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470 Responses to "Forced Responses: Oct 2020"
William B Jacksonsays
#92 Needs based economics is a rehashing of the words of Jesus. If that is Marxist to you then so be it. The rest of your post is a waste of time to deal with, sheer nonsense. Just one point nobody said that CO2 is the only green house gas, it is however the one we have added so much of to the atmosphere.
Marcosays
Uhm…Violet Wagner @92, you are aware that this is the blog of actual climate scientists, right? You may get away with your misinformation elsewhere, but not here. For example, climate scientists know, clearly unlike you, that the increase in atmospheric CO2 observed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is essentially completely caused by anthropogenic activity. That is, your little “only 0.8%” is in reality a huge “all of it” in terms of the observed increase. And that’s just one of your false talking points. You might want to check this blog for further explanations on the role of water (hint: it is a *precipitable* greenhouse gas), for example. And maybe look for “Holocene Thermal Maximum”, too, before talking about “it has been warming for 11,000 years”.
Killiansays
87 Kevin McKinney:
Making an exception…
Killian, #79–
There is a pathway, but you must learn the true nature of simplicity/regenerative systems/fair governance/social equity.
I’ve been telling you. Hear and listen.
I spent years “listening.” Never did hear anything that really clarified in anything like concrete terms what this “pathway” would be, nor where it would actually lead. And the descriptions of the “where” did not seem to me to be very internally consistent.
Now, the paper I cited did not offer anything by way of pathway to achieve the stated goal, either.
However, it *did* offer a pretty concrete take on what a (materially) “decent life” might entail, and what that would cost. That’s what I thought interesting, and potentially helpful. Killian, if you can emulate that in some fashion and find a way to communicate with some specificity, I would be glad to listen to those ideas. (But I’m sure not wading through paragraphs and paragraphs of vituperation and ego, which is candidly–and sadly–most of what I see from you.)
However, it *did* offer a pretty concrete take on what a (materially) “decent life” might entail, and what that would cost.
Does it matter? They were not talking about sustainability, they were talking efficiency and thermodynamics. Good, but not good enough. If an analysis does not include real-world limits, real-world use of resources, not averaged energy flows, it is not ultimately useful. The life they describe? Not regenerative, thus pointless. They are not regenerative designers, Kevin.
The true value of the paper is simply that it is an “authority” saying consumption must fall to the levels I told you ten years ago they must fall to so that, perhaps, you will understand you have royally fucked up by not listening for those ten years, and will now perhaps choose to begin to.
You have been told everything you need to know to chart your regenerative course; you blind yourself to it using me as your excuse.
If you refuse to even attempt to understand, how can you expect to? I told you, if you refuse to understand simplicity, you *cannot* understand the explanations of it and how to do it. If you refuse to learn how to do regenerative design, you *cannot* understand how to DO simplicity and a regenerative community.
You want to do calculus without learning geometry, differential equations and algebra first. Or, more apt to you, want to compose a score without knowing how to write notes and chords.
You expect to be told how to do regenerative systems in a blog post. It’s absurd, is it not? A permaculture course is the equivalent of a full year of a university course, but you want it in a blog post. You create a false gatekeeper of your own making: “Killian won’t tell me” when the reality is “I can’t be bothered to educate myself.” Why? For you to ponder.
You will never understand what must be done and what can be done to get to a regenerative future until you learn how to do regenerative design. It is VIA that education that the power of simplicity is understood. The breathtaking shift when the scales of modernity fall from one’s eyes so one can see, Matrix-like, the underlying living systems for the first time shocks the system. This is why so many say their permaculture course was life-changing.
To see decision-making set to First Principles not just occasionally, but always, is a shift to what is fundamental about living day to day.
Or, you can go live with an intact indigenous community still living the aboriginal lives they always have. Either way will lead you to the same place. (I suspect the tribal experience would be mind-altering, but the permaculture course more convenient, more comfortable, and would take a lot less time.)
95%, Kevin. They said it, not me. What’s your excuse going to be now? Ah, right. Covered that above.
Up to you, Kevin. Always was. Only you can choose to hear what is said rather than your inner bullshit.
Vituperative? Irony.
Ego? Irony.
Life on RealClimate:
Killian: We must reduce consumption in the US 90% and worldwide about 80%. Simplicity or bust.
Kevin: Kiwian said simpwicity! Kiwian YUCK! Simpwicity, YUCK!
Scientist: We really must reduce consumption a lot, like, 60-80%.
Killian: Not enough. US 90% and worldwide about 80%. Simplicity or bust.
Kevin: Kiwian said simpwicity! Kiwian YUCK! Simpwicity, YUCK!
Very recent scientist: We really must reduce consumption a lot, like, 95% in the highest-consuming nations.
Kevin: Oh. But, Kiwian betuh be nice!!!! Or… YUCK!
Jesus, dude… buy a fucking clue about where the problem here actually lies.
1. Regenerative systems are not based on efficiency, but on efficiency and robustness, i.e. resilience.
2. Not sustainable.
3. Nuclear already occupies all the space in the energy mix it needs to. Let it help manage the transition, then let it die except for a tiny number of truly niche needs, if an absolutely unmeetable need in some other way… like not doing the things that need that extreme form of energy and resource waste.
Killiansays
nigel, dear, see my comments to Kevin re the value of that paper. Son, you got nothing to teach me. Nor anyone else.
Killiansays
93 Ray Ladbury: Killian, and whoever else wants to chime in. One of the aspects of modern manufacturing that makes it difficult to reach sustainability is that economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis. If a business is to remain in business, it has to count on obsolescence to regularly renew demand for a product it is geared to turn out repetitively and cheaply. This is pretty much the opposite of what we want. Ideally, you’d buy a product once and hand it down to your progeny for generations.
Can a shift toward additive manufacturing, where a business can “retool” on a dime to make whatever is needed, help to resolve this?
You are, at best, describing a shift at the beginning of transition. Profit, draining energy out of the system, thus equaling waste (as told to Keen @ 2010) in the system and destabilizing it (let alone reducing the pool of available energy – resources – by about 50%, currently, to be shared by about 80-90%.)
I’m not super-interested in the shift until I can get people to understand the destination. I guarantee you we will not get to regenerative accidentally; we just do not have the time to do this in a series of decades-/century-long iterations.
However, if you’re going to insist on a drawn out transition instead of just solving the problems now (with about 50 years), then Keen and Raworth are about as good as you’re going to get.
However, though it has been claimed by two gentlement here, repeatedly, that I have not told you what to do (Really, it’s RIGHT there, they just can’t see it. Optical illusion?), this is how you transition:
1.
* Start a garden.
* Start water capture/your own water.
* Start energy production. (Could be as simple as planting fast-growing trees or woody shrubs for pollarding for wood energy or could be wind or solar – just don’t fool yourself into believing W&S are sustainable, they are are not at present.)
* Reduce consumption to needs wherever, however, and as quickly as possible within *your* particular household limits/conditions.
2.
* Do this with neighbors.
* Start a community council.
– egalitarian
– start meeting needs not met by the current system.
– start the process of Commonsing, i.e. share like your damned momma told you to! And plan the things in 1 and 2 together.
– start reskilling (in a resilient community, most people know how to do all basic things and multiple people and everyone masters multiple higher-level skills. Resilience.)
3.
* Network with other communities and start a city/regional citizens’ council.
– egalitarian
– start meeting needs not met by the current system.
– start the process of Commonsing, i.e. share like your damned momma told you to! And plan the things in 1, 2 and 3 together.
– start reskilling (in a resilient community, most people know how to do all basic things and multiple people and everyone masters multiple higher-level skills. Resilience.)
4. Network with other city/regional citizens’ councils to form a bio-regional citizens’ council.
– egalitarian
– start meeting needs not met by the current system.
– start the process of Commonsing, i.e. share like your damned momma told you to! And plan the things in 1, 2, and 4 together.
– start reskilling (in a resilient community, most people know how to do all basic things and multiple people and everyone masters multiple higher-level skills. Resilience.)
CRITICAL POINT: Each level of the network solves problems *only* at its scale and *only* with the cooperation of all other levels. Decisions are not final until they are approved at all four levels.
As you opt out of the old paradigm and into Regenerative Governance, the current system will continue to crumble. This is why you start with food, water, energy, shelter. If you are existentially secure, you can stand, you can resist (non-violently), your can build and create.
Don’t fight the Old Paradigm, create the new one. If you fight it, you will lose (at least for longer time than the risk analysis makes safe – which is why 60’s era civil action is not how we do this: Asking government and power systems to end themselves for your benefit is just delusional. It has never happened in history and will not happen this time. I find it bizarre people believe the wealthy and powerful and the government they own is going to unmake itself for your benefit! No… this is bottom-up all the way.)
Fill in the niches where it fails and grow the system so that as critical failure comes, the Commons network in your bio-region can hold thins together and avoid as much much pain and chaos as possible.
In terms of economics, see Keen on Jubilee. An orderly transition, exceedingly unlikely, will only be possible with a global jubilee. Without that, there is no way for the current system to morph into Regenerative Governance. With it, the various councils *could* theoretically get themselves elected to the existing structures then change them from within, However, it would be a MAJOR mistake to make that your primary goal. That should be considered an extremely lucky stroke were it to become possible, and those institutions would need to be altered drastically.
City council with every neighborhood represented and no mayor? No leader?
State government with only an assembly, no leader, no governor? And, see, that doesn’t work because states are not bio-regions. So, your bio-regional council will eventually become what state government once was. But much simpler.
etc.
I have said all of this before, so the next person who claims they’ve never heard it can just shut their lying goddamned mouths.
Dansays
re:90.
Flaunting your ignorance of climate versus weather once again, we see. Hint: Everything you’ve posted is weather. You’ve been told this time and time again but fail to learn.
VW: the earth has been getting warmer for the last 11,000 years
BPL: Well, no, Violet, it has not. The Earth passed peak warmth at the height of the interglacial, 6,000-8,000 years ago, and was cooling since then until the industrial revolution started.
I won’t bother dealing with the rest of the lies you are spreading (undoubtedly without realizing them to be lies on your part) since they have been endlessly debunked here and elsewhere already.
zebrasays
Ray Ladbury #93,
When it comes to economic reasoning, Ray, you appear to latch on to distorted conceptualizations of how things work.
How exactly would AM change the paradigm? Why would a business be more able to “stay in business” more sustainably… what exactly would they be “retooling” to make?
AM certainly could reduce energy and resource consumption to some degree, but that is independent of the business model, in terms of sales and revenue.
Maybe you could give a concrete, specific example of what you are imagining?
The theory that holds the most water (couldn’t resist) is that the sun was and still is getting brighter, little by little.
Except that measurements of total solar irradiance since 1980, and estimates before then, show no statistically verifiable trend matching that of global mean surface temperature since 1880. In fact, TSI has declined since the mid-1940s, while GMST has risen more than 0.7 °C. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm:
The solar fluctuations since 1870 have contributed a maximum of 0.1 °C to temperature changes. In recent times the biggest solar fluctuation happened around 1960. But the fastest global warming started in 1980.
