engineer-poet, you double down at 411. This lay-lurker is saying your racist BS doesn’t rise to the level of need for refutation, is plain BS. No more slack, take it elsewhere. Or better yet, improve your thinking.
nigeljsays
New open access research of possible interest:”Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement”
“Adam Lea @419, you mention this definition of sustainability ” This means that what is consumed has to be replaced at the same rate, and the energy input comes from renewable resources…”. This is good and is basically the same as the one I quoted, namely that we only consume resources that are able to regenerate, for example forests.”
“Yes? Yet every time for the last 2.5 years I have said the same, he’s bleated and brayed about how out of touch with reality, how impossible, how caveman, how… just every kind of stupidity WRT sustainability you could imagine. And here we see his character because he and I *recently* had this same conversation with the same bleating and braying.”
No. I have never said that definition of sustainability is not reasonable if applied to the biosphere. I have said it 1) has some problems and will need to be phased in in some cases, and 2) that it doesn’t make sense when applied to the mineral resource scarcity problem. Read what I said @423.
“This is easy to achieve with things like timber and the fisheries for example, because it means we just define a particular area of forest or a fishery size that we agree is sustainable.”
“No, dumbass, that is not what we do. Sustainability is size? Just stupid.”
Obviously size is a factor because if a resource gets below a certain size it hits a tipping point and crashes. I thought you knew that.
I never said it was just size. I said @423 “we then ensure we dont take more from the resource than it can replace naturally.” So you quoted me out of context, as you do to me and others repeatedly. Gavin should throw you off this website.
“When I say easy, its possible to define this, and harder to actually achieve it! But its already being in some places.”
“It exists in zero places outisde of intact aboriginal societies.”
NZ has sustainable fisheries based on fishing quota and it works. I could give you 1000 examples from around the world.
“And I do agree to the extent if we don’t achieve biosphere sustainability,we could get ourselves into huge trouble”
“We “could” get into trouble? What kind of asshat bloviating is this? COULD? We are well past could and deep into are, but look at this crap coming out of his asshat!”
You dont understand context. I was responding to an issue Adam Lea raised. I never said we don’t already have problems.
“for example if basic food production was compromised, so we have to steer society as best we can to this form of sustainability.
“Food has been compromised for decades. Virtually no industrial ag is anything close to sustainable, the “food” is nutrient deficient, poisonous and its soils are dead.”
You are confusing productivity with sustainability, and your allegations of nutrient deficient and so called poisonous foods are uncited hand waving.
“and would not feed 7.6 billion people and rising, so we probably do have to phase ‘sustainable’ forms of farming in as population growth slows, and population ultimately falls in absolute size. The good news is this may be happenening, because we do see organic farming gradually taking off.”
“So, this asshat thinks we should do regenerative, but it’s shit, so we must drop population to be able to do regenerative? That’s not just completely incorrect, it’s insanely stupid and suicidal. Don’t do regenerative to become regenerative. WTF? So, what? We bring down GHgs by wishing it to be so?”
I never said that. I specifically said we should do things like organic farming, but it needs to be expanded gradually to avoid a productivity crisis and food shortages. What is so hard to understand about that?
“Then he says organic as if organic = sustainable, which it does not. In fact, organic is industrial ag lite and is what cannot produce the food, nutrients and calories needed. Regenerative ag outperforms all other forms of ag.”
I used the term organic because it is convenient and generally understood. Your claims are uncited, unproven hand waving. I have already posted research studies showing organic farming has lower productivity than traditional industrial agriculture, so even more intensely natural forms of farming will probably have even less productivity. Its simple logic. I’m not saying this is a disaster, but it means it would best be phased in and supplemented with things like genetic engineering to help the productivity issues. However it appears permaculture doesn’t permit things like genetic engineering so that’s unfortunate.
“So we have this complex situation where its just not feasible to achieve the plan you mentioned where we say “right lets all become sustainable in a few months or a couple of years, and get the pain over quickly”.
“To his credit he’s stealing everything I’ve told him and pretending they’re his own thoughts. They are not. You can look back through the archives and watch this punk steal idea after idea and slowly change what he says while pretending he has “always” said these things.”
No. I have not claimed any of your ideas or anyone elses are my own invention. Please cite an example where Ive said “my ideas is abc” where it was your idea (or some wording similar to this). You haven’t and can’t. You live in a suspicious, paranoid, ego driven, fantasy world.
“In fact, the entire planet can be regenerative in 5 years, and the only llimit there is time to build soils. Every human on the planet can simplify within that time frame, and most far faster than 5 years.”
Empty assertion. Even if its possible it has disastrous consequences because that form of agriculture is not productive enough to support 7.6 billion people, all other things being equal. The only published science I could find was on organic farming and it has lower productivity than traditional industrial agriculture. Hence the need to phase it in. That is just one example of many problems with some sort of rapid plan. Ive explained this many times but you ignore it and wish it away.
“The trouble is mineral resources don’t regenerate”
“Oh, REALLY? Cause he’s said all along there are no real resource limits. Huh…”
Never said that in my life. Obviously mineral resources are finite. Goes without saying. I have questioned your pessimistic exaggerations about what reserves we have left, and you appear to somehow assume this means people don’t understand that they are finite.
nigeljsays
Killian @ 439 (continued):
“When we use minerals we erode the base supply a little bit each time, even when we recycle them.”
“What a scumbag. He has fought this very concept every time we have discussed it. Do you get my point? He’s one of those idiots who argues the person, not the issues. When I told him every process has loss he said I was full of crap, that many resources are endlessly recyclable.”
No. I have just pointed out in the past that the amount of the resource base we loose when recycling is pretty small and that your claims that recyling significantly degrades materials are uncited. Metals can be recycled endlessly with no significant loss of quality, easily googled.
“So we are resigned to using up at least some of the mineral resource base completely, ( for all practical purposes)”
“Why? See what I mean? He basically says we just have to keep using stuff till it’s gone just after saying we have to use things sustainably.”
No I didn’t say we have to keep using them until they are gone, just that its hard to get away from doing this is we want a technology based society. Depends how you define the sustainable use of minerals. I gave a definition @427, which you conveniently left out, namely that we just use mineral resources in moderation, and recycle them , and waste as little as possible.
“or define quantitatively what an appropriate sustainable rate of use might be. How would you pick a number?”
“You do the math. All of this is really simple mathematics. How fast is a resource replenished? That’s your limit. But he can’t figure this out?”
You are quoting me out of context. I was specifically referring to metals and things like oil. I repeat, these materials are created very slowly, too slow to be of use to us and they are finite. So it you use that definition of sustainability based around regeneration, its useless to us. We either have to 1) accept we cant be perfectly sustainable in the use of metals, and can only be reasonably sustainable, or 2) we define sustainablity as something like moderate use and wasting as little as possible. Take your pick, and stop evading the issue.
“One option is to take just enough minerals to survive, but that destroys quality of life.”
“It does for idiots for whom quality of life is the shitty way he lives now.”
Unsubstantiated opinion and his own personal value judgement.
“and is unlikely to be warmly embraced by many.”
“Stupid. Bullet fired toward your head, but since you don’t WANNA duck, you don’t HAVE to because the bullet will just pause for you mid-flight.”
What bullet? If we run out of minerals, it will be a slow process if you look at the reserves, and so is unlikely to affect me. At worst will cause some shortages for future generations, and force then towards a simpler life, which is what Killian wants anyway so its hard to see what hes on about.
There is of course a justifiable case to use resources more sparingly and to waste less, to help minimise problems for future generations, and to ensure there are enough to avoid poverty emerging, but this is different from some crazy radical 5 year programme where we cut our consumption to the bone.
NO IT CAN’T. ONLY SOME OF IT. RENEWABLES ARE NOT RECYCLABLE. (hes referring to renewable enegy here)
What? The wind and sun are endless. Most components of renewables are recyclable or can be modified for alternative uses. I couldn’t care less about the part’s that cant be recycled. Bury them but in a safe way. Its much the same issue with nuclear power plants.
“Permaculture has some principles, but it is not easy to apply these to real world situations”
“LOL… yet that’s exactly what permaculture does. This monkey-headed dingbat has never studied permaculture, yet constantly criticizes it based on his own made up beliefs.That’s immoral and unethical, yet it’s been going on here since he first started posting – just a step half a step less damaging to this site than when the denialists show up.”
Crazy stuff. Anyone here can google the issue and see the obvious problems with permaculture and how hard it is to apply it to real life problems and choices. You dont need a degree in permaculture. Oh hang on there is none. Permaculture certificates typically invlove about 70 hours of ‘study’:
“And we have to consider why we might want to live ‘sustainably’ in the first place? I can see the point of doing this in respect of the biosphere, because if we destroy the biosphere, we really could get ourselves into big trouble in addition to wrecking a beautiful planet….When it comes to the mineral resource base, the worst case scenario of business as usual consumption is we run short and have to live a bit more simply. So I can see a case for using mineral resources wisely, but not a case for deliberately making draconian and severe lifestyles changes. Its just a different issue to the biosphere.”
D^%$*(( actually thinks those are two different things. That might be the best example of his utter inability to think.
They are different things to an extent. The resources of the biosphere regenerate easily. Mineral resources are finite and don’t regenerate usefully to humans. We cant escape thinking about them a bit differently. Of course the use of mineral resources has environmental impacts, but I wasn’t talking about that aspect, actually.
Killian constantly misses the point of what people say, his understanding of everything including sustainability is simplistic and naive, and leads to endless absurdities and problems. He is not dumb, he just doesn’t think things through.
And another milestone. Not normal times, of course, but still, nice to see coal well below 20% of US electric generation. Renewables have been out-generating coal since March 25.
“Pragmatic take on how to store carbon: “Natural” Climate Solutions Could Speed Up Mitigation, With Risks. Additional Options Are Needed.”
“That’s acceptable to you? Why? You have argued against it your entire existence. I have said everytthing in that paper for years while you shit on it.”
Wrong. I’ve always promoted use of forests and soil sinks to absorb CO2, just that its a slow process so is not a magic answer and replacement for renewable energy. It’s a helpful wedge measure.
“And, as usual, the scientists doesn’t “get” what they are talking about:”
“The stakes in climate change mitigation are high, and I end by emphasizing that (1) minimizing the impacts of future climate change will be difficult, but not impossible; (2) natural climate solutions are among the few tools that are currently available at a scale that could help to speed up mitigation compared to what can be achieved with fossil fuel emissions reductions alone. However, many natural mitigation processes are inherently at risk of stopping or reversing.”
“Any move to natural sequestration will fail without system change. The same is true of greatly reduced GHG emissions. Thus, the concerns about mitigation ending is unfounded. It’s binary: We change the system, massively reduce emissions and massivley store carbon naturally or we don’t. Halfway equals the same as FAIL.”
Hand waving. As the research shows “However, many natural mitigation processes are inherently at risk of stopping or reversing.” This is what I said before, quoting other research, namely that warming soils act against the ability of soils to store carbon. Your “system change” cant change this, because it cant change the laws of physics.
Go back to sleep.
Killiansays
The Peanut Gallery is coming back to life, it seems. OK, peanuts, let’s rumble.
Re #450 Barton Paul Levenson said Yet another take-down of Moore’s idiotic film
You have no idea what a regenerative system is and what it requires of us, so upon what basis do you judge? If a film makes a an escellent point in a flawed manner, the premise is invalid? That’s stupid, illogical and fallacious. There has not been a single “take-down” that showed it understood the film at all.
Knowing some math does not make you an expert in restoring the ecosystem. You are speaking from a place of ignorance and bias against things you don’t even understand. That’s Trumpian.
—————-
446
Barton Paul Levenson says:
6 May 2020 at 4:56 AM
Adam Lea said My understanding of sustainability is a system that can operate indefinitely, absent any external forcing (e.g. a global catastrophe). This means that what is consumed has to be replaced at the same rate, and the energy input comes from renewable resources.
K 426: How did you come across that definition? It’s what I’ve said for years, but have never seen anyone else say.
————-
BPL lies: BPL: Except you are absolutely opposed to renewable energy
Except I’m on record here going back a decade saying the opposite. Are you that stupid, that personally biased, or just unable to parse basic English?
so saying you embrace “the energy input comes from renewable resources” is a lie, isn’t it?
The sun and wind are not renewable? You’re an idiot, hearing what you want to hear. This is more incredibly dumb than the crap above. Nice job cutting the quote down to the bare minimum to allow the lie to seem legit, though. Excellent propaganda technique. I’ll let the local arm of Propaganda, Inc., know you’re looking for a position. Or Donald Trump. Do you have a preference?
Hausfather is great on climate, shit on regenerative systems. He, and you, set up a Straw Man: The movie is bad because renewables aren’t 100% horse manure. Hausfather says,
Another method for evaluating the claim that “you use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it” is to calculate the amount of energy used to manufacture and construct a solar array or wind farm and compare that to the amount of electricity generated over its lifetime. This is known as Energy Return on Investment (EROI). As explained in a previous Climate Feedback claim review, it generally takes solar panels less than two years to generate the amount of energy that was used in their construction[1,2], while wind turbines do the same in less than one year[3].
