Joni Mitchells song big yellow taxi. Best damn environmental song ever written and by a massively talented and critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and guitarist from days gone by.
nemesis at 91: My thoughts about living like a Kogi were specific to me. How would I do that? Is it possible?
Your question: how would we persuade other people (a lot of them) to live like Kogi? Entirely different topic. I doubt that could be done. I was having enough trouble trying to sort how one willing person might do it.
what you said at 94, yeah, I think you may be right about our species.
But I remain optimistic about this planet and our amazing good fortune to have been born into a conscious state where reflection and analysis is possible. And I am optimistic about the planet’s ability to absorb the losses of a great extinction event and bounce back into a verdant state in about ten million years. It’s a wonderful planet. I am happy to be here most days.
Cheers
Mike
David B. Bensonsays
Russia is planning to add 45 nuclear power plants.
No. That is poetic licence. Green energy per se is not fake. The video shows the problem is the design of “GO” (guaranteed origin) which is a European system of tradeable renewable energy certificates.
The video makes a good point about the problems of burning biomass with schemes like BECCS. Heres a new research paper criticising BECCS: “Irrigation of biomass plantations may globally increase water stress more than climate change”. Thats shooting yourself in your own foot.
The results of this study are perhaps surprising :”Does solar geoengineering crowd out climate change mitigation efforts? Evidence from a stated preference referendum on a carbon tax”
“Solar geoengineering is increasingly being considered a realistic approach to managing climate change. One crucial concern is whether geoengineering crowds out efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Adding to a limited body of empirical evidence, we use a survey experiment to estimate how informing the U.S. public about solar geoengineering impacts support for a proposed national carbon tax. In contrast to the crowding-out hypothesis, we find that respondents who are provided with information about geoengineering are significantly more likely to support the tax. Further, we document systematic variation as people with egalitarian and communitarian worldviews are more responsive to the information relative to those with hierarchical and individualist worldviews. Our study suggests that the availability and awareness of solar geoengineering options may lead to an increase in greenhouse gas abatement efforts.”
Killiansays
96 mike says:
10 Mar 2021 at 11:42 AM
nuclear getting a look/review ten years after Fukushima:
“Fukushima was a man-made accident, triggered by natural hazards, that could and should have been avoided. Experts widely agreed that the root causes were lax regulatory oversight in Japan and an ineffective safety culture at the utility that operated the plant.
These problems are far from unique to Japan…
This is one thing tech heads/technocopians tend to overlook: You can’t separate nuclear (or any other system) from its human operators. Dancer/dance, just as those who talk about “pristine” nature completely disregard the documented gardening humans have done for at least 65k years.
Liebig’s Law of the Minumum/the weakest link applies.
When it comes to tech, that comes whole cloth from human imagination, humans will always be that weakest link as we are the designers, builders and operators.
That is, saying nuclear is safe but for the humans is a meaningless distinction for proponents to make.
Killiansays
The Kogi (and indigenous people in general) LOVE the very basis of their existence, lol ( highly recommended: https://www.amacad.org/publication/indigenous-americans-spirituality-and-ecos ). BUT that’s absolutely not the way politics and the fossil fool industry, the car industry, the meat industry, the arms industry, the agricultural industry, the stock market ect ect ect (extend ad lib) work, ROFL, and they will NEVER act that way I swear, capitalism will rather die than “love” the ecosystem
Exactly. As I have been saying. One pathway: Simplification.
Killiansays
93: Did you watch the 2nd documentary “Aluna”? In the 2nd documentary scientists agree very well with the Kogi. Sure, the Kogi use a different language than scientists, but they come to very same conclusion:
Yes, that is why my comment was quite specific that they lack the scientific language to articulate what they believe clearly. You’ll notice it took scientists to suss it out. The laypersons were lost. In both movies.
But I am not a layperson, I’m an ecological engineer, so it all made perfect sense to me, in part because, as I said, permaculture is heavily based in TEK – and TEK is science: Observe, hypothesize, test, confirm/invalidate.
Observation: Bird eats berry, bird lives.
Hypothesis: Berry might be edible.
Test: Try a bit.
Confirm: Yummy, no side effects.
Result: New food source. Tell others.
Invalidate: Yummy, burns the mouth and causes nausea.
The Kogi (and indigenous people in general) LOVE the very basis of their existence…
Whereas the whole premise of consumerism is the cultivation of dissatisfaction–with our situations, certainly, but first of all with ourselves. “More” is never “enough.”
Nemesissays
I’ll leave this beautiful and kind forum with some encouraging news, Warren Buffet’s “wealth” reached 100 billion dollars:
Capitalism is wonderful, you just need to work hard like Warren Buffet ( his eco/climate footprint is almost nothing compared to the vast global majority I bet) and you will quickly be as “wealthy” as Warren Buffet et al for sure, everyone can do it.
See you all at the beautiful end of the road soon :))
Bye (I won’t answer any more replies, I let go and fly away, away, away, free again).
Al Bundysays
BPL: In his own way, Killian is a troll.
AB: True. He has no patience and is immune to logic that originates outside of his realm.
But he’s way right about you and Nigel. You both are subgeniuses who believe you have brains worth listening to. Sorry. I tried my best to honor you and Nigel, but you two are friggin brain dead (“I got good marks” says Nigel – uh, so did all the other white morons who chose to complete their papers).
Killian is abrasive and nearly impossible to incorporate in a system, but unlike you and Nigel, I’ve found it productive to go out of my way to incorporate Killian’s additions to my tapestry.
In contrast, you and Nigel are worthless. Full stop.
Heres a new research paper criticising BECCS: “Irrigation of biomass plantations may globally increase water stress more than climate change”. Thats shooting yourself in your own foot.
You have to admit, 5%/day growth is pretty impressive. I don’t know how much carbon/m²/day this comes to, but at first glance it looks more like a solution than most of the things I’ve come across so far.
This is one thing tech heads/technocopians tend to overlook: You can’t separate nuclear (or any other system) from its human operators.
Of course it can be done, because it HAS been done. You can’t separate ANY system from its basic physics of operation. That was the entire point of molten-salt reactors; they have a guaranteed negative temperature coefficient, and the “freeze valve” emptying the core salt to a dump tank doesn’t depend on operators or even electricity to do its job. The safety systems of NuScale are based on similar principles.
saying nuclear is safe but for the humans is a meaningless distinction for proponents to make.
Nuclear is already the safest electric power humans have. Do you WANT more deaths from wind turbines catching fire while workers are in the nacelles, or people falling off roofs while dealing with PV panels? Dam failures taking out tens and hundreds of thousands at a time? Because that’s what you get with “renewables”. And of course, all fossil systems currently in use use the atmosphere as an open sewer, as does “biomass”.
Nemesissays
I might look like a fool saying “bye” twice and then replying again. Seems like there’s still some microscopic will to communicate my thoughts and feelings, although I am surrounded by deniers in my area and decided to shut up and reside in solitude as long as climate heating ect stirs me up.
The Kogi are very important to me as their lifestyle and vision of the universe can show, in contrast, what we might think and do wrong. In fact, why not learn from eachother, instead of calling these people “primitive” or something, modern man will fall over his very own ignorance and arrogance quickly enough.
@mike, #102
“My thoughts about living like a Kogi were specific to me. How would I do that? Is it possible?”
That comes as a real surprise to me, I didn’t expect that you are seriously contemplating to live like a Kogi (if I get that right). To live like a real Kogi you’d need to be part of a Kogi community, no other way. Then there is the Kogi’s view of life and the universe in general:
“Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings. That’s a completely different approach than in modern science. It’s more like poetry, they have a poetic connection to Nature ect, they wouldn’t say “the sun is a fusion reactor”, like modern man does, the sun is seen by the Kogi as a living being, so the sun can literally smile on a Kogi, but not on a physicist. The sun can smile in a poem, in a song, in a tale, in human visionary intuition, but it can’t smile in physics nor in mathematics, that’s the price for modern, scientific enlightenment:
The sun does not smile anymore. The trees don’t talk anymore, the ocean, the mountains, Nature, the universe does not talk to modern man, he is left with a mechanistic, materialistic machinery and so he handles things and beings as such most of the time. From that kind of perspective we are not even monkeys, but biorobots. Just say that the trees talk to you and they will put you in the madhouse sooner or later. Define yourself as a monkey and you’ll become a monkey, define yourself as a biorobot and you’ll become a biorobot, a homeless biorobot that lost his inner connection to Nature, earth, the universe. But the Kogi, the indigenous people say:
” All of Nature is in us, all of us is in Nature.”
– Pete Catches (Lakota elder)
That’s why all things and beings talk to them in a poetic language within, that’s the way they achieve wisdom beyond sheer rational knowledge. That’s one of the main differences of the Kogi resp indigenous people and modern man, that’s the worlview one would have to achieve in the first place to live like a Kogi, like an indigenous. The dictionary says:
” Indigenous or less commonly indigenous : of or relating to the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized by a now-dominant group.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indigenous
Lol, that tells a lot, doesn’t it? The “now dominant group” is us (on a global scale), the younger brother. And STILL these indigenous people are willing to come to terms with their oppressors. I wouldn’t do that, lol. WHY is that? Because they still LOVE their younger brothers, despite all murderous colonializm ect, they know, the younger brother is still part of the cosmic family. That’s their universal message:
You can exploit man and mice, you can set earth on climate fire, but you can never lose your true, cosmic/natural identity, no matter how lost you are as a homeless biorobot, earth is your true home, the solar system is your home, the milky way is your home, the universe is your home, your friend indeed, NEVER your enemy. Fight earth, fight Nature, fight the universe or whatever- in the end you are fighting and exploiting yourself. The chinese Taoists know that, they have their own image of man within Nature and all of Nature within man, they call that “The Great Man”, they literally imagine the veins in their own body are part of the rivers on earth and vice verse, the human hair is like the plants, the bones like trees, the water within the body like the waters within the oceans, the breath like the ocean tide and the wind, the thoughts and feelings like… The Great Spirit, the DAO, the Dharma within us. YES, the f* elements TALK to us within us all the time, don’t they?! Sure they do as WE ARE those f* elements, what else?! This is why one of the Kogi mamas said in that documentary:
” To think means to LISTEN.”
Wow. Sounds almost like a christian mystic or something, doesn’t it? To live like a Kogi means to listen much and to think much (wich is the same as listening, lol). Modern man calls it “contemplation” and “meditation”. When you stop talking and start listening like in meditation, then things start to talk, they start to teach you. This way the Kogi learned a lot, they not just gained knowledge, but wisdom. You can have mountains of knowledge and still exploit and destroy the ecosystem, but you didn’t achieve any wisdom at all. Knowledge is completely worthless without wisdom. What does all the knowledge for you, when you don’t know how to use it in a wise way? Nothing.
Discover and cultivate the Kogi, the universal indigenous within yourself and you will live like one. Sounds like a joke, but it’s true- remember:
” All of Nature is in us, all of us is in Nature.”
