Open thread for climate solution discussion. Climate science discussions should remain on the Unforced Variations thread.
Reader Interactions
854 Responses to "Forced Responses: Dec 2019"
nigeljsays
EP @767
“No they do not BOTH “go way back”. Wind and solar both go back CENTURIES. Fission goes back to 1938, at the earliest; the first demonstration was 1942. Now compare successes against age. Give credit where credit is due.”
Ok wind and solar go further back than nuclear, however its a spurious argument because there was no need to develop wind and solar way back, because we had energy dense fossil fuels, no real battery technology and no real awareness of AGW. Nuclear was developed because it was thought it would be better than using coal. And it is, buy orders of magnitude. But so are renewables :)
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EP @677
“If you grew up in an English-speaking Western culture and you can’t read Dickens, does that not suggest that you are not fit to carry on the culture and should not reproduce?”
No it doesn’t. I can read dickens, I just dont connect with his work in the same way I just dont connect with Chopins music, or Taylor Swifs music. Maybe I will give it another try. DC looks readable.
I did read tolstoy, dumas, hugo and dostoyevsky when virtually a child, so I think the intelligence genes are ok, I hope. If there is such a thing. But I just connected better with those authors.
“We cant really put them in tents and throw dog food at them. ….That really is the right way to treat hostile people who only want to take advantage of you. Australia puts them on an island and gives them the choice of staying there or going back home. That is the correct response to probably 99.9% of them”.
They aren’t really hostile people. They just want a better life. Its ok to put them on an island if they are treated humanely. The hard right are inhumane, the hard left go a bit nuts on the issue with naive compassion and would let anyone in. Its a mirror image thing.
All this right wing stuff will not help you sell your nuclear power ideas. Some people react very badly to it.
“Why should ANYONE “on the international stage” be admitted to the West rather than being assisted in place?
Doesn’t work for political refugees . Their life is at risk. I was thinking more about international aid projects. This ends up helping all of us, if you think about it. I like to have my cake and eat it too!
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EP @679
“Sat scores….800 math, well over 600 verbal…”
We don’t have those, but I do incredibly well on aptitude tests like that as well! But can we cut all this school yard bragging crap guys?
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EP @680
You seem to miss the point KM is making. Women today are not as dependent on a man’s check book for their survival. They have at least some financial independence. Its a freedom thing you guys on the right love dont you?
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Zebra @692,
“I have pointed out several times that EP fits a classic Authoritarian personality diagnosis.”.
And zebra fits the classic dunning kruger diagnosis.
We are all misfits here as AB points out (or something like that)
Authoritarianism is one of these things that can become a huge problem if it becomes dominant. Political history shows that. Yet authoritarianism in various forms has been part of all our lives forever, its in our evolution. The parent / child relationship is by nature authoritarian and it would be a disaster if otherwise. The applicable maxim is “moderation in all things”.
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And how the hell did we get from climate to slavery?
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @681, someone else was telling me liquid fuels were quite economic, even as as storage device for wind and solar intermittency issues. I cant track the research paper down but will have another look. Its important considering the high costs of batteries.
Quite a good plan using the army to build a new electricity grid. It might even appeal to Trump if someone could get the fossil fuels lobby out of his ear. Its his kind of thing to bring in the army to solve everything. Mr bone spurs.
The point is not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If capital goods are sometimes idle so what? School buildings are largely empty at nights.
But the other more conventional plan is capital is so cheap now. There’s a global glut of capital and interest rates are low. It will never be cheaper to build new infrastructure. Grasp the opportunity people.
Killiansays
And, yet another brick in the rapidly growing wall of regenerative systems/simplicity. Everything reinforces this as the only pathway forward.
Re #700 anklebiter said I haven’t a fucking clue. I yap because I can!
Killian @686 lists 5 simplicity principles. This is still not really a definition of simplicity, so work on that.
Dolt. Truly brain dead-level comment.
Killiansays
Who said this?
I think Killian is more right about principles. People need to embrace living with sustainable principles, or regenerative principles, and this might help make it easier to formulate more quantitative goals.
The same dolt who said this: Killian @686 lists 5 simplicity principles. This is still not really a definition of simplicity, so work on that.
For the nonanklebiters, non-dolts out there, how many principles are there? Hint: I’ve said it here many times. Hint: Not five. Hmmm… What, then, do those five principles correlate with? Could it be the article… in the post? Could there, just possibly, be a reason five principles and an article were posted together?
I need to provide exmples? Beyond an entire fecking article about fish skins used to make clothing? Why would people make fish skin clothes? Could it be they were using what they had? Adapting to their place? Getting multiple functions out of the elements around them? Not wasting anything? And, is there any reason fish skin clothes shouldn’t be used? Isn’t it cool, the diversity of clothing used on this planet?
* Use what you’ve got.
* Adapt in place.
* Zero Waste.
* Stupidity: The attempt to iron out all differences, and failing to use and value diversity.
* Every element has *at least* two functions.
I no longer think we are going to fix the climate problem with usual mitigation strategies and lifestyle changes. The problem is just too big, too many things have to change, there are too many psychological, ideological, cost and political impediments to change at scale.
We are probably going to end up resorting to some desperate geoengineering solution or sucking CO2 out of both the air with fans, because these are singular solutions. Its possible to see them actually happening and being coordinated and they dont need every country in the world to be involved to achieve a result.
It’s scary as hell and sad and not what I really want to see. No doubt Ill be labelelled a closet denier or whatever by the usual twits. But I don’t think I’m wrong about this. However I will still advocate for the conventional solutions.
Al Bundysays
Pure O/T
Nigel,
Yeah, my disclaimer was inferior. I said, “So, not really, but sod off.”
I should have also put ‘gloat’ in parentheses. (My diss to EP ended with the disclaimer that my actual opinion of EP was higher than the diss. So I accidentally treated you worse than EP. Oops. Sorry, man.)
No, EP did not give his SAT scores until after I noted his hypocrisy. My original ask was long ago. (My mind tends to flag incomplete threads.)
My SAT story includes lots of stupidity and testosterone. My plan was to prepare by not studying anything for months. Then I stayed up all night on the eve of the test playing war games so as to give the test a chance.
My plan failed dismally. The test kicked my butt: 800 math 700+ (760?) verbal.
O the shame. I can’t imagine the coma I would have to be in to score “well above 600”.
Ain’t guys dumb as dirt? Deriving pleasure from locking horns about irrelevancies? It’s such fun kicking each other in the balls.
Contrast with women, who have the sense to keep their gonads inside their bodies. (And to charge big bucks for kicking men in the balls – yeah, of course that’s a thing)
E-P 682: Are you under the impression that a near-universal institution could “disfigure” all of human society, both at the time and going forward?
BPL: Why, yes. You appear to be arguing that if something is “normal” it’s ethically okay. The majority isn’t always right. Slavery is a moral evil even when it’s universal.
Did it escape your attention that (legal) slavery in the US was abolished in 1865?
E-P: Go back and count how many times I’ve noted it, and BTW the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, not 1865.
BPL: And the Emancipation Proclamation had no actual effect other than for propaganda purposes, and the 14th amendment was ratified in 1866, and actual slavery persisted into the 1940s under the guise of conviction for made-up crimes, rural debt punishments, and peonage. You don’t know much actual history, do you?
nigeljsays
Killian @704 & 705,
You think I’m a dolt? Nope. I sailed through school and university (college) with excellent grades in almost every subject, and I was only ever in first gear. What are your academic credentials?
Listing 5 principles is not the same as defining simplification and simplicity. That’s self evident. A dictionary or encyclopedia wouldn’t just quote principles alone. At the very least it needs some commentary in your own words. It should be obvious what I meant. I’m not expecting perfection and these things are not always easy. I was actually genuinely interested.
I didn’t open your link because my computer gave me a website warning. I’ve tried it on my other computer now and its ok. You always assume the worst of people.
I responded to your list of 5 simplicity principles with a well mannered, positive constructive response. All I got in return was vitriol. You sound like stupid gone to college to me.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @709,
“Ain’t guys dumb as dirt? Deriving pleasure from locking horns about irrelevancies? It’s such fun kicking each other in the balls.”
Yep. We are like animals locking horns. And I do wish I had read your comment on all this before firing off a response to Killian. You will see why. Oh well, too late now :)
Thomassays
#711 etc.