You’re free to dismiss SkepticalScience.com, of course. Since you seem confident in your mastery of the relevant science, we’ll presume you can do your own data analysis. The GMST record for any interval between 1880 and today can be plotted with Dr. Kevin Cowtan’s trend plotter. You can choose from multiple independently compiled datasets. For the TSI record through 2016, see this peer-reviewed publication: A Solar Irradiance Climate Data Record, submitted to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Data Record (CDR) program; subsequent updates are archived there as well. If you choose a different TSI record, be sure to document it for us.
On second though, don’t bother. Here’s a little post-publication peer review, Ms. Wagner: Your beautiful theory is destroyed by an ugly fact. The sun isn’t getting brighter, but the earth is warming anyway. Other regular RC commenters can refute the rest of your erroneous claims, all similarly undead AGW-denialist memes. Here I’ll merely speculate on what motivates you to reject 200 years of climate science accumulated by generations of trained, disciplined, competitive genuine skeptics around the world. You say:
The needs based society idea is similar to Marxism in terms of theory. Marxism theory states that everyone will work to their ability and receive based on needs. The needs based society also in theory has similar aspirations…
On the energy consumption side, I agree that sustainable is better. However, fossil fuels provide a basis for cost effect energy and human advancement.
With all due respect, Marxism my pale boomer buttocks. Your “needs based society” is a plainly ideological straw man, a dishonest rhetorical tactic. We all acknowledge “cost-effective” (i.e. competitively-priced) fossil carbon has powered the explosion of per-capita prosperity in the past two centuries. But human economic aspirations do not constrain basic physics. Why are you so determined to deny that the trend of GMST in the last 150 years has something to do with the concurrent anthropogenic transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere by the petatonne? Do you think that just because fossil fuels are cheap to produce and sell on the “free” energy market, there can be no externalized, i.e. socialized costs that must be paid by someone, sometime? As the evidence for anthropogenic global warming conclusively demonstrates, fossil fuels are only cost-effective because “the invisible hand never picks up the check” (KS Robinson). If that’s Marxism, then Friedrich Hayek was a Marxist!
Look, economists across the political spectrum agree that well-designed carbon fee and dividend legislation would drive the otherwise-free market to build out the existentially necessary carbon-neutral economy with alacrity. Why shouldn’t the USA, after careful collective deliberation, impose a per-tonne carbon fee on fuel producers, and let them pass their increased cost on to consumers, who would get it all back in periodic dividends? If you don’t like that decarbonization proposal, Ms. Wagner, then give us something we can live with. One way or another, though, it’s time for you to acknowledge that the comfort and convenience you presently enjoy has costs you’re not (yet) paying for. Failing that, we may assume you wish to go on socializing your private marginal climate-change costs out of all the marvelous goods and services you buy, letting involuntary third parties pay with their homes, livelihoods and lives instead. But are you certain you won’t be one of them?
Piotrsays
Re: Violet Wagner @92
Your house is built on sand, VW. Your claim that human emissions of CO2 are harmless, because …climate changed long before humans influenced CO2 levels.
This a tired denialist cliche. It’s like saying: “Your Honour, my client, even though caught with 2 empty gas cans where a major wildfire just started, cannot possibly be guilty of arson, because forest fires were happening … long before there were even humans”.
Then you think you invented the wheel:
VW: “What is the most prevalent Greenhouse gas? It represents 90% of the volume of all greenhouse gases. It’s not CO2 , its H20; water vapor. Surprised?”
In short: your “90% of the volume of all greenhouse gases” is like saying that A. Navalny could not have been poisoned by with Novichok, because 99.9% of the bottle he drunk was water and water does not poison people.
To assess human impact on climate – it matters whether a gas is a driver of a climate change, or merely a feedback. Water vapour is a feedback:it can’t change the climate, it can only amplify the changes already under way. So
– if we REDUCE CO2 – water vapour would amplify the cooling
– if we INCREASE CO2 – water vapour would amplify the warming
Which is the OPPOSITE than your claims – it means that water vapour makes the reductions of CO2 MORE IMPORTANT, not irrelevant, as in your self-confident lecturing of others:
VW: “generating false fear and forcing reductions at all cost is dangerous, costly, harmful, and frankly stupid.”
So whose ideas are harmful, and frankly stupid” now?
P.S.To paraphrase Keynes (based on your Marxist rejoinder, I’d imagine not your favourite ;-)) – when I am proven wrong, I change my opinions. What do you do?
” This is pretty much the opposite of what we want. Ideally, you’d buy a product once and hand it down to your progeny for generations.
Can a shift toward additive manufacturing, where a business can “retool” on a dime to make whatever is needed, help to resolve this?”
Nearly indestructable heirloom jade axes were the pride and joy of neolithic cultures in the old world and the new , and are still being produced in Melanesia,
Alas, Ray, such quality products proved uncompetitive with retool-on-a- dime flint knapping.
Do you really want to go forward that far into the future of the past ?
“More or less everyone wants to improve the collective welfare, but not at their own expense.” and this:
Asking people to imagine an alternative future calls upon their thinking and imagination — their frontal cortex. Asking people to fear change calls upon something much deeper and older, their brainstem sense that it’s a dangerous world, they’re lucky to have what they have, and any disruption threatens it. The latter, when invoked, tends to drown out the former. That’s why progressive change is so difficult to muster and so easy to reverse.
Biden plan (background “music” has a slight unpleasantness that sounds like nails on a blackboard, wish their production people had done better) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7uZ0Gok2g
We are all stuck with knowing what we are doing is not nearly enough, but needing to support doing something rather than nothing …
Al Bundysays
Ray Ladbury: One of the aspects of modern manufacturing that makes it difficult to reach sustainability is that economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis.
AB: Agreed, except for the word “modern”. Modern manufacturing entails sending the purchaser the specs and the purchaser’s 3D printer makes the product. Of course, no big corporation is needed because lots of nerds and whoever will be offering ever so many designs so that kinda scares the rich. And POOF! The incentive to make garbage products evaporates.
Wow, that’s a shocker! World Nuclear News says nuclear is the most efficient way to decarbonize!
Look at Sweden, France and Ontario. Res ipsa loquitur.
Ray Ladburysays
Zebra, OK, think about this. You can get this. Current manufacturing requires on making the same damn thing over and over again so that you can make it as cheaply as possible. Staying in business requires recurring demand and hence obsolescene. AM means that you can make what is needed at the time. You can build things to last and still stay in business.
“In The Year 3000, garbage flint products will disappear as 3D lava printers make quality stone tools affordable to all.”
Killiansays
98 Kevin McKinney Ray, #93–
…economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis. If a business is to remain in business, it has to count on obsolescence to regularly renew demand for a product it is geared to turn out repetitively and cheaply. This is pretty much the opposite of what we want.
Yes, that’s a penetrating observation.
Penetrating? Why in the world do you think I have been talking about needs-based design and Commons?
It’s why I keep saying that consumerism as we know it has to die. As I understand Killian, and presumably those sharing his views, more or less, that’s also, partly at least, why profit has to go away. It’s simply not sustainable–if I understand correctly what he has said on numerous occasions.
And all exceedingly obvious if one considers survival a good thing.
The problem for me is that trading seems to have been something people always did, and they presumably did it in order to profit.
Says whom? You are conflating trade and trading. “Trade” as a verb and noun in the societies that concern themselves with wealth and profit rather than meeting needs and living within the limits of their ecosystems are what we try to describe with economics. Trading is done to meet a need first, a want second, in societies that are egalitarian Commons. Profit in the way you mean it is not the goal. Fairness is always wanted and people of the modern societies conflate that with profit-seeking. “To profit from,” to gain a benefit from, does not equal “to gain a profit from,” to get out more than you put in.
Trading has always happened. Profiteering I would say is an illness of sedentary, acquisitive societies of the past 10 years.
Seek out Keen for econ and Helga Vierich (on FB) for anthropological background on simple scieties.
nigeljsays
Judith Anderson @117, very true. I have literally just posted a comment on a website relating to NZ’s referendum on legalising cannabis (which looks doomed to fail) pointing out the logic and evidence points towards the value of legalisation, but this requires thought and work to grasp, and is easily countered with ignorant back of the brain emotive scaremongering prevalent in the media! Although I don’t use the stuff myself, I think legalise and regulate makes sense.
But I do think we have to persevere with facts based analysis in terms of promoting understanding of the serious climate problem and countering the trolls. Facts tends to usually win out in the end. Most people accept einsteins theories and the theory of evolution for example. Of course we will never persuade a certain group of completely closed minded folks but they appear to be in a small minority.
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Al Bundy @118, yes you understand the 3d printing issue. A lot of other people seem to have missed the point.
nigeljsays
Killian @103 says “95%, Kevin. They said it, not me. What’s your excuse going to be now? Ah, right. Covered that above.”
The research paper Kevin posted talking about reducing consumption of non renewable resources, and reducing use of energy by 95% is not just saying we ‘have to’ cut consumption of those resources by 95%. It’s also claiming it is ‘possible’ to do that. Such huge estimates are not new. The UN has also claimed we could cut our consumption by 95%.
The problem is all these numbers are just pure speculation about the future in terms of 1) what ‘might’ be technically possible in terms of better energy efficiency and miniaturisation and 2) its speculation about what people would be prepared to do in terms of reduced consumption of technology and energy. It’s just plucking a number out of a hat, and is likely to be about as accurate as economic predictions or other technical hype.
Sadly I think humanity will go on using non renewable resources and modern technology and energy in general at a prodigious rate, until the resources run short and costs therefore increase, forcing us to recycle what is left, and it probably means half the world will never have a western middle class lifestyle. The evidence certainly suggests this, because there’s been no sign of any real change in 50 years and people have known about resource scarcity for many decades.
I don’t know why any of this bothers you because you give every indication that you think simple indigenous lifestyles are better than our lifestyles. Im more worried about destruction of the biosphere and this is largely due to deforestation and over population and bad farming practices an dpotentially climate change as well.
We might get our consumption patterns down to some extent, although probably not 95%, by wasting as little as possible, because that is a feasible, practical thing to do and it doesn’t cause people to have to scale back ownership of things thay take for granted. There are obvious psychological barriers to reducing consumption, but there would be less psychological barriers to reducing waste as such because its a less painful exercise.
For the record, I have never questioned or criticised these simplification ideas simply because you have presented them. I do wish you would stop suggesting I have and I doubt Kevin has either. I was aware of many of them way back in the 1980’s when “limits to growth” was published on resource scarcity, and people talked about solutions including low tech, low consumption communities embracing egalitarian decision making, and shared ownership structures. People have tried these sorts of communities where I live, and most of them failed after a few years so I’m not convinced the model is globally scaleable. What evidence we have suggests it isn’t but I wish such experiments good luck.
But your tendency to be snarky will most certainly alienate at least some people and its a mystery to me why you cant work that out and modify your behaviour.
I think the solution to resource scarcity and related problems is primarily to 1)focus on trying to eliminate waste and 2) getting the size of population down to reduce demand pressure. This is a nice simple formaula for people to grasp and is practically possible and will ease the risk of some sort of abrupt future transition, if that’s what bothers you. Planting a garden can help reduce waste, assuming one has the spare land of course.