As Buddha said once in a while, death and destruction is part of our very existence, part of Nature, so death and destruction are not our enemies, they are part of us and they will come to everyone of us, there is no life without death and destruction, two sides of one coin. But how do you come to terms with death and destruction? By exploiting and raping the planet? By hoarding more and ever more funny money and material shit? No. One comes to terms with death and destruction by meditation, careful acting and letting go. This way one realizes that death is one’s very own shadow, ones very own abyss within oneself. Death destroys some things (like your identity card resp name, form, adress, birthdate, nationality ect sooner or later, so don’t get lost in it), but it does not destroy the very core of yourself as Death is at the very center of yourself, a dark abyss beyond names and forms, beyond namarupa. And yet this very center is also the center, the very spring of Life, within yourself, infinitely, eternally. That’s the kind of wisdom modern man has lost, so he is always on the run, trying to escape death and destruction and therefore causing more and ever more death and destruction, lol, trapped in the rat race.
In the end, to live like an indigenous, a true Kogi, you need to listen/contemplate/meditate much and become just yourself in it’s fullest meaning and extension and never lose your conscious connection to Nature, to the whole universe within and without and keep your baggage small, there is no other way to achieve full peace, full wisdom, full satisfaction no funny money could ever buy. That’s what the Kogi always strive for, that’s what we should strive for as a species and things will change for the better for sure and we would be part of the Kogi community and vice versa, part of the global family called “Homo Sapiens Sapiens”. The good news is:
You can do that anywhere you want as the saying goes:
” All of Nature is in us, all of us is in Nature.”
– Pete Catches (Lakota elder)
Best wishes.
nigeljsays
Killian @106 says
“This is one thing tech heads/technocopians tend to overlook: You can’t separate nuclear (or any other system) from its human operators. …Liebig’s Law of the Minumum/the weakest link applies…..When it comes to tech, that comes whole cloth from human imagination, humans will always be that weakest link as we are the designers, builders and operators.”
True, but you cannot separate your ideas about small, simple living, egalitarian regenerative communities from their human operators either. Its going to be hard making them work. I suggest read George Orwells novels.
nigeljsays
Bundy @111 you trash me, after being very happy to ask for and accept my money. Your comments reek of jealousy and resentment and massive hypocrisy. You couldn’t even finish College. Go away troll.
Nemesissays
@Killian, #108
” Yes, that is why my comment was quite specific that they lack the scientific language to articulate what they believe clearly. You’ll notice it took scientists to suss it out. The laypersons were lost. In both movies. “
Sure, the Kogi lack the scientific language/mindset, exactly like most of us lack the Kogi’s mindset. No surprise, different culture, different language. And as you said: ” The laypersons were lost. In both movies.”, but the pro scientists knew exactly what the Kogi are talking about, they confirmed the Kogi’s deep understanding of the ecosystem.
” Observation: Bird eats berry, bird lives.
Hypothesis: Berry might be edible.
Test: Try a bit.
Confirm: Yummy, no side effects.
Result: New food source. Tell others.
Invalidate: Yummy, burns the mouth and causes nausea.
Result: Avoid eating. Tell others.”
I subscribe to that and the Kogi would subscribe to that as well I guess. But it’s not that easy in a capitalist system, lol. Capitalism does not work truely rationally, it is a cheater too often and when scientific facts come into play, they will be debated, ignored, suppressed, denied when it comes to mundane profit. That’s fatal, that’s a death sentence and they know it, but they try to invent clever and ever more clever tech- fixes ect to compensate for the damage done, exactly like in the tale of the tortoise and the hare:
Elon Musk, the hare, extended that rat race to Mars, lol. Others extend it to luxury bunkers underground. You know, you propagate permaculture and I appreciate that, but that’s not the way how capitalism works. You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on aglobal grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before. The problem is not a technical, but an ethical one, we learn that from countless cases of corruption in the fossil fool industry and countless other industries.
@Gavin and all:
You can have as much beautiful scientific data and intentions as you like, the caravan moves on, nothing’s older than today’s newspaper. You are fighting windmills like Don Quixote and the funny money caravan moves on. You deal with all that neat, uncorrupted, sober scientific facts, you work hard and harder and you learn more and more about the cliff, the tipping points, Mother Nature’s uncontrollable kick in the face like permafrost, huuuuh, methane, uh ah, drought (like here in Germany) and on goes the list and the caravan moves on like blind led by the blind. I can wipe out all your hard scientific facts, all your hard, hard work over years and decades and centuries with one gesture:
I am not interested, I am busy making funny money = power.
That’s the way it works.
Killiansays
BPL: In his own way, Killian is a troll.
In his own way, BPL needs to learn to use the dictionary – and the mirror. He is the last of the people who still go around literally doing nothing but insulting people with a given post. I do not do that. I call people out without first consulting any other person’s set of principles or etiquette. I am an adult so set my own path, and with a *very* high skill set in analysis. I rarely get things wrong. I do not suffer liars and fools gladly. There are a lot of lies told on this forum, and those who lie simply to troll are fools who choose to risk our future to score points in their imagined battle of wits. The favorite forms of fallacy being the Straw Man and Ad Hom.
I may respond strongly, but I never troll. And those comments for which I am accused of being a troll or rude or what have you, are always *responses* to rudeness, trolling, ideological bullshit, racism, lies, etc. By definition, I cannot be a troll; they instigate with the goal of disrupting. I quite literally never do that on this forum.
So, again. learn the word, BPL, because of all the silliness we see on this forum, you are the only true troll here anymore.
Enough on this. If you’re on this forum and addressing individuals’ rather than issues, you are the fool and the troll and should do the right thing and either alter your behavior or get the hell off the forum.
“Were Our Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors Actually Better Off Than We Are?”
But it also identifies the key issue that things changed when humans developed farming which gave rise to hierarchies, inequality, materialism etc, etc. It just seems to me that this makes it hard to get rid of hierarchies and inequality, and the best we can probably do is manage such things better so they don’t cause oppression and poverty.
Russell Seitzsays
50, 109
Thanks to Killiian for elucidating the structural entanglement of Colombian coal exports, coca chewing Kogi climate philosophers, and the hippy lifestyle:
David B. Benson@113: If this unique process scales up green hydrogen becomes readily available
They might need to work on their maths a bit. They say “the first technology to deliver energy efficiency of 95 percent … compared to 70 percent of water electrolysis,” but they also say “A kilogram of hydrogen stores somewhere between 33 and 39 kWh of energy, depending on who you ask” (what!) and that “today’s electrolyzers consume as much as 48 kWh per kilogram”. That makes (depending on who you ask, I guess), conventional electrolysis between 68% and 81% efficient.
They say their process can produce a kg of hydrogen using 39.9kWh, so, again, “depending on who you ask”, their process is between about 98% and 83% efficient.
According to Wikipedia the heat of combustion of hydrogen is −286 kJ/mol, 500mol/kg for hydrogen gas, which I make to be 39.8 kWh/kg. But that’s only if you ask me ;)
Killiansays
Green hydrogen? Why do they lie? Why are they allowed to?
Killiansays
11 Al Bundy says:
11 Mar 2021 at 10:42 AM
BPL: In his own way, Killian is a troll.
AB: True. He has no patience and is immune to logic that originates outside of his realm.
HAHAHA… the peanuts are baaaaaack! Still lying, still gaslighting, still hypocrites, still wrong.
Just as a cell phone might seem like magic to a pre-industrial person, correct use of logic seems like magic to you.
Lets just suppose that the Basalt weathering method is the one chosen, and it works to drop CO2 down to around 300 ppm…
Now what? How do we restore degraded soils worldwide?
There is currently more carbon missing from soils worldwide (mostly due to poor agricultural methods) than there is extra carbon in the atmosphere.
If we “permanently” remove the carbon from the atmosphere, and the only way any biotic fixing and capture of carbon is from atmospheric CO2, where are you going to get the carbon to restore degraded ecosystems and cropland soils?
That’s a really really really dangerous move. I am all for it if you can show a way to avoid this unintended emergent property of the biosphere system. However, nothing on your link seems to have even considered the long term effects of such a course of action.
David B. Bensonsays
Scott E Strough @130 — Your claim about soils is not supported by a link to a reference.
But suppose so. As more carbon is added to soils by appropriate agriculture, about half that amount will leave the oceans. Capture that fraction by basalt weathering.
Can’t capture too much as there is always more coal, oil and natural gas to supply more carbon.
Killiansays
117 nigelj says:
11 Mar 2021 at 4:38 PM
Killian @106 says
Liebig’s Law of the Minumum/the weakest link applies…..When it comes to tech, that comes whole cloth from human imagination, humans will always be that weakest link as we are the designers, builders and operators.”
True, but you cannot separate your ideas about small, simple living, egalitarian regenerative communities from their human operators either.
Let me see… I have pointed out there is no such thing as pure nature becausde we have been changing nature on every continent but Antarctica for up to 300,000 years and have intentionally been shaping it to meet our needs for at least 65k years, and you post this as if you are informing me of something?
Do you never think before you post? Do you not understand why, when I says, “This is yellow” and you come along and say, “But you need to consider that that is yellow” I just want to slap you upside the head?
Its going to be hard making them work.
No, it’s not. Simplicity is simple. What is hard is getting fools and idiots to do what is clearly necessary.
I suggest read George Orwells novels.
I suggest you figure out how little you contribute here, and particularly how often you troll – even when you don’t seem to be intending to.
Killiansays
114 Engineer-Poet says:
11 Mar 2021 at 3:58 PM
nigelj @104:
Heres a new research paper criticising BECCS: “Irrigation of biomass plantations may globally increase water stress more than climate change”. Thats shooting yourself in your own foot.
Depth-cycling of artificial giant kelp beds would eliminate the irrigation problem and directly extract carbon from the oceans.
You have to admit, 5%/day growth is pretty impressive. I don’t know how much carbon/m²/day this comes to, but at first glance it looks more like a solution than most of the things I’ve come across so far.
Because artificially altering huge areas of the ocean will work out just fine in the end…
Geo-engineering is stupid no matter how you shape it. As you saw with the Kogi and their Food Forest approach to cultivation, it is in mimicking Nature, not displacing it, that we solve our problems.
Killiansays
116 Nemesis says:
11 Mar 2021 at 4:24 PM
“Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings.
Your first sentence is incorrect. While there is a mythology and belief system within which their knowledge is bound, the knowledge itself is extremely objective. All that emphasis on sitting and thinking is an example of the first principle of Permaculture: Observe. Long, thoughtful observation over quick, thoughtless action is preferable. This is similar in its essence to well begun is half done. Taking the time to tart correctly, carefully avoids having to redo what you have done.
The Kogi observe very carefully and think on what they observe almost obsessively. They don’t impose what they they think, they let the truth of the things emerge – which is another Permaculture principle: Don’t impose design, let it emerge from the site and the context.