The issue raised by the film is not about how efficient wind and solar are, it is whether they are sustainable. Every supposed “take down” does this same stupid, suicidally ignorant dance. Not once in the film do they say the issue is how efficient these systems are. The stats are there only to illustrate that renewables do not come close to being sustainable. The *issue* is sustainability. It doesn’t matter at all that efficiency has improved or that reliance on fossil fuels has been reduced. Those are not germane to the issue of sustainability. Raising those points and claiming they invalidate the film only shows logic is not something you care about, nor honesty.
Worse is the ideology of consumption shown by ignoring the actual issue of energy: It’s not net energy, it’s resource consumption. To say renewables return more energy than needed to make them is important in no way, shape, or form. What they ACTUALLY DO is reduce the usuable portion of the sun’s energy. A plant does a good job of maximizing what it can get from the sun. Solar panels are shit at that.
But the real issue is you would have us believe energy captured from the sun is free because the energy we can use from the panels replaces that taken from FFs. No, it doesn’t. The FF’s do not come back into existence via captured sunlight. Those resources and the ecosystems damaged to get them get nothing back from those solar panels. They are forever gone.
Saying the net energy available to USE compensates for the ecosystem damaged or destroyed and resources consumed is about as stupid a thing a human can say given our current context.
Them: Look! Wind generators and PV’s are unsustainable!
You two idjits: No way, Jose! Look at how efficient they are now!
Them: But you’ve destroyed ecosystems and squandered non-renewable resources!
You two idjits: But my lights are on!
This is prima facie bullshit.
—————
Re #444 Barton Paul Levenson said K 418: the smoke nad [sic] mirrors of “renewables.”
BPL: Which are still growing by leaps and bounds
BPL may actually be stupid. I hadn’t realized that before. I thought he was just a biased, argumentative ass. But, not, this is First Order dumb: It’s popular, so it is good.
Christ on a pogo stick… that’s idiocy.
despite K’s alliance with E-P on how awful they are.
And, again, the lie. Go ahead, keep repeating The Big Lie. In the meantime, consider cutting and pasting where I EVER said renewables are awful or I am “absolutely opposed to renewable energy.”
(How ironic that a guy with a Jewish-sounding surname is a blatant propagandist. But, hey, maybe you’re Scottish and just don’t care.)
I’ll wait, damned liar.
zebrasays
Barton Paul Levenson #449,
You could also say that only white nations have fought wars to keep slavery. Just sayin’.
And I have to take issue with your implied characterization of engineers in other posts. I’ve worked with EE’s, and I’ve taught some who went on to get degrees. They were not anything like EP.
The problem, as I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out to you quite a while back, is extreme Authoritarian Personality. And that is a manifestation of early childhood experience, social environment, and in this case resentment over never being anything but a plug-and-chug drone.
The people I worked with had advanced degrees and teaching positions, and even if they had conservative (the old-fashioned kind) views, they were not idiots.
“If only Killian and EP would learn to express their thoughts succinctly, they’d be so much easier to scroll past.”
Nicely done!
But do you think they don’t know that? Insecure losers often try to speak over others, and never shut up, because that is the only way anyone will pay attention to them… the only way they ‘exist’. In this context I call it column-inch addiction.
To say renewables return more energy than needed to make them is important in no way, shape, or form.
Then POTH shouldn’t have lied about it.
What they ACTUALLY DO is reduce the usuable portion of the sun’s energy. A plant does a good job of maximizing what it can get from the sun. Solar panels are shit at that.
Seems to be a fallacy of the excluded middle in here, compounded with a misconception. Says here that:
For actual sunlight, where only 45% of the light is in the photosynthetically active wavelength range, the theoretical maximum efficiency of solar energy conversion is approximately 11%. In actuality, however, plants do not absorb all incoming sunlight (due to reflection, respiration requirements of photosynthesis and the need for optimal solar radiation levels) and do not convert all harvested energy into biomass, which results in a maximum overall photosynthetic efficiency of 3 to 6% of total solar radiation.
Given that current commercially-available solar panels run at something like 17-20% efficiency, perhaps Killian would like to reconsider whether solar PV is “shit” at energy conversion, relative to photosynthesis?
But the real issue is you would have us believe energy captured from the sun is free because the energy we can use from the panels replaces that taken from FFs. No, it doesn’t. The FF’s do not come back into existence via captured sunlight.
Gosh, that’s a revelation. However, I think that the real point here is that most of us think that the energy ‘captured from the sun’ is very low in carbon emissions–and theoretically could be zero, if transportation, manufacturing and electrical generation were thoroughly decarbonized.
Those resources and the ecosystems damaged to get them get nothing back from those solar panels. They are forever gone.
Tendentious and probably often untrue. The resources can be recycled, and while the process may not be infinitely repeatable, it is certainly sufficient to last us many human lifetimes, particularly if used with wisdom. (Admittedly, on recent form that may be a pretty big ‘if’.)
As for ecosystems, there’s not much that humans do that fail to create some measure of ecosystem disturbance, so it’s not a question–presuming that we find the option of species suicide unappealing–of avoiding all ecosystem harm. It’s a question of how much is necessary, how much is tolerable and how much is justified. (Again, we’d better make those choices with improved wisdom. But we don’t get not to choose.)
And finally, the great thing about ecosystems is that they can, and do, regenerate if given a chance. So, no, they need not be “forever gone.”
nigeljsays
Zebra @458 says “The problem, as I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out to you quite a while back, is extreme Authoritarian Personality (allegedly EP)”
EP has these annoying racial views, and believes the electricity grid should best be a monopoly. I don’t really see how you get from there to claiming he has an authoritarian personality. He seems like an independent thinker, even if we might disagree with some of the conclusions.
In any event you need to look beyond this so called authoritarian personality, to the content of what people say, just as I try to look past your own naieve ultra liberal personality where you think free markets can solve every problem, and your supercilious style. (heavy sarcasm fully intended)
nigeljsays
Barton Paul Levenson @459, yes exactly renewables are being recycled, but you see its not all 100% perfect, so according to the grand poohbah Killian, we have to panic like headless chickens, and not use them at all, or only a tiny little bit of them, (sarcasm).
Al Bundysays
NigelJ: The so called documentary gets its facts badly wrong, and I cant tolerate that even if it makes some valid point buried underneath. Which is doubtful anyway.
AB: I thought it was a grand history, though it didn’t say much about the present. As I said before, it needed a “Current Developments” section, but it really told the story about how universal the ability to doofus up anything is among those who purport to have special leadership skills, regardless of whether one’s brain is constrained from adequate oxygen via a neck-snake or a fun fog…
Al Bundysays
Killian: You have no idea what a regenerative system is and what it requires of us,
AB: It requires us to create (or find) a new sun every ten or twenty billion years. Until you got that, you got nothing. I laugh at your guaranteed-to-run-down pretend-regenerative system. Your system is only slightly less unsustainable than other folks’ plans, and their plans don’t entail suckiness beyond imagination. As if I’m giving up the web cuz “we’ll” run out of whateverium in four billion years and have to give up the web a full billion years before the lights go out on this solar system anyway.
Adam Leasays
Killian 426:
“How did you come across that definition? It’s what I’ve said for years, but have never seen anyone else say.”
I just worked it out from first principles, starting from what does sustainable mean, it means something can continue indefinitely. Then I applied this to humanity, and what it would take for human ways of living to be truly sustainable. Humans (like other life forms) consume energy and resources and produce waste, so for this to be sustainable in the strictest sense, humanity has to use energy from renewable sources and consume resources at a rate that they are replenished (by another process). The waste produced also has to be usable for something else. I visioned that a sustainable system will interact with other systems in a kind of complex cyclic structure, so that waste from one process can be a resource for another (e.g. animal waste can be used for soil improvement), and as one process consumes a resource, a different process is generating it at the same rate.
nigeljsays
What I’m getting at is this: The sustainable use of the biosphere is well covered by the definition posted bu AL” This means that what is consumed has to be replaced at the same rate, and the energy input comes from renewable resources…”.
This definition becomes senseless with mineral resources, because things like oil form so slowly and minerals like aluminium ore are basically a finite resource. I would define the sustainable use of the mineral resource base as minimising waste and greed. I doubt we can define the issue in a simpler way that is useful.
nigeljsays
Killian says renewables are not sustainable, presumably because we wont be able to build them forever, but he then says to BPL @457 that he’s not opposed to their use (to some unspecified extent, but from past comments its definitely very sparingly).
That means he supports the use of non sustainable resources, which sends an utterly confusing message to the public. This is why it could be better to define renewables as sustainable, provided we recycle them. Everyone knows they wont last for all eternity.
James Charlessays
‘A new documentary Planet of the Humans by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs – hardly right-wing climate change deniers – set out to understand how fossil fuel lobbyists and corrupt politicians had thwarted the increasingly urgent transition to a carbon neutral future. What they found, however – and what the documentary details – is an equally corrupt “green energy” lobby that has no real solutions to the predicament we are in. As Michael Donnelly at Counterpunch explains:
“The basic conclusion is that we have been following corporate foundation-financed, Democratic Party-tied misleadership and that is why we are where we are.”
The issue here is not with the seriousness of the crisis, but with the way just one solution is on offer; and it just happens to be the one that makes the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.’ https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2019/08/13/goldsmiths-kebab/?fbclid=IwAR2zUO79Dbw3Cm3E9lS0FQCrWIQMlQBP4SgN3Xknguu_p3ZCmNeHHUiIlu4
Killiansays
Given that current commercially-available solar panels run at something like 17-20% efficiency, perhaps Killian would like to reconsider whether solar PV is “shit” at energy conversion, relative to photosynthesis?
I guess all those non-replaceable resources have nothing to do with your calculation. The point with plants is the useable portions is… used. Additionally, there are no negatives. Plants are part of a wholistic and holistic cycling with no ultimate losses. Solar destroys ecosystems to exist.
Do better, Kevin.
Given that current commercially-available solar panels run at something like 17-20% efficiency
Sunpower has produced over 24% for some years now.
But the real issue is you would have us believe energy captured from the sun is free because the energy we can use from the panels replaces that taken from FFs. No, it doesn’t. The FF’s do not come back into existence via captured sunlight.
Gosh, that’s a revelation.
You’re being childish. Taht’s unlike you, but since we’re challenging your entire view on climate future, it’s understandable. Fact is, the entire problem with the climate/environmental movement is it is not reality-based. Regenerative is not understood. Growth is not understood. Resource limits are not understood. Etc.
I literally have not read a single “take down” of the movie that addressed what the movie’s theses were. Not one. There is a balanced look over at resilience.org for those who are willing to hear how badly they have dealt with this movie. Groupthink is going to kill us all.
most of us think that the energy ‘captured from the sun’ is very low in carbon emissions–and theoretically could be zero
Was that the movie’s point? No. What was it’s point?
Deos that address sustainability? No. Sustainability/regenerativeness is about managing carbon, but that only matters if we do not destroy the ecosystem. Scaling up renewables to have 9 billion living like, say, Europe will require multiple Earths. That is *common knowledge”, yet here you don’t deal with it at all.
Full context, Kevin, always, or you end up saying stupid shit.
Tendentious
LOL… right… because facts don’t exist. My context is always inclusive of the resources of this planet. For you to call awareness tendentious is just argumentative, biased. You are a technocopian and don’t like hearing you can’t have waht you wish you could. It’s hard, I get it, but lying doesn’t improve that.
and probably often untrue. The resources can be recycled, and while the process may not be infinitely repeatable, it is certainly sufficient to last us many human lifetimes, particularly if used with wisdom.
Every raw resource is destroyed by it’s use and cannot, ever, be reconstituted. Why pretend you don’t get this just to score a point because you’re butthurt?
Recycling? How many times do I have to repeat this? A TINY fraction of the world’s extracted resources are recycled. Essentially, nearly 100% of the infrastructure for a multi-century recyclable future must be built out to even consider it a possiblity! You are talkign decades just to get to where it’s *possible.* Do we have decades? Do you truly believe we can wait decades to even be able to do waht you propose, thus ensuring additional decades of spreading it all around the world? And completely changing the sociopolitical and economics systems to *allow* all humans to benefit?
You are making the same mistakes everyone else does: You talk about secondary, tertiary and even quarternary(?) issues and ignoring First Principle and First Order issues.
How many more years do you think that can go on?
Killiansays
Re #465 nigelj said Barton Paul Levenson @459, yes exactly renewables are being recycled, but you see its not all 100% perfect, so according to the grand poohbah Killian, we have to panic like headless chickens, and not use them at all, or only a tiny little bit of them, (sarcasm).
You have been since you got here, and apparently always will be, a fool and liar. How do you possibly look at bald-faced lies (you have made the same charge and been proven a liar multiple times) and attempt to magnify them?