You are clearly unable to see these and other problems with simplification, for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t see the obvious problems.
nigeljsays
Zebra @110, so do you actually have an answer to RL’s very SPECIFIC question, or are you just going to shift the goal posts?
We are all stuck with knowing what we are doing is not nearly enough, but needing to support doing something rather than nothing …
More moral clarity from Ms. Anderson. What makes her so rare?
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury @20,
“Zebra, OK, think about this. You can get this.”
Ray the eternal optimist. I hope you read my response @100 on the previous page, because it includes an interesting link on the issue relevant to your line of work.
nigeljsays
Killian @122
KM: “It’s why I keep saying that consumerism as we know it has to die. As I understand Killian, and presumably those sharing his views, more or less, that’s also, partly at least, why profit has to go away. It’s simply not sustainable–if I understand correctly what he has said on numerous occasions.”
Killian: “And all exceedingly obvious if one considers survival a good thing.”
Nigel: I do not see this as obvious. Nobody has explained an exact detailed mechanism of how consumerism “per se” and the profit motive “per se” would lead to our extinction. Instead the problem looks more like bad farming methods, over population depleting the biospheres resources, and the dumping of toxic waste in an unmitigated fashion. But Sweden deals with waste really well.
KM: “The problem for me (KM) is that trading seems to have been something people always did, and they presumably did it in order to profit.”
Killian: “Says whom? You are conflating trade and trading. “Trade” as a verb and noun in the societies that concern themselves with wealth and profit rather than meeting needs and living within the limits of their ecosystems are what we try to describe with economics. Trading is done to meet a need first, a want second, in societies that are egalitarian Commons. Profit in the way you mean it is not the goal. Fairness is always wanted and people of the modern societies conflate that with profit-seeking. “To profit from,” to gain a benefit from, does not equal “to gain a profit from,” to get out more than you put in.”
Nigel: People do indeed trade to get things that might be useful and obviously needs are prioritised over wants simply in order to survive, but sooner or later history shows they start to trade to make a surplus, ie a profit, for themselves. It an evolutionary process ffs, and capitalism is the outcome and is also an evolving process (not always in good ways).
Telling people they have to stop making a profit, or amassing a surplus (call it whatever you like) is not going to be easy and its almost trying to push cultural evolution into reverse gear. There are huge psychological hurdles. Our natural instincts are to acquire things, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter. Nobody will want to do reduce their materialism unless they see other people doing it and as a result nothing changes. Concentrate on what things might be more likely to change, like eliminating waste,
Al Bundysays
Ray Ladbury: . Current manufacturing requires on making the same damn thing over and over again so that you can make it as cheaply as possible. Staying in business requires recurring demand and hence obsolescene.
AB: If my company makes heirloom-quality gadgets I can lease them for a few pennies less than the garbage-purchaser’s credit card payment increase.
nigeljsays
I dont think its possible to precisely differentiate needs from wants, apart from a few needs essential for immediate short term survival like water, food, clothing and basic shelter. Anyone disagree?
zebrasays
Ray Ladbury #120,
I asked you to give an example. The fact that you can’t reinforces my observation that you are stuck in some fallacious cognitive loop.
What would be manufactured on demand, and last forever?? Automobiles? Chairs? You can’t come up with a single real-world application to illustrate your assertion?? AM, however much the tech advances, has a narrow set of applications.
How would AM change the economics? Are you saying that you will borrow the money (at compound interest, of course) to buy this magic machine, and to stock all the materials that might be used, and then have it sit idle while you wait for one-of-a-kind orders? How will you pay the rent on your factory?
Who is going to buy this very expensive object you are producing? How does the average person afford non-mass-produced objects?
Your conception about the economics is just wrong. There are already heirloom-quality objects being manufactured; the reality is that there is a limited market for them. People like cheap stuff, and they buy the latest model phone because of social pressures. AM has no effect on this.
Killiansays
Re 122: I posted, “Trading has always happened. Profiteering I would say is an illness of sedentary, acquisitive societies of the past 10 years.”
I meant to write, ” the past 10,000 years.”
Aigooo…
Susan Andersonsays
Thanks to moderators for moving my comments from Unforced Variations to Forced Responses. Will actually read RC explanation of what goes where next time.
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I am distressed that hacking the planet (of course) is gaining ground. Here, for example: As Climate Disasters Pile Up, a Radical Proposal Gains Traction: The idea of modifying Earth’s atmosphere to cool the planet, once seen as too risky to seriously consider, is attracting new money and attention. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/climate/climate-change-geoengineering.html
Reader Picks (as usual) do a good job of explaining why this is a terrible idea, but unfortunately the NYTimes gave its last “pick” to ill-informed wishful thinking, which will be the first comment everyone sees on opening. I would prefer not to have had to share mine with this foolishness.
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The Biden plan video is worth repeating, since I’m here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7uZ0Gok2g
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Mal, my blushes, I don’t see it that way. If only I were only more of a walker of walks than talker of talks …
Nigel at 128 says: “Telling people they have to stop making a profit, or amassing a surplus (call it whatever you like) is not going to be easy and its almost trying to push cultural evolution into reverse gear.”
Mike says: Could transition to an economy that is not as driven by the profit motive be like trying to push cultural evolution into a forward/survival gear from its present reverse/destruction/extinction gear? It’s hard to imagine that, isn’t it? There may be some good ideas about a different type of global economy to be found here: https://steadystate.org/
more Nigel: “Our natural instincts are to acquire things, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter.”
If our natural instinct to acquire things was satisfied with a full pantry, enough food to get through a winter, that would be a good thing. Nigel, please skim or read this site on over-consumption: https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/why-do-we-over-consume
Nigel says: “Nobody will want to do reduce their materialism unless they see other people doing it and as a result nothing changes.”
I think if you look around you will find that many people do want to reduce their materialism and are changing their habits already. Reducing materialism and consumption habits makes sense for many reasons. You might want to think about whether you are projecting your view and assuming that everyone has the same view. I think the prisoner’s dilemma is not the only game in town.
I will continue to reduce my consumption and think hard about materialism whether I see other people doing it or not. Happiness and consumption are not well connected imo.
Nigels says: “Concentrate on what things might be more likely to change, like eliminating waste”
You are welcome to do that. I have done quite a bit of that reduce waste thing myself. I think it’s a good thing, but I think it’s not sufficient to slow the sixth great extinction or to flatten the curve of ghg growth in the atmosphere. It feels very good to get your ducks in a row, to reduce waste and to have the deck chairs all organized and in straight lines, but if the ship is going down, you may need to look harder at why our ship is taking on water.
I don’t think anyone else is using “profit” as I did in my comment. I had said:
Profit is by definition what happens when you exchange something less valued for something more valued, no? And, as side note, if there is such a thing as a ‘win-win’ deal, which I believe there to be, then one might guess that conservation laws do not apply to wealth…
Killian separates trade and profit based on the societies in which they occur:
“Trade” as a verb and noun in the societies that concern themselves with wealth and profit rather than meeting needs and living within the limits of their ecosystems are what we try to describe with economics. Trading is done to meet a need first, a want second, in societies that are egalitarian Commons.
Nigel separates trade and profit based on some undefined “surplus”:
People do indeed trade to get things that might be useful and obviously needs are prioritised over wants simply in order to survive, but sooner or later history shows they start to trade to make a surplus, ie a profit, for themselves.
In the first instance, I have difficulty trying to imagine how the individual making a particular trade performs a different act in one society versus the other. Are some trades, or modes of trading, taboo because they are deemed to be unsustainable?
In the second, I have difficulty understanding the concept of surplus as it applies in this instance. If my model of “profit” is accepted, the “surplus” is the subjective difference between the value to trader A of the item he offered versus the item he received. The ‘surplus’ in that sense is the whole point of *any* trade, and doesn’t slip in at some point in history, because it’s been there all along.
One could, however, imagine a spectrum. At one end would be my imagined trade, which, since it was a simon-pure ideal transaction, was perfectly unconstrained. At the other end would be the transaction of slave-taking, which, translated into words, would run something like “You surrender everything you are, have, or want, to me–and in return I don’t torture you to death, or at least not too quickly or too soon.”
That begins to get to Killian’s distinction, perhaps, as a apparent key word in his description was “egalitarian.” It is not original to suggest that a pre-requisite for a valid exchange is relative equality of power between parties (with respect to the circumstances of that trade, at least.) And that brings in “profiteering”, as distinct from simply profiting: the former, one might propose, happens when one party in an exchange uses an imbalance of power to extract value from the other’s party’s position.
While otherwise working towards net zero carbon, of course.
Mr. Know It Allsays
92 – Violet Wagner
“We’ve heard that global warming started with the Industrial Revolution. But, is that accurate? Well, No. Actually the earth has been getting warmer for the last 11,000 years, since the end of the last ice age…..”
96 – Kevin McKinney
“No, it hasn’t. The height of postglacial warmth (until recently, that is) was about 8,000 years back, give or take:….”
Exactly right, Violet. The real question, the inconvenient question for Kevin and others, is “How did the earth suddenly warm and end the ice age?” Did dinosaurs suddenly find a huge methane-rich plot of beans?!?! :) Of course, the “believers” will have an answer and blather on about changes in the orbit of the earth as if THAT is believable. What kind of forces would be involved in changing the orbit of a ball of rock 8,000 miles in diameter orbiting the sun at ~67,000 miles/hour? It would take some astrophysics to man-splain THAT wouldn’t it? Well, I found an astrophysicist to man-splain it to me, and I’ll be paying close attention to as many videos on it as I can find:
Based on comments under the video I have not decided if this astrophysicist understands the subject, but I’m going to watch more videos and think about it. ;)
After reading all of the replies to your comment, you might think this AGW stuff is some kind of religion, and maybe you’re right!
In other climate news, cold records in Oregon are falling faster than the thermometer in the coming ice age. Broke a 1919 record by 8 deg F, and several more: (note the source is the extreme leftist Oregonian, not Breitbart.) ;)
Very good comment overall, Nigel. You express yourself well. I’m largely in reluctant agreement, but ;^). I’ll also adopt an evolutionary perspective here. You say:
Our natural instincts are to acquire things, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter. Nobody will want to do reduce their materialism unless they see other people doing it and as a result nothing changes.
I’m convinced that Homo sapiens does exhibit “instincts”, i.e. genetically inherited behavioral predispositions. It’s the assumption underlying the Tragedy of the Commons, a term biologists apply to other species as well (e.g. Rankin et al. 2007). Yet undeniably, our species also exhibits culturally transmitted behavior. I see little evidence our inherited behavioral drivers have changed since our expansion out of Africa, but what a difference cultural evolution has made! Consider this: In 1968, G. Hardin used human population growth as an example of a TotC. At that time, the global total fertility rate (TFR) was 4.9. Concern about the aggregate impact on the biosphere of the population bomb swept the global intelligentsia. Although Hardin’s political opinions were notorious, he ostensibly wasn’t prepared for the subsequent political backlash. Whatever his intentions were, he was accused of proposing genocidal population “control” in third-world nations. I can’t find where, but he later said his biggest mistake was not calling it “the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons”. By management, he meant “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.”