Killiansays
119 Nemesis says:
11 Mar 2021 at 5:45 PM
@Killian, #108
…. Elon Musk, the hare, extended that rat race to Mars, lol. Others extend it to luxury bunkers underground. You know, you propagate permaculture and I appreciate that, but that’s not the way how capitalism works. You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on aglobal grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before.
Do the math: There is no time to wait for the death of Capitalism, *then* build a better system. I agree with Buckminster Fuller. I wrote in 2011 that we need to opt out of the current system and opt into regenerative systems. Turns out Bucky felt the same:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The problem is the solution (Permaculture, again): If the problem is consumption, stop consuming. Stop consuming, Capitalism dies. Capitalism dies, its slave class of billionaires and millionaires also go away.
You want to end Capitalism, do Regenerative Governance.
Killiansays
123 nigelj says:
12 Mar 2021 at 4:54 PM
This seems to me like a good concise analysis of hunter gatherers and and praises these societies and suggests a few things we could emulate:
Because it reads as if you wrote it. It’s a terrible review repeating bullshit tropes and using shit logic. The reviewer has a clear agenda.
“Ryan’s cardinal sin, however, is overreach. He refers darkly to “the otherworldly price we and other creatures on this planet are paying” for our species’ crowning intellectual achievements. But this framing suggests causality where there is none. It isn’t the fault of artists or scientists that our states and ecosystems have fallen into crisis.
Straw Man. I have not read the book, but only an idiot would claim it is knowledge itself that causes our problems. I am certain the writer did not do that, but spoke of how our reliance on tech, i.e. the appplication and implementation of knowledge is the problem. And, it is. I realized this when I was 12. I could not understand why we needed so many different kinds of cars, phones, etc. It seemed inherently wasteful, stupid and needlessly competitive to me.
Rather than leaning on the sexy-but-unpersuasive case that civilization is plain poison
Another Straw Man: Civilization is not poison, the modern form of it is.
Ryan might have focused more on what hunter-gatherers have done right and pivoting sooner to how we might recreate the best aspects of our ancestral past — insofar as it’s possible.
This fool is saying, don’t blame us, just suggest a few things we *might* be able to do.
You should be able to spot this crap yourself except that, as I said, that review could have been written by cutting and pasting from your comments on this forum.
Killiansays
130 Scott E Strough says:
13 Mar 2021 at 10:44 PM
@128 David,
Lets just suppose that the Basalt weathering method is the one chosen, and it works to drop CO2 down to around 300 ppm…
Now what? How do we restore degraded soils worldwide?
There is currently more carbon missing from soils worldwide (mostly due to poor agricultural methods) than there is extra carbon in the atmosphere.
If we “permanently” remove the carbon from the atmosphere, and the only way any biotic fixing and capture of carbon is from atmospheric CO2, where are you going to get the carbon to restore degraded ecosystems and cropland soils?
…nothing on your link seems to have even considered the long term effects of such a course of action.
This is an excellent point. Use destructive methods to draw down carbon, then regenerative ag would push us to temperatures that are too low – which would require the continuation of FF ag.
I do not think this is accidental.
Nemesissays
@Kevin Mckinney, #109
“Nemesis: The Kogi (and indigenous people in general) LOVE the very basis of their existence…
David McKinney: Whereas the whole premise of consumerism is the cultivation of dissatisfaction–with our situations, certainly, but first of all with ourselves. “More” is never “enough.”
I agree, modern, materialist man is never fully satisfied, always striving for “more”, wich is never enough. It is because he lost his conscious connection to his true Nature, to Nature in general, unlike the Kogi and other indigenous people who don’t strive for more and ever more, but who are striving for never losing this conscious connection to his Nature within resp Nature around him (both are the same indeed). Modern man, the modern world is ruled by a materialist/consumerist paradigm and there will be no real change before we achieve a new, a better, a holistic and more spiritual paradigm. The sheer materialistic/physicalistic paradigm is a total failure as we can see all around us.
@nigelj, #123
I don’t think farming was the main cause of hierarchies, inequality ect. There are still agricultural communities who are farely egalitarian and don’t live in some strictly hierarchical setting (see small agricultural communities in India and elsewhere). Agriculture is one major premise for a highly hierarchic structured system, but it’s not the cause of it.
There must have been a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal system during human history after the last iceage roughly 10 500 years ago, when shamans turned into priests and clan chiefs turned into emperors. One of the very first literal reports of that shift can be found in the Gilgamesh epic. Gilgamesh was the first historical tyrant, who slayed Humbaba, the guardian of the forrest and exploited the cedars of the Lebanon to build his palace. He was a cruel and greedy type of person, a tragical figure who strived for eternal life and who stirred up the female goddess Inanna ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna ) and the natural forces for doing so. A sensation happened 6 years ago when a new section of tablet V of the Gilgamesh epic has been found:
” The aftermath of the heroes’ slaying of Ḫumbaba is now better preserved (300–308). The previously available text made it clear that Gilgameš and Enkidu knew, even before they killed Ḫumbaba, that what they were doing would anger the cosmic forces that governed the world, chiefly the god Enlil. Their reaction after the event is now tinged with a hint of guilty conscience, when Enkidu remarks ruefully that [ana] tušār ništakan qišta, “we have reduced the forest [to] a wasteland” (303). The anxiety about offending the gods seems to a modern reader compounded by ecological regret. Enkidu goes on to imagine the angry questions that Enlil will ask them when they arrive home: minu uzzakunuma tarahhisa qista, “what was this wrath of yours that you went trampling the forest?” (306). In the theme of the angry gods, the poems about Ḫumbaba in both Sumerian and Akkadian already displayed an ethical ambivalence toward the expedition to his Cedar Forest, arising from what one commentator has called the “double nature” of the forest’s guardian as ogre and servant of Enlil (Forsyth 1981: 21). This newly recovered speech of Enkidu adds to the impression that, to the poets’ minds, the destruction of Ḫumbaba and his trees was morally wrong.”
Full text (a translation of the newly found section included):
Here we have the very first historical report of ecological destruction:
” … Ancient ecology
The new section of Tablet V contains ecological aspects that resonate with modern day concerns over environmental destruction. Of course, there are potential anachronisms in projecting environmental concerns on an ancient text composed thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution.
Yet, the undeniable sensitivity in the epic’s presentation of the wilderness is illuminating, considering the long history of humanity’s interaction with our environment and its animal inhabitants…” https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-73444
Common interpretations had seen Gilgamesh as a “hero” who had slain a demon (Humbaba). But the newly found section lets Humbaba resp the forrest shine in totally different light. And it’s no accident that all human emperors have been masculine like Gilgamesh. In fact, Gilgamesh is the very first historical written report of ecological destruction. And still modern man is striving for eternal life ( through technical manipulation of Nature), like Gilgamesh did:
Again, Kurzweil is masculine^^ That’s the very peak of striving for more and ever more- eternal life through technology, while the ecosystem is being exploited and finally falling apart. It’s a mistake, a hubris, denying eternal life on a spiritual basis, while striving for eternal life through technology, lol. It’s a delusion, a farce, the ultimate hubris of modern man.
Nemesissays
@Killian, #134
Nemesis said: “Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings.”
Killian replied: ” Your first sentence is incorrect. While there is a mythology and belief system within which their knowledge is bound, the knowledge itself is extremely objective.”
Sure, but the emphasis in what I said is on objectivity as in “modern science”. The Kogi don’t practice modern science, do they? They don’t follow the materialist, physicalist way of thinking, but they achieve their knowledge through a meditative way mostly from within, from an intuitive approach of observation and conclusion:
” The cosmic visions of indigenous peoples are significantly diverse. Each nation and community has its own unique traditions. Still, several characteristics stand out. First, it is common to envision the creative process of the universe as a form of thought or mental process…
Perhaps the most important aspect of indigenous cosmic visions is the conception of creation as a living process, resulting in a living universe in which a kinship exists between all things…”
Modern, materialist science does not see the creative process of the universe as a form of thought or mental prozess and it does not see the entire cosmos as living process, but it imagines some “objective”, archimedean point beyond mundane human existence:
” An Archimedean point (Latin: Punctum Archimedis) is a hypothetical standpoint from which an observer can objectively perceive the subject of inquiry with a view of totality (i.e., a god’s-eye view); or a reliable starting point from which one may reason. In other words, a view from an Archimedean point describes the ideal of “removing oneself” from the object of study so that one can see it in relation to all other things while remaining independent of them…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_point
THAT is NOT the way the Kogi percieve life, Nature, the universe, reality-, like Jack D. Forbes said:
” … Some scientists think
they can study a world of
matter separate from themselves
but there is no
Universe Un-observed
(knowable to us at least)
nothing can be known
without being channeled
through some creature’s senses,
the unobserved Universe
cannot be discussed
for we, the observers,
being its very description
are its eyes and ears
its very making
is our seeing of it
our sensing of it…”
Nemesissays
@Killian, #108
” Do the math: There is no time to wait for the death of Capitalism…”
Lol, capitalism will die quickly, so you do not need plenty of time to see capitalism die^^
” You want to end Capitalism, do Regenerative Governance.”
I never said I want to end capitalism, I just said:
” You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on a global grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before.”
Btw, I can’t do any regenerative governance, I am just a nobody, i don’t “own” any land nor any money to buy some, I don’t have any political power whatsoever, so I just wait and watch capitalism dying right here, right now, right in front of my very eyes :) Welcome to the end of the american dream (-factory) literally:
Because artificially altering huge areas of the ocean will work out just fine in the end…
The entire oceans have ALREADY been altered. They’ve become about 0.1 pH points more acid due to excess CO2. The solution is to REMOVE that CO2. Either fixation as biomass or conversion to carbonate will serve.
Geo-engineering is stupid no matter how you shape it. As you saw with the Kogi and their Food Forest approach to cultivation, it is in mimicking Nature, not displacing it, that we solve our problems.
The blue expanses of the oceans are blue rather than green because there is very little growing there. Depth-cycling of kelp beds mimics the upwelling of nutrients which are scarce in most surface waters. In principle, you can depth-cycle anywhere even where upwelling does not occur naturally.
Nemesissays
@nigelj, #123
Addendum to my recent reply:
Even if agriculture would have been a/the cause of modern hubris ( I don’t think so, just look at global CO2 graphs eg, starting to ramp up around 1850, not 10 000 years ago), we can’t go back to a hunting/gathering nomad life, impossible. And it’s not necessary. The problem ain’t agriculture per se, but modern, industrial, profitoptimized agriculture done by multibillion dollar companies/business, who mostly give a shit about eco- destruction. It’s the same with energy companies: The problem is not energy per se, but capitalized, monopolized, centralized energy production- the main problem is the corruption in these and countless other industries. The solutions for our modern problems are there for decades, but there’s not enough will to change that capitalist system, there is way too much will to make money = power. We live in a corrupted, materialist system, that’s the root- problem, not technology nor agriculture per se. Capitalist companies think “dollar, profit”, not “climate change, loving the environment, the very basis of our existence” ect, so they act according to their capitalist agenda. That’s a fact and that’s the root problem of modern ecomomy:
The false, capitalist assumption, that the selfishness of the individual would ever lead to the common wellbeing in the long run. What a mistake, what a piece of sheer propaganda.