E-P, I told you you wouldn’t get far no matter how useful or reaosnable your primary ‘climate’ views were. And here is the proof positive – here you are having a debate discussion about the vagaries of Slavery in the USA.
They got ya big time! Again. The local residents always do. Whether it’s killian’s sensible factual advice on permaculture simplicity in the “big picture future’, or it’s me about communicating the better tot he hoi polloi, or scott and his soils info, or you with the obvious positives of genIV nuclear being backed in by Gates and Hansen, it doesn’t matter EP, anyone with something sensible to say or question always going to get hammered to death here once they find the ‘loop hole’ the ‘weak point’ to get you with.
And you’ve been GOT buddy. Whatever useful thing you had to say is not DIRT here. I recommend you simply walk away. They own this place! They do not care about agw/cc more than being right themselves about everything. It’s not worth it. Walk away.
nigeljsays
Thomas @714 don’t include me with your nameless accusations. EP largely started the conversation about slavery, immigration, women, not me. Nobody is out to ‘get’ EP. Some of us including myself object to his anti immigration, xenophobic, anti feminist sounding views and I make no apologies for this.
I dont oppose nuclear power and find EPs cooments quite good value in the main (immigration stuff excepted).
I would not categorise permaculture as factual advice. Speculation would be nearer the truth. Just so you know, nuclear power is totally inconsistent with simplicity / permaculture (ask Killian thats what hes said) so its amusing to see you seem to think they are both equally valid viewpoints. What a laugh.
This is a science website. These scientist guys like BPL are trained to rip things to bits. And its a good thing! We have to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Shame if you cant work that out.
You say “They do not care about agw/cc more than being right themselves about everything. It’s not worth it. Walk away.”
A total lie, and utter, complete hypocrisy on your part. Now go away and stop defaming people.
Killiansays
anklebiter said You think I’m a dolt? Nope.
It’s not an opinion, it’s been verified by your actions on a daily basis.
I sailed through school and university (college) with excellent grades in almost every subject
Grades have nothing to do with being stupid. Good grades take almost no effort for the intelligent/creatively-minded, and for even below average intellects and non-creative elbow grease suffices.
Again, you show you understand little.
I graduate from a small, comprehensive university ranked in the top 7 to top 11 in its caregory while I was a student there, and is still highly ranked.
This means nothing WRT stupidity.
Listing 5 principles is not the same as defining simplification and simplicity. That’s self evident.
Yes, it is. Yet you seem to think noting which principles are related the information in an article somehow needs to meet your non sequitur demand for a definition of simplicity.
Had I posted an article on Alpine lakes are you going to demand a treatise on ice fishing, too?
Dolt.
At the very least it needs some commentary in your own words.
First Principles are non-reductory. I.e., they are self-evident. Except to you.
It should be obvious what I meant.
It was: You have no gaddamned idea what the feck you are ever talking about.
I was actually genuinely interested.
Bullshit. You had all the info you needed and chose to anklebite.
I didn’t open your link because my computer gave me a website warning.
Like father, like son.
I’ve tried it on my other computer now and its ok. You always assume the worst of people.
I assumed nothing. You made a stupid, non sequitur claim and demand.
I responded to your list of 5 simplicity principles with a well mannered, positive constructive response.
Bullshit. You anklebit, as always, and arrogantly told me what I must communicate to please you because what you think I should say trumps what I have chosen to say. And all because you can’t suss out something as simple as “Every element must have *at least* two functions.” And, no, we do not ignore principles in order to allow stupid solutions as you suggested we should do. Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option. You don’t include it anyway, you pay fecking attention and realize the principle is there for a REASON, and defer to its source: Nature.
All I got in return was vitriol.
You got a mirror put in front of your face. You choose to not learn. That’s on you.
You sound like stupid gone to college to me.
You and Trump, mirror intellects.
zebrasays
#710 BPL,
I didn’t read any of what went before this but a couple of pragmatic points you missed (you may recall that I am not a fan of “moral” reasoning.)
1. Immigration (to “the West”) will contribute to reducing global population growth. The immigrant’s offspring usually adapt to the local fertility rates within about two generations. Doesn’t solve the problem of Mormons and such, but the bonus effect is that the connection with the “old country” will influence relatives and friends who stay behind. Much better to have one’s sister offer help on the merits of fewer children than some pretentious international do-gooders.
2. More generally with respect to that last point, “Western values” are, again, spread at the actual grass roots level, as well as financial assistance in the form of remittances rather than “aid”. And of course, for the usual geopolitical games, native-speakers and those with connections are always useful.
3. Hybrid vigor. Compare the vitality of the coasts and some cities in the US which have diverse populations to the doldrums and despair of the islands of “purity” in the rest of the country. Seems obvious that the effect is both cultural and biological.
So, the immigration program that tries to bring in people from “everywhere”, whose name I forget and is under attack now, does not require a moral argument to justify. Nor the acceptance of refugees. It’s just a practical necessity if you think the US should try to influence what happens globally.
jgnfldsays
@710 “BPL: The same reason you pull someone who’s drowning into a lifeboat.”
Uh, Barton…apparently you don’t know how libertarians think!
nigeljsays
One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources, but does it actually make much sense? For example, if we look at things like a chisel or hand saw they are essential things we take for granted, yet only really have one function, unless you include spurious things. It is also hard to see how you could modify them to make them multi functional and in a useful way that isn’t a horrible compromise. The same goes at larger scale when you get to certain types of buildings etc.
In comparison things like automobiles, swiss army knives, and smart phones and a hammer are multi functional either by design or as a natural outcome of things. That’s ok. However simplicity takes us largely towards a high tech culture, which is the exact opposite of what the advocates of simplicity want. So how do they resolve this issue?
In fact industry already tries to make things multi functional because it gives them a selling advantage. The obvious example is the multi function printer. (Of course you can buy one function printer is you want, but customers have the choice.) I doubt that the application of the 2 functions principle is really going to change how our culture works because capitalism by its inherent nature already promotes multi functionalism. However the people who promote simplicity largely oppose capitalism.So this is a dilemma.
I could go on about some of the problems with the other simplicity principles….
nigeljsays
Killian @716, you still haven’t told me your school and university grades. Hmmm I wonder why.
No I don’t expect you to define alpine lakes by talking about fishing. What a non sequitur.
If you did a talk on simplicity for an uninformed audience and just listed 5 principles they would be lost. You need a short definition something like “simplification is about making do with less while ensuring we have only what we really need to prosper.” Here are five principles that underpin this principal objective…..”
Actually you and Trump are far more mirror intellects than me and Trump. Your personality is much like Trumps, the thing that differs is he is hard right politically (in the main), you are hard left.
I will continue to call you out when I think you post nonsense. I’m harder on others and myself. I always reinforce when people make good points and I’ve done it with you. Christ I bet you were a difficult child.
nigeljsays
Killlian @716 says “And, no, we do not ignore principles in order to allow stupid solutions as you suggested we should do. Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option. You don’t include it anyway, you pay fecking attention and realize the principle is there for a REASON, and defer to its source: Nature.”
I didn’t say to do stupid solutions. For example some parts of what we eliminate from our bodies doesn’t serve any real purpose other than waste, eg some components of urine and faeces. Even if faeces is basically used up as fertiliser like the Dutch do parts of it are effectively waste. Trying to separate out the useful bits doesn’t necessarily make much sense, just because we probably can.
Animals create waste . Some is absorbed back into nature, but when they die the bones get buried and look like waste to me. it just sits there in the ground for ages. So animals and humans naturally create waste. Technological waste is just an extension of the issue.
It seems to me that minimising waste is a reasonable principle, and making sure waste is inert, so its not going to cause a problem.
Now to the divisive subject of nuclear waste. And I acknowledge its a problem. Please also note that the natural environment has radioactive nuclear material in it, nuclear material that eventually breaks down into waste. Its hard for me to see humans creating nuclear waste as being fundamentally different. Maybe we could send it into space and dump it inside an asteroid, but its probably prohibitively expensive, being several thousands of tons each year.
nigeljsays
One of these simplicity principles Killian talks about is “zero waste”. While the goal is well intended, I’m not persuaded that this makes sense. No argument has been put as to why we must achieve zero waste. All we have is an argument that simplicity is a good thing (for reasons unknown) and has to include zero waste, which is a very rigid rule.