Ironically, the population bomb turns out to be self-limiting without coercion. Global TFR has dropped from over 5.0 in 1964 to below 2.5 today, see my previous link. In fact, it’s approaching replacement rate of about 2.3, below which our total numbers will begin to fall, as the demographic bulge initiated over 60 years ago contracts through this century. The rapid decline in TFR is attributable to drastically reduced infant mortality, along with improved female education and empowerment; i.e. the classic demographic transition, more or less. In India, for example, TFR now 2.2, in Brazil and China 1.7. While government coercion has played some role, at least in China, women throughout the developing world are increasingly having fewer children voluntarily, preferring to raise no more than two to compete in their modern societies. That is, human population growth is not a TotC, simply because the marginal cost to individual women of having more children soon outweighs the benefit. It’s demand on the biosphere by people already born that’s tragically open-ended. Remember I=PAT? Per capita consumption, determined by rising affluence (A) and technological innovation (T), is now the bigger driver of trends in global impact (I). P is at least 1.0 for every living human, higher for those with offspring; while AT is positive for anyone with the most tenuous connection to the global economy, which of course includes everyone on RC without exception. No wonder “We are all stuck with knowing what we are doing is not nearly enough”. Only immediate suicide, leaving no offspring, would be!
In any event, once published, Hardin’s title phrase was taken up by the behavioral sciences, as a convenient metaphor for a defined class of social problems: e.g. E. Ostrom, a political scientist and IMHO important visionary thinker, was awarded the 2009 Economics Nobel for her work on stakeholder groups and non-coercive enforcement of collectively chosen limits on common-pool resource use. Also see e.g. Ostrom 2000, Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms; and I particularly recommend her 2011 Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture slides. Ostrom agreed that climate is a global commons, but recognizing the difficulty of enforcing international decarbonization agreements or legislating effective national policies, she proposed “polycentric” collective responses to AGW, arguing that we should support action in all collective scopes, from neighborhood cooperatives to global youth movements. Yet she didn’t rule out the possibility that enforceable (i.e. “coercive”) national and international agreements might ultimately be required. She nonetheless referred to the “Drama of the Commons”, which need not end in tragedy! Dudes, I’m tired of linking citations. You can look all of this stuff up.
Anyway, as Ostrom was no doubt aware, concentrated capital plays an overbalancing role in the drama of the climate commons, by resolutely keeping the cost of AGW out of the market price of fossil carbon. AFAICT, the only hope of overcoming fossil fuel money in the US is to outvote it. All non-trumpist Americans, get thee to the polls! And remember, a vote for virtually any non-blue candidate, or no vote at all, is a vote for oafishal AGW-denial. That’s not ideological bias, merely a sad historical fact.
nigeljsays
mike @135 , thanks for the interesting and useful references. Yes I agree there are some good potential theoretical alternatives socioeconomic models, and I’ve read some similar references to the ones you provided.
All I said was it looks like its going to be a slow process transitioning to a new system and to widely reduced levels of per capita consumption, for the practical, technical and psychological reasons I stated. Yes a few people have changed their habits, but mostly only small numbers of people and only marginally. Nothing you have posted convincingly changes any of the points I actually made.
As such we are very reliant on scaling up sufficient zero carbon clean energy to make the current system work without ending up a complete shambles with blackouts. So we will need a lot of new energy by 2050. As consumption patters fall over longer time periods, assuming values and lifestyles change dramatically, and I hope they do, we wont need as much new energy, especially if population growth stops and goes negative.
I did NOT say that we should continue to consume resources as normal. I have never said that, and I’ve pointed out many times that we should aim to reduce our consumption patterns, even on this months FR thread. Which I presume you have read. But I like to be realistic about what’s possible.
Yes eliminating waste in conventional interpretation would not fix the climate problem. But I’ve said before several times we can interpret waste a bit more widely. We could consider that burning fossil fuels for energy is a waste of a resource, given 1)its very finite and once its burned its essentially gone for good, and 2)we have alternatives like renewable energy and 3) fossil fuels might be better used for petrochemical applications where they could last for many centuries if we do it right.
And of course we need renewable energy (or nuclear power, I dont care so much which, they both do the job. I think its for local communities to decide which.)
nigeljsays
zebra @131
“I asked you (RL) to give an example. The fact that you can’t reinforces my observation that you are stuck in some fallacious cognitive loop.”
How about you answer Ladburys question FIRST : “Killian, and whoever else wants to chime in. One of the aspects of modern manufacturing that makes it difficult to reach sustainability is that economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis. ….Can a shift toward additive manufacturing, where a business can “retool” on a dime to make whatever is needed, help to resolve this?”
Its really simple. Yes or no. If no why? Quoting known problems with 3d printing is beside the point and doesnt invalidate that 3D printing and other alternative manufacturing might at least reduce the built in obsolescence problem.
“What would be manufactured on demand, and last forever??”
Strawman. Nobody said last forever.
“Automobiles? Chairs? You can’t come up with a single real-world application to illustrate your assertion??”
Examples of current 3d printing can be easily googled.
“How would AM change the economics? Are you saying that you will borrow the money (at compound interest, of course) to buy this magic machine, and to stock all the materials that might be used, and then have it sit idle while you wait for one-of-a-kind orders? How will you pay the rent on your factory?”
FFS, people are already doing 3d printing where they perceive a gap in the market. They have clearly solved all these problems, so its not necessary to litigate them all over again on this website. Now there are obvious reasons to suggest 3d printing will not completely displace conventional mass production, but it is likely to continue gain some market share. Like AB said it might eventually start to force mass producers to make longer lasting products.
“Who is going to buy this very expensive object you are producing? How does the average person afford non-mass-produced objects?”
3D printing is actually quite economic. And it enables people to buy specialised products that would otherwise be too costly because you would have to retool a huge assembly line.
“Your conception about the economics is just wrong. There are already heirloom-quality objects being manufactured; the reality is that there is a limited market for them. People like cheap stuff….”
That is true but nobody claimed magical properties for 3D printing, just that it could HELP reduce the built in obsolescence problem.
nigeljsays
Mike @135, just a clarification. I said “All I said was it looks like its going to be a slow process transitioning to a new system and to widely reduced levels of per capita consumption, for the practical, technical and psychological reasons I stated.” I didn’t use the exact words slow process in in the comment you referred to, but I’ve said it many times on this website.
Susan, re your link to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it seems ironic of Raypierre to complain of the moral hazards of the ScopEx experiment:
” Harvard’s reckless plan for a privately-funded field trial testing some of the key elements needed for albedo modification… crosses a thin red line beyond which lies the slippery slope down to ever-larger field trials and ultimately deployment… SCoPEx, involves a powered balloon which would spread about a kilogram of water or calcium carbonate (limestone) particles in the stratosphere, over a swathe of air about a kilometer long and 100 meters in diameter… it does pose a considerable social and political risk in being the first step towards development of actual technology for deployment”
bexause ScopEx’s scope is in fact far smaller that such unintentional and uninstrumented exercises in aerosol albedo change as skywriting advertisements.
Kevin McKinney @136, surplus was probably a bad choice of words on my part but equates to profit. And I agree with your definition relating to trade that “Profit is by definition what happens when you exchange something less valued for something more valued, no?”
But I was really just saying very early examples of trade probably didnt involve any notions of making a profit as such, and perhaps K is right to that extent. It was probably a more naive transaction of swapping things based around different groups having different resources or skills. Whether this is based on needs or wants is clearly immaterial. Its just a process.
But society has clearly transitioned long ago to a profit making model, and this has been a cultural evolution and as such its not going to be easy or quick unwinding this embedded process. Not for profit organisations do exist, but have not taken over. And I think the difference between a naive form of trade and making a profit is actually a very fine line.
And all this assumes that making a profit is inherently wrong, and I’m not convinced about that. Most of the justifications are just hand waving. Profit has upsides in that it allows for investment and innovation as well as rewarding the original investors.
And I don’t agree with Killians comments that appear to suggest wants associates with making a profit. Not for profit organisations still sometimes provide for wants. I would categorise a university education as more of a want than a need.
nigeljsays
Mr. Know It All @138,
“What kind of forces would be involved in changing the orbit of a ball of rock 8,000 miles in diameter orbiting the sun at ~67,000 miles/hour? It would take some astrophysics to man-splain THAT wouldn’t it? ”
Good grief. The earth changes its orbit and wobbles around on its axis. This is not somebodies opinion. Its been deduced from various observations and is a scientific fact. The universe has a lot of huge forces operating in it. Heard of the big bang theory that ultimately set all this sort of thing in motion?
Honestly the way you write makes you sound like a typical trump supporter, the guy who gets d and e grades at school. I suggest you change your style :)
Exactly right, Violet. The real question, the inconvenient question for Kevin and others, is “How did the earth suddenly warm and end the ice age?” Did dinosaurs suddenly find a huge methane-rich plot of beans?!?! :) Of course, the “believers” will have an answer and blather on about changes in the orbit of the earth as if THAT is believable. What kind of forces would be involved in changing the orbit of a ball of rock 8,000 miles in diameter orbiting the sun at ~67,000 miles/hour?
This looks like self-parody. It’s the old “humans weren’t responsible for the warming that ended the Pleistocene, so they can’t be now, because warming can only ever have one cause” howler, plus an undisguised attack from personal incredulity. Doesn’t he realize the orbital mechanics that result in Milankovich cycles can be directly observed?
IAT:
Oregon says “send us some AGW please”.
:)
He must not have smelled the smoke this summer. Oregon has had quite enough AGW already, thank you! But how is one to interpret his smile emoji? One never knows!
IAT:
After reading all of the replies to your comment, you might think this AGW stuff is some kind of religion, and maybe you’re right!
But then there’s physics. If Mr. IAT didn’t exist, OTOH, would it be necessary to invent him ;^)?
Killiansays
You’ve heard this before. There’s a reason it’s echoing.
“Re-commoning” of the world, both material and social, will be central to this great transformation of civilization. Peace, both domestic and global, will likewise be an essential element in a renewed and reimagined civilization. The age of darkness of the past few centuries, rife with imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, and patriarchal power, should now close.
…The new worldview emerging in the context of the present global systemic crisis is in fact resonant with a very ancient worldview. …The idea of returning to “business as usual” is an inevitably catastrophic idea. Only a radical transformation of the fundamental forms of our civilization will be sufficient to avert future disaster. Transformative praxis of the many, by the many, and for the many, holds the only realistic promise and source of hope for our collective survival. Now there can be no more excuses, and no turning back.
You want to keep saying profit, but the goal of exchange in societies that understand and live within ecological limits is not acquisitive,it is needs-based. Not profit, perceived *value.* Inportant here is the lack of any real gain in trying to “get over on” another person. Or community. You will likely need them someday. In fact, that person/community is extremely likely to be part of your own semi-kin network of villages. It makesno sense to want to weaken them for your own gain. In fact, since we’re talking a Commons, there is no personal gain at all.
Yes, the power dynamic is removed. Mind you, there a number of different approaches to Commonsing, and I intentionally focus only on full Commons because thatis the only form I see as being able to achieve a regenerative society.
Profiteering I would define as wanting to maximize what you get at another’s/others’ expense rather than seeking fair trade.