Add materialist hyperconsumption and a false definition of “progress” to the list. Is it a real “progress” to strive for Mars, while earth is going down the drain? Is it a real “progress” to build more and ever more weappons for killing eachother in the most technologically sophisticated way?Is it a real “progress” to have the brandnew Iphone every year? Ect, ect, ect… What kind of “progress” is this?
What about real progress within man himself? What about progress in education, progress in social-economy, progress in meditation, progress in developing human inner qualities within themselves, what about developing wisdom, consciousness, not just scientific, technological knowledge mostly for controlling and exploiting the planet and human beings? You can never have climate mitigation, ecofriendly behaviour without wise, educated, conscious human beings. Change the materialist, consumerist, “more, more, more” paradigm and you will change the world for good. There is no effective climate discussion without discussing the root of it all:
A certain, materialist behaviour, rooted in a certain culture, a certain kind of worldview.
nigeljsays
Killian @132, so in other words its going to be hard work making simplification work because of the human factor, which is essentially what I said. Why didn’t you just agree with that and avoid all those words. I’m interested in how such problems might be overcome, but I will look elsewhere as I’m not getting anything from anyone here.
And suggesting that my mentioning George Orwells books is trolling? I don’t think so. They are critically respected books, that point out how the human factor often upsets grand plans and ideas, so not abusive or inflammatory, so not trolling by any generally accepted definition. And if you haven’t read them you should.
“And, it is. I realized this when I was 12. I could not understand why we needed so many different kinds of cars, phones, etc. It seemed inherently wasteful, stupid and needlessly competitive to me.”
Yes having multiple types of automobiles and phones is wasteful. At least to an extent as I will get to. I thought that at a young age as well. You need multiple different metal presses for example. Of course as everyone knows its a function of free market competitive capitalism where multiple manufacturers differentiate themselves to win market share. If they don’t they risk going bust. Its “the system”.
However I also figured out at an early age the alternatives are not that great. For example you have one manufacturer producing only one or two types of automobile like like East Germanys Trabant or the Russian Lada, which were both truly dreadful automobiles, because there was no competitive pressure to make the companies perform well, over the longer term. So it may be a question of ‘efficiency’ versus ‘quality’ and I prefer quality.
I agree you can have too much competition, but putting limits around competition looks very difficult. What would you do? What is the optimal point and why? I’m asking anyone reading this page.
And its not that wasteful if you analyse the numbers. If it became too wasteful companies would still go bust. They balance efficiency and product differentiation. Much of this stuff is similar underneath anyway. Same engines different bodies! Same intel processor chip, different computer bodies and brands.
“Another Straw Man: Civilization is not poison, the modern form of it is.”
Not so much a strawman as just a questionable view.
“This fool is saying, don’t blame us, just suggest a few things we *might* be able to do.”
No you missed a couple of things. There are many obvious implied criticisms of modern civilisation in the article and book: “And technology is nudging us ever closer to blowing up the planet, whether literally or metaphorically”. “It’s also true that we’re allowing our technology to control us…”
I think the article and book it referenced made some good points. Many are consistent with what you say. Sure it got some things wrong, and I never said I accepted every point it made, but I’m not sure that your very relentlessly negative form of messaging will convince anyone of anything very much.
nigeljsays
Nemesis @116
Thanks for the interesting take on the cycle of life and death.
Nemesis @138
“I don’t think farming was the main cause of hierarchies, inequality ect. There are still agricultural communities who are farely egalitarian and don’t live in some strictly hierarchical setting (see small agricultural communities in India and elsewhere). Agriculture is one major premise for a highly hierarchic structured system, but it’s not the cause of it…”
Yes but clearly farming lead to a huge increase in inequality and hierarchies. The historical evidence shows this. And farming culture gradually became complex with many new products and activities emerging and civilsations growing and becoming complex, and hierarchies and inequality are fairly obvious properties or outcomes of that. Some people are also naturally more productive than others and this starts to become more obvious in farming culture. A few small traditional farming communities in India have maintained simpler societies with very egalitarian structures and very low inequality but they are the exceptions as you mentioned. India largely has a very unequal caste structure doesnt it?
I think it would be difficult to literally eliminate hierarchies and maintain a highly performing farming culture, or industrial culture. Many modern experiments trying to do this have failed. Some have succeeded, but it does rather look like its all challenging to scale up. I’ve googled all these issues and read up on them.
We obviously cant make everyone equally productive, but you could minimise inequality by some wealth redistribution done through the governments tax and spend system as is already done in some places. Small groups of people do the same, but in a more informal way. Stuff does get shared. But trying to make everyone have the same level of wealth is very difficult for obvious reasons, and it is not necessary. For example who gets the latest model of iphone? There are simply not enough for everyone to own one, not until they are made at huge scale and low prices. This principle applies widely.
“There must have been a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal system during human history after the last iceage roughly 10 500 years ago, when shamans turned into priests and clan chiefs turned into emperors…”
Yes, but hierarchies and inequality could exist in a matriarchal system although one suspects it would be a gentler form. Is that what you meant? However it looks like people in western countries want a gender neutral sort of society, rather than a patriarchal or matriarchal society.
Nemesis @139
“Sure, but the emphasis in what I said is on objectivity as in “modern science”. The Kogi don’t practice modern science, do they? They don’t follow the materialist, physicalist way of thinking, but they achieve their knowledge through a meditative way mostly from within, from an intuitive approach of observation and conclusion:”
The Kogi arguably did a basic form of science. Take the example by Killian of observing birds eating berries and surviving, and concluding they may be safe for us to eat then tentatively tasting a few etc,etc. Its all there, observation, experiment, theory about berries. But this didn’t seem to get applied to much other than issues of diet and basic health and it was modern civilisation that applied this sort of thinking to astronomy and evolution etc. But they had the instruments to do this. The medieval world was very poor at science, killed it dead for centuries until the enlightenment period.
nigeljsays
nemesis @140
“Btw, I can’t do any regenerative governance, I am just a nobody, i don’t “own” any land nor any money to buy some, I don’t have any political power whatsoever, so I just wait and watch capitalism dying right here, right now, right in front of my very eyes :) Welcome to the end of the american dream (-factory) literally:”
My understanding is RG just means you get together with a small number of people and make decisions by mutual agreement and that everyone is considered an equal, and you are guided by a set of principles based around prioritising needs, good environmental principles, etc, etc. Others will follow. Capitalism will wither. We shall see I guess.
Nemesis @142
“Even if agriculture would have been a/the cause of modern hubris ( I don’t think so, just look at global CO2 graphs eg, starting to ramp up around 1850, not 10 000 years ago), we can’t go back to a hunting/gathering nomad life, impossible. And it’s not necessary. The problem ain’t agriculture per se, but modern, industrial, profitoptimized agriculture done by multibillion dollar companies/business, who mostly give a shit about eco- destruction.”
Yes of course. It could all be solved if governments got tough on how these businesses operate. But they don’t get tough enough. It will probably take an ecological disaster of epic proportions before they do. The death of every last pollinating insect.
“What about real progress within man himself? What about progress in education, progress in social-economy, progress in meditation, progress in developing human inner qualities within themselves, what about developing wisdom, consciousness, not just scientific, technological knowledge mostly for controlling and exploiting the planet and human beings?”
Yes we have to start doing more of those things. The balance has become very skewed. I chose a career that had good job satisfaction and a moderately decent income. I could have done other jobs that earned more money but I didnt want to spend my days doing something I hated. But I dont have my balance of all these sorts of things 100% right either.
nigeljsays
Important new open access research study: “Carbon‐Neutral Pathways for the United States”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C points to the need for carbon neutrality by mid‐century. Achieving this in the United States in only 30 years will be challenging, and practical pathways detailing the technologies, infrastructure, costs, and tradeoffs involved are needed. Modeling the entire U.S. energy and industrial system with new analysis tools that capture synergies not represented in sector‐specific or integrated assessment models, we created multiple pathways to net zero and net negative CO2 emissions by 2050. They met all forecast U.S. energy needs at a net cost of 0.2–1.2% of GDP in 2050 (according to the study this is $1 per day per person), using only commercial or near‐commercial technologies, and requiring no early retirement of existing infrastructure. Pathways with constraints on consumer behavior, land use, biomass use, and technology choices (e.g., no nuclear) met the target but at higher cost. All pathways employed four basic strategies: energy efficiency, decarbonized electricity, electrification, and carbon capture. Least‐cost pathways were based on >80% wind and solar electricity plus thermal generation for reliability. A 100% renewable primary energy system was feasible but had higher cost and land use. We found multiple feasible options for supplying low‐carbon fuels for non‐electrifiable end uses in industry, freight, and aviation, which were not required in bulk until after 2035. In the next decade, the actions required in all pathways were similar: expand renewable capacity 3.5 fold, retire coal, maintain existing gas generating capacity, and increase electric vehicle and heat pump sales to >50% of market share. This study provides a playbook for carbon neutrality policy with concrete near‐term priorities.
nigeljsays
Related to previous: “Getting to net zero—and even net negative—is surprisingly feasible, and affordable”
@Killian, #108
” Do the math: There is no time to wait for the death of Capitalism…”
Lol, capitalism will die quickly, so you do not need plenty of time to see capitalism die^^
I have no faith in your crystal ball. Uncertainty is not our friend. 1. No matter how quickly it comes, tipping points may be coming faster. 2. No matter the time frame, it will still be faster by doing Regenerative Governance to both create the new system and cause the end of the other more quickly.
” You want to end Capitalism, do Regenerative Governance.”
I never said I want to end capitalism, I just said:
Pedantry. Save it for those who cannot think.
You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on a global grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before.
And I said this is incorrect. There is no need to wait for Capitalism to die first. It will both faster and wiser to build the better system and reduce Capitalism with the same effort. It makes no sense to kill two birds with two stones when you can use one stone.
Btw, I can’t do any regenerative governance, I am just a nobody, i don’t “own” any land nor any money to buy some, I don’t have any political power whatsoever
You clearly have no idea at all what Regenerative Governance is because nothing in your list prevents you from engaging in RG.
Joni Mitchells song big yellow taxi. Best damn environmental song ever written and by a massively talented and critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and guitarist from days gone by.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20
nemesis at 91: My thoughts about living like a Kogi were specific to me. How would I do that? Is it possible?
Your question: how would we persuade other people (a lot of them) to live like Kogi? Entirely different topic. I doubt that could be done. I was having enough trouble trying to sort how one willing person might do it.
what you said at 94, yeah, I think you may be right about our species.