How are you better than Hitler or Trump? We’re discussing the existance of potentially the vast majority of life on the planet and you think it’s a time for lies and gotcha’s? Because you’re insane?
Killiansays
Re #467 Al Bundy said Killian: You have no idea what a regenerative system is and what it requires of us,
AB: It requires us to create (or find) a new sun every ten or twenty billion years. Until you got that, you got nothing. I laugh at your guaranteed-to-run-down pretend-regenerative system. Your system is only slightly less unsustainable than other folks’ plans, and their plans don’t entail suckiness beyond imagination. As if I’m giving up the web cuz “we’ll” run out of whateverium in four billion years and have to give up the web a full billion years before the lights go out on this solar system anyway.
Perfect demostration of the intentional Red Herring. And flatly wrong. The end of Earth? That’s our proximate issue?
The Peanut Gallery is in full rage.
Killiansays
Re #468 Adam Lea said Killian 426:
“How did you come across that definition? It’s what I’ve said for years, but have never seen anyone else say.”
I just worked it out from first principles, starting from what does sustainable mean, it means something can continue indefinitely. Then I applied this to humanity, and what it would take for human ways of living to be truly sustainable. Humans (like other life forms) consume energy and resources and produce waste, so for this to be sustainable in the strictest sense, humanity has to use energy from renewable sources and consume resources at a rate that they are replenished (by another process). The waste produced also has to be usable for something else. I visioned that a sustainable system will interact with other systems in a kind of complex cyclic structure, so that waste from one process can be a resource for another (e.g. animal waste can be used for soil improvement), and as one process consumes a resource, a different process is generating it at the same rate.
Now, that’s what I did and what I have said here since around 2009, or sooner. It wasn’t a problem until around 2013. Then the Peanut Gallery went nuts and ever since such comments get a hot load of shit, because ignorance.
Funny, you don’t catch the same. Hmmm… For saying exactly the same things. Hmmm… And before you say it’s my “style”, go back and search ccpo’s comments and see that the conversations used to be civil.
The Peanut Gallery goes groupthink rabid. As you currently see.
Killian, IIRC, thinks that we can, with simplification, use less energy than is already currently available from renewable sources. Hence, there is no need to build any more and suffer the penalty in environmental damage (including carbon emissions, since while it is possible to build RE gear without emissions, we certainly are not yet doing so.)
It’s logical, given the premise. But I think that the premise is mistaken, personally. People would have to be both willing and able to make profound changes in their ways of life very quickly. Yet, in a somewhat parallel case, we see surprisingly large numbers of people here in the US at least, who reject even the most basic public health measures in the midst of a pandemic that has now killed over a quarter of a million people–about a third of them right here in the home of the freely infected. (And, for that matter, reject with while brandishing automatic rifles, carrying Nazi symbols and wearing t-shirts that say such charming things as “F*** your feelings!”)
And that’s just the difficulties with the “willing” piece of the equation. The “able” part is problematic too, IMO, but I’ll leave that aside for now as it’s been discussed previously.
As for ecosystems, there’s not much that humans do that fail to create some measure of ecosystem disturbance, so it’s not a question–presuming that we find the option of species suicide unappealing–of avoiding all ecosystem harm. It’s a question of how much is necessary, how much is tolerable and how much is justified. (Again, we’d better make those choices with improved wisdom. But we don’t get not to choose.)
Yes. This is the problem with defining “sustainability”: even if we live simply, simply by living we make demands on natural capital. Accordingly, the “best” thing anyone can do for their ecosystem is to die, childless, now. Many RC readers are familiar with that idea. Yet few if any of us will choose the third requirement, so we’re each responsible for our own ecological impacts until we die. Some will reject the second, leaving them to account for their descendants’ impacts as well. But no congratulations for voluntarily forgoing descendants: by arranging to terminate your ecological debt upon your death, you’ve merely gone and selected yourself out of the evolution game. In a word, you’re maladapted ;^).
Volunteer losers notwithstanding, the average “behaviorally modern” Homo sapiens is well adapted. Consequently, from long before we left Africa, our advent was an ecosystem disturbance. Assisted by cultural (including technological) adaptation, we launched mass extinctions around the globe. Then we invented agriculture, which Jared Diamond called the worst mistake in the history of the human race. He was right about this much, at least: agriculture radically simplifies the ecosystem of the land under cultivation, killing off or driving away most species in order to divert larger fractions of local energy and nutrient fluxes through human biomass. Once it allowed our populations to grow beyond local carrying capacity for a foraging economy, positive feedback drove agriculture to preempt ever more of the biosphere. That, combined with technological development, has enabled our global population to grow through 7.8 billion and counting. Much ecosystem disturbance has ensued.
There’s a further argument to be made, that throughout the rise of “civilization” and the expansion of the human population, all new material wealth (“stuff”, that is) has been created by liquidating natural capital, with consequent ecosystem disturbance up to and including climate change. If that’s true, then we should expect further ecosystem disturbance as long as our population grows, since all those additional people will (duh) need stuff: food, clothing and shelter, at minimum. And even a stable population isn’t sustainable as long as total wealth, again in terms of stuff, increases. Nor is a society that includes “have-nots”, who (duh) mostly want more stuff, sustainable unless the “haves” give some up. Much social as well as ecosystem disturbance will ensue.
Halting liquidation of natural capital entails broad collective intervention in the otherwise-free market for goods and services: a political problem, under any sovereignty system. The question, as Kevin observes, is how much intervention is justified by the sustainability requirement, versus how much is politically possible. How much biodiversity loss can be sustained, for example? I’m afraid “wisdom”, i.e. calm and rational analysis of facts without fooling ourselves, leaves the existence value of most species unresolved. Some elevation of the global extinction rate over “background” therefore appears unavoidable. What rate is sustainable, largely depends on the person doing the evaluating. Personally, I’m less sanguine than the average US voter about disappearing Pacific coast salmon runs. Wild bears still defecate in the woods, but wild salmon now deliver tiny fractions of their historically immense loads of marine-derived nutrients annually to vast areas of North America, as far east as the continental divide. Now, that’s what I call an ecosystem disturbance.
Alas, halting the decline of wild salmon, with its multifarious causes, appears politically impossible. Does it matter that we can now eat farmed salmon, then flush their nutrients into a sewer? IMHO the loss of genetically distinct runs of wild salmon is a high cost indeed to pay for luxury and convenience, but subjective costs by definition don’t necessarily show up in others’ private accounting. Voluntarily internalizing them may slow the rate of loss a little, but as long as someone resists abatement of the causes (hoo boy), wild salmon will dwindle. Some runs may be spared for a time, but many more have gone extinct before my eyes 8^(. That might fall within someone’s definition of sustainable, but it’s a personal bummer for me. It’s just sustainable enough that I’m not ready to kill myself yet.
Al Bundysays
Mal Adapted: Accordingly, the “best” thing anyone can do for their ecosystem is to die, childless, now.
AB: Dunno about that. I mean, if you’re gonna go all macabre, wouldn’t “serial mass murderer” do more? ;-)
nigeljsays
Kevin McKinney @476, agreed.
I would just add a couple of things. Killian thinks we can get by with a great deal less energy, as opposed to moderate reductions. But obviously we could, nobody gets points for stating the obvious. We would ‘survive’ if thats what we want.
The IPCC plan is based around renewables doing the heavy lifting and moderate energy reductions. That is achievable. Fantasy dreams of huge energy reductions are not.
The trouble with huge energy reductions goes beyond your comments: 1)Its really hard seeing people embracing such huge lifestyle changes as you say, so I don’t want to waste my time promoting it and 2) the impacts of wind towers on the environment can be solved in other ways and are being, and 3) it degrades my quality of life for insignificant gains for future generations and 4) while we can make our technology more energy efficient, huge efficiencies are just speculation and wishful thinking.
I promote things that are likely to have some buy in, and which have some value for a wide variety of reasons, like driving smaller cars and regulations that promote fuel efficiency, and smaller homes. Even persuading people of this isn’t always easy.
nigeljsays
Killian @473
“Re #465 nigelj said Barton Paul Levenson @459, yes exactly renewables are being recycled, but you see its not all 100% perfect, so according to the grand poohbah Killian, we have to panic like headless chickens, and not use them at all, or only a tiny little bit of them, (sarcasm).”
“You have been since you got here, and apparently always will be, a fool and liar. How do you possibly look at bald-faced lies (you have made the same charge and been proven a liar multiple times) and attempt to magnify them?”
Wrong. You are on record on this website saying 1) America doesn’t need to build ANY more renewable energy, because it already has what it needs for a simplified world and 2) the third world can get by with a solar panel or two on their roofs, and a car battery.
This certainly looks like a “tiny bit of renewable energy” to me. You obviously don’t know what you say from one day to the next.
You don’t belong here. You claim to be an environmental expert, but you are shown to be wrong on the basics constantly by numerous commentators, for example your ridiculous, uncited claims renewables cant be recycled, and photosynthesis is more efficient than solar panels, and many others I have previously outlined. Up your game.
nigeljsays
Mal Adapted @478.
“Halting liquidation of natural capital entails broad collective intervention in the otherwise-free market for goods and services: a political problem, under any sovereignty system.”
Yes and this is probably our only realistic hope. And I think there’s still hope. Plenty of countries have sensible interventions in the free market, and often it doesn’t need much to achieve a useful result. The expansion of wind and solar power is the result of quite small subsidies, for example. As environmental pressures become more and more obvious, interventions will probably expand.
There are not may appealing alternatives. Controlled markets like communism were a failure, and go against human nature. People clearly like to own property and trade in it. It just looks like it would be difficult to turn back the clock on this even if we wanted to. Sorry don’t mean to sound like I’m lecturing you, I’m just expressing what I see as the difficulties.
The most sustainable lifestyle might be hunter gatherer. It’s hard to get below that other than humans ceasing to exist, but its not even feasible in today’s world with 7.6 billion people, and means giving up all or most of our technology.
Instead we could live sustainably in the biosphere by not taking more than that which naturally grows. I believe this is possible, but obviously not easy personally and politically.
The trouble is the mineral resource base, because it’s essentially finite and things like new oil reserves aren’t created quickly enough to be useful to us , so the only sustainable use of minerals looks to be consuming the resource, but minimising waste.
Al Bundysays
Killian: The end of Earth? That’s our proximate issue?
AB: “Our”, Kemosabe? Tis your One True Axiom: Thou shalt not use a resource in a way that won’t allow its regeneration (via volcanic activity, for example) to keep pace with your system’s losses. If your soda can recycling participation hits 100% and the system only loses 0.1% per loop thru you’ve got to replace all that aluminum every thousand loops. If you can’t replace your aluminum that quickly and without degrading our future ability to harvest aluminum then your soda can operation is not sustainable. Your Gospel, right? IS there a time period? “for a billion years”? The period during which human-friendly flora and fauna can sustain themselves naturally on Earth, which is basically the sun’s main sequence?
But, of course, that’s mostly academic. “The next fifty years” (or less) are my reality. I’ll help as much as I can.
Nigel’s right. Slow the inevitable slide towards Ocean Harvest of Minerals. And OHoM might not be so bad. Perhaps oceanic farms in upwellings can mine the ocean via one or another species of plant with an affinity towards this or that element. I’ve read that one reason smoking is way bad for you is that the tobacco plant is quite good at absorbing heavy metals from its environment, including radioactive stuff after nuclear disasters. I’ve heard that “Chernobyl Leaf” is to die for…
(The other big reason is that nicotine is a vascular constrictor, which starves your cells of all they need, as contrasted with THC’s dilation. Dilation dumps a lot of energy to the environment via one’s extremities, which could be the underlying driver of that peculiar malady, “the munchies”.)
And what, pray tell, is the sustainability? Zero. The EROEI? 3? 1? If only all of you wanted to spend any time talking about solving the problem. Because time.
For once I’m going to respond to you in utter seriousness.
We HAVE to deal with this. An immediate turn to regenerative systems and rapid simplification preclude any actual fix. We need to remove about a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, and fast. This requires mineralization of the CO2, which requires OTOO 800 billion tons of minerals (olivine; basalt may require more) to be rapidly weathered to carbonates. Doing this in the few decades we have available requires energy you cannot get with your “regenerative” schemes. We need far more energy than “regenerative” systems can supply.
Then there’s the social aspect. Our societies are built on technologies like automobiles and trucks. People’s lives depend on them. We did not arrive here quickly and we will not retreat from here quickly, absent a collapse which prevents us from fixing the atmosphere. The immediate job is to get carbon-negative. Technologies like PHEVs are solid ways to get to that goal. We have decades or centuries of other resources. Even if they won’t last indefinitely, they’ll last long enough for us to solve the immediate climate problem and set our societies on the right course… IF we use them wisely.
I’ve read the entire post, but will limit my response to a central point.