Killiansays
135 mike: You make some excellentobservations. As I have said ad nauseum, “People won’t,” is a poor argument to hang one’s haton when people will and already are.
Particularly blindedto the facts of history is the claim about human nature. Fact: Those who live within Nature’s limits l8ve exactly as I have said we all must: Regeneratively. And… tey always have. They never stopped. 300,000 yearsof human history vs the last 10k? Which is more likely to reveal what “human nature” truly is? Yes, we have desires. All humans do. It can be hard to manage them. This is why we develop customs, social norms, etc. E.g., the father telling his teen sin to get him water and not only the sin, but the other people present teasing the man about being a king since he thinks he can tell another human what to do.
The man got his own water.
Killiansays
130 nigel:
Of course you don’t. So, stop telling others what is or is not possible; you have quite explicitly stated you have absolutely no idea.
#92 Needs based economics is a rehashing of the words of Jesus. If that is Marxist to you then so be it. The rest of your post is a waste of time to deal with, sheer nonsense. Just one point nobody said that CO2 is the only green house gas, it is however the one we have added so much of to the atmosphere.
Uhm…Violet Wagner @92, you are aware that this is the blog of actual climate scientists, right? You may get away with your misinformation elsewhere, but not here. For example, climate scientists know, clearly unlike you, that the increase in atmospheric CO2 observed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is essentially completely caused by anthropogenic activity. That is, your little “only 0.8%” is in reality a huge “all of it” in terms of the observed increase. And that’s just one of your false talking points. You might want to check this blog for further explanations on the role of water (hint: it is a *precipitable* greenhouse gas), for example. And maybe look for “Holocene Thermal Maximum”, too, before talking about “it has been warming for 11,000 years”.
87 Kevin McKinney:
Making an exception…
Killian, #79–
There is a pathway, but you must learn the true nature of simplicity/regenerative systems/fair governance/social equity.
I’ve been telling you. Hear and listen.
I spent years “listening.” Never did hear anything that really clarified in anything like concrete terms what this “pathway” would be, nor where it would actually lead. And the descriptions of the “where” did not seem to me to be very internally consistent.
Now, the paper I cited did not offer anything by way of pathway to achieve the stated goal, either.
However, it *did* offer a pretty concrete take on what a (materially) “decent life” might entail, and what that would cost. That’s what I thought interesting, and potentially helpful. Killian, if you can emulate that in some fashion and find a way to communicate with some specificity, I would be glad to listen to those ideas. (But I’m sure not wading through paragraphs and paragraphs of vituperation and ego, which is candidly–and sadly–most of what I see from you.)
However, it *did* offer a pretty concrete take on what a (materially) “decent life” might entail, and what that would cost.
Does it matter? They were not talking about sustainability, they were talking efficiency and thermodynamics. Good, but not good enough. If an analysis does not include real-world limits, real-world use of resources, not averaged energy flows, it is not ultimately useful. The life they describe? Not regenerative, thus pointless. They are not regenerative designers, Kevin.
The true value of the paper is simply that it is an “authority” saying consumption must fall to the levels I told you ten years ago they must fall to so that, perhaps, you will understand you have royally fucked up by not listening for those ten years, and will now perhaps choose to begin to.
You have been told everything you need to know to chart your regenerative course; you blind yourself to it using me as your excuse.
If you refuse to even attempt to understand, how can you expect to? I told you, if you refuse to understand simplicity, you *cannot* understand the explanations of it and how to do it. If you refuse to learn how to do regenerative design, you *cannot* understand how to DO simplicity and a regenerative community.
You want to do calculus without learning geometry, differential equations and algebra first. Or, more apt to you, want to compose a score without knowing how to write notes and chords.
You expect to be told how to do regenerative systems in a blog post. It’s absurd, is it not? A permaculture course is the equivalent of a full year of a university course, but you want it in a blog post. You create a false gatekeeper of your own making: “Killian won’t tell me” when the reality is “I can’t be bothered to educate myself.” Why? For you to ponder.
You will never understand what must be done and what can be done to get to a regenerative future until you learn how to do regenerative design. It is VIA that education that the power of simplicity is understood. The breathtaking shift when the scales of modernity fall from one’s eyes so one can see, Matrix-like, the underlying living systems for the first time shocks the system. This is why so many say their permaculture course was life-changing.
To see decision-making set to First Principles not just occasionally, but always, is a shift to what is fundamental about living day to day.
Or, you can go live with an intact indigenous community still living the aboriginal lives they always have. Either way will lead you to the same place. (I suspect the tribal experience would be mind-altering, but the permaculture course more convenient, more comfortable, and would take a lot less time.)
95%, Kevin. They said it, not me. What’s your excuse going to be now? Ah, right. Covered that above.
Up to you, Kevin. Always was. Only you can choose to hear what is said rather than your inner bullshit.
Vituperative? Irony.
Ego? Irony.
Life on RealClimate:
Killian: We must reduce consumption in the US 90% and worldwide about 80%. Simplicity or bust.
Kevin: Kiwian said simpwicity! Kiwian YUCK! Simpwicity, YUCK!
Scientist: We really must reduce consumption a lot, like, 60-80%.
Killian: Not enough. US 90% and worldwide about 80%. Simplicity or bust.
Kevin: Kiwian said simpwicity! Kiwian YUCK! Simpwicity, YUCK!
Very recent scientist: We really must reduce consumption a lot, like, 95% in the highest-consuming nations.
Kevin: Oh. But, Kiwian betuh be nice!!!! Or… YUCK!
Jesus, dude… buy a fucking clue about where the problem here actually lies.
81 Engineer-Poet: I’ll just put this here….
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/New-nuclear-the-most-efficient-way-to-decarbonise
1. Regenerative systems are not based on efficiency, but on efficiency and robustness, i.e. resilience.
2. Not sustainable.
3. Nuclear already occupies all the space in the energy mix it needs to. Let it help manage the transition, then let it die except for a tiny number of truly niche needs, if an absolutely unmeetable need in some other way… like not doing the things that need that extreme form of energy and resource waste.
nigel, dear, see my comments to Kevin re the value of that paper. Son, you got nothing to teach me. Nor anyone else.
93 Ray Ladbury: Killian, and whoever else wants to chime in. One of the aspects of modern manufacturing that makes it difficult to reach sustainability is that economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis. If a business is to remain in business, it has to count on obsolescence to regularly renew demand for a product it is geared to turn out repetitively and cheaply. This is pretty much the opposite of what we want. Ideally, you’d buy a product once and hand it down to your progeny for generations.
Can a shift toward additive manufacturing, where a business can “retool” on a dime to make whatever is needed, help to resolve this?
You are, at best, describing a shift at the beginning of transition. Profit, draining energy out of the system, thus equaling waste (as told to Keen @ 2010) in the system and destabilizing it (let alone reducing the pool of available energy – resources – by about 50%, currently, to be shared by about 80-90%.)
I’m not super-interested in the shift until I can get people to understand the destination. I guarantee you we will not get to regenerative accidentally; we just do not have the time to do this in a series of decades-/century-long iterations.
However, if you’re going to insist on a drawn out transition instead of just solving the problems now (with about 50 years), then Keen and Raworth are about as good as you’re going to get.
However, though it has been claimed by two gentlement here, repeatedly, that I have not told you what to do (Really, it’s RIGHT there, they just can’t see it. Optical illusion?), this is how you transition:
1.
* Start a garden.
* Start water capture/your own water.
* Start energy production. (Could be as simple as planting fast-growing trees or woody shrubs for pollarding for wood energy or could be wind or solar – just don’t fool yourself into believing W&S are sustainable, they are are not at present.)
* Reduce consumption to needs wherever, however, and as quickly as possible within *your* particular household limits/conditions.
2.
* Do this with neighbors.
* Start a community council.
– egalitarian
– start meeting needs not met by the current system.
– start the process of Commonsing, i.e. share like your damned momma told you to! And plan the things in 1 and 2 together.
– start reskilling (in a resilient community, most people know how to do all basic things and multiple people and everyone masters multiple higher-level skills. Resilience.)
3.
* Network with other communities and start a city/regional citizens’ council.
– egalitarian
– start meeting needs not met by the current system.
– start the process of Commonsing, i.e. share like your damned momma told you to! And plan the things in 1, 2 and 3 together.
– start reskilling (in a resilient community, most people know how to do all basic things and multiple people and everyone masters multiple higher-level skills. Resilience.)
4. Network with other city/regional citizens’ councils to form a bio-regional citizens’ council.
– egalitarian
– start meeting needs not met by the current system.
– start the process of Commonsing, i.e. share like your damned momma told you to! And plan the things in 1, 2, and 4 together.
– start reskilling (in a resilient community, most people know how to do all basic things and multiple people and everyone masters multiple higher-level skills. Resilience.)
CRITICAL POINT: Each level of the network solves problems *only* at its scale and *only* with the cooperation of all other levels. Decisions are not final until they are approved at all four levels.
As you opt out of the old paradigm and into Regenerative Governance, the current system will continue to crumble. This is why you start with food, water, energy, shelter. If you are existentially secure, you can stand, you can resist (non-violently), your can build and create.
Don’t fight the Old Paradigm, create the new one. If you fight it, you will lose (at least for longer time than the risk analysis makes safe – which is why 60’s era civil action is not how we do this: Asking government and power systems to end themselves for your benefit is just delusional. It has never happened in history and will not happen this time. I find it bizarre people believe the wealthy and powerful and the government they own is going to unmake itself for your benefit! No… this is bottom-up all the way.)
Fill in the niches where it fails and grow the system so that as critical failure comes, the Commons network in your bio-region can hold thins together and avoid as much much pain and chaos as possible.
In terms of economics, see Keen on Jubilee. An orderly transition, exceedingly unlikely, will only be possible with a global jubilee. Without that, there is no way for the current system to morph into Regenerative Governance. With it, the various councils *could* theoretically get themselves elected to the existing structures then change them from within, However, it would be a MAJOR mistake to make that your primary goal. That should be considered an extremely lucky stroke were it to become possible, and those institutions would need to be altered drastically.
City council with every neighborhood represented and no mayor? No leader?
State government with only an assembly, no leader, no governor? And, see, that doesn’t work because states are not bio-regions. So, your bio-regional council will eventually become what state government once was. But much simpler.
etc.
I have said all of this before, so the next person who claims they’ve never heard it can just shut their lying goddamned mouths.
re:90.
Flaunting your ignorance of climate versus weather once again, we see. Hint: Everything you’ve posted is weather. You’ve been told this time and time again but fail to learn.
E-P 81: https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/New-nuclear-the-most-efficient-way-to-decarbonise
BPL: Wow, that’s a shocker! World Nuclear News says nuclear is the most efficient way to decarbonize!
VW: the earth has been getting warmer for the last 11,000 years
BPL: Well, no, Violet, it has not. The Earth passed peak warmth at the height of the interglacial, 6,000-8,000 years ago, and was cooling since then until the industrial revolution started.
I won’t bother dealing with the rest of the lies you are spreading (undoubtedly without realizing them to be lies on your part) since they have been endlessly debunked here and elsewhere already.
Ray Ladbury #93,
When it comes to economic reasoning, Ray, you appear to latch on to distorted conceptualizations of how things work.