But I remain optimistic about this planet and our amazing good fortune to have been born into a conscious state where reflection and analysis is possible. And I am optimistic about the planet’s ability to absorb the losses of a great extinction event and bounce back into a verdant state in about ten million years. It’s a wonderful planet. I am happy to be here most days.
Cheers
Mike
Russia is planning to add 45 nuclear power plants.
Engineer-Poet @98 says “Green Energy (is fake):”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW-VLPyxqAM
No. That is poetic licence. Green energy per se is not fake. The video shows the problem is the design of “GO” (guaranteed origin) which is a European system of tradeable renewable energy certificates.
The video makes a good point about the problems of burning biomass with schemes like BECCS. Heres a new research paper criticising BECCS: “Irrigation of biomass plantations may globally increase water stress more than climate change”. Thats shooting yourself in your own foot.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21640-3
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-03009-z
The results of this study are perhaps surprising :”Does solar geoengineering crowd out climate change mitigation efforts? Evidence from a stated preference referendum on a carbon tax”
“Solar geoengineering is increasingly being considered a realistic approach to managing climate change. One crucial concern is whether geoengineering crowds out efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Adding to a limited body of empirical evidence, we use a survey experiment to estimate how informing the U.S. public about solar geoengineering impacts support for a proposed national carbon tax. In contrast to the crowding-out hypothesis, we find that respondents who are provided with information about geoengineering are significantly more likely to support the tax. Further, we document systematic variation as people with egalitarian and communitarian worldviews are more responsive to the information relative to those with hierarchical and individualist worldviews. Our study suggests that the availability and awareness of solar geoengineering options may lead to an increase in greenhouse gas abatement efforts.”
96 mike says:
10 Mar 2021 at 11:42 AM
nuclear getting a look/review ten years after Fukushima:
“Fukushima was a man-made accident, triggered by natural hazards, that could and should have been avoided. Experts widely agreed that the root causes were lax regulatory oversight in Japan and an ineffective safety culture at the utility that operated the plant.
These problems are far from unique to Japan…
This is one thing tech heads/technocopians tend to overlook: You can’t separate nuclear (or any other system) from its human operators. Dancer/dance, just as those who talk about “pristine” nature completely disregard the documented gardening humans have done for at least 65k years.
Liebig’s Law of the Minumum/the weakest link applies.
When it comes to tech, that comes whole cloth from human imagination, humans will always be that weakest link as we are the designers, builders and operators.
That is, saying nuclear is safe but for the humans is a meaningless distinction for proponents to make.
The Kogi (and indigenous people in general) LOVE the very basis of their existence, lol ( highly recommended: https://www.amacad.org/publication/indigenous-americans-spirituality-and-ecos ). BUT that’s absolutely not the way politics and the fossil fool industry, the car industry, the meat industry, the arms industry, the agricultural industry, the stock market ect ect ect (extend ad lib) work, ROFL, and they will NEVER act that way I swear, capitalism will rather die than “love” the ecosystem
Exactly. As I have been saying. One pathway: Simplification.
93: Did you watch the 2nd documentary “Aluna”? In the 2nd documentary scientists agree very well with the Kogi. Sure, the Kogi use a different language than scientists, but they come to very same conclusion:
Yes, that is why my comment was quite specific that they lack the scientific language to articulate what they believe clearly. You’ll notice it took scientists to suss it out. The laypersons were lost. In both movies.
But I am not a layperson, I’m an ecological engineer, so it all made perfect sense to me, in part because, as I said, permaculture is heavily based in TEK – and TEK is science: Observe, hypothesize, test, confirm/invalidate.
Observation: Bird eats berry, bird lives.
Hypothesis: Berry might be edible.
Test: Try a bit.
Confirm: Yummy, no side effects.
Result: New food source. Tell others.
Invalidate: Yummy, burns the mouth and causes nausea.
Result: Avoid eating. Tell others.
Whereas the whole premise of consumerism is the cultivation of dissatisfaction–with our situations, certainly, but first of all with ourselves. “More” is never “enough.”
I’ll leave this beautiful and kind forum with some encouraging news, Warren Buffet’s “wealth” reached 100 billion dollars:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/finanzen/warren-buffett-vermoegen-berkshire-hathaway-bill-gates-101.html
Capitalism is wonderful, you just need to work hard like Warren Buffet ( his eco/climate footprint is almost nothing compared to the vast global majority I bet) and you will quickly be as “wealthy” as Warren Buffet et al for sure, everyone can do it.
See you all at the beautiful end of the road soon :))
Bye (I won’t answer any more replies, I let go and fly away, away, away, free again).
BPL: In his own way, Killian is a troll.
AB: True. He has no patience and is immune to logic that originates outside of his realm.
But he’s way right about you and Nigel. You both are subgeniuses who believe you have brains worth listening to. Sorry. I tried my best to honor you and Nigel, but you two are friggin brain dead (“I got good marks” says Nigel – uh, so did all the other white morons who chose to complete their papers).
Killian is abrasive and nearly impossible to incorporate in a system, but unlike you and Nigel, I’ve found it productive to go out of my way to incorporate Killian’s additions to my tapestry.
In contrast, you and Nigel are worthless. Full stop.
Sl, do I hit send or delete?
I hit delete. Didn’t work. Karma?
If this unique process scales up green hydrogen becomes readily available:
https://newatlas.com/energy/h2pro-cheap-hydrogen-electrolysis/
nigelj @104:
Depth-cycling of artificial giant kelp beds would eliminate the irrigation problem and directly extract carbon from the oceans.
You have to admit, 5%/day growth is pretty impressive. I don’t know how much carbon/m²/day this comes to, but at first glance it looks more like a solution than most of the things I’ve come across so far.
@106:
Of course it can be done, because it HAS been done. You can’t separate ANY system from its basic physics of operation. That was the entire point of molten-salt reactors; they have a guaranteed negative temperature coefficient, and the “freeze valve” emptying the core salt to a dump tank doesn’t depend on operators or even electricity to do its job. The safety systems of NuScale are based on similar principles.
Nuclear is already the safest electric power humans have. Do you WANT more deaths from wind turbines catching fire while workers are in the nacelles, or people falling off roofs while dealing with PV panels? Dam failures taking out tens and hundreds of thousands at a time? Because that’s what you get with “renewables”. And of course, all fossil systems currently in use use the atmosphere as an open sewer, as does “biomass”.
I might look like a fool saying “bye” twice and then replying again. Seems like there’s still some microscopic will to communicate my thoughts and feelings, although I am surrounded by deniers in my area and decided to shut up and reside in solitude as long as climate heating ect stirs me up.
The Kogi are very important to me as their lifestyle and vision of the universe can show, in contrast, what we might think and do wrong. In fact, why not learn from eachother, instead of calling these people “primitive” or something, modern man will fall over his very own ignorance and arrogance quickly enough.
@mike, #102
“My thoughts about living like a Kogi were specific to me. How would I do that? Is it possible?”
That comes as a real surprise to me, I didn’t expect that you are seriously contemplating to live like a Kogi (if I get that right). To live like a real Kogi you’d need to be part of a Kogi community, no other way. Then there is the Kogi’s view of life and the universe in general:
“Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings. That’s a completely different approach than in modern science. It’s more like poetry, they have a poetic connection to Nature ect, they wouldn’t say “the sun is a fusion reactor”, like modern man does, the sun is seen by the Kogi as a living being, so the sun can literally smile on a Kogi, but not on a physicist. The sun can smile in a poem, in a song, in a tale, in human visionary intuition, but it can’t smile in physics nor in mathematics, that’s the price for modern, scientific enlightenment:
The sun does not smile anymore. The trees don’t talk anymore, the ocean, the mountains, Nature, the universe does not talk to modern man, he is left with a mechanistic, materialistic machinery and so he handles things and beings as such most of the time. From that kind of perspective we are not even monkeys, but biorobots. Just say that the trees talk to you and they will put you in the madhouse sooner or later. Define yourself as a monkey and you’ll become a monkey, define yourself as a biorobot and you’ll become a biorobot, a homeless biorobot that lost his inner connection to Nature, earth, the universe. But the Kogi, the indigenous people say:
” All of Nature is in us, all of us is in Nature.”
– Pete Catches (Lakota elder)
That’s why all things and beings talk to them in a poetic language within, that’s the way they achieve wisdom beyond sheer rational knowledge. That’s one of the main differences of the Kogi resp indigenous people and modern man, that’s the worlview one would have to achieve in the first place to live like a Kogi, like an indigenous. The dictionary says:
” Indigenous or less commonly indigenous : of or relating to the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized by a now-dominant group.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indigenous
Lol, that tells a lot, doesn’t it? The “now dominant group” is us (on a global scale), the younger brother. And STILL these indigenous people are willing to come to terms with their oppressors. I wouldn’t do that, lol. WHY is that? Because they still LOVE their younger brothers, despite all murderous colonializm ect, they know, the younger brother is still part of the cosmic family. That’s their universal message:
You can exploit man and mice, you can set earth on climate fire, but you can never lose your true, cosmic/natural identity, no matter how lost you are as a homeless biorobot, earth is your true home, the solar system is your home, the milky way is your home, the universe is your home, your friend indeed, NEVER your enemy. Fight earth, fight Nature, fight the universe or whatever- in the end you are fighting and exploiting yourself. The chinese Taoists know that, they have their own image of man within Nature and all of Nature within man, they call that “The Great Man”, they literally imagine the veins in their own body are part of the rivers on earth and vice verse, the human hair is like the plants, the bones like trees, the water within the body like the waters within the oceans, the breath like the ocean tide and the wind, the thoughts and feelings like… The Great Spirit, the DAO, the Dharma within us. YES, the f* elements TALK to us within us all the time, don’t they?! Sure they do as WE ARE those f* elements, what else?! This is why one of the Kogi mamas said in that documentary:
” To think means to LISTEN.”
Wow. Sounds almost like a christian mystic or something, doesn’t it? To live like a Kogi means to listen much and to think much (wich is the same as listening, lol). Modern man calls it “contemplation” and “meditation”. When you stop talking and start listening like in meditation, then things start to talk, they start to teach you. This way the Kogi learned a lot, they not just gained knowledge, but wisdom. You can have mountains of knowledge and still exploit and destroy the ecosystem, but you didn’t achieve any wisdom at all. Knowledge is completely worthless without wisdom. What does all the knowledge for you, when you don’t know how to use it in a wise way? Nothing.
Discover and cultivate the Kogi, the universal indigenous within yourself and you will live like one. Sounds like a joke, but it’s true- remember:
” All of Nature is in us, all of us is in Nature.”