Most of us would agree waste is bad, however it obviously does not follow that because waste is a bad thing we should aim for zero waste. Many things can be bad for us at some level, but completely eliminating them can also be bad. The costs of achieving zero waste could be high. According to Killian it locks out nuclear power. It could lead to a level of recycling that becomes a bit pointless ,or attempts to use products in applications that don’t make a lot of sense.
Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different? Isn’t the issue more about the ‘impacts’ of the waste on the environment and whether they are positive, negative or neutral?
Minimising waste and rendering waste neutral so it doesn’t harm the environment seems a more plausible principle. You can then have a set of quantitative rules, or goals to work towards. We could probably get reasonably close to zero waste.
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Simplicity also says “use what you have” and “everything has at least two functions”. However things like a hand saw and chisel only really have one function of any real use. It would be more correct to say “many things” have at least two functions wouldn’t it?
We should obviously at least consider using what we have, but its not always going to make sense, unless you want to freeze your lifestyle at some level. Too bad I guess if you are already poor. However the principle doesn’t say ‘always’ use what you have, so presumably it has some flexibility?
A typical sofa is multi functional, because you can sit on it and sleep on it. But who would want to spend their life sleeping on a sofa? Or sitting on the edge of a bed? The point is yes many things have many functions, but do most of them badly, so we constantly look for improvements by inventing new things.
Of course buying new purpose made things uses scarce resources. The Japanese (I think) do well with sofas that are specifically designed to also be used as a bed. I’m a fan of multi functional devices like this. And you see this with the tiny house movement. However deliberate multi functionalism is a different thing from the observations on the list of 5 simplicity principles although not inconsistent with it.
nigeljsays
Utopian philosophising and very strict sets of principles don’t do much for me. The following suggestion is my idea for a concise, practical guide to low carbon footprints and conservation of resources, that doesn’t lock us into absurd positions, ie it allows for some flexibility and technological advancement.
I don’t claim the individual points are original, I have no idea whether they are or aren’t its just off the top of my head. The thing that interests me more is what a workable but concise list of principles looks like.
1) Only buy things that add substantial value and save substantial labour. The planet has limited resources, that have to be made to last for future generations.
2) Buying things becomes like a drug that buys very temporary happiness. Try to make do with what you have, and find more enduring sources of happiness, that often come for free.
3) Bigger is not always better. Small is beautiful and uses less scarce resources. Think of others and think of your wallet. This goes for the size of families as well as material goods.
4) Don’t be a slave to status and use excessive materialism to show your status. Find a sensible balance.
5) Don’t waste energy and resources. Recycle whenever possible. Minimise waste whenever possible, and neutralise waste so it doesn’t harm the environment and other people.
Killiansays
Re #719 anklebiter and idiot on regenerative systems who can’t stop talking about them despite have ZERO knowledge on the topic said One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources
Yes, ASSume. Dumbshit.
Adam Leasays
“Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different? Isn’t the issue more about the ‘impacts’ of the waste on the environment and whether they are positive, negative or neutral?”
Animals excrete waste, which contains nutrients to fertalise plant growth, which produces food to feed herbivores, which feed carnivores, which all produce waste, which fertalises plants, i.e. a circular system. The only inputs are sunlight and water (rain).
The point is that humans don’t live like this, they consume then trash at ever increasing rates, causing environmental damage, and the waste is useless for anything else. It is a linear system, which is not sustainable on a planet with finite resources, because humans are not doing anything to initiate replacement of the raw materials of the stuff (much of it non-essential) they are consuming. You can’t run a linear system on a finite planet forever.
The (or one) idea behind permaculture (AIUI) is to observe how these circular systems in nature operate, and design human systems to mimic the cyclical nature, so that any waste from one process is the raw material for another, and ultimately it forms a closed loop, with sunlight being the energy input.
nigeljsays
Adam Lea @725, yes animals do excrete waste that generally helps the environment and is absorbed, but some is harmful, eg urine from cattle causes high nitrate levels. The natural world can be a messy brutal place.
I did also acknowledge human waste is often harmful, and we should reduce waste, recycle etc, and that which we can’t we should neutralise.
My point was does it make sense to try to eliminate ALL waste? What do you think, yes or no?
patrick027says
re 717 zebra “2. More generally with respect to that last point, “Western values” are, again, spread at the actual grass roots level,”…
In addition to the rest of the world, I hope they can spread fast enough within the West itself. (Irony – perhaps immigrants to the U.S. can help spread Western values within the U.S.!)
patrick027says
From the perspective of cattle, they’re excrement and CH4 emissions would be waste; if they’re population were to explode, they’d have to learn to reduce, reuse, recycle for they’re own good. If termite populations increased to much, they might look upon they’re own mounds as a blight upon the once scenic landscape (urban sprawl) – if they were capable of such thought. Humans are a part of nature, and like the cyanobacteria before them, they’ve dumped toxic waste into the environment; they have to decide whether to trigger the evolution and eventual dominance of the bacteria that digest PCBs, etc, or find a way to maintain something like what we’ve come to enjoy.
patrick027says
…Which is to say, we should be able to emit waste into the environment of a type and amount (and spatial-temporal distribution) comparable to a species living in a balanced, healthy ecosystem (which therefore would not be ‘waste’ from an outsider’s perspective); any more must somehow be managed by ourselves.
patrick027says
pumped hydro storage – you can get an extra ~ 2000+? m head by making the lower reservoir brine, but could the osmotic technology ever be efficient enough?
(It occurred to me that desalination plants could regenerate some energy by dumping a brine down a tube to a sufficient depth such that the outflow could power a turbine (actually any depth would provide some power; more depth = more energy per unit brine); brine might be stored onshore until power is needed. A finite resource, yes, as eventually the bottom of the ocean would fill with brine in this scenario, but maybe if the flows are not too great… I saw on a TV show that there are natural brine river(s) and lake(s) in the Gulf of Mexico.)
Also, what about coating windturbine blades with some TiO2 to catalyze the oxidation of CH4 from the cattle upwind? (effect too small?)
patrick027says
There are people working on generating energy from ocean currents. I wondered about the environmental effects, and it occurred to me that maybe energy could be put back into currents when necessary (i.e. run turbines as ‘blowers’). Could currents be used like flywheels? Note – the total energy of a current in near geostrophic balance includes the potential energy of the change in sea level across the current (for surface currents, obviously), with some adjustment for changes in density; i.e. there is a head across the current. Taking energy out of the flow will cause the water to spill over, putting energy back into the flow at the expense of the potential energy; putting energy back by accelerating the current will push the current sideways and pile water up to one side. Effects on sealevel at coasts must be considered. Feasable? Worthwhile?
PS it also occurred to me that meltwater from Greenland and Antarctica could 1. supply osmotic power but also 2. be spun up into anticyclonic gyres and sent equatorward as batches of freshwater and energy; a 100 m/s current (*~1e-4 /s = 0.01 m/s2) would sustain on the order of a 1 m/km gradient (0.001*9.81 m/s2 ~= 0.01 m/s2) on the surface (away from equator)… but for mixing and viscosity, darnit!
patrick027says
“but for mixing and viscosity, darnit!” …and the centrifugal force, which requires anticyclonic trajectory flow be supergeostrophic (faster) to be balanced – and on the spatial scales I was thinking of, perhaps beyond infinite, which is to say, a ‘lens’ of freshwater floating on the ocean could not be maintained – rather, both anticyclonic and cyclonic vortices would be low pressure systems (approaching cyclostrophic balance e.g. small whirlpools).
patrick027says
re “Western values” – as dicussed in the comment to which I replied, it was implied they were a good thing, and so I in turn used the term as if it were all good values, which was not actually warranted. To refer to the values I was thinking of, or at least some portion of them, as Western values would be like referring to science as ‘Western science’, which I understand to be a combination of historical reference (ancient Greece, Copernicus, Newton, etc.) and discipline label (science can be practiced anywhere by anyone; there is no ‘Eastern science’ that is anything different, except in the sense that some scientific achievements occurred there specifically).