Killian:
Scaling up renewables to have 9 billion living like, say, Europe will require multiple Earths. That is *common knowledge”, yet here you don’t deal with it at all.
What Gibbs doesn’t “deal with” is the reality that we can’t sufficiently control the population over decadal timescales except by Holocaust, which nearly everyone rejects for good and sufficient reasons. Population can be controlled–is being controlled, with some regional exceptions–but it will take longer than we have, if that is our only strategy for reducing carbon emissions.
Hence, we need to transform the way we live, and fast.
You think it can be done entirely via simplification and the adoption of sustainable, regenerative practices. With some reluctance, and much deliberation, I disagree. It would be great to have such a straightforward solution at hand. But my reluctant conclusion is that there is no realistic possibility of widespread adoption of such in anything like the time necessary.
So I’m forced back to the system that we have. How can it be modified with greatest speed to avoid as much harm to the climate system as we still can? Looking at the world, the most promising avenue appears to me to be the widespread deployment of wind and solar energy, combined with storage, other renewables, and existing nuclear power. Is it going to have a cost in environmental degradation? Sure. Is it going to be larger than in the past? I don’t think so. Practices have improved vastly, and can improve more.
Everything humans do has an ecological footprint, but not everything we do has to mean “destruction,” not if that term is taken to mean something like “complete devastation” (as opposed to “partial alteration”.) Wind farms co-exist very happily with agricultural ones, as my farm cousins in Ontario would tell you. Solar can, too, and of course there are millions of square miles of rooftop around the world, a significant proportion of which is suitable for PV. Disused coal plants and mines can become energy storage sites of various sorts–and in some cases, are already.
Yeah, we need the raw materials, and yeah, these have not always been extracted in the best ways. But mining can be done responsibly, and as use increases, recycling of these materials will too. It may not be sustainable on millennial timescales, but it can be sustained for at least a couple of centuries. That’s good enough for me.
So, is decarbonizing the power grid–and transportation, and manufacturing–going to require “multiple Earths?” No, pretty sure it won’t. Not even close, in fact. We have enough of everything–except maybe wisdom.
We had a slavery case in Colorado a while back. The perps were Saudi nationals and I recall the victim was not American either. The Saudis are infamous for mistreating their Indonesian maids, yet somehow they still have women willing to take those jobs.
E-P read The Bell Curve and thinks it’s a great work of science.
I have never seen a popular work with so many citations and footnotes. Pick it up yourself, check out a chapter or two… if you can stand having your preconceptions challenged. Or should I say, prejudices.
I think that the real point here is that most of us think that the energy ‘captured from the sun’ is very low in carbon emissions–and theoretically could be zero, if transportation, manufacturing and electrical generation were thoroughly decarbonized.
The missing link for solar is something to deal with intermittency. It’s the biggest problem and always has been.
However, there’s one thing that the greenies have missed about this storage technology: if it eliminates negative prices on the grid, it puts nuclear back in the game in a HUGE way. It allows emissions-free peaking.
Not one word on how many megawatt-HOURS is involved, though. Nor anything about whether they can be charged from the grid, to carry overnight surpluses over for peak loads when weather cuts the PV output. The article is boob bait for greenie-feelies.
nigeljsays
National Geographic March 2020 edition has an excellent article on reducing waste and the circular economy. And this is starting to happen even in the capitalist societies of scandinavia:
Of course its far from perfect, but its a step forwards. But I’m not a perfectionist in terms of sustainability, human destiny, and socioeconomic systems. That sort of perfectionism is naievely stupid. The fact that technology can’t be sustained forever, does not ipso faco make it a bad thing or something we should abandon. We just have to mitigate the downsides better.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @483,
“Thou shalt not use a resource in a way that won’t allow its regeneration (via volcanic activity, for example) to keep pace with your system’s losses….”
Yes, but I just don’t think Killian gets it. However he does seem to permit ‘some’ use of modern technology, but he’s never specific on just what, or how much, so its completely nebulous and unhelpful. He mentioned a communications backbone. So is this cell phones, conventional phones, radios, vhf, uhf, how many phones per 1000 people? For me until you crystallise this out its all a bit meaningless. These permaculturalists escape the issue by saying design is location specific, but thats BS really.There would be a global average.
I would just add if we use a dictionary definition of sustainable, there is no perfect environmental sustainability that lasts forever. All we can do is reduce proximate problems, and it then becomes a question of what specific problems and how to do that. I see no guarantee that adopting a completely new socioeconomic system would do a great job, and it would certainly risk causing other problems. Sustainability is important, but so are solving other problems. The world will probably be hit by an asteroid anyway sooner than we want, then it could all be over.
“The other big reason is that nicotine is a vascular constrictor, which starves your cells of all they need, as contrasted with THC’s dilation. Dilation dumps a lot of energy to the environment via one’s extremities, which could be the underlying driver of that peculiar malady, “the munchies”.)”
This is why tobacco smoking has a bad effect on erections, and maybe why THC is good for sex. From what I remember a million years ago. Sigh.
nigeljsays
Killian @472 posts “Scaling up renewables to have 9 billion living like, say, Europe will require multiple Earths. That is *common knowledge”, yet here you don’t deal with it at all.”
This is not the case, and is just uncited hand waving. Published research by Jacobson shows the earth has enough resources for renewables sufficient for a good standard of living everywhere, certainly close to Europes standards. Other research shows we have enough materials for a good nuclear build. Until you prove in specific line by line detail where that research is wrong, you got nothing.
Maybe we wont get there. It’s still better than standing still, or having fantasy dreams that suddenly everyone will abandon their cars, televisions, electric stoves etc and that people would be prepared to live with a solar panel and tiny little fridge and wood burner stove. All for what purpose? this only delays the inevitable at best.
But obviously we should aim for better energy efficiency, and use energy a bit more sparingly. A sensible goal would be to aim to cut our personal energy use by 20%, because that’s clearly achievable.
—————–
Engineer poet @484, problems of regenerative approach etc. You are not wrong.
nigeljsays
AB @483
“Slow the inevitable slide towards Ocean Harvest of Minerals. And OHoM might not be so bad. Perhaps oceanic farms in upwellings can mine the ocean via one or another species of plant with an affinity towards this or that element. I’ve read that one reason smoking is way bad for you is that the tobacco plant is quite good at absorbing heavy metals from its environment, including radioactive stuff after nuclear disasters. I’ve heard that “Chernobyl Leaf” is to die for…”
Yes, and there’s another way of looking at it as well using a type of inductive logic. We can say realistically that mining one km2 total of the global ocean bed around a typical country is going to be trivially damaging, and it would be used up quick so the ecosystem would recover quickly enough, and that strip mining half the ocean bed would be an environmental disaster and ultimately a human disaster as well. Somewhere between those extremes is an optimal total area that doesn’t excessively degrade the environment, and threaten species numbers, and it could be analysed and calculated.
Of course it will vary regionally, but that would be a starting point. In fact only certain limited areas of the sea bed will have concentrated ore deposits and that could well turn out to fall within an acceptable total area. Some will conflict with areas with endangered species, so might have to be put off limits. And once you decide to mine the ocean beds, its a question of considering the least destructive methods.
It’s all difficult technically and politically, but so are all the alternatives.
Killiansays
Re #476 Kevin McKinney said #470, nigel–
Killian, IIRC, thinks that we can, with simplification, use less energy than is already currently available from renewable sources. Hence, there is no need to build any more and suffer the penalty in environmental damage
Correct, but incomplete.
(including carbon emissions, since while it is possible to build RE gear without emissions, we certainly are not yet doing so.)
I don’t think this is true except in some theory. Turbine blades? Concrete? etc.? I mean, how massive would the embedded carbon be to build out the necessary infrastructure to do so, both in terms of a global, comprehensive recycyling system and the new manufacturing?
TheOilDrum archives should be mandatory reading…
It’s logical, given the premise.
Obviously.
But I think that the premise is mistaken
You are not stating the premise correctly/completely. To keep this short, I’ll keep it simple: 1. The correct messaging has not been in place: Existential Risk + regenerative mitigation + There is no choice.
Leave any of those out, you’re spitting in the wind.
People would have to be both willing
Until the messaging is correct, how likely is that? Barn door, then the horse, then the cart.
and able to make profound changes in their ways of life very quickly.
That is by far the easiest part of it all. The changes themselves are simple.
One of the galling aspects of posting here is the sheer number of lies that pile up about what I have said. I have always said simplicity is simple, but getting there won’t be easy. I have also always said we are unlikely to change course, and if we do, it’s unlikely we will succeed. However, failure is only certain if we never try or if we go the wrong way. I think it’s getting to the point where what I’ve said for over ten years is becoming obvious even to those who don’t want to see it: Time’s up. We have one narrow pathway. I am certain of that.
Convincing the Peanut Gallery and the rest of the world? That’s the trick.
And I have never said otherwise. So, no, you don’t disagree with the premise, you still are ignoring and/or forgetting key aspects of the premise.
The “able” part is problematic too, IMO, but I’ll leave that aside for now as it’s been discussed previously.
No. Take a permaculture course. Regenerative Community Incubators? Potentially 1,000,000 “ecovillages” is 20 years. 50 years would be dead easy. Ecosystem Restoration Camps is a similar idea. I was involved at the very beginning, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t get that we need spaces for 2 billion more people *and* restored land left unprotected would likely be exploited again, so… RCI’s not ERC’s. It’s a very simple shift that would accelerate the spread of such places, but, hey, being ahead of the curve, your voice is lost on the wind.
Same is true of Transition Towns and the Global Ecovillage Network. Each has a tiny flaw that when addressed would make them far more effective. The flaw? Add Regenerative Governance. Formalize the networks into actual co-operative networks. Add governance. The key flaw of TT’s is they seek to “change from within.” Will never happen for reasons I have written of here many, many times.
“You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
He had this exactly correct. When it comes to fundamental changes,
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. – Einstein
If TT’s adopted RG, they’d be creating the future we need. GEN is encouraging/assisting ecovillage creation, but the network is not a true co-operative network with resources shared and has no governance concept at all. Same exact problem as TT’s. Add RG and it’s golden. Take the three concepts and network all three under RG, and we are on the pathway to the future we must have. Add in the far more adaptive and appropriate Via Campesina, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. All the more so with the RCI process adopted.
But, as I said, ahead of the curve, nobody can hear what you say. I’m not the messenger, I’m the oracle – for lack of better, more clever, more subtle analogy.
I’ve been looking for messenger for over a decade. Maybe you should consider applying for the job instead of giving me shit. I have 25k pledged toward starting a physical site. 50k if it’s in Korea. The future is not yet written, but it soon will be and will be completely out of our hands. Even if that proves untrue, the existential risk analysis says do it anyway.
When even the ultra-cautious Gavin starts parroting the existential risk line, you know we’re in some deep shit.
Killiansays
Re #470 nigelj said That means he supports the use of non sustainable resources, which sends an utterly confusing message to the public.
Not all humans are as stupid as you are.
Killiansays
Re #471 James Charles said ‘A new documentary Planet of the Humans by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs – hardly right-wing climate change deniers – set out to understand how fossil fuel lobbyists and corrupt politicians had thwarted the increasingly urgent transition to a carbon neutral future…
…but with the way just one solution is on offer; and it just happens to be the one that makes the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.’
Yes. All the “take downs” are ignorant and/or self-serving piles of dung. This is the worst response to a germane, if flawed, statement I have ever seen from the supposedly knowledgeable and engaged.
Absolutely massive pile of dog crap.
Killiansays
Re #478 Mal Adapted said Halting liquidation of natural capital entails broad collective intervention in the otherwise-free market for goods and services: a political problem, under any sovereignty system.
Not under Regenerative Governance. The only sovereignty is Commons, and that starting with, rather than merely paying lip service to, what is regenerative.
The question, as Kevin observes, is how much intervention is justified by the sustainability requirement
No. This is, for the millionth time, irrelevant. Justified? How do you “justify” survival/not survival? THE question is, what is regenerative? That is the question. Until you are able *and* willing to answer that and accept the true answer, you cannot hope to solve any of this.
versus how much is politically possible.
You choose the political over the real? That is why you don’t accept the solutions. So long as any person thinks of climate/ecosystem destruction via economics and/or politics rather than looking at economics and politics via ecosystem services, they will not understand the problem nor the solutions.
How much biodiversity loss can be sustained, for example?
That’s a damned poor application of the precaustionary principles, not least because there is no way to answer that. So, how about we just put it (mostly) back the way it was?
engineer-poet, you double down at 411. This lay-lurker is saying your racist BS doesn’t rise to the level of need for refutation, is plain BS. No more slack, take it elsewhere. Or better yet, improve your thinking.
New open access research of possible interest:”Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15414-6
Killian @439
“Adam Lea @419, you mention this definition of sustainability ” This means that what is consumed has to be replaced at the same rate, and the energy input comes from renewable resources…”. This is good and is basically the same as the one I quoted, namely that we only consume resources that are able to regenerate, for example forests.”
