arses and actually do something about the future. I seriously doubt we will see an actual global push into renewable and sustainable, though. This would require effort, resilience and actual change, all of which are in a very short supply on this scale; furthermore, it would mean replacing our power structures, ideologies and economical systems, all of which are and will fight tooth and nail to survive. So it remains that the next best thing is for us to compile some kind of a library of survival knowledge...

b.bb...but mongodb is webscale!

This mission statement translates into 'take from the rich, give to the poor'. Dunno whether to actually believe them, but the statement is guaranteed at least 50% true :)

Well the academia is no different. The same petty politics, the same self-serving nipple rubbing. People are the same everywhere. The only difference is that academia is more p2p - If your real work is outgunned, you can hopefully find another journal or university, get a second opinion. This makes a hell of a difference - because wikipedia seems to be a central authority, you outsource much of your critical thinking and then find yourseld pissed when people happen. In academia, because of the explicit p2p nature you are forced to do your own thinking and therefore learn to deal with it to the point that it becomes programmatic and you are not able to pause to see it to be the same thing anymore.
Also you should not underestimate the system of meta(data) you build in your mind to navigate the the academia. This meta is linked to the best and only true value system you can imagine (your's), is built on the most complete and competent data available to you (your experience) and is therefore the best you can imagine (this meta is _you_, afterall!). So you build your image of academia in the image of yourself, and then notice that academia navigates well, is predictably reliable and gets the job done. Just like you! Expect it to happen in any field though, once you invest enough brainhours.

How 'bout some bay area blues?

FTFY

Climate change - reserch on this has fought the banhammer since Dubya.
Effects of fracking - the new kid in town.
Considering the status quo in the US of A, I'm pretty sure this proposal is all about clearing the road to kick the can down on.

You seem to have trouble parsing political language.

Temporary means permanent. Once you remeber this, you will be amazed how often you hear this word.

For some further fun, notice how many of their plans and speeches become crystal clear once you interpret 'terrorist' the way they do: 'a person'.

Do I even need to remind anyone that freedom = slavery?

They must have solved the travelling salesman problem.