… so I suppose what I had in mind was something like Secular Humanism. As opposed to e.g. consumerism/materialism, or for that matter, White supremacism, which could also be considered a part of ‘Western values’, unfortunately.
patrick027says
“science can be practiced anywhere by anyone” – well I’d guess it’s a bit harder for newborns (they learn a lot, fast, to be sure, but I’m not sure if they intuitively know about ‘control groups’??) :) , and some investigations require equipment that isn’t always available… but you know what I was getting at…
patrick027says
long-term solutions – if you store solar thermal energy in a body of rock and use a hydrothermal system to put it in and take it out, you might at the same time be generating ore deposits and pretty crystals.
patrick027says
“White supremacism, which could also be considered a part of ‘Western values’, unfortunately.”-not that racism more generally is confined to the West, not at all.
So you 100% agree with me that diffuse external radiation is a moronic factoid
Only if it is ALPHA radiation.
and you will surely promise to never bring it up again.
I will bring up anything that is relevant, and I do not care if your impaired or otherwise constrained comprehension keeps you from grasping it.
Also, do not think I have not noticed your attempt to obfuscate and confuse by refusing to quote or even reference by comment number what you are referring to. This is a blatant breach of RC etiquette, and I will henceforth refuse to read (let alone reply to) anything you post with such a breach. I have directly cited (by #, by hyperlink and by direct quote) everything of yours to which I have replied. If you are so injured by feelings of inadequacy… note that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. If anything I said has wounded you, you implicitly agree you deserve it.
Hoo-kay, comments are disappearing beyond recall again. I bet if I try to re-post I’ll be told “you already said that” but it still won’t appear. Not the least bit funny or fair.
Killiansays
So many sources of food. Don’t let your lack of knowledge condemn you to believing there is no way to feed the world.
Re #725 Adam Lea said “Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different?
An other person speaking out their rear end on a topic they clearly have zero understanding of. When we speak of waste, it does not mean something excreted or unused in the simplest sense, it means something not useful at all. Animal excretions are food to other biota, habitat to other biota, part of new soils, fertilizer. They are in no way, shape or form waste in the sense of unusable and unused.
How can someone with access to the internet have never heard of manure as fertilizer or compost, etc?
Humans create pollution in ways no animal does. And if some form of biota over-produces, the cycle leads to a die off to get back to equilibrium. Humans just keep growing and our **useless** wastes are massively altering the ecosystem in ways that are breaking it and in ways we cannot even guess at.
Some will speak on any issue, whether knowledgeable or not. Try to remember: Having an opinion does not equal having a germane opinion.
Killiansays
I should have known… my previous was actually not Adam’s statement, but dipshit’s.
Sorry, Lea.
Anyone reading anything from anklebiter and actualy thinking it’s worthwhile is a greater fool than the anklebiter is.
as EP noted, letting capital goods sit around half the time while waiting for the wind is a bit expensive. But T Bills are 1.79%. Capital ain’t worth what it used to be.
You can print money, and send it chasing asset bubbles. You can’t print concrete or steel or oil or competent civil engineers (FIU bridge collapse, anyone?).
When things cease to work as you expect, there is something wrong with your expectations. We are in a descending spiral in no small part because of financialization of everything, with those 1.79% interest rates as a prime symptom. If the economy was actually performing we would be able to pay 5.25% on ordinary savings accounts. 1.79% says we are in deep, deep trouble. Raising interest to 5.25% would produce massive bankruptcies; as the saying goes, when the tide goes out you see who’s been swimming naked.
Killiansays
Hmmm… where have we heard this before?
By now it is clear that change will not come from the top. The business and political elites are bent on maintaining the status quo, however deadly it may be.
For this reason, it is the grassroots that has to mobilise to defy climate apartheid and push for urgent climate change that includes not only divesting from fossil fuels and cutting back on global emissions, but also reforming the world economy away from the growth frenzy that currently drives it.
Stupidity: The attempt to iron out all differences, and failing to use and value diversity.
Diversity of knowledge is good, because no one can know everything. This is why people have different specialities.
Diversity of values, languages and cultures is a gross liability, making it harder to do even simple things. When NASA put men on the moon, it was almost completely run by chain-smoking white men in shirts and ties with crew cuts, and so were all the contractors. It can’t do this today. But look at the control room at SpaceX.
Defended? Have you lost your ever-loving mind? I’m glad it’s now a punishable offense (though I can dig up modern examples from US soil… all of them perpetrated by immigrants). Geez, if you want some unique moral evil that the United States practices to this day, why don’t you get upset about abortion, or no-fault divorce that makes kids so miserable? 155 years is a LONG time.
Why, exactly, would anyone who risked everything to flee–in your rather strange framing–slavery, then “reinstitute” it in their new land?
Why would anyone flee “gang violence”, only to have their children create new street gangs? But they do. Some things, and I mean people and cultures, are unfit for importation.
Just bizarre; no causation was asserted or implied.
You implied the “places” have problems. Wrong. These problems are all human creations, not local miasmas which remain behind when people move. Do you think Sweden would look the same if you replaced all the Swedes with Eritreans? Well, it looks like we’re going to find out. Sucks for the Swedes, though.
You said, “Also, what about coating windturbine blades with some TiO2 to catalyze the oxidation of CH4 from the cattle upwind? (effect too small?)”
No need actually. The grasslands and all the organisms of the grasslands biomes are net sinks for methane.
The whole methane thing is a huge red herring developed by the merchants of doubt.
You might remember some of their arguments early on in trying to inspire a denialist backlash. They once upon a time also made a strawman claiming even breathing was a cause, since all life emits CO2, even plants respire.
Well guess what, all life emits methane too, even living plants! Certainly decaying plants and even burning plants!
But the net is all that matters, not the gross. And properly managed livestock on a grassland are part of a net sink, not a source, because of methanotrophs in the soil.
And no, nothing you could coat on a windmill could possibly even come close to the massive sink caused by methanotrophs in grasslands. That sink is in fact the only biotic net sink on the planet…. and far larger than any meager coating you could put on a windmill blade.
But there are management strategies a rancher can employ to make sure the methanotroph population remains healthy.
Front Microbiol. 2013; 4: 225.
Published online 2013 Aug 14. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2013.00225
PMCID: PMC3743065
PMID: 23966984
Environmental impacts on the diversity of methane-cycling microbes and their resultant function
Emma L. Aronson, Steven D. Allison, and Brent R. Helliker
nigeljsays
Patrick says “…Which is to say, we should be able to emit waste into the environment of a type and amount (and spatial-temporal distribution) comparable to a species living in a balanced, healthy ecosystem (which therefore would not be ‘waste’ from an outsider’s perspective); any more must somehow be managed by ourselves.”
This is talking sense. Not zero waste. Reduced waste as I said. Levels and types of of waste in harmony with the environment, so managed waste in equilibrium.
The practical thing to do to achieve this goal is to put a price on waste just like putting a price on carbon.
And “Irony – perhaps immigrants to the U.S. can help spread Western values within the U.S.!)”
My point was does it make sense to try to eliminate ALL waste? What do you think, yes or no?
I think it depends on the definition of “waste”. Waste is inherent in subtractive manufacture of pretty much anything, as it’s the very essence of the operation of ‘cutting to measure.’ And of course, if you use something, at some point it will either break or wear out.
But that’s not the real issue: the real issue is, can you–we–find ways to use the ‘waste’ material we generate as feedstock for some other process? For instance, it gives me some solace that our waste paper is nearly 100% composted. (Everything but the stupid glassine ‘windows’ in some envelopes, which must be discarded before shredding and composting.) It’s still a massive waste, but at least those flyers for goods and services I’d never be interested in in a geological age are going to be helping grow vegetables in a bit. (As opposed to generating methane in a landfill.)
Maybe not literally everything, absolutely strictly accounted–“leakage” happens–but I think we can, and should, get damn close. In fact, I think in the longer term we must.
EP @767
“No they do not BOTH “go way back”. Wind and solar both go back CENTURIES. Fission goes back to 1938, at the earliest; the first demonstration was 1942. Now compare successes against age. Give credit where credit is due.”
Ok wind and solar go further back than nuclear, however its a spurious argument because there was no need to develop wind and solar way back, because we had energy dense fossil fuels, no real battery technology and no real awareness of AGW. Nuclear was developed because it was thought it would be better than using coal. And it is, buy orders of magnitude. But so are renewables :)
———————————
EP @677
“If you grew up in an English-speaking Western culture and you can’t read Dickens, does that not suggest that you are not fit to carry on the culture and should not reproduce?”