“Yes? Yet every time for the last 2.5 years I have said the same, he’s bleated and brayed about how out of touch with reality, how impossible, how caveman, how… just every kind of stupidity WRT sustainability you could imagine. And here we see his character because he and I *recently* had this same conversation with the same bleating and braying.”
No. I have never said that definition of sustainability is not reasonable if applied to the biosphere. I have said it 1) has some problems and will need to be phased in in some cases, and 2) that it doesn’t make sense when applied to the mineral resource scarcity problem. Read what I said @423.
“This is easy to achieve with things like timber and the fisheries for example, because it means we just define a particular area of forest or a fishery size that we agree is sustainable.”
“No, dumbass, that is not what we do. Sustainability is size? Just stupid.”
Obviously size is a factor because if a resource gets below a certain size it hits a tipping point and crashes. I thought you knew that.
I never said it was just size. I said @423 “we then ensure we dont take more from the resource than it can replace naturally.” So you quoted me out of context, as you do to me and others repeatedly. Gavin should throw you off this website.
“When I say easy, its possible to define this, and harder to actually achieve it! But its already being in some places.”
“It exists in zero places outisde of intact aboriginal societies.”
NZ has sustainable fisheries based on fishing quota and it works. I could give you 1000 examples from around the world.
“And I do agree to the extent if we don’t achieve biosphere sustainability,we could get ourselves into huge trouble”
“We “could” get into trouble? What kind of asshat bloviating is this? COULD? We are well past could and deep into are, but look at this crap coming out of his asshat!”
You dont understand context. I was responding to an issue Adam Lea raised. I never said we don’t already have problems.
“for example if basic food production was compromised, so we have to steer society as best we can to this form of sustainability.
“Food has been compromised for decades. Virtually no industrial ag is anything close to sustainable, the “food” is nutrient deficient, poisonous and its soils are dead.”
You are confusing productivity with sustainability, and your allegations of nutrient deficient and so called poisonous foods are uncited hand waving.
“and would not feed 7.6 billion people and rising, so we probably do have to phase ‘sustainable’ forms of farming in as population growth slows, and population ultimately falls in absolute size. The good news is this may be happenening, because we do see organic farming gradually taking off.”
“So, this asshat thinks we should do regenerative, but it’s shit, so we must drop population to be able to do regenerative? That’s not just completely incorrect, it’s insanely stupid and suicidal. Don’t do regenerative to become regenerative. WTF? So, what? We bring down GHgs by wishing it to be so?”
I never said that. I specifically said we should do things like organic farming, but it needs to be expanded gradually to avoid a productivity crisis and food shortages. What is so hard to understand about that?
“Then he says organic as if organic = sustainable, which it does not. In fact, organic is industrial ag lite and is what cannot produce the food, nutrients and calories needed. Regenerative ag outperforms all other forms of ag.”
I used the term organic because it is convenient and generally understood. Your claims are uncited, unproven hand waving. I have already posted research studies showing organic farming has lower productivity than traditional industrial agriculture, so even more intensely natural forms of farming will probably have even less productivity. Its simple logic. I’m not saying this is a disaster, but it means it would best be phased in and supplemented with things like genetic engineering to help the productivity issues. However it appears permaculture doesn’t permit things like genetic engineering so that’s unfortunate.
“So we have this complex situation where its just not feasible to achieve the plan you mentioned where we say “right lets all become sustainable in a few months or a couple of years, and get the pain over quickly”.
“To his credit he’s stealing everything I’ve told him and pretending they’re his own thoughts. They are not. You can look back through the archives and watch this punk steal idea after idea and slowly change what he says while pretending he has “always” said these things.”
No. I have not claimed any of your ideas or anyone elses are my own invention. Please cite an example where Ive said “my ideas is abc” where it was your idea (or some wording similar to this). You haven’t and can’t. You live in a suspicious, paranoid, ego driven, fantasy world.
“In fact, the entire planet can be regenerative in 5 years, and the only llimit there is time to build soils. Every human on the planet can simplify within that time frame, and most far faster than 5 years.”
Empty assertion. Even if its possible it has disastrous consequences because that form of agriculture is not productive enough to support 7.6 billion people, all other things being equal. The only published science I could find was on organic farming and it has lower productivity than traditional industrial agriculture. Hence the need to phase it in. That is just one example of many problems with some sort of rapid plan. Ive explained this many times but you ignore it and wish it away.
“The trouble is mineral resources don’t regenerate”
“Oh, REALLY? Cause he’s said all along there are no real resource limits. Huh…”
Never said that in my life. Obviously mineral resources are finite. Goes without saying. I have questioned your pessimistic exaggerations about what reserves we have left, and you appear to somehow assume this means people don’t understand that they are finite.
Killian @ 439 (continued):
“When we use minerals we erode the base supply a little bit each time, even when we recycle them.”
“What a scumbag. He has fought this very concept every time we have discussed it. Do you get my point? He’s one of those idiots who argues the person, not the issues. When I told him every process has loss he said I was full of crap, that many resources are endlessly recyclable.”
No. I have just pointed out in the past that the amount of the resource base we loose when recycling is pretty small and that your claims that recyling significantly degrades materials are uncited. Metals can be recycled endlessly with no significant loss of quality, easily googled.
“So we are resigned to using up at least some of the mineral resource base completely, ( for all practical purposes)”
“Why? See what I mean? He basically says we just have to keep using stuff till it’s gone just after saying we have to use things sustainably.”
No I didn’t say we have to keep using them until they are gone, just that its hard to get away from doing this is we want a technology based society. Depends how you define the sustainable use of minerals. I gave a definition @427, which you conveniently left out, namely that we just use mineral resources in moderation, and recycle them , and waste as little as possible.
“or define quantitatively what an appropriate sustainable rate of use might be. How would you pick a number?”
“You do the math. All of this is really simple mathematics. How fast is a resource replenished? That’s your limit. But he can’t figure this out?”
You are quoting me out of context. I was specifically referring to metals and things like oil. I repeat, these materials are created very slowly, too slow to be of use to us and they are finite. So it you use that definition of sustainability based around regeneration, its useless to us. We either have to 1) accept we cant be perfectly sustainable in the use of metals, and can only be reasonably sustainable, or 2) we define sustainablity as something like moderate use and wasting as little as possible. Take your pick, and stop evading the issue.
“One option is to take just enough minerals to survive, but that destroys quality of life.”
“It does for idiots for whom quality of life is the shitty way he lives now.”
Unsubstantiated opinion and his own personal value judgement.
“and is unlikely to be warmly embraced by many.”
“Stupid. Bullet fired toward your head, but since you don’t WANNA duck, you don’t HAVE to because the bullet will just pause for you mid-flight.”
What bullet? If we run out of minerals, it will be a slow process if you look at the reserves, and so is unlikely to affect me. At worst will cause some shortages for future generations, and force then towards a simpler life, which is what Killian wants anyway so its hard to see what hes on about.
There is of course a justifiable case to use resources more sparingly and to waste less, to help minimise problems for future generations, and to ensure there are enough to avoid poverty emerging, but this is different from some crazy radical 5 year programme where we cut our consumption to the bone.
NO IT CAN’T. ONLY SOME OF IT. RENEWABLES ARE NOT RECYCLABLE. (hes referring to renewable enegy here)
What? The wind and sun are endless. Most components of renewables are recyclable or can be modified for alternative uses. I couldn’t care less about the part’s that cant be recycled. Bury them but in a safe way. Its much the same issue with nuclear power plants.
“Permaculture has some principles, but it is not easy to apply these to real world situations”
“LOL… yet that’s exactly what permaculture does. This monkey-headed dingbat has never studied permaculture, yet constantly criticizes it based on his own made up beliefs.That’s immoral and unethical, yet it’s been going on here since he first started posting – just a step half a step less damaging to this site than when the denialists show up.”
Crazy stuff. Anyone here can google the issue and see the obvious problems with permaculture and how hard it is to apply it to real life problems and choices. You dont need a degree in permaculture. Oh hang on there is none. Permaculture certificates typically invlove about 70 hours of ‘study’:
https://permeco.org/permaculture-design-certificate-course/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI74a6zMSg6QIVyyMrCh0teQHDEAAYASAAEgK6jPD_BwE
“And we have to consider why we might want to live ‘sustainably’ in the first place? I can see the point of doing this in respect of the biosphere, because if we destroy the biosphere, we really could get ourselves into big trouble in addition to wrecking a beautiful planet….When it comes to the mineral resource base, the worst case scenario of business as usual consumption is we run short and have to live a bit more simply. So I can see a case for using mineral resources wisely, but not a case for deliberately making draconian and severe lifestyles changes. Its just a different issue to the biosphere.”
D^%$*(( actually thinks those are two different things. That might be the best example of his utter inability to think.
They are different things to an extent. The resources of the biosphere regenerate easily. Mineral resources are finite and don’t regenerate usefully to humans. We cant escape thinking about them a bit differently. Of course the use of mineral resources has environmental impacts, but I wasn’t talking about that aspect, actually.
Killian constantly misses the point of what people say, his understanding of everything including sustainability is simplistic and naive, and leads to endless absurdities and problems. He is not dumb, he just doesn’t think things through.
And another milestone. Not normal times, of course, but still, nice to see coal well below 20% of US electric generation. Renewables have been out-generating coal since March 25.
https://electrek.co/2020/05/05/renewables-surpass-coal-in-us-power-generation-every-day-in-april-making-evs-greener/
Killian @440
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EF001310?af=R
“Pragmatic take on how to store carbon: “Natural” Climate Solutions Could Speed Up Mitigation, With Risks. Additional Options Are Needed.”
“That’s acceptable to you? Why? You have argued against it your entire existence. I have said everytthing in that paper for years while you shit on it.”
Wrong. I’ve always promoted use of forests and soil sinks to absorb CO2, just that its a slow process so is not a magic answer and replacement for renewable energy. It’s a helpful wedge measure.
“And, as usual, the scientists doesn’t “get” what they are talking about:”
“The stakes in climate change mitigation are high, and I end by emphasizing that (1) minimizing the impacts of future climate change will be difficult, but not impossible; (2) natural climate solutions are among the few tools that are currently available at a scale that could help to speed up mitigation compared to what can be achieved with fossil fuel emissions reductions alone. However, many natural mitigation processes are inherently at risk of stopping or reversing.”
“Any move to natural sequestration will fail without system change. The same is true of greatly reduced GHG emissions. Thus, the concerns about mitigation ending is unfounded. It’s binary: We change the system, massively reduce emissions and massivley store carbon naturally or we don’t. Halfway equals the same as FAIL.”
Hand waving. As the research shows “However, many natural mitigation processes are inherently at risk of stopping or reversing.” This is what I said before, quoting other research, namely that warming soils act against the ability of soils to store carbon. Your “system change” cant change this, because it cant change the laws of physics.
Go back to sleep.
The Peanut Gallery is coming back to life, it seems. OK, peanuts, let’s rumble.
Re #450 Barton Paul Levenson said Yet another take-down of Moore’s idiotic film
You have no idea what a regenerative system is and what it requires of us, so upon what basis do you judge? If a film makes a an escellent point in a flawed manner, the premise is invalid? That’s stupid, illogical and fallacious. There has not been a single “take-down” that showed it understood the film at all.
Knowing some math does not make you an expert in restoring the ecosystem. You are speaking from a place of ignorance and bias against things you don’t even understand. That’s Trumpian.
—————-
446
Barton Paul Levenson says:
6 May 2020 at 4:56 AM
Adam Lea said My understanding of sustainability is a system that can operate indefinitely, absent any external forcing (e.g. a global catastrophe). This means that what is consumed has to be replaced at the same rate, and the energy input comes from renewable resources.
K 426: How did you come across that definition? It’s what I’ve said for years, but have never seen anyone else say.
————-
BPL lies: BPL: Except you are absolutely opposed to renewable energy
Except I’m on record here going back a decade saying the opposite. Are you that stupid, that personally biased, or just unable to parse basic English?
so saying you embrace “the energy input comes from renewable resources” is a lie, isn’t it?
The sun and wind are not renewable? You’re an idiot, hearing what you want to hear. This is more incredibly dumb than the crap above. Nice job cutting the quote down to the bare minimum to allow the lie to seem legit, though. Excellent propaganda technique. I’ll let the local arm of Propaganda, Inc., know you’re looking for a position. Or Donald Trump. Do you have a preference?
Hausfather is great on climate, shit on regenerative systems. He, and you, set up a Straw Man: The movie is bad because renewables aren’t 100% horse manure. Hausfather says,
The issue raised by the film is not about how efficient wind and solar are, it is whether they are sustainable. Every supposed “take down” does this same stupid, suicidally ignorant dance. Not once in the film do they say the issue is how efficient these systems are. The stats are there only to illustrate that renewables do not come close to being sustainable. The *issue* is sustainability. It doesn’t matter at all that efficiency has improved or that reliance on fossil fuels has been reduced. Those are not germane to the issue of sustainability. Raising those points and claiming they invalidate the film only shows logic is not something you care about, nor honesty.