As Buddha said once in a while, death and destruction is part of our very existence, part of Nature, so death and destruction are not our enemies, they are part of us and they will come to everyone of us, there is no life without death and destruction, two sides of one coin. But how do you come to terms with death and destruction? By exploiting and raping the planet? By hoarding more and ever more funny money and material shit? No. One comes to terms with death and destruction by meditation, careful acting and letting go. This way one realizes that death is one’s very own shadow, ones very own abyss within oneself. Death destroys some things (like your identity card resp name, form, adress, birthdate, nationality ect sooner or later, so don’t get lost in it), but it does not destroy the very core of yourself as Death is at the very center of yourself, a dark abyss beyond names and forms, beyond namarupa. And yet this very center is also the center, the very spring of Life, within yourself, infinitely, eternally. That’s the kind of wisdom modern man has lost, so he is always on the run, trying to escape death and destruction and therefore causing more and ever more death and destruction, lol, trapped in the rat race.
In the end, to live like an indigenous, a true Kogi, you need to listen/contemplate/meditate much and become just yourself in it’s fullest meaning and extension and never lose your conscious connection to Nature, to the whole universe within and without and keep your baggage small, there is no other way to achieve full peace, full wisdom, full satisfaction no funny money could ever buy. That’s what the Kogi always strive for, that’s what we should strive for as a species and things will change for the better for sure and we would be part of the Kogi community and vice versa, part of the global family called “Homo Sapiens Sapiens”. The good news is:
You can do that anywhere you want as the saying goes:
” All of Nature is in us, all of us is in Nature.”
– Pete Catches (Lakota elder)
Best wishes.
Killian @106 says
“This is one thing tech heads/technocopians tend to overlook: You can’t separate nuclear (or any other system) from its human operators. …Liebig’s Law of the Minumum/the weakest link applies…..When it comes to tech, that comes whole cloth from human imagination, humans will always be that weakest link as we are the designers, builders and operators.”
True, but you cannot separate your ideas about small, simple living, egalitarian regenerative communities from their human operators either. Its going to be hard making them work. I suggest read George Orwells novels.
Bundy @111 you trash me, after being very happy to ask for and accept my money. Your comments reek of jealousy and resentment and massive hypocrisy. You couldn’t even finish College. Go away troll.
@Killian, #108
” Yes, that is why my comment was quite specific that they lack the scientific language to articulate what they believe clearly. You’ll notice it took scientists to suss it out. The laypersons were lost. In both movies. “
Sure, the Kogi lack the scientific language/mindset, exactly like most of us lack the Kogi’s mindset. No surprise, different culture, different language. And as you said: ” The laypersons were lost. In both movies.”, but the pro scientists knew exactly what the Kogi are talking about, they confirmed the Kogi’s deep understanding of the ecosystem.
” Observation: Bird eats berry, bird lives.
Hypothesis: Berry might be edible.
Test: Try a bit.
Confirm: Yummy, no side effects.
Result: New food source. Tell others.
Invalidate: Yummy, burns the mouth and causes nausea.
Result: Avoid eating. Tell others.”
I subscribe to that and the Kogi would subscribe to that as well I guess. But it’s not that easy in a capitalist system, lol. Capitalism does not work truely rationally, it is a cheater too often and when scientific facts come into play, they will be debated, ignored, suppressed, denied when it comes to mundane profit. That’s fatal, that’s a death sentence and they know it, but they try to invent clever and ever more clever tech- fixes ect to compensate for the damage done, exactly like in the tale of the tortoise and the hare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortoise_and_the_Hare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_the_Tortoise
Elon Musk, the hare, extended that rat race to Mars, lol. Others extend it to luxury bunkers underground. You know, you propagate permaculture and I appreciate that, but that’s not the way how capitalism works. You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on aglobal grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before. The problem is not a technical, but an ethical one, we learn that from countless cases of corruption in the fossil fool industry and countless other industries.
@Gavin and all:
You can have as much beautiful scientific data and intentions as you like, the caravan moves on, nothing’s older than today’s newspaper. You are fighting windmills like Don Quixote and the funny money caravan moves on. You deal with all that neat, uncorrupted, sober scientific facts, you work hard and harder and you learn more and more about the cliff, the tipping points, Mother Nature’s uncontrollable kick in the face like permafrost, huuuuh, methane, uh ah, drought (like here in Germany) and on goes the list and the caravan moves on like blind led by the blind. I can wipe out all your hard scientific facts, all your hard, hard work over years and decades and centuries with one gesture:
I am not interested, I am busy making funny money = power.
That’s the way it works.
BPL: In his own way, Killian is a troll.
In his own way, BPL needs to learn to use the dictionary – and the mirror. He is the last of the people who still go around literally doing nothing but insulting people with a given post. I do not do that. I call people out without first consulting any other person’s set of principles or etiquette. I am an adult so set my own path, and with a *very* high skill set in analysis. I rarely get things wrong. I do not suffer liars and fools gladly. There are a lot of lies told on this forum, and those who lie simply to troll are fools who choose to risk our future to score points in their imagined battle of wits. The favorite forms of fallacy being the Straw Man and Ad Hom.
I may respond strongly, but I never troll. And those comments for which I am accused of being a troll or rude or what have you, are always *responses* to rudeness, trolling, ideological bullshit, racism, lies, etc. By definition, I cannot be a troll; they instigate with the goal of disrupting. I quite literally never do that on this forum.
So, again. learn the word, BPL, because of all the silliness we see on this forum, you are the only true troll here anymore.
Enough on this. If you’re on this forum and addressing individuals’ rather than issues, you are the fool and the troll and should do the right thing and either alter your behavior or get the hell off the forum.
AB: you and Nigel are worthless.
BPL: I will toss and turn all night because Al doesn’t like me.
Correction:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rosatom-targets-24-new-reactor-units-in-Russia-by
Just 24 more nuclear power plants in Russia.
This seems to me like a good concise analysis of hunter gatherers and and praises these societies and suggests a few things we could emulate:
https://www.adventure-journal.com/2020/01/were-our-hunter-gatherer-ancestors-actually-better-off-than-we-are/
“Were Our Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors Actually Better Off Than We Are?”
But it also identifies the key issue that things changed when humans developed farming which gave rise to hierarchies, inequality, materialism etc, etc. It just seems to me that this makes it hard to get rid of hierarchies and inequality, and the best we can probably do is manage such things better so they don’t cause oppression and poverty.
50, 109
Thanks to Killiian for elucidating the structural entanglement of Colombian coal exports, coca chewing Kogi climate philosophers, and the hippy lifestyle:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/03/we-all-emit-like-yellow-submarine.html
David B. Benson@113: If this unique process scales up green hydrogen becomes readily available
They might need to work on their maths a bit. They say “the first technology to deliver energy efficiency of 95 percent … compared to 70 percent of water electrolysis,” but they also say “A kilogram of hydrogen stores somewhere between 33 and 39 kWh of energy, depending on who you ask” (what!) and that “today’s electrolyzers consume as much as 48 kWh per kilogram”. That makes (depending on who you ask, I guess), conventional electrolysis between 68% and 81% efficient.
They say their process can produce a kg of hydrogen using 39.9kWh, so, again, “depending on who you ask”, their process is between about 98% and 83% efficient.
According to Wikipedia the heat of combustion of hydrogen is −286 kJ/mol, 500mol/kg for hydrogen gas, which I make to be 39.8 kWh/kg. But that’s only if you ask me ;)
Green hydrogen? Why do they lie? Why are they allowed to?
11 Al Bundy says:
11 Mar 2021 at 10:42 AM
BPL: In his own way, Killian is a troll.
AB: True. He has no patience and is immune to logic that originates outside of his realm.
HAHAHA… the peanuts are baaaaaack! Still lying, still gaslighting, still hypocrites, still wrong.
Just as a cell phone might seem like magic to a pre-industrial person, correct use of logic seems like magic to you.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210310-the-trillion-dollar-plan-to-capture-co2
The basalt weathering method is the best, permanent.
@128:
Ultramafic minerals are somewhat better, but seriously… whatever works.
@128 David,
Lets just suppose that the Basalt weathering method is the one chosen, and it works to drop CO2 down to around 300 ppm…
Now what? How do we restore degraded soils worldwide?
There is currently more carbon missing from soils worldwide (mostly due to poor agricultural methods) than there is extra carbon in the atmosphere.
If we “permanently” remove the carbon from the atmosphere, and the only way any biotic fixing and capture of carbon is from atmospheric CO2, where are you going to get the carbon to restore degraded ecosystems and cropland soils?
That’s a really really really dangerous move. I am all for it if you can show a way to avoid this unintended emergent property of the biosphere system. However, nothing on your link seems to have even considered the long term effects of such a course of action.
Scott E Strough @130 — Your claim about soils is not supported by a link to a reference.
But suppose so. As more carbon is added to soils by appropriate agriculture, about half that amount will leave the oceans. Capture that fraction by basalt weathering.
Can’t capture too much as there is always more coal, oil and natural gas to supply more carbon.
117 nigelj says:
11 Mar 2021 at 4:38 PM
Killian @106 says
Liebig’s Law of the Minumum/the weakest link applies…..When it comes to tech, that comes whole cloth from human imagination, humans will always be that weakest link as we are the designers, builders and operators.”
True, but you cannot separate your ideas about small, simple living, egalitarian regenerative communities from their human operators either.
Let me see… I have pointed out there is no such thing as pure nature becausde we have been changing nature on every continent but Antarctica for up to 300,000 years and have intentionally been shaping it to meet our needs for at least 65k years, and you post this as if you are informing me of something?
Do you never think before you post? Do you not understand why, when I says, “This is yellow” and you come along and say, “But you need to consider that that is yellow” I just want to slap you upside the head?
Its going to be hard making them work.
No, it’s not. Simplicity is simple. What is hard is getting fools and idiots to do what is clearly necessary.
I suggest read George Orwells novels.
I suggest you figure out how little you contribute here, and particularly how often you troll – even when you don’t seem to be intending to.
114 Engineer-Poet says:
11 Mar 2021 at 3:58 PM
nigelj @104:
Heres a new research paper criticising BECCS: “Irrigation of biomass plantations may globally increase water stress more than climate change”. Thats shooting yourself in your own foot.
Depth-cycling of artificial giant kelp beds would eliminate the irrigation problem and directly extract carbon from the oceans.
You have to admit, 5%/day growth is pretty impressive. I don’t know how much carbon/m²/day this comes to, but at first glance it looks more like a solution than most of the things I’ve come across so far.
Because artificially altering huge areas of the ocean will work out just fine in the end…
Geo-engineering is stupid no matter how you shape it. As you saw with the Kogi and their Food Forest approach to cultivation, it is in mimicking Nature, not displacing it, that we solve our problems.
116 Nemesis says:
11 Mar 2021 at 4:24 PM
“Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings.
Your first sentence is incorrect. While there is a mythology and belief system within which their knowledge is bound, the knowledge itself is extremely objective. All that emphasis on sitting and thinking is an example of the first principle of Permaculture: Observe. Long, thoughtful observation over quick, thoughtless action is preferable. This is similar in its essence to well begun is half done. Taking the time to tart correctly, carefully avoids having to redo what you have done.