No it doesn’t. I can read dickens, I just dont connect with his work in the same way I just dont connect with Chopins music, or Taylor Swifs music. Maybe I will give it another try. DC looks readable.
I did read tolstoy, dumas, hugo and dostoyevsky when virtually a child, so I think the intelligence genes are ok, I hope. If there is such a thing. But I just connected better with those authors.
“We cant really put them in tents and throw dog food at them. ….That really is the right way to treat hostile people who only want to take advantage of you. Australia puts them on an island and gives them the choice of staying there or going back home. That is the correct response to probably 99.9% of them”.
They aren’t really hostile people. They just want a better life. Its ok to put them on an island if they are treated humanely. The hard right are inhumane, the hard left go a bit nuts on the issue with naive compassion and would let anyone in. Its a mirror image thing.
All this right wing stuff will not help you sell your nuclear power ideas. Some people react very badly to it.
“Why should ANYONE “on the international stage” be admitted to the West rather than being assisted in place?
Doesn’t work for political refugees . Their life is at risk. I was thinking more about international aid projects. This ends up helping all of us, if you think about it. I like to have my cake and eat it too!
—————————————-
EP @679
“Sat scores….800 math, well over 600 verbal…”
We don’t have those, but I do incredibly well on aptitude tests like that as well! But can we cut all this school yard bragging crap guys?
————————————
EP @680
You seem to miss the point KM is making. Women today are not as dependent on a man’s check book for their survival. They have at least some financial independence. Its a freedom thing you guys on the right love dont you?
——————————————-
Zebra @692,
“I have pointed out several times that EP fits a classic Authoritarian personality diagnosis.”.
And zebra fits the classic dunning kruger diagnosis.
We are all misfits here as AB points out (or something like that)
Authoritarianism is one of these things that can become a huge problem if it becomes dominant. Political history shows that. Yet authoritarianism in various forms has been part of all our lives forever, its in our evolution. The parent / child relationship is by nature authoritarian and it would be a disaster if otherwise. The applicable maxim is “moderation in all things”.
———————————————-
And how the hell did we get from climate to slavery?
Al Bundy @681, someone else was telling me liquid fuels were quite economic, even as as storage device for wind and solar intermittency issues. I cant track the research paper down but will have another look. Its important considering the high costs of batteries.
Quite a good plan using the army to build a new electricity grid. It might even appeal to Trump if someone could get the fossil fuels lobby out of his ear. Its his kind of thing to bring in the army to solve everything. Mr bone spurs.
The point is not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If capital goods are sometimes idle so what? School buildings are largely empty at nights.
But the other more conventional plan is capital is so cheap now. There’s a global glut of capital and interest rates are low. It will never be cheaper to build new infrastructure. Grasp the opportunity people.
And, yet another brick in the rapidly growing wall of regenerative systems/simplicity. Everything reinforces this as the only pathway forward.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/palau-pacific-marine-protected-area-fishing-environment/
Re #700 anklebiter said I haven’t a fucking clue. I yap because I can!
Killian @686 lists 5 simplicity principles. This is still not really a definition of simplicity, so work on that.
Dolt. Truly brain dead-level comment.
Who said this?
I think Killian is more right about principles. People need to embrace living with sustainable principles, or regenerative principles, and this might help make it easier to formulate more quantitative goals.
The same dolt who said this: Killian @686 lists 5 simplicity principles. This is still not really a definition of simplicity, so work on that.
For the nonanklebiters, non-dolts out there, how many principles are there? Hint: I’ve said it here many times. Hint: Not five. Hmmm… What, then, do those five principles correlate with? Could it be the article… in the post? Could there, just possibly, be a reason five principles and an article were posted together?
I need to provide exmples? Beyond an entire fecking article about fish skins used to make clothing? Why would people make fish skin clothes? Could it be they were using what they had? Adapting to their place? Getting multiple functions out of the elements around them? Not wasting anything? And, is there any reason fish skin clothes shouldn’t be used? Isn’t it cool, the diversity of clothing used on this planet?
* Use what you’ve got.
* Adapt in place.
* Zero Waste.
* Stupidity: The attempt to iron out all differences, and failing to use and value diversity.
* Every element has *at least* two functions.
The man is a dolt.
For plants, warmer is worser:
https://m.phys.org/news/2020-01-insect-warmer-climate-double-trouble.html
Insects like it.
Tesla unintended acceleration problem resolved! That was quick.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/response-completely-false-nhtsa-unintended-acceleration-petition-tesla-blames-short
Michael Moore says earth done in 4 years due to climate change:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/21/michael-moore-were-done-in-four-years-if-we-dont-fix-climate-change/
Population being reduced by new virus:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/21/cdc-confirms-first-us-case-of-china-coronavirus/
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/01/21/death-toll-from-china-mystery-virus-doubles-overnight/
https://www.breitbart.com/news/6-dead-of-coronavirus-who-calls-emergency-meeting/
Greta throws another temper tantrum:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/21/greta-thunberg-tells-world-to-start-listening-to-her-warnings-of-climate-catastrophe/
Trump whips her ass:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/21/delingpole-donald-trump-vs-greta-and-the-prophets-of-doom/
Climate history is an inconvenient truth:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/earths_climate_history_what_the_doomsayers_dont_want_voters_to_know_.html
;)
I no longer think we are going to fix the climate problem with usual mitigation strategies and lifestyle changes. The problem is just too big, too many things have to change, there are too many psychological, ideological, cost and political impediments to change at scale.
We are probably going to end up resorting to some desperate geoengineering solution or sucking CO2 out of both the air with fans, because these are singular solutions. Its possible to see them actually happening and being coordinated and they dont need every country in the world to be involved to achieve a result.
It’s scary as hell and sad and not what I really want to see. No doubt Ill be labelelled a closet denier or whatever by the usual twits. But I don’t think I’m wrong about this. However I will still advocate for the conventional solutions.
Pure O/T
Nigel,
Yeah, my disclaimer was inferior. I said, “So, not really, but sod off.”
I should have also put ‘gloat’ in parentheses. (My diss to EP ended with the disclaimer that my actual opinion of EP was higher than the diss. So I accidentally treated you worse than EP. Oops. Sorry, man.)
No, EP did not give his SAT scores until after I noted his hypocrisy. My original ask was long ago. (My mind tends to flag incomplete threads.)
My SAT story includes lots of stupidity and testosterone. My plan was to prepare by not studying anything for months. Then I stayed up all night on the eve of the test playing war games so as to give the test a chance.
My plan failed dismally. The test kicked my butt: 800 math 700+ (760?) verbal.
O the shame. I can’t imagine the coma I would have to be in to score “well above 600”.
Ain’t guys dumb as dirt? Deriving pleasure from locking horns about irrelevancies? It’s such fun kicking each other in the balls.
Contrast with women, who have the sense to keep their gonads inside their bodies. (And to charge big bucks for kicking men in the balls – yeah, of course that’s a thing)
E-P 677: Why should ANYONE “on the international stage” be admitted to the West rather than being assisted in place?
BPL: The same reason you pull someone who’s drowning into a lifeboat.
E-P 682: Are you under the impression that a near-universal institution could “disfigure” all of human society, both at the time and going forward?
BPL: Why, yes. You appear to be arguing that if something is “normal” it’s ethically okay. The majority isn’t always right. Slavery is a moral evil even when it’s universal.
Did it escape your attention that (legal) slavery in the US was abolished in 1865?
E-P: Go back and count how many times I’ve noted it, and BTW the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, not 1865.
BPL: And the Emancipation Proclamation had no actual effect other than for propaganda purposes, and the 14th amendment was ratified in 1866, and actual slavery persisted into the 1940s under the guise of conviction for made-up crimes, rural debt punishments, and peonage. You don’t know much actual history, do you?
Killian @704 & 705,
You think I’m a dolt? Nope. I sailed through school and university (college) with excellent grades in almost every subject, and I was only ever in first gear. What are your academic credentials?