Worse is the ideology of consumption shown by ignoring the actual issue of energy: It’s not net energy, it’s resource consumption. To say renewables return more energy than needed to make them is important in no way, shape, or form. What they ACTUALLY DO is reduce the usuable portion of the sun’s energy. A plant does a good job of maximizing what it can get from the sun. Solar panels are shit at that.
But the real issue is you would have us believe energy captured from the sun is free because the energy we can use from the panels replaces that taken from FFs. No, it doesn’t. The FF’s do not come back into existence via captured sunlight. Those resources and the ecosystems damaged to get them get nothing back from those solar panels. They are forever gone.
Saying the net energy available to USE compensates for the ecosystem damaged or destroyed and resources consumed is about as stupid a thing a human can say given our current context.
Them: Look! Wind generators and PV’s are unsustainable!
You two idjits: No way, Jose! Look at how efficient they are now!
Them: But you’ve destroyed ecosystems and squandered non-renewable resources!
You two idjits: But my lights are on!
This is prima facie bullshit.
—————
Re #444 Barton Paul Levenson said K 418: the smoke nad [sic] mirrors of “renewables.”
BPL: Which are still growing by leaps and bounds
BPL may actually be stupid. I hadn’t realized that before. I thought he was just a biased, argumentative ass. But, not, this is First Order dumb: It’s popular, so it is good.
Christ on a pogo stick… that’s idiocy.
despite K’s alliance with E-P on how awful they are.
And, again, the lie. Go ahead, keep repeating The Big Lie. In the meantime, consider cutting and pasting where I EVER said renewables are awful or I am “absolutely opposed to renewable energy.”
(How ironic that a guy with a Jewish-sounding surname is a blatant propagandist. But, hey, maybe you’re Scottish and just don’t care.)
I’ll wait, damned liar.
Barton Paul Levenson #449,
You could also say that only white nations have fought wars to keep slavery. Just sayin’.
And I have to take issue with your implied characterization of engineers in other posts. I’ve worked with EE’s, and I’ve taught some who went on to get degrees. They were not anything like EP.
The problem, as I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out to you quite a while back, is extreme Authoritarian Personality. And that is a manifestation of early childhood experience, social environment, and in this case resentment over never being anything but a plug-and-chug drone.
The people I worked with had advanced degrees and teaching positions, and even if they had conservative (the old-fashioned kind) views, they were not idiots.
Again, just sayin’.
K 439: RENEWABLES ARE NOT RECYCLABLE.
BPL: https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2019/03/27/company-expands-wind-turbine-recycling-operation/
If only Killian and EP would learn to express their thoughts succinctly, they’d be so much easier to scroll past.
“Economics is a failed science”
Hmmm…
https://twitter.com/ole_b_peters/status/1258038042415243264?s=19
#460 Ray Ladbury,
“If only Killian and EP would learn to express their thoughts succinctly, they’d be so much easier to scroll past.”
Nicely done!
But do you think they don’t know that? Insecure losers often try to speak over others, and never shut up, because that is the only way anyone will pay attention to them… the only way they ‘exist’. In this context I call it column-inch addiction.
Killian, #457–
Then POTH shouldn’t have lied about it.
Seems to be a fallacy of the excluded middle in here, compounded with a misconception. Says here that:
Given that current commercially-available solar panels run at something like 17-20% efficiency, perhaps Killian would like to reconsider whether solar PV is “shit” at energy conversion, relative to photosynthesis?
Gosh, that’s a revelation. However, I think that the real point here is that most of us think that the energy ‘captured from the sun’ is very low in carbon emissions–and theoretically could be zero, if transportation, manufacturing and electrical generation were thoroughly decarbonized.
Tendentious and probably often untrue. The resources can be recycled, and while the process may not be infinitely repeatable, it is certainly sufficient to last us many human lifetimes, particularly if used with wisdom. (Admittedly, on recent form that may be a pretty big ‘if’.)
As for ecosystems, there’s not much that humans do that fail to create some measure of ecosystem disturbance, so it’s not a question–presuming that we find the option of species suicide unappealing–of avoiding all ecosystem harm. It’s a question of how much is necessary, how much is tolerable and how much is justified. (Again, we’d better make those choices with improved wisdom. But we don’t get not to choose.)
And finally, the great thing about ecosystems is that they can, and do, regenerate if given a chance. So, no, they need not be “forever gone.”
Zebra @458 says “The problem, as I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out to you quite a while back, is extreme Authoritarian Personality (allegedly EP)”
EP has these annoying racial views, and believes the electricity grid should best be a monopoly. I don’t really see how you get from there to claiming he has an authoritarian personality. He seems like an independent thinker, even if we might disagree with some of the conclusions.
In any event you need to look beyond this so called authoritarian personality, to the content of what people say, just as I try to look past your own naieve ultra liberal personality where you think free markets can solve every problem, and your supercilious style. (heavy sarcasm fully intended)
Barton Paul Levenson @459, yes exactly renewables are being recycled, but you see its not all 100% perfect, so according to the grand poohbah Killian, we have to panic like headless chickens, and not use them at all, or only a tiny little bit of them, (sarcasm).
NigelJ: The so called documentary gets its facts badly wrong, and I cant tolerate that even if it makes some valid point buried underneath. Which is doubtful anyway.
AB: I thought it was a grand history, though it didn’t say much about the present. As I said before, it needed a “Current Developments” section, but it really told the story about how universal the ability to doofus up anything is among those who purport to have special leadership skills, regardless of whether one’s brain is constrained from adequate oxygen via a neck-snake or a fun fog…
Killian: You have no idea what a regenerative system is and what it requires of us,
AB: It requires us to create (or find) a new sun every ten or twenty billion years. Until you got that, you got nothing. I laugh at your guaranteed-to-run-down pretend-regenerative system. Your system is only slightly less unsustainable than other folks’ plans, and their plans don’t entail suckiness beyond imagination. As if I’m giving up the web cuz “we’ll” run out of whateverium in four billion years and have to give up the web a full billion years before the lights go out on this solar system anyway.
Killian 426:
“How did you come across that definition? It’s what I’ve said for years, but have never seen anyone else say.”
I just worked it out from first principles, starting from what does sustainable mean, it means something can continue indefinitely. Then I applied this to humanity, and what it would take for human ways of living to be truly sustainable. Humans (like other life forms) consume energy and resources and produce waste, so for this to be sustainable in the strictest sense, humanity has to use energy from renewable sources and consume resources at a rate that they are replenished (by another process). The waste produced also has to be usable for something else. I visioned that a sustainable system will interact with other systems in a kind of complex cyclic structure, so that waste from one process can be a resource for another (e.g. animal waste can be used for soil improvement), and as one process consumes a resource, a different process is generating it at the same rate.
What I’m getting at is this: The sustainable use of the biosphere is well covered by the definition posted bu AL” This means that what is consumed has to be replaced at the same rate, and the energy input comes from renewable resources…”.
This definition becomes senseless with mineral resources, because things like oil form so slowly and minerals like aluminium ore are basically a finite resource. I would define the sustainable use of the mineral resource base as minimising waste and greed. I doubt we can define the issue in a simpler way that is useful.
Killian says renewables are not sustainable, presumably because we wont be able to build them forever, but he then says to BPL @457 that he’s not opposed to their use (to some unspecified extent, but from past comments its definitely very sparingly).
That means he supports the use of non sustainable resources, which sends an utterly confusing message to the public. This is why it could be better to define renewables as sustainable, provided we recycle them. Everyone knows they wont last for all eternity.
‘A new documentary Planet of the Humans by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs – hardly right-wing climate change deniers – set out to understand how fossil fuel lobbyists and corrupt politicians had thwarted the increasingly urgent transition to a carbon neutral future. What they found, however – and what the documentary details – is an equally corrupt “green energy” lobby that has no real solutions to the predicament we are in. As Michael Donnelly at Counterpunch explains:
“The basic conclusion is that we have been following corporate foundation-financed, Democratic Party-tied misleadership and that is why we are where we are.”
The issue here is not with the seriousness of the crisis, but with the way just one solution is on offer; and it just happens to be the one that makes the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.’
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2019/08/13/goldsmiths-kebab/?fbclid=IwAR2zUO79Dbw3Cm3E9lS0FQCrWIQMlQBP4SgN3Xknguu_p3ZCmNeHHUiIlu4
Given that current commercially-available solar panels run at something like 17-20% efficiency, perhaps Killian would like to reconsider whether solar PV is “shit” at energy conversion, relative to photosynthesis?
I guess all those non-replaceable resources have nothing to do with your calculation. The point with plants is the useable portions is… used. Additionally, there are no negatives. Plants are part of a wholistic and holistic cycling with no ultimate losses. Solar destroys ecosystems to exist.
Do better, Kevin.
Given that current commercially-available solar panels run at something like 17-20% efficiency
Sunpower has produced over 24% for some years now.
But the real issue is you would have us believe energy captured from the sun is free because the energy we can use from the panels replaces that taken from FFs. No, it doesn’t. The FF’s do not come back into existence via captured sunlight.
Gosh, that’s a revelation.
You’re being childish. Taht’s unlike you, but since we’re challenging your entire view on climate future, it’s understandable. Fact is, the entire problem with the climate/environmental movement is it is not reality-based. Regenerative is not understood. Growth is not understood. Resource limits are not understood. Etc.
I literally have not read a single “take down” of the movie that addressed what the movie’s theses were. Not one. There is a balanced look over at resilience.org for those who are willing to hear how badly they have dealt with this movie. Groupthink is going to kill us all.
most of us think that the energy ‘captured from the sun’ is very low in carbon emissions–and theoretically could be zero
Was that the movie’s point? No. What was it’s point?
Deos that address sustainability? No. Sustainability/regenerativeness is about managing carbon, but that only matters if we do not destroy the ecosystem. Scaling up renewables to have 9 billion living like, say, Europe will require multiple Earths. That is *common knowledge”, yet here you don’t deal with it at all.
Full context, Kevin, always, or you end up saying stupid shit.
Tendentious
LOL… right… because facts don’t exist. My context is always inclusive of the resources of this planet. For you to call awareness tendentious is just argumentative, biased. You are a technocopian and don’t like hearing you can’t have waht you wish you could. It’s hard, I get it, but lying doesn’t improve that.
and probably often untrue. The resources can be recycled, and while the process may not be infinitely repeatable, it is certainly sufficient to last us many human lifetimes, particularly if used with wisdom.
Every raw resource is destroyed by it’s use and cannot, ever, be reconstituted. Why pretend you don’t get this just to score a point because you’re butthurt?
Recycling? How many times do I have to repeat this? A TINY fraction of the world’s extracted resources are recycled. Essentially, nearly 100% of the infrastructure for a multi-century recyclable future must be built out to even consider it a possiblity! You are talkign decades just to get to where it’s *possible.* Do we have decades? Do you truly believe we can wait decades to even be able to do waht you propose, thus ensuring additional decades of spreading it all around the world? And completely changing the sociopolitical and economics systems to *allow* all humans to benefit?
You are making the same mistakes everyone else does: You talk about secondary, tertiary and even quarternary(?) issues and ignoring First Principle and First Order issues.
How many more years do you think that can go on?
Re #465 nigelj said Barton Paul Levenson @459, yes exactly renewables are being recycled, but you see its not all 100% perfect, so according to the grand poohbah Killian, we have to panic like headless chickens, and not use them at all, or only a tiny little bit of them, (sarcasm).
You have been since you got here, and apparently always will be, a fool and liar. How do you possibly look at bald-faced lies (you have made the same charge and been proven a liar multiple times) and attempt to magnify them?
How are you better than Hitler or Trump? We’re discussing the existance of potentially the vast majority of life on the planet and you think it’s a time for lies and gotcha’s? Because you’re insane?
Re #467 Al Bundy said Killian: You have no idea what a regenerative system is and what it requires of us,
AB: It requires us to create (or find) a new sun every ten or twenty billion years. Until you got that, you got nothing. I laugh at your guaranteed-to-run-down pretend-regenerative system. Your system is only slightly less unsustainable than other folks’ plans, and their plans don’t entail suckiness beyond imagination. As if I’m giving up the web cuz “we’ll” run out of whateverium in four billion years and have to give up the web a full billion years before the lights go out on this solar system anyway.
Perfect demostration of the intentional Red Herring. And flatly wrong. The end of Earth? That’s our proximate issue?
The Peanut Gallery is in full rage.
Re #468 Adam Lea said Killian 426:
“How did you come across that definition? It’s what I’ve said for years, but have never seen anyone else say.”