The Kogi observe very carefully and think on what they observe almost obsessively. They don’t impose what they they think, they let the truth of the things emerge – which is another Permaculture principle: Don’t impose design, let it emerge from the site and the context.
119 Nemesis says:
11 Mar 2021 at 5:45 PM
@Killian, #108
….
Elon Musk, the hare, extended that rat race to Mars, lol. Others extend it to luxury bunkers underground. You know, you propagate permaculture and I appreciate that, but that’s not the way how capitalism works. You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on aglobal grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before.
Do the math: There is no time to wait for the death of Capitalism, *then* build a better system. I agree with Buckminster Fuller. I wrote in 2011 that we need to opt out of the current system and opt into regenerative systems. Turns out Bucky felt the same:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The problem is the solution (Permaculture, again): If the problem is consumption, stop consuming. Stop consuming, Capitalism dies. Capitalism dies, its slave class of billionaires and millionaires also go away.
You want to end Capitalism, do Regenerative Governance.
123 nigelj says:
12 Mar 2021 at 4:54 PM
This seems to me like a good concise analysis of hunter gatherers and and praises these societies and suggests a few things we could emulate:
Because it reads as if you wrote it. It’s a terrible review repeating bullshit tropes and using shit logic. The reviewer has a clear agenda.
“Ryan’s cardinal sin, however, is overreach. He refers darkly to “the otherworldly price we and other creatures on this planet are paying” for our species’ crowning intellectual achievements. But this framing suggests causality where there is none. It isn’t the fault of artists or scientists that our states and ecosystems have fallen into crisis.
Straw Man. I have not read the book, but only an idiot would claim it is knowledge itself that causes our problems. I am certain the writer did not do that, but spoke of how our reliance on tech, i.e. the appplication and implementation of knowledge is the problem. And, it is. I realized this when I was 12. I could not understand why we needed so many different kinds of cars, phones, etc. It seemed inherently wasteful, stupid and needlessly competitive to me.
Rather than leaning on the sexy-but-unpersuasive case that civilization is plain poison
Another Straw Man: Civilization is not poison, the modern form of it is.
Ryan might have focused more on what hunter-gatherers have done right and pivoting sooner to how we might recreate the best aspects of our ancestral past — insofar as it’s possible.
This fool is saying, don’t blame us, just suggest a few things we *might* be able to do.
You should be able to spot this crap yourself except that, as I said, that review could have been written by cutting and pasting from your comments on this forum.
130 Scott E Strough says:
13 Mar 2021 at 10:44 PM
@128 David,
Lets just suppose that the Basalt weathering method is the one chosen, and it works to drop CO2 down to around 300 ppm…
Now what? How do we restore degraded soils worldwide?
There is currently more carbon missing from soils worldwide (mostly due to poor agricultural methods) than there is extra carbon in the atmosphere.
If we “permanently” remove the carbon from the atmosphere, and the only way any biotic fixing and capture of carbon is from atmospheric CO2, where are you going to get the carbon to restore degraded ecosystems and cropland soils?
…nothing on your link seems to have even considered the long term effects of such a course of action.
This is an excellent point. Use destructive methods to draw down carbon, then regenerative ag would push us to temperatures that are too low – which would require the continuation of FF ag.
I do not think this is accidental.
@Kevin Mckinney, #109
“Nemesis: The Kogi (and indigenous people in general) LOVE the very basis of their existence…
David McKinney: Whereas the whole premise of consumerism is the cultivation of dissatisfaction–with our situations, certainly, but first of all with ourselves. “More” is never “enough.”
I agree, modern, materialist man is never fully satisfied, always striving for “more”, wich is never enough. It is because he lost his conscious connection to his true Nature, to Nature in general, unlike the Kogi and other indigenous people who don’t strive for more and ever more, but who are striving for never losing this conscious connection to his Nature within resp Nature around him (both are the same indeed). Modern man, the modern world is ruled by a materialist/consumerist paradigm and there will be no real change before we achieve a new, a better, a holistic and more spiritual paradigm. The sheer materialistic/physicalistic paradigm is a total failure as we can see all around us.
@nigelj, #123
I don’t think farming was the main cause of hierarchies, inequality ect. There are still agricultural communities who are farely egalitarian and don’t live in some strictly hierarchical setting (see small agricultural communities in India and elsewhere). Agriculture is one major premise for a highly hierarchic structured system, but it’s not the cause of it.
There must have been a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal system during human history after the last iceage roughly 10 500 years ago, when shamans turned into priests and clan chiefs turned into emperors. One of the very first literal reports of that shift can be found in the Gilgamesh epic. Gilgamesh was the first historical tyrant, who slayed Humbaba, the guardian of the forrest and exploited the cedars of the Lebanon to build his palace. He was a cruel and greedy type of person, a tragical figure who strived for eternal life and who stirred up the female goddess Inanna ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna ) and the natural forces for doing so. A sensation happened 6 years ago when a new section of tablet V of the Gilgamesh epic has been found:
” The aftermath of the heroes’ slaying of Ḫumbaba is now better preserved (300–308). The previously available text made it clear that Gilgameš and Enkidu knew, even before they killed Ḫumbaba, that what they were doing would anger the cosmic forces that governed the world, chiefly the god Enlil. Their reaction after the event is now tinged with a hint of guilty conscience, when Enkidu remarks ruefully that [ana] tušār ništakan qišta, “we have reduced the forest [to] a wasteland” (303). The anxiety about offending the gods seems to a modern reader compounded by ecological regret. Enkidu goes on to imagine the angry questions that Enlil will ask them when they arrive home: minu uzzakunuma tarahhisa qista, “what was this wrath of yours that you went trampling the forest?” (306). In the theme of the angry gods, the poems about Ḫumbaba in both Sumerian and Akkadian already displayed an ethical ambivalence toward the expedition to his Cedar Forest, arising from what one commentator has called the “double nature” of the forest’s guardian as ogre and servant of Enlil (Forsyth 1981: 21). This newly recovered speech of Enkidu adds to the impression that, to the poets’ minds, the destruction of Ḫumbaba and his trees was morally wrong.”
Full text (a translation of the newly found section included):
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/jcunestud.66.0069_w-footer.pdf
Here we have the very first historical report of ecological destruction:
” … Ancient ecology
The new section of Tablet V contains ecological aspects that resonate with modern day concerns over environmental destruction. Of course, there are potential anachronisms in projecting environmental concerns on an ancient text composed thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution.
Yet, the undeniable sensitivity in the epic’s presentation of the wilderness is illuminating, considering the long history of humanity’s interaction with our environment and its animal inhabitants…”
https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-73444
Common interpretations had seen Gilgamesh as a “hero” who had slain a demon (Humbaba). But the newly found section lets Humbaba resp the forrest shine in totally different light. And it’s no accident that all human emperors have been masculine like Gilgamesh. In fact, Gilgamesh is the very first historical written report of ecological destruction. And still modern man is striving for eternal life ( through technical manipulation of Nature), like Gilgamesh did:
https://www.businessinsider.com/futurist-ray-kurzweil-eternal-life-technology-2015-11?r=US&IR=T&op=1
Again, Kurzweil is masculine^^ That’s the very peak of striving for more and ever more- eternal life through technology, while the ecosystem is being exploited and finally falling apart. It’s a mistake, a hubris, denying eternal life on a spiritual basis, while striving for eternal life through technology, lol. It’s a delusion, a farce, the ultimate hubris of modern man.
@Killian, #134
Nemesis said: “Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings.”
Killian replied: ” Your first sentence is incorrect. While there is a mythology and belief system within which their knowledge is bound, the knowledge itself is extremely objective.”
Sure, but the emphasis in what I said is on objectivity as in “modern science”. The Kogi don’t practice modern science, do they? They don’t follow the materialist, physicalist way of thinking, but they achieve their knowledge through a meditative way mostly from within, from an intuitive approach of observation and conclusion:
” The cosmic visions of indigenous peoples are significantly diverse. Each nation and community has its own unique traditions. Still, several characteristics stand out. First, it is common to envision the creative process of the universe as a form of thought or mental process…
Perhaps the most important aspect of indigenous cosmic visions is the conception of creation as a living process, resulting in a living universe in which a kinship exists between all things…”
https://www.amacad.org/publication/indigenous-americans-spirituality-and-ecos
Modern, materialist science does not see the creative process of the universe as a form of thought or mental prozess and it does not see the entire cosmos as living process, but it imagines some “objective”, archimedean point beyond mundane human existence:
” An Archimedean point (Latin: Punctum Archimedis) is a hypothetical standpoint from which an observer can objectively perceive the subject of inquiry with a view of totality (i.e., a god’s-eye view); or a reliable starting point from which one may reason. In other words, a view from an Archimedean point describes the ideal of “removing oneself” from the object of study so that one can see it in relation to all other things while remaining independent of them…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_point
THAT is NOT the way the Kogi percieve life, Nature, the universe, reality-, like Jack D. Forbes said:
” … Some scientists think
they can study a world of
matter separate from themselves
but there is no
Universe Un-observed
(knowable to us at least)
nothing can be known
without being channeled
through some creature’s senses,
the unobserved Universe
cannot be discussed
for we, the observers,
being its very description
are its eyes and ears
its very making
is our seeing of it
our sensing of it…”
@Killian, #108
” Do the math: There is no time to wait for the death of Capitalism…”
Lol, capitalism will die quickly, so you do not need plenty of time to see capitalism die^^
” You want to end Capitalism, do Regenerative Governance.”
I never said I want to end capitalism, I just said:
” You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on a global grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before.”
Btw, I can’t do any regenerative governance, I am just a nobody, i don’t “own” any land nor any money to buy some, I don’t have any political power whatsoever, so I just wait and watch capitalism dying right here, right now, right in front of my very eyes :) Welcome to the end of the american dream (-factory) literally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWDVtjXAXzQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0rxYKfUoE0
See, the capitalist myth/paradigme is in fact already dying ;)
@133:
The entire oceans have ALREADY been altered. They’ve become about 0.1 pH points more acid due to excess CO2. The solution is to REMOVE that CO2. Either fixation as biomass or conversion to carbonate will serve.
The blue expanses of the oceans are blue rather than green because there is very little growing there. Depth-cycling of kelp beds mimics the upwelling of nutrients which are scarce in most surface waters. In principle, you can depth-cycle anywhere even where upwelling does not occur naturally.
@nigelj, #123
Addendum to my recent reply:
Even if agriculture would have been a/the cause of modern hubris ( I don’t think so, just look at global CO2 graphs eg, starting to ramp up around 1850, not 10 000 years ago), we can’t go back to a hunting/gathering nomad life, impossible. And it’s not necessary. The problem ain’t agriculture per se, but modern, industrial, profitoptimized agriculture done by multibillion dollar companies/business, who mostly give a shit about eco- destruction. It’s the same with energy companies: The problem is not energy per se, but capitalized, monopolized, centralized energy production- the main problem is the corruption in these and countless other industries. The solutions for our modern problems are there for decades, but there’s not enough will to change that capitalist system, there is way too much will to make money = power. We live in a corrupted, materialist system, that’s the root- problem, not technology nor agriculture per se. Capitalist companies think “dollar, profit”, not “climate change, loving the environment, the very basis of our existence” ect, so they act according to their capitalist agenda. That’s a fact and that’s the root problem of modern ecomomy:
The false, capitalist assumption, that the selfishness of the individual would ever lead to the common wellbeing in the long run. What a mistake, what a piece of sheer propaganda.