Listing 5 principles is not the same as defining simplification and simplicity. That’s self evident. A dictionary or encyclopedia wouldn’t just quote principles alone. At the very least it needs some commentary in your own words. It should be obvious what I meant. I’m not expecting perfection and these things are not always easy. I was actually genuinely interested.
I didn’t open your link because my computer gave me a website warning. I’ve tried it on my other computer now and its ok. You always assume the worst of people.
I responded to your list of 5 simplicity principles with a well mannered, positive constructive response. All I got in return was vitriol. You sound like stupid gone to college to me.
Al Bundy @709,
“Ain’t guys dumb as dirt? Deriving pleasure from locking horns about irrelevancies? It’s such fun kicking each other in the balls.”
Yep. We are like animals locking horns. And I do wish I had read your comment on all this before firing off a response to Killian. You will see why. Oh well, too late now :)
#711 etc.
E-P, I told you you wouldn’t get far no matter how useful or reaosnable your primary ‘climate’ views were. And here is the proof positive – here you are having a debate discussion about the vagaries of Slavery in the USA.
They got ya big time! Again. The local residents always do. Whether it’s killian’s sensible factual advice on permaculture simplicity in the “big picture future’, or it’s me about communicating the better tot he hoi polloi, or scott and his soils info, or you with the obvious positives of genIV nuclear being backed in by Gates and Hansen, it doesn’t matter EP, anyone with something sensible to say or question always going to get hammered to death here once they find the ‘loop hole’ the ‘weak point’ to get you with.
And you’ve been GOT buddy. Whatever useful thing you had to say is not DIRT here. I recommend you simply walk away. They own this place! They do not care about agw/cc more than being right themselves about everything. It’s not worth it. Walk away.
Thomas @714 don’t include me with your nameless accusations. EP largely started the conversation about slavery, immigration, women, not me. Nobody is out to ‘get’ EP. Some of us including myself object to his anti immigration, xenophobic, anti feminist sounding views and I make no apologies for this.
I dont oppose nuclear power and find EPs cooments quite good value in the main (immigration stuff excepted).
I would not categorise permaculture as factual advice. Speculation would be nearer the truth. Just so you know, nuclear power is totally inconsistent with simplicity / permaculture (ask Killian thats what hes said) so its amusing to see you seem to think they are both equally valid viewpoints. What a laugh.
This is a science website. These scientist guys like BPL are trained to rip things to bits. And its a good thing! We have to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Shame if you cant work that out.
You say “They do not care about agw/cc more than being right themselves about everything. It’s not worth it. Walk away.”
A total lie, and utter, complete hypocrisy on your part. Now go away and stop defaming people.
anklebiter said You think I’m a dolt? Nope.
It’s not an opinion, it’s been verified by your actions on a daily basis.
I sailed through school and university (college) with excellent grades in almost every subject
Grades have nothing to do with being stupid. Good grades take almost no effort for the intelligent/creatively-minded, and for even below average intellects and non-creative elbow grease suffices.
Again, you show you understand little.
I graduate from a small, comprehensive university ranked in the top 7 to top 11 in its caregory while I was a student there, and is still highly ranked.
This means nothing WRT stupidity.
Listing 5 principles is not the same as defining simplification and simplicity. That’s self evident.
Yes, it is. Yet you seem to think noting which principles are related the information in an article somehow needs to meet your non sequitur demand for a definition of simplicity.
Had I posted an article on Alpine lakes are you going to demand a treatise on ice fishing, too?
Dolt.
At the very least it needs some commentary in your own words.
First Principles are non-reductory. I.e., they are self-evident. Except to you.
It should be obvious what I meant.
It was: You have no gaddamned idea what the feck you are ever talking about.
I was actually genuinely interested.
Bullshit. You had all the info you needed and chose to anklebite.
I didn’t open your link because my computer gave me a website warning.
Like father, like son.
I’ve tried it on my other computer now and its ok. You always assume the worst of people.
I assumed nothing. You made a stupid, non sequitur claim and demand.
I responded to your list of 5 simplicity principles with a well mannered, positive constructive response.
Bullshit. You anklebit, as always, and arrogantly told me what I must communicate to please you because what you think I should say trumps what I have chosen to say. And all because you can’t suss out something as simple as “Every element must have *at least* two functions.” And, no, we do not ignore principles in order to allow stupid solutions as you suggested we should do. Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option. You don’t include it anyway, you pay fecking attention and realize the principle is there for a REASON, and defer to its source: Nature.
All I got in return was vitriol.
You got a mirror put in front of your face. You choose to not learn. That’s on you.
You sound like stupid gone to college to me.
You and Trump, mirror intellects.
#710 BPL,
I didn’t read any of what went before this but a couple of pragmatic points you missed (you may recall that I am not a fan of “moral” reasoning.)
1. Immigration (to “the West”) will contribute to reducing global population growth. The immigrant’s offspring usually adapt to the local fertility rates within about two generations. Doesn’t solve the problem of Mormons and such, but the bonus effect is that the connection with the “old country” will influence relatives and friends who stay behind. Much better to have one’s sister offer help on the merits of fewer children than some pretentious international do-gooders.
2. More generally with respect to that last point, “Western values” are, again, spread at the actual grass roots level, as well as financial assistance in the form of remittances rather than “aid”. And of course, for the usual geopolitical games, native-speakers and those with connections are always useful.
3. Hybrid vigor. Compare the vitality of the coasts and some cities in the US which have diverse populations to the doldrums and despair of the islands of “purity” in the rest of the country. Seems obvious that the effect is both cultural and biological.
So, the immigration program that tries to bring in people from “everywhere”, whose name I forget and is under attack now, does not require a moral argument to justify. Nor the acceptance of refugees. It’s just a practical necessity if you think the US should try to influence what happens globally.
@710 “BPL: The same reason you pull someone who’s drowning into a lifeboat.”
Uh, Barton…apparently you don’t know how libertarians think!
One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources, but does it actually make much sense? For example, if we look at things like a chisel or hand saw they are essential things we take for granted, yet only really have one function, unless you include spurious things. It is also hard to see how you could modify them to make them multi functional and in a useful way that isn’t a horrible compromise. The same goes at larger scale when you get to certain types of buildings etc.
In comparison things like automobiles, swiss army knives, and smart phones and a hammer are multi functional either by design or as a natural outcome of things. That’s ok. However simplicity takes us largely towards a high tech culture, which is the exact opposite of what the advocates of simplicity want. So how do they resolve this issue?
In fact industry already tries to make things multi functional because it gives them a selling advantage. The obvious example is the multi function printer. (Of course you can buy one function printer is you want, but customers have the choice.) I doubt that the application of the 2 functions principle is really going to change how our culture works because capitalism by its inherent nature already promotes multi functionalism. However the people who promote simplicity largely oppose capitalism.So this is a dilemma.
I could go on about some of the problems with the other simplicity principles….
Killian @716, you still haven’t told me your school and university grades. Hmmm I wonder why.
No I don’t expect you to define alpine lakes by talking about fishing. What a non sequitur.
If you did a talk on simplicity for an uninformed audience and just listed 5 principles they would be lost. You need a short definition something like “simplification is about making do with less while ensuring we have only what we really need to prosper.” Here are five principles that underpin this principal objective…..”
Actually you and Trump are far more mirror intellects than me and Trump. Your personality is much like Trumps, the thing that differs is he is hard right politically (in the main), you are hard left.
I will continue to call you out when I think you post nonsense. I’m harder on others and myself. I always reinforce when people make good points and I’ve done it with you. Christ I bet you were a difficult child.
Killlian @716 says “And, no, we do not ignore principles in order to allow stupid solutions as you suggested we should do. Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option. You don’t include it anyway, you pay fecking attention and realize the principle is there for a REASON, and defer to its source: Nature.”
I didn’t say to do stupid solutions. For example some parts of what we eliminate from our bodies doesn’t serve any real purpose other than waste, eg some components of urine and faeces. Even if faeces is basically used up as fertiliser like the Dutch do parts of it are effectively waste. Trying to separate out the useful bits doesn’t necessarily make much sense, just because we probably can.
Animals create waste . Some is absorbed back into nature, but when they die the bones get buried and look like waste to me. it just sits there in the ground for ages. So animals and humans naturally create waste. Technological waste is just an extension of the issue.
It seems to me that minimising waste is a reasonable principle, and making sure waste is inert, so its not going to cause a problem.