How exactly would AM change the paradigm? Why would a business be more able to “stay in business” more sustainably… what exactly would they be “retooling” to make?
AM certainly could reduce energy and resource consumption to some degree, but that is independent of the business model, in terms of sales and revenue.
Maybe you could give a concrete, specific example of what you are imagining?
zxdcfvghjxdcfghjsdfgh https://www.youtube.com
Violet Wagner:
Except that measurements of total solar irradiance since 1980, and estimates before then, show no statistically verifiable trend matching that of global mean surface temperature since 1880. In fact, TSI has declined since the mid-1940s, while GMST has risen more than 0.7 °C. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm:
You’re free to dismiss SkepticalScience.com, of course. Since you seem confident in your mastery of the relevant science, we’ll presume you can do your own data analysis. The GMST record for any interval between 1880 and today can be plotted with Dr. Kevin Cowtan’s trend plotter. You can choose from multiple independently compiled datasets. For the TSI record through 2016, see this peer-reviewed publication: A Solar Irradiance Climate Data Record, submitted to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Data Record (CDR) program; subsequent updates are archived there as well. If you choose a different TSI record, be sure to document it for us.
On second though, don’t bother. Here’s a little post-publication peer review, Ms. Wagner: Your beautiful theory is destroyed by an ugly fact. The sun isn’t getting brighter, but the earth is warming anyway. Other regular RC commenters can refute the rest of your erroneous claims, all similarly undead AGW-denialist memes. Here I’ll merely speculate on what motivates you to reject 200 years of climate science accumulated by generations of trained, disciplined, competitive genuine skeptics around the world. You say:
With all due respect, Marxism my pale boomer buttocks. Your “needs based society” is a plainly ideological straw man, a dishonest rhetorical tactic. We all acknowledge “cost-effective” (i.e. competitively-priced) fossil carbon has powered the explosion of per-capita prosperity in the past two centuries. But human economic aspirations do not constrain basic physics. Why are you so determined to deny that the trend of GMST in the last 150 years has something to do with the concurrent anthropogenic transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere by the petatonne? Do you think that just because fossil fuels are cheap to produce and sell on the “free” energy market, there can be no externalized, i.e. socialized costs that must be paid by someone, sometime? As the evidence for anthropogenic global warming conclusively demonstrates, fossil fuels are only cost-effective because “the invisible hand never picks up the check” (KS Robinson). If that’s Marxism, then Friedrich Hayek was a Marxist!
Look, economists across the political spectrum agree that well-designed carbon fee and dividend legislation would drive the otherwise-free market to build out the existentially necessary carbon-neutral economy with alacrity. Why shouldn’t the USA, after careful collective deliberation, impose a per-tonne carbon fee on fuel producers, and let them pass their increased cost on to consumers, who would get it all back in periodic dividends? If you don’t like that decarbonization proposal, Ms. Wagner, then give us something we can live with. One way or another, though, it’s time for you to acknowledge that the comfort and convenience you presently enjoy has costs you’re not (yet) paying for. Failing that, we may assume you wish to go on socializing your private marginal climate-change costs out of all the marvelous goods and services you buy, letting involuntary third parties pay with their homes, livelihoods and lives instead. But are you certain you won’t be one of them?
Re: Violet Wagner @92
Your house is built on sand, VW. Your claim that human emissions of CO2 are harmless, because …climate changed long before humans influenced CO2 levels.
This a tired denialist cliche. It’s like saying: “Your Honour, my client, even though caught with 2 empty gas cans where a major wildfire just started, cannot possibly be guilty of arson, because forest fires were happening … long before there were even humans”.
Then you think you invented the wheel:
VW: “What is the most prevalent Greenhouse gas? It represents 90% of the volume of all greenhouse gases. It’s not CO2 , its H20; water vapor. Surprised?”
no, nobody was – we have seen the same denialist cliche many times before. See the debunking of it on this forum and elsewhere
https://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Water_vapor_accounts_for_almost_all_of_the_greenhouse_effect
In short: your “90% of the volume of all greenhouse gases” is like saying that A. Navalny could not have been poisoned by with Novichok, because 99.9% of the bottle he drunk was water and water does not poison people.
To assess human impact on climate – it matters whether a gas is a driver of a climate change, or merely a feedback. Water vapour is a feedback:it can’t change the climate, it can only amplify the changes already under way. So
– if we REDUCE CO2 – water vapour would amplify the cooling
– if we INCREASE CO2 – water vapour would amplify the warming
Which is the OPPOSITE than your claims – it means that water vapour makes the reductions of CO2 MORE IMPORTANT, not irrelevant, as in your self-confident lecturing of others:
VW: “generating false fear and forcing reductions at all cost is dangerous, costly, harmful, and frankly stupid.”
So whose ideas are harmful, and frankly stupid” now?
P.S.To paraphrase Keynes (based on your Marxist rejoinder, I’d imagine not your favourite ;-)) – when I am proven wrong, I change my opinions. What do you do?
I guess we will see …
===
Piotr
From NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/climate/trump-election-climate-noaa.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
jgnfld @94 — Here is about World Nuclear News:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/About-us
RL 93:
” This is pretty much the opposite of what we want. Ideally, you’d buy a product once and hand it down to your progeny for generations.
Can a shift toward additive manufacturing, where a business can “retool” on a dime to make whatever is needed, help to resolve this?”
Nearly indestructable heirloom jade axes were the pride and joy of neolithic cultures in the old world and the new , and are still being produced in Melanesia,
Alas, Ray, such quality products proved uncompetitive with retool-on-a- dime flint knapping.
Do you really want to go forward that far into the future of the past ?
https://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/04/blue_jade.html
A friend sent me this gem from Vox about why people won’t do what they need to do; included are a couple of extracts. It also includes the Biden plan, which seems quite good to me.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21531494/joe-biden-oil-industry-clean-energy-transition-trump
“More or less everyone wants to improve the collective welfare, but not at their own expense.” and this:
Biden plan (background “music” has a slight unpleasantness that sounds like nails on a blackboard, wish their production people had done better)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7uZ0Gok2g
We are all stuck with knowing what we are doing is not nearly enough, but needing to support doing something rather than nothing …
Ray Ladbury: One of the aspects of modern manufacturing that makes it difficult to reach sustainability is that economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis.
AB: Agreed, except for the word “modern”. Modern manufacturing entails sending the purchaser the specs and the purchaser’s 3D printer makes the product. Of course, no big corporation is needed because lots of nerds and whoever will be offering ever so many designs so that kinda scares the rich. And POOF! The incentive to make garbage products evaporates.
@108:
Look at Sweden, France and Ontario. Res ipsa loquitur.
Zebra, OK, think about this. You can get this. Current manufacturing requires on making the same damn thing over and over again so that you can make it as cheaply as possible. Staying in business requires recurring demand and hence obsolescene. AM means that you can make what is needed at the time. You can build things to last and still stay in business.
118
Al, where is Conan OBrien now that we need him:
“In The Year 3000, garbage flint products will disappear as 3D lava printers make quality stone tools affordable to all.”
98 Kevin McKinney Ray, #93–
…economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis. If a business is to remain in business, it has to count on obsolescence to regularly renew demand for a product it is geared to turn out repetitively and cheaply. This is pretty much the opposite of what we want.
Yes, that’s a penetrating observation.
Penetrating? Why in the world do you think I have been talking about needs-based design and Commons?
It’s why I keep saying that consumerism as we know it has to die. As I understand Killian, and presumably those sharing his views, more or less, that’s also, partly at least, why profit has to go away. It’s simply not sustainable–if I understand correctly what he has said on numerous occasions.
And all exceedingly obvious if one considers survival a good thing.
The problem for me is that trading seems to have been something people always did, and they presumably did it in order to profit.
Says whom? You are conflating trade and trading. “Trade” as a verb and noun in the societies that concern themselves with wealth and profit rather than meeting needs and living within the limits of their ecosystems are what we try to describe with economics. Trading is done to meet a need first, a want second, in societies that are egalitarian Commons. Profit in the way you mean it is not the goal. Fairness is always wanted and people of the modern societies conflate that with profit-seeking. “To profit from,” to gain a benefit from, does not equal “to gain a profit from,” to get out more than you put in.
Trading has always happened. Profiteering I would say is an illness of sedentary, acquisitive societies of the past 10 years.
Seek out Keen for econ and Helga Vierich (on FB) for anthropological background on simple scieties.
Judith Anderson @117, very true. I have literally just posted a comment on a website relating to NZ’s referendum on legalising cannabis (which looks doomed to fail) pointing out the logic and evidence points towards the value of legalisation, but this requires thought and work to grasp, and is easily countered with ignorant back of the brain emotive scaremongering prevalent in the media! Although I don’t use the stuff myself, I think legalise and regulate makes sense.
But I do think we have to persevere with facts based analysis in terms of promoting understanding of the serious climate problem and countering the trolls. Facts tends to usually win out in the end. Most people accept einsteins theories and the theory of evolution for example. Of course we will never persuade a certain group of completely closed minded folks but they appear to be in a small minority.
————————–
Al Bundy @118, yes you understand the 3d printing issue. A lot of other people seem to have missed the point.
Killian @103 says “95%, Kevin. They said it, not me. What’s your excuse going to be now? Ah, right. Covered that above.”
The research paper Kevin posted talking about reducing consumption of non renewable resources, and reducing use of energy by 95% is not just saying we ‘have to’ cut consumption of those resources by 95%. It’s also claiming it is ‘possible’ to do that. Such huge estimates are not new. The UN has also claimed we could cut our consumption by 95%.
The problem is all these numbers are just pure speculation about the future in terms of 1) what ‘might’ be technically possible in terms of better energy efficiency and miniaturisation and 2) its speculation about what people would be prepared to do in terms of reduced consumption of technology and energy. It’s just plucking a number out of a hat, and is likely to be about as accurate as economic predictions or other technical hype.
Sadly I think humanity will go on using non renewable resources and modern technology and energy in general at a prodigious rate, until the resources run short and costs therefore increase, forcing us to recycle what is left, and it probably means half the world will never have a western middle class lifestyle. The evidence certainly suggests this, because there’s been no sign of any real change in 50 years and people have known about resource scarcity for many decades.
I don’t know why any of this bothers you because you give every indication that you think simple indigenous lifestyles are better than our lifestyles. Im more worried about destruction of the biosphere and this is largely due to deforestation and over population and bad farming practices an dpotentially climate change as well.
We might get our consumption patterns down to some extent, although probably not 95%, by wasting as little as possible, because that is a feasible, practical thing to do and it doesn’t cause people to have to scale back ownership of things thay take for granted. There are obvious psychological barriers to reducing consumption, but there would be less psychological barriers to reducing waste as such because its a less painful exercise.
For the record, I have never questioned or criticised these simplification ideas simply because you have presented them. I do wish you would stop suggesting I have and I doubt Kevin has either. I was aware of many of them way back in the 1980’s when “limits to growth” was published on resource scarcity, and people talked about solutions including low tech, low consumption communities embracing egalitarian decision making, and shared ownership structures. People have tried these sorts of communities where I live, and most of them failed after a few years so I’m not convinced the model is globally scaleable. What evidence we have suggests it isn’t but I wish such experiments good luck.