I just worked it out from first principles, starting from what does sustainable mean, it means something can continue indefinitely. Then I applied this to humanity, and what it would take for human ways of living to be truly sustainable. Humans (like other life forms) consume energy and resources and produce waste, so for this to be sustainable in the strictest sense, humanity has to use energy from renewable sources and consume resources at a rate that they are replenished (by another process). The waste produced also has to be usable for something else. I visioned that a sustainable system will interact with other systems in a kind of complex cyclic structure, so that waste from one process can be a resource for another (e.g. animal waste can be used for soil improvement), and as one process consumes a resource, a different process is generating it at the same rate.
Now, that’s what I did and what I have said here since around 2009, or sooner. It wasn’t a problem until around 2013. Then the Peanut Gallery went nuts and ever since such comments get a hot load of shit, because ignorance.
Funny, you don’t catch the same. Hmmm… For saying exactly the same things. Hmmm… And before you say it’s my “style”, go back and search ccpo’s comments and see that the conversations used to be civil.
The Peanut Gallery goes groupthink rabid. As you currently see.
Good luck!
#470, nigel–
Killian, IIRC, thinks that we can, with simplification, use less energy than is already currently available from renewable sources. Hence, there is no need to build any more and suffer the penalty in environmental damage (including carbon emissions, since while it is possible to build RE gear without emissions, we certainly are not yet doing so.)
It’s logical, given the premise. But I think that the premise is mistaken, personally. People would have to be both willing and able to make profound changes in their ways of life very quickly. Yet, in a somewhat parallel case, we see surprisingly large numbers of people here in the US at least, who reject even the most basic public health measures in the midst of a pandemic that has now killed over a quarter of a million people–about a third of them right here in the home of the freely infected. (And, for that matter, reject with while brandishing automatic rifles, carrying Nazi symbols and wearing t-shirts that say such charming things as “F*** your feelings!”)
And that’s just the difficulties with the “willing” piece of the equation. The “able” part is problematic too, IMO, but I’ll leave that aside for now as it’s been discussed previously.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/08/rural-electric-co-op-blows-up-energy-storage-race-with-secret-battery/
Kevin McKinney:
Yes. This is the problem with defining “sustainability”: even if we live simply, simply by living we make demands on natural capital. Accordingly, the “best” thing anyone can do for their ecosystem is to die, childless, now. Many RC readers are familiar with that idea. Yet few if any of us will choose the third requirement, so we’re each responsible for our own ecological impacts until we die. Some will reject the second, leaving them to account for their descendants’ impacts as well. But no congratulations for voluntarily forgoing descendants: by arranging to terminate your ecological debt upon your death, you’ve merely gone and selected yourself out of the evolution game. In a word, you’re maladapted ;^).
Volunteer losers notwithstanding, the average “behaviorally modern” Homo sapiens is well adapted. Consequently, from long before we left Africa, our advent was an ecosystem disturbance. Assisted by cultural (including technological) adaptation, we launched mass extinctions around the globe. Then we invented agriculture, which Jared Diamond called the worst mistake in the history of the human race. He was right about this much, at least: agriculture radically simplifies the ecosystem of the land under cultivation, killing off or driving away most species in order to divert larger fractions of local energy and nutrient fluxes through human biomass. Once it allowed our populations to grow beyond local carrying capacity for a foraging economy, positive feedback drove agriculture to preempt ever more of the biosphere. That, combined with technological development, has enabled our global population to grow through 7.8 billion and counting. Much ecosystem disturbance has ensued.
There’s a further argument to be made, that throughout the rise of “civilization” and the expansion of the human population, all new material wealth (“stuff”, that is) has been created by liquidating natural capital, with consequent ecosystem disturbance up to and including climate change. If that’s true, then we should expect further ecosystem disturbance as long as our population grows, since all those additional people will (duh) need stuff: food, clothing and shelter, at minimum. And even a stable population isn’t sustainable as long as total wealth, again in terms of stuff, increases. Nor is a society that includes “have-nots”, who (duh) mostly want more stuff, sustainable unless the “haves” give some up. Much social as well as ecosystem disturbance will ensue.
Halting liquidation of natural capital entails broad collective intervention in the otherwise-free market for goods and services: a political problem, under any sovereignty system. The question, as Kevin observes, is how much intervention is justified by the sustainability requirement, versus how much is politically possible. How much biodiversity loss can be sustained, for example? I’m afraid “wisdom”, i.e. calm and rational analysis of facts without fooling ourselves, leaves the existence value of most species unresolved. Some elevation of the global extinction rate over “background” therefore appears unavoidable. What rate is sustainable, largely depends on the person doing the evaluating. Personally, I’m less sanguine than the average US voter about disappearing Pacific coast salmon runs. Wild bears still defecate in the woods, but wild salmon now deliver tiny fractions of their historically immense loads of marine-derived nutrients annually to vast areas of North America, as far east as the continental divide. Now, that’s what I call an ecosystem disturbance.
Alas, halting the decline of wild salmon, with its multifarious causes, appears politically impossible. Does it matter that we can now eat farmed salmon, then flush their nutrients into a sewer? IMHO the loss of genetically distinct runs of wild salmon is a high cost indeed to pay for luxury and convenience, but subjective costs by definition don’t necessarily show up in others’ private accounting. Voluntarily internalizing them may slow the rate of loss a little, but as long as someone resists abatement of the causes (hoo boy), wild salmon will dwindle. Some runs may be spared for a time, but many more have gone extinct before my eyes 8^(. That might fall within someone’s definition of sustainable, but it’s a personal bummer for me. It’s just sustainable enough that I’m not ready to kill myself yet.
Mal Adapted: Accordingly, the “best” thing anyone can do for their ecosystem is to die, childless, now.
AB: Dunno about that. I mean, if you’re gonna go all macabre, wouldn’t “serial mass murderer” do more? ;-)
Kevin McKinney @476, agreed.
I would just add a couple of things. Killian thinks we can get by with a great deal less energy, as opposed to moderate reductions. But obviously we could, nobody gets points for stating the obvious. We would ‘survive’ if thats what we want.
The IPCC plan is based around renewables doing the heavy lifting and moderate energy reductions. That is achievable. Fantasy dreams of huge energy reductions are not.
The trouble with huge energy reductions goes beyond your comments: 1)Its really hard seeing people embracing such huge lifestyle changes as you say, so I don’t want to waste my time promoting it and 2) the impacts of wind towers on the environment can be solved in other ways and are being, and 3) it degrades my quality of life for insignificant gains for future generations and 4) while we can make our technology more energy efficient, huge efficiencies are just speculation and wishful thinking.
I promote things that are likely to have some buy in, and which have some value for a wide variety of reasons, like driving smaller cars and regulations that promote fuel efficiency, and smaller homes. Even persuading people of this isn’t always easy.
Killian @473
“Re #465 nigelj said Barton Paul Levenson @459, yes exactly renewables are being recycled, but you see its not all 100% perfect, so according to the grand poohbah Killian, we have to panic like headless chickens, and not use them at all, or only a tiny little bit of them, (sarcasm).”
“You have been since you got here, and apparently always will be, a fool and liar. How do you possibly look at bald-faced lies (you have made the same charge and been proven a liar multiple times) and attempt to magnify them?”
Wrong. You are on record on this website saying 1) America doesn’t need to build ANY more renewable energy, because it already has what it needs for a simplified world and 2) the third world can get by with a solar panel or two on their roofs, and a car battery.
This certainly looks like a “tiny bit of renewable energy” to me. You obviously don’t know what you say from one day to the next.
You don’t belong here. You claim to be an environmental expert, but you are shown to be wrong on the basics constantly by numerous commentators, for example your ridiculous, uncited claims renewables cant be recycled, and photosynthesis is more efficient than solar panels, and many others I have previously outlined. Up your game.
Mal Adapted @478.
“Halting liquidation of natural capital entails broad collective intervention in the otherwise-free market for goods and services: a political problem, under any sovereignty system.”
Yes and this is probably our only realistic hope. And I think there’s still hope. Plenty of countries have sensible interventions in the free market, and often it doesn’t need much to achieve a useful result. The expansion of wind and solar power is the result of quite small subsidies, for example. As environmental pressures become more and more obvious, interventions will probably expand.
There are not may appealing alternatives. Controlled markets like communism were a failure, and go against human nature. People clearly like to own property and trade in it. It just looks like it would be difficult to turn back the clock on this even if we wanted to. Sorry don’t mean to sound like I’m lecturing you, I’m just expressing what I see as the difficulties.
The most sustainable lifestyle might be hunter gatherer. It’s hard to get below that other than humans ceasing to exist, but its not even feasible in today’s world with 7.6 billion people, and means giving up all or most of our technology.
Instead we could live sustainably in the biosphere by not taking more than that which naturally grows. I believe this is possible, but obviously not easy personally and politically.
The trouble is the mineral resource base, because it’s essentially finite and things like new oil reserves aren’t created quickly enough to be useful to us , so the only sustainable use of minerals looks to be consuming the resource, but minimising waste.
Killian: The end of Earth? That’s our proximate issue?
AB: “Our”, Kemosabe? Tis your One True Axiom: Thou shalt not use a resource in a way that won’t allow its regeneration (via volcanic activity, for example) to keep pace with your system’s losses. If your soda can recycling participation hits 100% and the system only loses 0.1% per loop thru you’ve got to replace all that aluminum every thousand loops. If you can’t replace your aluminum that quickly and without degrading our future ability to harvest aluminum then your soda can operation is not sustainable. Your Gospel, right? IS there a time period? “for a billion years”? The period during which human-friendly flora and fauna can sustain themselves naturally on Earth, which is basically the sun’s main sequence?
But, of course, that’s mostly academic. “The next fifty years” (or less) are my reality. I’ll help as much as I can.
Nigel’s right. Slow the inevitable slide towards Ocean Harvest of Minerals. And OHoM might not be so bad. Perhaps oceanic farms in upwellings can mine the ocean via one or another species of plant with an affinity towards this or that element. I’ve read that one reason smoking is way bad for you is that the tobacco plant is quite good at absorbing heavy metals from its environment, including radioactive stuff after nuclear disasters. I’ve heard that “Chernobyl Leaf” is to die for…
(The other big reason is that nicotine is a vascular constrictor, which starves your cells of all they need, as contrasted with THC’s dilation. Dilation dumps a lot of energy to the environment via one’s extremities, which could be the underlying driver of that peculiar malady, “the munchies”.)
Killian went off on his hobby-horse @428:
For once I’m going to respond to you in utter seriousness.
We have MUCH bigger problems to deal with than your notion of “sustainability”. We have an immediate climate crisis in which substantial parts of the world may become deadly to human life in the near future (and don’t ask about livestock or wildlife). These changes are BAKED IN given what humanity has already done to the atmosphere.
We HAVE to deal with this. An immediate turn to regenerative systems and rapid simplification preclude any actual fix. We need to remove about a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, and fast. This requires mineralization of the CO2, which requires OTOO 800 billion tons of minerals (olivine; basalt may require more) to be rapidly weathered to carbonates. Doing this in the few decades we have available requires energy you cannot get with your “regenerative” schemes. We need far more energy than “regenerative” systems can supply.
Then there’s the social aspect. Our societies are built on technologies like automobiles and trucks. People’s lives depend on them. We did not arrive here quickly and we will not retreat from here quickly, absent a collapse which prevents us from fixing the atmosphere. The immediate job is to get carbon-negative. Technologies like PHEVs are solid ways to get to that goal. We have decades or centuries of other resources. Even if they won’t last indefinitely, they’ll last long enough for us to solve the immediate climate problem and set our societies on the right course… IF we use them wisely.
“Inside Clean Energy: A California Utility Announces 770 Megawatts of Battery Storage. That’s a Lot. {?}
Southern California Edison plans to build seven storage projects on a fast timetable despite the economic disruption of the coronavirus.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06052020/inside-clean-energy-california-battery-storage-wind-solar?utm_source=InsideClimate+News&utm_campaign=21e72cf2fb-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_29c928ffb5-21e72cf2fb-327874541
JC 471: ‘ what the documentary details – is an equally corrupt “green energy” lobby that has no real solutions to the predicament we are in. ‘
BPL: Look again.
https://climatecrocks.com/2020/04/25/planet-of-the-stupid/?fbclid=IwAR1Gl6aV40ZK2wG8_E1uf21PEW48uB-5J0BRnWFiNMkevK8R0QIXJYDoSs0
https://benwehrman.com/planet-of-the-humans-disaster/?fbclid=IwAR2O6o3a8LevPWlYpBsnPCrjRxH9otfHhzwz77mH7s8V-t_57ZaPJ-y9mi0
https://climatefeedback.org/planet-of-the-humans-documentary-misleads-viewers-about-renewable-energy/?fbclid=IwAR0WBhAOHPEV669vmQVmJ9lXUUQW84Fabg7KwQKZQrqPVb__N4fCjkhlVgU
K 472: Solar destroys ecosystems to exist.
BPL: And murders puppies.
Killian, #472–
I’ve read the entire post, but will limit my response to a central point.