Now to the divisive subject of nuclear waste. And I acknowledge its a problem. Please also note that the natural environment has radioactive nuclear material in it, nuclear material that eventually breaks down into waste. Its hard for me to see humans creating nuclear waste as being fundamentally different. Maybe we could send it into space and dump it inside an asteroid, but its probably prohibitively expensive, being several thousands of tons each year.
One of these simplicity principles Killian talks about is “zero waste”. While the goal is well intended, I’m not persuaded that this makes sense. No argument has been put as to why we must achieve zero waste. All we have is an argument that simplicity is a good thing (for reasons unknown) and has to include zero waste, which is a very rigid rule.
Most of us would agree waste is bad, however it obviously does not follow that because waste is a bad thing we should aim for zero waste. Many things can be bad for us at some level, but completely eliminating them can also be bad. The costs of achieving zero waste could be high. According to Killian it locks out nuclear power. It could lead to a level of recycling that becomes a bit pointless ,or attempts to use products in applications that don’t make a lot of sense.
Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different? Isn’t the issue more about the ‘impacts’ of the waste on the environment and whether they are positive, negative or neutral?
Minimising waste and rendering waste neutral so it doesn’t harm the environment seems a more plausible principle. You can then have a set of quantitative rules, or goals to work towards. We could probably get reasonably close to zero waste.
————————————–
Simplicity also says “use what you have” and “everything has at least two functions”. However things like a hand saw and chisel only really have one function of any real use. It would be more correct to say “many things” have at least two functions wouldn’t it?
We should obviously at least consider using what we have, but its not always going to make sense, unless you want to freeze your lifestyle at some level. Too bad I guess if you are already poor. However the principle doesn’t say ‘always’ use what you have, so presumably it has some flexibility?
A typical sofa is multi functional, because you can sit on it and sleep on it. But who would want to spend their life sleeping on a sofa? Or sitting on the edge of a bed? The point is yes many things have many functions, but do most of them badly, so we constantly look for improvements by inventing new things.
Of course buying new purpose made things uses scarce resources. The Japanese (I think) do well with sofas that are specifically designed to also be used as a bed. I’m a fan of multi functional devices like this. And you see this with the tiny house movement. However deliberate multi functionalism is a different thing from the observations on the list of 5 simplicity principles although not inconsistent with it.
Utopian philosophising and very strict sets of principles don’t do much for me. The following suggestion is my idea for a concise, practical guide to low carbon footprints and conservation of resources, that doesn’t lock us into absurd positions, ie it allows for some flexibility and technological advancement.
I don’t claim the individual points are original, I have no idea whether they are or aren’t its just off the top of my head. The thing that interests me more is what a workable but concise list of principles looks like.
1) Only buy things that add substantial value and save substantial labour. The planet has limited resources, that have to be made to last for future generations.
2) Buying things becomes like a drug that buys very temporary happiness. Try to make do with what you have, and find more enduring sources of happiness, that often come for free.
3) Bigger is not always better. Small is beautiful and uses less scarce resources. Think of others and think of your wallet. This goes for the size of families as well as material goods.
4) Don’t be a slave to status and use excessive materialism to show your status. Find a sensible balance.
5) Don’t waste energy and resources. Recycle whenever possible. Minimise waste whenever possible, and neutralise waste so it doesn’t harm the environment and other people.
Re #719 anklebiter and idiot on regenerative systems who can’t stop talking about them despite have ZERO knowledge on the topic said One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources
Yes, ASSume. Dumbshit.
“Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different? Isn’t the issue more about the ‘impacts’ of the waste on the environment and whether they are positive, negative or neutral?”
Animals excrete waste, which contains nutrients to fertalise plant growth, which produces food to feed herbivores, which feed carnivores, which all produce waste, which fertalises plants, i.e. a circular system. The only inputs are sunlight and water (rain).
The point is that humans don’t live like this, they consume then trash at ever increasing rates, causing environmental damage, and the waste is useless for anything else. It is a linear system, which is not sustainable on a planet with finite resources, because humans are not doing anything to initiate replacement of the raw materials of the stuff (much of it non-essential) they are consuming. You can’t run a linear system on a finite planet forever.
The (or one) idea behind permaculture (AIUI) is to observe how these circular systems in nature operate, and design human systems to mimic the cyclical nature, so that any waste from one process is the raw material for another, and ultimately it forms a closed loop, with sunlight being the energy input.
Adam Lea @725, yes animals do excrete waste that generally helps the environment and is absorbed, but some is harmful, eg urine from cattle causes high nitrate levels. The natural world can be a messy brutal place.
I did also acknowledge human waste is often harmful, and we should reduce waste, recycle etc, and that which we can’t we should neutralise.
My point was does it make sense to try to eliminate ALL waste? What do you think, yes or no?
re 717 zebra “2. More generally with respect to that last point, “Western values” are, again, spread at the actual grass roots level,”…
In addition to the rest of the world, I hope they can spread fast enough within the West itself. (Irony – perhaps immigrants to the U.S. can help spread Western values within the U.S.!)
From the perspective of cattle, they’re excrement and CH4 emissions would be waste; if they’re population were to explode, they’d have to learn to reduce, reuse, recycle for they’re own good. If termite populations increased to much, they might look upon they’re own mounds as a blight upon the once scenic landscape (urban sprawl) – if they were capable of such thought. Humans are a part of nature, and like the cyanobacteria before them, they’ve dumped toxic waste into the environment; they have to decide whether to trigger the evolution and eventual dominance of the bacteria that digest PCBs, etc, or find a way to maintain something like what we’ve come to enjoy.
…Which is to say, we should be able to emit waste into the environment of a type and amount (and spatial-temporal distribution) comparable to a species living in a balanced, healthy ecosystem (which therefore would not be ‘waste’ from an outsider’s perspective); any more must somehow be managed by ourselves.
pumped hydro storage – you can get an extra ~ 2000+? m head by making the lower reservoir brine, but could the osmotic technology ever be efficient enough?
(It occurred to me that desalination plants could regenerate some energy by dumping a brine down a tube to a sufficient depth such that the outflow could power a turbine (actually any depth would provide some power; more depth = more energy per unit brine); brine might be stored onshore until power is needed. A finite resource, yes, as eventually the bottom of the ocean would fill with brine in this scenario, but maybe if the flows are not too great… I saw on a TV show that there are natural brine river(s) and lake(s) in the Gulf of Mexico.)
with a density difference of ~ 0.25 kg/L (depending on temperature…), releasing saturated brine into seawater at some depth z would have the equivalent power of a head of freshwater on land about 4z https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_water
Also, what about coating windturbine blades with some TiO2 to catalyze the oxidation of CH4 from the cattle upwind? (effect too small?)
There are people working on generating energy from ocean currents. I wondered about the environmental effects, and it occurred to me that maybe energy could be put back into currents when necessary (i.e. run turbines as ‘blowers’). Could currents be used like flywheels? Note – the total energy of a current in near geostrophic balance includes the potential energy of the change in sea level across the current (for surface currents, obviously), with some adjustment for changes in density; i.e. there is a head across the current. Taking energy out of the flow will cause the water to spill over, putting energy back into the flow at the expense of the potential energy; putting energy back by accelerating the current will push the current sideways and pile water up to one side. Effects on sealevel at coasts must be considered. Feasable? Worthwhile?
PS it also occurred to me that meltwater from Greenland and Antarctica could 1. supply osmotic power but also 2. be spun up into anticyclonic gyres and sent equatorward as batches of freshwater and energy; a 100 m/s current (*~1e-4 /s = 0.01 m/s2) would sustain on the order of a 1 m/km gradient (0.001*9.81 m/s2 ~= 0.01 m/s2) on the surface (away from equator)… but for mixing and viscosity, darnit!