But your tendency to be snarky will most certainly alienate at least some people and its a mystery to me why you cant work that out and modify your behaviour.
I think the solution to resource scarcity and related problems is primarily to 1)focus on trying to eliminate waste and 2) getting the size of population down to reduce demand pressure. This is a nice simple formaula for people to grasp and is practically possible and will ease the risk of some sort of abrupt future transition, if that’s what bothers you. Planting a garden can help reduce waste, assuming one has the spare land of course.
You are clearly unable to see these and other problems with simplification, for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t see the obvious problems.
Zebra @110, so do you actually have an answer to RL’s very SPECIFIC question, or are you just going to shift the goal posts?
Susan Anderson (ellipsis original):
More moral clarity from Ms. Anderson. What makes her so rare?
Ray Ladbury @20,
“Zebra, OK, think about this. You can get this.”
Ray the eternal optimist. I hope you read my response @100 on the previous page, because it includes an interesting link on the issue relevant to your line of work.
Killian @122
KM: “It’s why I keep saying that consumerism as we know it has to die. As I understand Killian, and presumably those sharing his views, more or less, that’s also, partly at least, why profit has to go away. It’s simply not sustainable–if I understand correctly what he has said on numerous occasions.”
Killian: “And all exceedingly obvious if one considers survival a good thing.”
Nigel: I do not see this as obvious. Nobody has explained an exact detailed mechanism of how consumerism “per se” and the profit motive “per se” would lead to our extinction. Instead the problem looks more like bad farming methods, over population depleting the biospheres resources, and the dumping of toxic waste in an unmitigated fashion. But Sweden deals with waste really well.
KM: “The problem for me (KM) is that trading seems to have been something people always did, and they presumably did it in order to profit.”
Killian: “Says whom? You are conflating trade and trading. “Trade” as a verb and noun in the societies that concern themselves with wealth and profit rather than meeting needs and living within the limits of their ecosystems are what we try to describe with economics. Trading is done to meet a need first, a want second, in societies that are egalitarian Commons. Profit in the way you mean it is not the goal. Fairness is always wanted and people of the modern societies conflate that with profit-seeking. “To profit from,” to gain a benefit from, does not equal “to gain a profit from,” to get out more than you put in.”
Nigel: People do indeed trade to get things that might be useful and obviously needs are prioritised over wants simply in order to survive, but sooner or later history shows they start to trade to make a surplus, ie a profit, for themselves. It an evolutionary process ffs, and capitalism is the outcome and is also an evolving process (not always in good ways).
Telling people they have to stop making a profit, or amassing a surplus (call it whatever you like) is not going to be easy and its almost trying to push cultural evolution into reverse gear. There are huge psychological hurdles. Our natural instincts are to acquire things, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter. Nobody will want to do reduce their materialism unless they see other people doing it and as a result nothing changes. Concentrate on what things might be more likely to change, like eliminating waste,
Ray Ladbury: . Current manufacturing requires on making the same damn thing over and over again so that you can make it as cheaply as possible. Staying in business requires recurring demand and hence obsolescene.
AB: If my company makes heirloom-quality gadgets I can lease them for a few pennies less than the garbage-purchaser’s credit card payment increase.
I dont think its possible to precisely differentiate needs from wants, apart from a few needs essential for immediate short term survival like water, food, clothing and basic shelter. Anyone disagree?
Ray Ladbury #120,
I asked you to give an example. The fact that you can’t reinforces my observation that you are stuck in some fallacious cognitive loop.
What would be manufactured on demand, and last forever?? Automobiles? Chairs? You can’t come up with a single real-world application to illustrate your assertion?? AM, however much the tech advances, has a narrow set of applications.
How would AM change the economics? Are you saying that you will borrow the money (at compound interest, of course) to buy this magic machine, and to stock all the materials that might be used, and then have it sit idle while you wait for one-of-a-kind orders? How will you pay the rent on your factory?
Who is going to buy this very expensive object you are producing? How does the average person afford non-mass-produced objects?
Your conception about the economics is just wrong. There are already heirloom-quality objects being manufactured; the reality is that there is a limited market for them. People like cheap stuff, and they buy the latest model phone because of social pressures. AM has no effect on this.
Re 122: I posted, “Trading has always happened. Profiteering I would say is an illness of sedentary, acquisitive societies of the past 10 years.”
I meant to write, ” the past 10,000 years.”
Aigooo…
Thanks to moderators for moving my comments from Unforced Variations to Forced Responses. Will actually read RC explanation of what goes where next time.
—
I am distressed that hacking the planet (of course) is gaining ground. Here, for example:
As Climate Disasters Pile Up, a Radical Proposal Gains Traction: The idea of modifying Earth’s atmosphere to cool the planet, once seen as too risky to seriously consider, is attracting new money and attention.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/climate/climate-change-geoengineering.html
Reader Picks (as usual) do a good job of explaining why this is a terrible idea, but unfortunately the NYTimes gave its last “pick” to ill-informed wishful thinking, which will be the first comment everyone sees on opening. I would prefer not to have had to share mine with this foolishness.
—
The Biden plan video is worth repeating, since I’m here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7uZ0Gok2g
—
Mal, my blushes, I don’t see it that way. If only I were only more of a walker of walks than talker of talks …
re Geoengineering wishful/magic thinking growth …
Perhaps one of the higher-ups here can get an OpEd into the NYTimes on the subject. My go to on this has been RayPierre’s (started with Slate but moved on here).
https://thebulletin.org/2017/06/the-trouble-with-geoengineers-hacking-the-planet/
Nigel at 128 says: “Telling people they have to stop making a profit, or amassing a surplus (call it whatever you like) is not going to be easy and its almost trying to push cultural evolution into reverse gear.”
Mike says: Could transition to an economy that is not as driven by the profit motive be like trying to push cultural evolution into a forward/survival gear from its present reverse/destruction/extinction gear? It’s hard to imagine that, isn’t it? There may be some good ideas about a different type of global economy to be found here: https://steadystate.org/
more Nigel: “Our natural instincts are to acquire things, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter.”
If our natural instinct to acquire things was satisfied with a full pantry, enough food to get through a winter, that would be a good thing. Nigel, please skim or read this site on over-consumption: https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/why-do-we-over-consume
Nigel says: “Nobody will want to do reduce their materialism unless they see other people doing it and as a result nothing changes.”
I think if you look around you will find that many people do want to reduce their materialism and are changing their habits already. Reducing materialism and consumption habits makes sense for many reasons. You might want to think about whether you are projecting your view and assuming that everyone has the same view. I think the prisoner’s dilemma is not the only game in town.
I will continue to reduce my consumption and think hard about materialism whether I see other people doing it or not. Happiness and consumption are not well connected imo.
Nigels says: “Concentrate on what things might be more likely to change, like eliminating waste”
You are welcome to do that. I have done quite a bit of that reduce waste thing myself. I think it’s a good thing, but I think it’s not sufficient to slow the sixth great extinction or to flatten the curve of ghg growth in the atmosphere. It feels very good to get your ducks in a row, to reduce waste and to have the deck chairs all organized and in straight lines, but if the ship is going down, you may need to look harder at why our ship is taking on water.
Cheers
Mike
#128 & previous, on profit:
I don’t think anyone else is using “profit” as I did in my comment. I had said:
Killian separates trade and profit based on the societies in which they occur:
Nigel separates trade and profit based on some undefined “surplus”:
In the first instance, I have difficulty trying to imagine how the individual making a particular trade performs a different act in one society versus the other. Are some trades, or modes of trading, taboo because they are deemed to be unsustainable?
In the second, I have difficulty understanding the concept of surplus as it applies in this instance. If my model of “profit” is accepted, the “surplus” is the subjective difference between the value to trader A of the item he offered versus the item he received. The ‘surplus’ in that sense is the whole point of *any* trade, and doesn’t slip in at some point in history, because it’s been there all along.
One could, however, imagine a spectrum. At one end would be my imagined trade, which, since it was a simon-pure ideal transaction, was perfectly unconstrained. At the other end would be the transaction of slave-taking, which, translated into words, would run something like “You surrender everything you are, have, or want, to me–and in return I don’t torture you to death, or at least not too quickly or too soon.”
That begins to get to Killian’s distinction, perhaps, as a apparent key word in his description was “egalitarian.” It is not original to suggest that a pre-requisite for a valid exchange is relative equality of power between parties (with respect to the circumstances of that trade, at least.) And that brings in “profiteering”, as distinct from simply profiting: the former, one might propose, happens when one party in an exchange uses an imbalance of power to extract value from the other’s party’s position.
A wide variety of materials exhibit radiative cooling:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03911-8
all at about 100 w/m^2. Is this enough for geoengineering a cooler planet?
While otherwise working towards net zero carbon, of course.
92 – Violet Wagner
“We’ve heard that global warming started with the Industrial Revolution. But, is that accurate? Well, No. Actually the earth has been getting warmer for the last 11,000 years, since the end of the last ice age…..”
96 – Kevin McKinney
“No, it hasn’t. The height of postglacial warmth (until recently, that is) was about 8,000 years back, give or take:….”
Exactly right, Violet. The real question, the inconvenient question for Kevin and others, is “How did the earth suddenly warm and end the ice age?” Did dinosaurs suddenly find a huge methane-rich plot of beans?!?! :) Of course, the “believers” will have an answer and blather on about changes in the orbit of the earth as if THAT is believable. What kind of forces would be involved in changing the orbit of a ball of rock 8,000 miles in diameter orbiting the sun at ~67,000 miles/hour? It would take some astrophysics to man-splain THAT wouldn’t it? Well, I found an astrophysicist to man-splain it to me, and I’ll be paying close attention to as many videos on it as I can find:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCe7PdErGBk
Based on comments under the video I have not decided if this astrophysicist understands the subject, but I’m going to watch more videos and think about it. ;)
After reading all of the replies to your comment, you might think this AGW stuff is some kind of religion, and maybe you’re right!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrdspdHvdNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y81EOYIIN34
In other climate news, cold records in Oregon are falling faster than the thermometer in the coming ice age. Broke a 1919 record by 8 deg F, and several more: (note the source is the extreme leftist Oregonian, not Breitbart.) ;)
https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2020/10/cold-snap-topples-daily-low-temperature-records-across-oregon.html
Oregon says “send us some AGW please”.
:)
nigelj @128
Very good comment overall, Nigel. You express yourself well. I’m largely in reluctant agreement, but ;^). I’ll also adopt an evolutionary perspective here. You say:
I’m convinced that Homo sapiens does exhibit “instincts”, i.e. genetically inherited behavioral predispositions. It’s the assumption underlying the Tragedy of the Commons, a term biologists apply to other species as well (e.g. Rankin et al. 2007). Yet undeniably, our species also exhibits culturally transmitted behavior. I see little evidence our inherited behavioral drivers have changed since our expansion out of Africa, but what a difference cultural evolution has made! Consider this: In 1968, G. Hardin used human population growth as an example of a TotC. At that time, the global total fertility rate (TFR) was 4.9. Concern about the aggregate impact on the biosphere of the population bomb swept the global intelligentsia. Although Hardin’s political opinions were notorious, he ostensibly wasn’t prepared for the subsequent political backlash. Whatever his intentions were, he was accused of proposing genocidal population “control” in third-world nations. I can’t find where, but he later said his biggest mistake was not calling it “the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons”. By management, he meant “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.”