Killian:
What Gibbs doesn’t “deal with” is the reality that we can’t sufficiently control the population over decadal timescales except by Holocaust, which nearly everyone rejects for good and sufficient reasons. Population can be controlled–is being controlled, with some regional exceptions–but it will take longer than we have, if that is our only strategy for reducing carbon emissions.
Hence, we need to transform the way we live, and fast.
You think it can be done entirely via simplification and the adoption of sustainable, regenerative practices. With some reluctance, and much deliberation, I disagree. It would be great to have such a straightforward solution at hand. But my reluctant conclusion is that there is no realistic possibility of widespread adoption of such in anything like the time necessary.
So I’m forced back to the system that we have. How can it be modified with greatest speed to avoid as much harm to the climate system as we still can? Looking at the world, the most promising avenue appears to me to be the widespread deployment of wind and solar energy, combined with storage, other renewables, and existing nuclear power. Is it going to have a cost in environmental degradation? Sure. Is it going to be larger than in the past? I don’t think so. Practices have improved vastly, and can improve more.
Everything humans do has an ecological footprint, but not everything we do has to mean “destruction,” not if that term is taken to mean something like “complete devastation” (as opposed to “partial alteration”.) Wind farms co-exist very happily with agricultural ones, as my farm cousins in Ontario would tell you. Solar can, too, and of course there are millions of square miles of rooftop around the world, a significant proportion of which is suitable for PV. Disused coal plants and mines can become energy storage sites of various sorts–and in some cases, are already.
Yeah, we need the raw materials, and yeah, these have not always been extracted in the best ways. But mining can be done responsibly, and as use increases, recycling of these materials will too. It may not be sustainable on millennial timescales, but it can be sustained for at least a couple of centuries. That’s good enough for me.
So, is decarbonizing the power grid–and transportation, and manufacturing–going to require “multiple Earths?” No, pretty sure it won’t. Not even close, in fact. We have enough of everything–except maybe wisdom.
BPL gets indignant @442:
A whole lot of people beg to differ.
https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/
https://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today
As much as 20% of the population of Mauritania are slaves, today. It doesn’t matter what the laws say, it’s a fact.
https://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/category/mauritania-slaverys-last-stronghold/
We had a slavery case in Colorado a while back. The perps were Saudi nationals and I recall the victim was not American either. The Saudis are infamous for mistreating their Indonesian maids, yet somehow they still have women willing to take those jobs.
I have never seen a popular work with so many citations and footnotes. Pick it up yourself, check out a chapter or two… if you can stand having your preconceptions challenged. Or should I say, prejudices.
Drat, should have addressed @449 in the previous comment:
That was a revolt, not a war. The Haitians never put armies in the field.
Note that it was not just a revolution, it was also a genocide. All the French were killed, and then all the mullatoes.
Shorter Richard Creager: “Badthinker! BAAAAADTHINKER!!!” Pearl-clutching is so funny.
Kevin McKinney writes @463:
The missing link for solar is something to deal with intermittency. It’s the biggest problem and always has been.
We have another dark horse that just popped up, in the form of a Bill Gates-associated effort called Form Energy, which has something they call an “aqueous air battery” allegedly good for 150 hours of storage. Nobody seems to know anything about the actual chemistry, efficiency or anything else. This reminds me way too much of the Range Fuels and EEstor debacles.
However, there’s one thing that the greenies have missed about this storage technology: if it eliminates negative prices on the grid, it puts nuclear back in the game in a HUGE way. It allows emissions-free peaking.
James Charles writes @485:
Not one word on how many megawatt-HOURS is involved, though. Nor anything about whether they can be charged from the grid, to carry overnight surpluses over for peak loads when weather cuts the PV output. The article is boob bait for greenie-feelies.
National Geographic March 2020 edition has an excellent article on reducing waste and the circular economy. And this is starting to happen even in the capitalist societies of scandinavia:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/03/how-a-circular-economy-could-save-the-world-feature/
Of course its far from perfect, but its a step forwards. But I’m not a perfectionist in terms of sustainability, human destiny, and socioeconomic systems. That sort of perfectionism is naievely stupid. The fact that technology can’t be sustained forever, does not ipso faco make it a bad thing or something we should abandon. We just have to mitigate the downsides better.
Al Bundy @483,
“Thou shalt not use a resource in a way that won’t allow its regeneration (via volcanic activity, for example) to keep pace with your system’s losses….”
Yes, but I just don’t think Killian gets it. However he does seem to permit ‘some’ use of modern technology, but he’s never specific on just what, or how much, so its completely nebulous and unhelpful. He mentioned a communications backbone. So is this cell phones, conventional phones, radios, vhf, uhf, how many phones per 1000 people? For me until you crystallise this out its all a bit meaningless. These permaculturalists escape the issue by saying design is location specific, but thats BS really.There would be a global average.
I would just add if we use a dictionary definition of sustainable, there is no perfect environmental sustainability that lasts forever. All we can do is reduce proximate problems, and it then becomes a question of what specific problems and how to do that. I see no guarantee that adopting a completely new socioeconomic system would do a great job, and it would certainly risk causing other problems. Sustainability is important, but so are solving other problems. The world will probably be hit by an asteroid anyway sooner than we want, then it could all be over.
“The other big reason is that nicotine is a vascular constrictor, which starves your cells of all they need, as contrasted with THC’s dilation. Dilation dumps a lot of energy to the environment via one’s extremities, which could be the underlying driver of that peculiar malady, “the munchies”.)”
This is why tobacco smoking has a bad effect on erections, and maybe why THC is good for sex. From what I remember a million years ago. Sigh.
Killian @472 posts “Scaling up renewables to have 9 billion living like, say, Europe will require multiple Earths. That is *common knowledge”, yet here you don’t deal with it at all.”
This is not the case, and is just uncited hand waving. Published research by Jacobson shows the earth has enough resources for renewables sufficient for a good standard of living everywhere, certainly close to Europes standards. Other research shows we have enough materials for a good nuclear build. Until you prove in specific line by line detail where that research is wrong, you got nothing.
Maybe we wont get there. It’s still better than standing still, or having fantasy dreams that suddenly everyone will abandon their cars, televisions, electric stoves etc and that people would be prepared to live with a solar panel and tiny little fridge and wood burner stove. All for what purpose? this only delays the inevitable at best.
But obviously we should aim for better energy efficiency, and use energy a bit more sparingly. A sensible goal would be to aim to cut our personal energy use by 20%, because that’s clearly achievable.
—————–
Engineer poet @484, problems of regenerative approach etc. You are not wrong.
AB @483
“Slow the inevitable slide towards Ocean Harvest of Minerals. And OHoM might not be so bad. Perhaps oceanic farms in upwellings can mine the ocean via one or another species of plant with an affinity towards this or that element. I’ve read that one reason smoking is way bad for you is that the tobacco plant is quite good at absorbing heavy metals from its environment, including radioactive stuff after nuclear disasters. I’ve heard that “Chernobyl Leaf” is to die for…”
Yes, and there’s another way of looking at it as well using a type of inductive logic. We can say realistically that mining one km2 total of the global ocean bed around a typical country is going to be trivially damaging, and it would be used up quick so the ecosystem would recover quickly enough, and that strip mining half the ocean bed would be an environmental disaster and ultimately a human disaster as well. Somewhere between those extremes is an optimal total area that doesn’t excessively degrade the environment, and threaten species numbers, and it could be analysed and calculated.
Of course it will vary regionally, but that would be a starting point. In fact only certain limited areas of the sea bed will have concentrated ore deposits and that could well turn out to fall within an acceptable total area. Some will conflict with areas with endangered species, so might have to be put off limits. And once you decide to mine the ocean beds, its a question of considering the least destructive methods.
It’s all difficult technically and politically, but so are all the alternatives.
Re #476 Kevin McKinney said #470, nigel–
Killian, IIRC, thinks that we can, with simplification, use less energy than is already currently available from renewable sources. Hence, there is no need to build any more and suffer the penalty in environmental damage
Correct, but incomplete.
(including carbon emissions, since while it is possible to build RE gear without emissions, we certainly are not yet doing so.)
I don’t think this is true except in some theory. Turbine blades? Concrete? etc.? I mean, how massive would the embedded carbon be to build out the necessary infrastructure to do so, both in terms of a global, comprehensive recycyling system and the new manufacturing?
TheOilDrum archives should be mandatory reading…
It’s logical, given the premise.
Obviously.
But I think that the premise is mistaken
You are not stating the premise correctly/completely. To keep this short, I’ll keep it simple: 1. The correct messaging has not been in place: Existential Risk + regenerative mitigation + There is no choice.
Leave any of those out, you’re spitting in the wind.
People would have to be both willing
Until the messaging is correct, how likely is that? Barn door, then the horse, then the cart.
and able to make profound changes in their ways of life very quickly.
That is by far the easiest part of it all. The changes themselves are simple.
One of the galling aspects of posting here is the sheer number of lies that pile up about what I have said. I have always said simplicity is simple, but getting there won’t be easy. I have also always said we are unlikely to change course, and if we do, it’s unlikely we will succeed. However, failure is only certain if we never try or if we go the wrong way. I think it’s getting to the point where what I’ve said for over ten years is becoming obvious even to those who don’t want to see it: Time’s up. We have one narrow pathway. I am certain of that.
Convincing the Peanut Gallery and the rest of the world? That’s the trick.
And I have never said otherwise. So, no, you don’t disagree with the premise, you still are ignoring and/or forgetting key aspects of the premise.
The “able” part is problematic too, IMO, but I’ll leave that aside for now as it’s been discussed previously.
No. Take a permaculture course. Regenerative Community Incubators? Potentially 1,000,000 “ecovillages” is 20 years. 50 years would be dead easy. Ecosystem Restoration Camps is a similar idea. I was involved at the very beginning, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t get that we need spaces for 2 billion more people *and* restored land left unprotected would likely be exploited again, so… RCI’s not ERC’s. It’s a very simple shift that would accelerate the spread of such places, but, hey, being ahead of the curve, your voice is lost on the wind.
Same is true of Transition Towns and the Global Ecovillage Network. Each has a tiny flaw that when addressed would make them far more effective. The flaw? Add Regenerative Governance. Formalize the networks into actual co-operative networks. Add governance. The key flaw of TT’s is they seek to “change from within.” Will never happen for reasons I have written of here many, many times.
He had this exactly correct. When it comes to fundamental changes,
If TT’s adopted RG, they’d be creating the future we need. GEN is encouraging/assisting ecovillage creation, but the network is not a true co-operative network with resources shared and has no governance concept at all. Same exact problem as TT’s. Add RG and it’s golden. Take the three concepts and network all three under RG, and we are on the pathway to the future we must have. Add in the far more adaptive and appropriate Via Campesina, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. All the more so with the RCI process adopted.
But, as I said, ahead of the curve, nobody can hear what you say. I’m not the messenger, I’m the oracle – for lack of better, more clever, more subtle analogy.
I’ve been looking for messenger for over a decade. Maybe you should consider applying for the job instead of giving me shit. I have 25k pledged toward starting a physical site. 50k if it’s in Korea. The future is not yet written, but it soon will be and will be completely out of our hands. Even if that proves untrue, the existential risk analysis says do it anyway.
When even the ultra-cautious Gavin starts parroting the existential risk line, you know we’re in some deep shit.
Re #470 nigelj said That means he supports the use of non sustainable resources, which sends an utterly confusing message to the public.
Not all humans are as stupid as you are.
Re #471 James Charles said ‘A new documentary Planet of the Humans by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs – hardly right-wing climate change deniers – set out to understand how fossil fuel lobbyists and corrupt politicians had thwarted the increasingly urgent transition to a carbon neutral future…
…but with the way just one solution is on offer; and it just happens to be the one that makes the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.’
Yes. All the “take downs” are ignorant and/or self-serving piles of dung. This is the worst response to a germane, if flawed, statement I have ever seen from the supposedly knowledgeable and engaged.
Absolutely massive pile of dog crap.
Re #478 Mal Adapted said Halting liquidation of natural capital entails broad collective intervention in the otherwise-free market for goods and services: a political problem, under any sovereignty system.
Not under Regenerative Governance. The only sovereignty is Commons, and that starting with, rather than merely paying lip service to, what is regenerative.
The question, as Kevin observes, is how much intervention is justified by the sustainability requirement
No. This is, for the millionth time, irrelevant. Justified? How do you “justify” survival/not survival? THE question is, what is regenerative? That is the question. Until you are able *and* willing to answer that and accept the true answer, you cannot hope to solve any of this.
versus how much is politically possible.
You choose the political over the real? That is why you don’t accept the solutions. So long as any person thinks of climate/ecosystem destruction via economics and/or politics rather than looking at economics and politics via ecosystem services, they will not understand the problem nor the solutions.
How much biodiversity loss can be sustained, for example?
That’s a damned poor application of the precaustionary principles, not least because there is no way to answer that. So, how about we just put it (mostly) back the way it was?