“but for mixing and viscosity, darnit!” …and the centrifugal force, which requires anticyclonic trajectory flow be supergeostrophic (faster) to be balanced – and on the spatial scales I was thinking of, perhaps beyond infinite, which is to say, a ‘lens’ of freshwater floating on the ocean could not be maintained – rather, both anticyclonic and cyclonic vortices would be low pressure systems (approaching cyclostrophic balance e.g. small whirlpools).
re “Western values” – as dicussed in the comment to which I replied, it was implied they were a good thing, and so I in turn used the term as if it were all good values, which was not actually warranted. To refer to the values I was thinking of, or at least some portion of them, as Western values would be like referring to science as ‘Western science’, which I understand to be a combination of historical reference (ancient Greece, Copernicus, Newton, etc.) and discipline label (science can be practiced anywhere by anyone; there is no ‘Eastern science’ that is anything different, except in the sense that some scientific achievements occurred there specifically).
… so I suppose what I had in mind was something like Secular Humanism. As opposed to e.g. consumerism/materialism, or for that matter, White supremacism, which could also be considered a part of ‘Western values’, unfortunately.
“science can be practiced anywhere by anyone” – well I’d guess it’s a bit harder for newborns (they learn a lot, fast, to be sure, but I’m not sure if they intuitively know about ‘control groups’??) :) , and some investigations require equipment that isn’t always available… but you know what I was getting at…
long-term solutions – if you store solar thermal energy in a body of rock and use a hydrothermal system to put it in and take it out, you might at the same time be generating ore deposits and pretty crystals.
“White supremacism, which could also be considered a part of ‘Western values’, unfortunately.”-not that racism more generally is confined to the West, not at all.
Okay I’m done for the night.
Al Bundy, shoe salesman proves he should stick to that @666:
Only if it is ALPHA radiation.
I will bring up anything that is relevant, and I do not care if your impaired or otherwise constrained comprehension keeps you from grasping it.
Also, do not think I have not noticed your attempt to obfuscate and confuse by refusing to quote or even reference by comment number what you are referring to. This is a blatant breach of RC etiquette, and I will henceforth refuse to read (let alone reply to) anything you post with such a breach. I have directly cited (by #, by hyperlink and by direct quote) everything of yours to which I have replied. If you are so injured by feelings of inadequacy… note that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. If anything I said has wounded you, you implicitly agree you deserve it.
Hoo-kay, comments are disappearing beyond recall again. I bet if I try to re-post I’ll be told “you already said that” but it still won’t appear. Not the least bit funny or fair.
So many sources of food. Don’t let your lack of knowledge condemn you to believing there is no way to feed the world.
#Simplicity
https://returntonow.net/2018/09/29/weeds-more-nutritious-than-store-bought-produce/?fbclid=IwAR35BqHMi0UPA20XiQGB-Zb-MwJpJKbt1E4LYb76O0ipA5nccKh7n2vGiiQ
Re #725 Adam Lea said “Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different?
An other person speaking out their rear end on a topic they clearly have zero understanding of. When we speak of waste, it does not mean something excreted or unused in the simplest sense, it means something not useful at all. Animal excretions are food to other biota, habitat to other biota, part of new soils, fertilizer. They are in no way, shape or form waste in the sense of unusable and unused.
How can someone with access to the internet have never heard of manure as fertilizer or compost, etc?
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/17797/20151027/loss-animals-poop-disrupts-nutrient-cycles-new-study-shows.htm
https://marinesanctuary.org/blog/whale-poop-and-climate-change/
Humans create pollution in ways no animal does. And if some form of biota over-produces, the cycle leads to a die off to get back to equilibrium. Humans just keep growing and our **useless** wastes are massively altering the ecosystem in ways that are breaking it and in ways we cannot even guess at.
Some will speak on any issue, whether knowledgeable or not. Try to remember: Having an opinion does not equal having a germane opinion.
I should have known… my previous was actually not Adam’s statement, but dipshit’s.
Sorry, Lea.
Anyone reading anything from anklebiter and actualy thinking it’s worthwhile is a greater fool than the anklebiter is.
Al Bundy wrote @681:
You can print money, and send it chasing asset bubbles. You can’t print concrete or steel or oil or competent civil engineers (FIU bridge collapse, anyone?).
When things cease to work as you expect, there is something wrong with your expectations. We are in a descending spiral in no small part because of financialization of everything, with those 1.79% interest rates as a prime symptom. If the economy was actually performing we would be able to pay 5.25% on ordinary savings accounts. 1.79% says we are in deep, deep trouble. Raising interest to 5.25% would produce massive bankruptcies; as the saying goes, when the tide goes out you see who’s been swimming naked.
Hmmm… where have we heard this before?
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/australia-fires-portend-future-climate-apartheid-200126155118129.html
Killian wrote @686:
Diversity of knowledge is good, because no one can know everything. This is why people have different specialities.
Diversity of values, languages and cultures is a gross liability, making it harder to do even simple things. When NASA put men on the moon, it was almost completely run by chain-smoking white men in shirts and ties with crew cuts, and so were all the contractors. It can’t do this today. But look at the control room at SpaceX.
Kevin McKinney slandered @694:
Defended? Have you lost your ever-loving mind? I’m glad it’s now a punishable offense (though I can dig up modern examples from US soil… all of them perpetrated by immigrants). Geez, if you want some unique moral evil that the United States practices to this day, why don’t you get upset about abortion, or no-fault divorce that makes kids so miserable? 155 years is a LONG time.
Why would anyone flee “gang violence”, only to have their children create new street gangs? But they do. Some things, and I mean people and cultures, are unfit for importation.
You implied the “places” have problems. Wrong. These problems are all human creations, not local miasmas which remain behind when people move. Do you think Sweden would look the same if you replaced all the Swedes with Eritreans? Well, it looks like we’re going to find out. Sucks for the Swedes, though.
@patrick 731,
You said, “Also, what about coating windturbine blades with some TiO2 to catalyze the oxidation of CH4 from the cattle upwind? (effect too small?)”
No need actually. The grasslands and all the organisms of the grasslands biomes are net sinks for methane.
The whole methane thing is a huge red herring developed by the merchants of doubt.
You might remember some of their arguments early on in trying to inspire a denialist backlash. They once upon a time also made a strawman claiming even breathing was a cause, since all life emits CO2, even plants respire.
Well guess what, all life emits methane too, even living plants! Certainly decaying plants and even burning plants!
But the net is all that matters, not the gross. And properly managed livestock on a grassland are part of a net sink, not a source, because of methanotrophs in the soil.
And no, nothing you could coat on a windmill could possibly even come close to the massive sink caused by methanotrophs in grasslands. That sink is in fact the only biotic net sink on the planet…. and far larger than any meager coating you could put on a windmill blade.
But there are management strategies a rancher can employ to make sure the methanotroph population remains healthy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3743065/
Front Microbiol. 2013; 4: 225.
Published online 2013 Aug 14. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2013.00225
PMCID: PMC3743065
PMID: 23966984
Environmental impacts on the diversity of methane-cycling microbes and their resultant function
Emma L. Aronson, Steven D. Allison, and Brent R. Helliker
Patrick says “…Which is to say, we should be able to emit waste into the environment of a type and amount (and spatial-temporal distribution) comparable to a species living in a balanced, healthy ecosystem (which therefore would not be ‘waste’ from an outsider’s perspective); any more must somehow be managed by ourselves.”
This is talking sense. Not zero waste. Reduced waste as I said. Levels and types of of waste in harmony with the environment, so managed waste in equilibrium.
The practical thing to do to achieve this goal is to put a price on waste just like putting a price on carbon.
And “Irony – perhaps immigrants to the U.S. can help spread Western values within the U.S.!)”
Ha ha. Amusing and apposite.
nigel, #726–
I think it depends on the definition of “waste”. Waste is inherent in subtractive manufacture of pretty much anything, as it’s the very essence of the operation of ‘cutting to measure.’ And of course, if you use something, at some point it will either break or wear out.
But that’s not the real issue: the real issue is, can you–we–find ways to use the ‘waste’ material we generate as feedstock for some other process? For instance, it gives me some solace that our waste paper is nearly 100% composted. (Everything but the stupid glassine ‘windows’ in some envelopes, which must be discarded before shredding and composting.) It’s still a massive waste, but at least those flyers for goods and services I’d never be interested in in a geological age are going to be helping grow vegetables in a bit. (As opposed to generating methane in a landfill.)
Maybe not literally everything, absolutely strictly accounted–“leakage” happens–but I think we can, and should, get damn close. In fact, I think in the longer term we must.
Take what you will from this. #Simpicity
https://www.yahoo.com/news/country-life-young-female-farmer-090014966.html