Add materialist hyperconsumption and a false definition of “progress” to the list. Is it a real “progress” to strive for Mars, while earth is going down the drain? Is it a real “progress” to build more and ever more weappons for killing eachother in the most technologically sophisticated way?Is it a real “progress” to have the brandnew Iphone every year? Ect, ect, ect… What kind of “progress” is this?
What about real progress within man himself? What about progress in education, progress in social-economy, progress in meditation, progress in developing human inner qualities within themselves, what about developing wisdom, consciousness, not just scientific, technological knowledge mostly for controlling and exploiting the planet and human beings? You can never have climate mitigation, ecofriendly behaviour without wise, educated, conscious human beings. Change the materialist, consumerist, “more, more, more” paradigm and you will change the world for good. There is no effective climate discussion without discussing the root of it all:
A certain, materialist behaviour, rooted in a certain culture, a certain kind of worldview.
Killian @132, so in other words its going to be hard work making simplification work because of the human factor, which is essentially what I said. Why didn’t you just agree with that and avoid all those words. I’m interested in how such problems might be overcome, but I will look elsewhere as I’m not getting anything from anyone here.
And suggesting that my mentioning George Orwells books is trolling? I don’t think so. They are critically respected books, that point out how the human factor often upsets grand plans and ideas, so not abusive or inflammatory, so not trolling by any generally accepted definition. And if you haven’t read them you should.
Killian @137 — You miss the point. Permanent removal of carbon dioxide is expen$ive. By all means use appropriate agriculture and
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/694/trillions-trees
first, adding permanent removal methods only as required.
Killian @136
“And, it is. I realized this when I was 12. I could not understand why we needed so many different kinds of cars, phones, etc. It seemed inherently wasteful, stupid and needlessly competitive to me.”
Yes having multiple types of automobiles and phones is wasteful. At least to an extent as I will get to. I thought that at a young age as well. You need multiple different metal presses for example. Of course as everyone knows its a function of free market competitive capitalism where multiple manufacturers differentiate themselves to win market share. If they don’t they risk going bust. Its “the system”.
However I also figured out at an early age the alternatives are not that great. For example you have one manufacturer producing only one or two types of automobile like like East Germanys Trabant or the Russian Lada, which were both truly dreadful automobiles, because there was no competitive pressure to make the companies perform well, over the longer term. So it may be a question of ‘efficiency’ versus ‘quality’ and I prefer quality.
I agree you can have too much competition, but putting limits around competition looks very difficult. What would you do? What is the optimal point and why? I’m asking anyone reading this page.
And its not that wasteful if you analyse the numbers. If it became too wasteful companies would still go bust. They balance efficiency and product differentiation. Much of this stuff is similar underneath anyway. Same engines different bodies! Same intel processor chip, different computer bodies and brands.
“Another Straw Man: Civilization is not poison, the modern form of it is.”
Not so much a strawman as just a questionable view.
“This fool is saying, don’t blame us, just suggest a few things we *might* be able to do.”
No you missed a couple of things. There are many obvious implied criticisms of modern civilisation in the article and book: “And technology is nudging us ever closer to blowing up the planet, whether literally or metaphorically”. “It’s also true that we’re allowing our technology to control us…”
I think the article and book it referenced made some good points. Many are consistent with what you say. Sure it got some things wrong, and I never said I accepted every point it made, but I’m not sure that your very relentlessly negative form of messaging will convince anyone of anything very much.
Nemesis @116
Thanks for the interesting take on the cycle of life and death.
Nemesis @138
“I don’t think farming was the main cause of hierarchies, inequality ect. There are still agricultural communities who are farely egalitarian and don’t live in some strictly hierarchical setting (see small agricultural communities in India and elsewhere). Agriculture is one major premise for a highly hierarchic structured system, but it’s not the cause of it…”
Yes but clearly farming lead to a huge increase in inequality and hierarchies. The historical evidence shows this. And farming culture gradually became complex with many new products and activities emerging and civilsations growing and becoming complex, and hierarchies and inequality are fairly obvious properties or outcomes of that. Some people are also naturally more productive than others and this starts to become more obvious in farming culture. A few small traditional farming communities in India have maintained simpler societies with very egalitarian structures and very low inequality but they are the exceptions as you mentioned. India largely has a very unequal caste structure doesnt it?
I think it would be difficult to literally eliminate hierarchies and maintain a highly performing farming culture, or industrial culture. Many modern experiments trying to do this have failed. Some have succeeded, but it does rather look like its all challenging to scale up. I’ve googled all these issues and read up on them.
We obviously cant make everyone equally productive, but you could minimise inequality by some wealth redistribution done through the governments tax and spend system as is already done in some places. Small groups of people do the same, but in a more informal way. Stuff does get shared. But trying to make everyone have the same level of wealth is very difficult for obvious reasons, and it is not necessary. For example who gets the latest model of iphone? There are simply not enough for everyone to own one, not until they are made at huge scale and low prices. This principle applies widely.
“There must have been a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal system during human history after the last iceage roughly 10 500 years ago, when shamans turned into priests and clan chiefs turned into emperors…”
Yes, but hierarchies and inequality could exist in a matriarchal system although one suspects it would be a gentler form. Is that what you meant? However it looks like people in western countries want a gender neutral sort of society, rather than a patriarchal or matriarchal society.
Nemesis @139
“Sure, but the emphasis in what I said is on objectivity as in “modern science”. The Kogi don’t practice modern science, do they? They don’t follow the materialist, physicalist way of thinking, but they achieve their knowledge through a meditative way mostly from within, from an intuitive approach of observation and conclusion:”
The Kogi arguably did a basic form of science. Take the example by Killian of observing birds eating berries and surviving, and concluding they may be safe for us to eat then tentatively tasting a few etc,etc. Its all there, observation, experiment, theory about berries. But this didn’t seem to get applied to much other than issues of diet and basic health and it was modern civilisation that applied this sort of thinking to astronomy and evolution etc. But they had the instruments to do this. The medieval world was very poor at science, killed it dead for centuries until the enlightenment period.
nemesis @140
“Btw, I can’t do any regenerative governance, I am just a nobody, i don’t “own” any land nor any money to buy some, I don’t have any political power whatsoever, so I just wait and watch capitalism dying right here, right now, right in front of my very eyes :) Welcome to the end of the american dream (-factory) literally:”
My understanding is RG just means you get together with a small number of people and make decisions by mutual agreement and that everyone is considered an equal, and you are guided by a set of principles based around prioritising needs, good environmental principles, etc, etc. Others will follow. Capitalism will wither. We shall see I guess.
Nemesis @142
“Even if agriculture would have been a/the cause of modern hubris ( I don’t think so, just look at global CO2 graphs eg, starting to ramp up around 1850, not 10 000 years ago), we can’t go back to a hunting/gathering nomad life, impossible. And it’s not necessary. The problem ain’t agriculture per se, but modern, industrial, profitoptimized agriculture done by multibillion dollar companies/business, who mostly give a shit about eco- destruction.”
Yes of course. It could all be solved if governments got tough on how these businesses operate. But they don’t get tough enough. It will probably take an ecological disaster of epic proportions before they do. The death of every last pollinating insect.
“What about real progress within man himself? What about progress in education, progress in social-economy, progress in meditation, progress in developing human inner qualities within themselves, what about developing wisdom, consciousness, not just scientific, technological knowledge mostly for controlling and exploiting the planet and human beings?”
Yes we have to start doing more of those things. The balance has become very skewed. I chose a career that had good job satisfaction and a moderately decent income. I could have done other jobs that earned more money but I didnt want to spend my days doing something I hated. But I dont have my balance of all these sorts of things 100% right either.
Important new open access research study: “Carbon‐Neutral Pathways for the United States”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020AV000284
Abstract
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C points to the need for carbon neutrality by mid‐century. Achieving this in the United States in only 30 years will be challenging, and practical pathways detailing the technologies, infrastructure, costs, and tradeoffs involved are needed. Modeling the entire U.S. energy and industrial system with new analysis tools that capture synergies not represented in sector‐specific or integrated assessment models, we created multiple pathways to net zero and net negative CO2 emissions by 2050. They met all forecast U.S. energy needs at a net cost of 0.2–1.2% of GDP in 2050 (according to the study this is $1 per day per person), using only commercial or near‐commercial technologies, and requiring no early retirement of existing infrastructure. Pathways with constraints on consumer behavior, land use, biomass use, and technology choices (e.g., no nuclear) met the target but at higher cost. All pathways employed four basic strategies: energy efficiency, decarbonized electricity, electrification, and carbon capture. Least‐cost pathways were based on >80% wind and solar electricity plus thermal generation for reliability. A 100% renewable primary energy system was feasible but had higher cost and land use. We found multiple feasible options for supplying low‐carbon fuels for non‐electrifiable end uses in industry, freight, and aviation, which were not required in bulk until after 2035. In the next decade, the actions required in all pathways were similar: expand renewable capacity 3.5 fold, retire coal, maintain existing gas generating capacity, and increase electric vehicle and heat pump sales to >50% of market share. This study provides a playbook for carbon neutrality policy with concrete near‐term priorities.
Related to previous: “Getting to net zero—and even net negative—is surprisingly feasible, and affordable”
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-net-zeroand-negativeis-surprisingly-feasible.html
140 Nemesis says:
14 Mar 2021 at 9:32 AM
@Killian, #108
” Do the math: There is no time to wait for the death of Capitalism…”
Lol, capitalism will die quickly, so you do not need plenty of time to see capitalism die^^
I have no faith in your crystal ball. Uncertainty is not our friend. 1. No matter how quickly it comes, tipping points may be coming faster. 2. No matter the time frame, it will still be faster by doing Regenerative Governance to both create the new system and cause the end of the other more quickly.
” You want to end Capitalism, do Regenerative Governance.”
I never said I want to end capitalism, I just said:
Pedantry. Save it for those who cannot think.
You’ll need to wait until capitalism died, if you want to do it on a global grand scale, the hare needs to die first, there will be no real change before.
And I said this is incorrect. There is no need to wait for Capitalism to die first. It will both faster and wiser to build the better system and reduce Capitalism with the same effort. It makes no sense to kill two birds with two stones when you can use one stone.
Btw, I can’t do any regenerative governance, I am just a nobody, i don’t “own” any land nor any money to buy some, I don’t have any political power whatsoever
You clearly have no idea at all what Regenerative Governance is because nothing in your list prevents you from engaging in RG.