Ironically, the population bomb turns out to be self-limiting without coercion. Global TFR has dropped from over 5.0 in 1964 to below 2.5 today, see my previous link. In fact, it’s approaching replacement rate of about 2.3, below which our total numbers will begin to fall, as the demographic bulge initiated over 60 years ago contracts through this century. The rapid decline in TFR is attributable to drastically reduced infant mortality, along with improved female education and empowerment; i.e. the classic demographic transition, more or less. In India, for example, TFR now 2.2, in Brazil and China 1.7. While government coercion has played some role, at least in China, women throughout the developing world are increasingly having fewer children voluntarily, preferring to raise no more than two to compete in their modern societies. That is, human population growth is not a TotC, simply because the marginal cost to individual women of having more children soon outweighs the benefit. It’s demand on the biosphere by people already born that’s tragically open-ended. Remember I=PAT? Per capita consumption, determined by rising affluence (A) and technological innovation (T), is now the bigger driver of trends in global impact (I). P is at least 1.0 for every living human, higher for those with offspring; while AT is positive for anyone with the most tenuous connection to the global economy, which of course includes everyone on RC without exception. No wonder “We are all stuck with knowing what we are doing is not nearly enough”. Only immediate suicide, leaving no offspring, would be!
In any event, once published, Hardin’s title phrase was taken up by the behavioral sciences, as a convenient metaphor for a defined class of social problems: e.g. E. Ostrom, a political scientist and IMHO important visionary thinker, was awarded the 2009 Economics Nobel for her work on stakeholder groups and non-coercive enforcement of collectively chosen limits on common-pool resource use. Also see e.g. Ostrom 2000, Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms; and I particularly recommend her 2011 Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture slides. Ostrom agreed that climate is a global commons, but recognizing the difficulty of enforcing international decarbonization agreements or legislating effective national policies, she proposed “polycentric” collective responses to AGW, arguing that we should support action in all collective scopes, from neighborhood cooperatives to global youth movements. Yet she didn’t rule out the possibility that enforceable (i.e. “coercive”) national and international agreements might ultimately be required. She nonetheless referred to the “Drama of the Commons”, which need not end in tragedy! Dudes, I’m tired of linking citations. You can look all of this stuff up.
Anyway, as Ostrom was no doubt aware, concentrated capital plays an overbalancing role in the drama of the climate commons, by resolutely keeping the cost of AGW out of the market price of fossil carbon. AFAICT, the only hope of overcoming fossil fuel money in the US is to outvote it. All non-trumpist Americans, get thee to the polls! And remember, a vote for virtually any non-blue candidate, or no vote at all, is a vote for oafishal AGW-denial. That’s not ideological bias, merely a sad historical fact.
mike @135 , thanks for the interesting and useful references. Yes I agree there are some good potential theoretical alternatives socioeconomic models, and I’ve read some similar references to the ones you provided.
All I said was it looks like its going to be a slow process transitioning to a new system and to widely reduced levels of per capita consumption, for the practical, technical and psychological reasons I stated. Yes a few people have changed their habits, but mostly only small numbers of people and only marginally. Nothing you have posted convincingly changes any of the points I actually made.
As such we are very reliant on scaling up sufficient zero carbon clean energy to make the current system work without ending up a complete shambles with blackouts. So we will need a lot of new energy by 2050. As consumption patters fall over longer time periods, assuming values and lifestyles change dramatically, and I hope they do, we wont need as much new energy, especially if population growth stops and goes negative.
I did NOT say that we should continue to consume resources as normal. I have never said that, and I’ve pointed out many times that we should aim to reduce our consumption patterns, even on this months FR thread. Which I presume you have read. But I like to be realistic about what’s possible.
Yes eliminating waste in conventional interpretation would not fix the climate problem. But I’ve said before several times we can interpret waste a bit more widely. We could consider that burning fossil fuels for energy is a waste of a resource, given 1)its very finite and once its burned its essentially gone for good, and 2)we have alternatives like renewable energy and 3) fossil fuels might be better used for petrochemical applications where they could last for many centuries if we do it right.
And of course we need renewable energy (or nuclear power, I dont care so much which, they both do the job. I think its for local communities to decide which.)
zebra @131
“I asked you (RL) to give an example. The fact that you can’t reinforces my observation that you are stuck in some fallacious cognitive loop.”
How about you answer Ladburys question FIRST : “Killian, and whoever else wants to chime in. One of the aspects of modern manufacturing that makes it difficult to reach sustainability is that economies of scale favor production of lots of cheap, short-lived goods that must be replaced on a regular basis. ….Can a shift toward additive manufacturing, where a business can “retool” on a dime to make whatever is needed, help to resolve this?”
Its really simple. Yes or no. If no why? Quoting known problems with 3d printing is beside the point and doesnt invalidate that 3D printing and other alternative manufacturing might at least reduce the built in obsolescence problem.
“What would be manufactured on demand, and last forever??”
Strawman. Nobody said last forever.
“Automobiles? Chairs? You can’t come up with a single real-world application to illustrate your assertion??”
Examples of current 3d printing can be easily googled.
“How would AM change the economics? Are you saying that you will borrow the money (at compound interest, of course) to buy this magic machine, and to stock all the materials that might be used, and then have it sit idle while you wait for one-of-a-kind orders? How will you pay the rent on your factory?”
FFS, people are already doing 3d printing where they perceive a gap in the market. They have clearly solved all these problems, so its not necessary to litigate them all over again on this website. Now there are obvious reasons to suggest 3d printing will not completely displace conventional mass production, but it is likely to continue gain some market share. Like AB said it might eventually start to force mass producers to make longer lasting products.
“Who is going to buy this very expensive object you are producing? How does the average person afford non-mass-produced objects?”
3D printing is actually quite economic. And it enables people to buy specialised products that would otherwise be too costly because you would have to retool a huge assembly line.
“Your conception about the economics is just wrong. There are already heirloom-quality objects being manufactured; the reality is that there is a limited market for them. People like cheap stuff….”
That is true but nobody claimed magical properties for 3D printing, just that it could HELP reduce the built in obsolescence problem.
Mike @135, just a clarification. I said “All I said was it looks like its going to be a slow process transitioning to a new system and to widely reduced levels of per capita consumption, for the practical, technical and psychological reasons I stated.” I didn’t use the exact words slow process in in the comment you referred to, but I’ve said it many times on this website.
134
Susan, re your link to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it seems ironic of Raypierre to complain of the moral hazards of the ScopEx experiment:
” Harvard’s reckless plan for a privately-funded field trial testing some of the key elements needed for albedo modification… crosses a thin red line beyond which lies the slippery slope down to ever-larger field trials and ultimately deployment… SCoPEx, involves a powered balloon which would spread about a kilogram of water or calcium carbonate (limestone) particles in the stratosphere, over a swathe of air about a kilometer long and 100 meters in diameter… it does pose a considerable social and political risk in being the first step towards development of actual technology for deployment”
bexause ScopEx’s scope is in fact far smaller that such unintentional and uninstrumented exercises in aerosol albedo change as skywriting advertisements.
Guess who started it and when–
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-scopex-experiment-that-time-forgot.html
Kevin McKinney @136, surplus was probably a bad choice of words on my part but equates to profit. And I agree with your definition relating to trade that “Profit is by definition what happens when you exchange something less valued for something more valued, no?”
But I was really just saying very early examples of trade probably didnt involve any notions of making a profit as such, and perhaps K is right to that extent. It was probably a more naive transaction of swapping things based around different groups having different resources or skills. Whether this is based on needs or wants is clearly immaterial. Its just a process.
But society has clearly transitioned long ago to a profit making model, and this has been a cultural evolution and as such its not going to be easy or quick unwinding this embedded process. Not for profit organisations do exist, but have not taken over. And I think the difference between a naive form of trade and making a profit is actually a very fine line.
And all this assumes that making a profit is inherently wrong, and I’m not convinced about that. Most of the justifications are just hand waving. Profit has upsides in that it allows for investment and innovation as well as rewarding the original investors.
And I don’t agree with Killians comments that appear to suggest wants associates with making a profit. Not for profit organisations still sometimes provide for wants. I would categorise a university education as more of a want than a need.
Mr. Know It All @138,
“What kind of forces would be involved in changing the orbit of a ball of rock 8,000 miles in diameter orbiting the sun at ~67,000 miles/hour? It would take some astrophysics to man-splain THAT wouldn’t it? ”
Good grief. The earth changes its orbit and wobbles around on its axis. This is not somebodies opinion. Its been deduced from various observations and is a scientific fact. The universe has a lot of huge forces operating in it. Heard of the big bang theory that ultimately set all this sort of thing in motion?
Honestly the way you write makes you sound like a typical trump supporter, the guy who gets d and e grades at school. I suggest you change your style :)
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
This looks like self-parody. It’s the old “humans weren’t responsible for the warming that ended the Pleistocene, so they can’t be now, because warming can only ever have one cause” howler, plus an undisguised attack from personal incredulity. Doesn’t he realize the orbital mechanics that result in Milankovich cycles can be directly observed?
IAT:
He must not have smelled the smoke this summer. Oregon has had quite enough AGW already, thank you! But how is one to interpret his smile emoji? One never knows!
IAT:
But then there’s physics. If Mr. IAT didn’t exist, OTOH, would it be necessary to invent him ;^)?
You’ve heard this before. There’s a reason it’s echoing.
https://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/beyond-koyaanisqatsi-reimagining-civilization/
136 McKinney:
You want to keep saying profit, but the goal of exchange in societies that understand and live within ecological limits is not acquisitive,it is needs-based. Not profit, perceived *value.* Inportant here is the lack of any real gain in trying to “get over on” another person. Or community. You will likely need them someday. In fact, that person/community is extremely likely to be part of your own semi-kin network of villages. It makesno sense to want to weaken them for your own gain. In fact, since we’re talking a Commons, there is no personal gain at all.
Yes, the power dynamic is removed. Mind you, there a number of different approaches to Commonsing, and I intentionally focus only on full Commons because thatis the only form I see as being able to achieve a regenerative society.
Profiteering I would define as wanting to maximize what you get at another’s/others’ expense rather than seeking fair trade.
135 mike: You make some excellentobservations. As I have said ad nauseum, “People won’t,” is a poor argument to hang one’s haton when people will and already are.
Particularly blindedto the facts of history is the claim about human nature. Fact: Those who live within Nature’s limits l8ve exactly as I have said we all must: Regeneratively. And… tey always have. They never stopped. 300,000 yearsof human history vs the last 10k? Which is more likely to reveal what “human nature” truly is? Yes, we have desires. All humans do. It can be hard to manage them. This is why we develop customs, social norms, etc. E.g., the father telling his teen sin to get him water and not only the sin, but the other people present teasing the man about being a king since he thinks he can tell another human what to do.
The man got his own water.
130 nigel:
Of course you don’t. So, stop telling others what is or is not possible; you have quite explicitly stated you have absolutely no idea.