A bimonthly open thread on climate solutions. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is always the most contentious comment thread on the site, but please try and be constructive and avoid going off on wild tangents.
Reader Interactions
554 Responses to "Forced Responses: May 2021"
siddsays
Experiments to capture carbon from air to begin in UK:
“…Tainter argues that sustainability is about problem solving and that problem solving increases social complexity. But he also argues that social complexity requires energy and resources, and this implies that solving problems, including ecological problems, can actually demand increases in energy and resource consumption, not reductions. ”
and
“… Tainter (2006: 93) maintains that sustainability is ‘not a passive consequence of having fewer human beings who consume more limited resources,’ as many argue it is; he even goes as far as to suggest that voluntary simplification by way of foregoing consumption may no longer be an option for industrial civilisation, for reasons that will be explained. Instead, Tainter’s conception of sustainability involves subsiding increased complexity with more energy and resources in order to solve ongoing problems.
While Tainter’s theory of social complexity has much to commend it, in this paper (which is part of a larger work-in-progress) I wish to examine and ultimately challenge Tainter’s conclusion that voluntary simplification is not a viable path to sustainability. In fact, I will argue that it is by far our best bet, even if the odds do not provide grounds for much optimism. Moreover, should sustainability prove too ambitious a goal for industrial civilisation, I contend that simplification remains the most effective means of building ‘resilience’ (i.e. the ability of an individual or community to withstand societal or ecological shocks). While I accept that problem solving generally implies an increase in social complexity, the thesis I present below is that there comes a point when complexity itself becomes a problem, at which point voluntary simplification, not further complexity, is the most appropriate response. Not only does industrial civilisation seem to be at such a point today (Homer-Dixon, 2006), or well beyond it (Gilding, 2011), I hope to show that voluntary simplification presents a viable and desirable option for responding to today’s converging social, economic, and ecological problems. This goes directly against Tainter’s conception of sustainability, while accepting much of his background theoretical framework.[2] ”
So, this is interesting to me. I will probably do a bit more reading on Tainter and on this reaction to Tainter. I am also interested in a thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.
The usual suspects and any others who engage in less than thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas will be ignored. Life is too short to spend time on useless conflict and aggravation.
Cheers
Mike
nigeljsays
Killian @191,
Regarding the problems of using biomass for energy. Burning biomass for energy is not wrong in all circumstances. Its fine that traditional indigenous people are allowed to do this for example because the quantities are small. However trying to shift towards burning more biomass for energy at a larger or global scale is very problematic. Even if we only do this a little bit and try to minimise our per capita energy consumption, it will likely devastate more natural habitat and cause air pollution. The maths is intuitively obvious. We are already in a precarious state. This is why we are probably locked into building quite a lot of renewable energy.
Of course in an ideal world we should try to minimise how much renewable energy we build to make the resources spin out as long as possible. You are not wrong there. But that is another separate issue and depends on what choices people make personally, and an understanding of what the implications of running out of resources are. Looks to me like it would force humanity back to a subsistence farming culture. Personally I think we are a fairly long way from that outcome.So we have to weigh up this future dilemma against our own legitimate needs and aspirations in the present and also take into account that recycling the resource will help.
Regarding potential problems with regenerative farming. Yes its attractive and is the way to go with farming, but its not realistic to think it is without ANY problems. As I’ve said before the hard objective evidence I’ve seen suggests it has lower yields than industrial agriculture. Not massively lower, but lower. Therefore that problem has to be navigated. About 30% of food production is lost in waste of various types. If we could reduce this it might help mitigate the yield problem and the transition to new farming methods, but you have to be realistic, because changing this sort of thing is quite hard in reality. No till agriculture is fairly benign on yields but removing nitrates and pesticide use is the problem. You might have to keep some pesticide and nitrate use but at a lower level, at least for a time. Genetic engineering might improve yields enough to make regenerative farming compelling. But I don’t know what’s realistically possible. It does mean we could not switch the world to regenerative farming instantly or quickly, but that won’t happen anyway. Changing modes of behaviour has a history of taking considerable time (The Titanic analogy…).
Regarding the problems of getting rid of private ownership and hierarchies. Refer to my comments @141.
Regarding simplification ideas like the circular recycling economy, passive solar buildings, and aiming for “walkable” communities less reliant on the automobile etc. All good, but it will obviously take quite a long time to build these sorts of things or adapt existing infrastructure. The Titanic analogy, again but hopefully we can avoid the iceberg. But again its why we will probably still need a significant new energy grid.
However trying to shift towards burning more biomass for energy at a larger or global scale is very problematic. Even if we only do this a little bit and try to minimise our per capita energy consumption, it will likely devastate more natural habitat and cause air pollution. The maths is intuitively obvious. We are already in a precarious state.
That much was obvious to me several decades ago.
This is why we are probably locked into building quite a lot of renewable energy.
No. We need lots of energy with low ecological impact, including zero/negative net GHG emissions and low impact on land use and ecosystems. Those are NOT the same thing, at least not as currently defined.
Oceanic uranium is replenished by rivers at a rate of over 30,000 tons per year. It is not present at anything like total contributions because it has been deposited out just as fast, in formations like phosphate rock. Did you know that the uranium in phosphate rock is “radwaste”? Until it’s converted to yellowcake; then it’s raw nuclear fuel.
Total human energy consumption could be supplied by a fraction of those 30-odd thousand tons per year. Is uranium “renewable energy”? Even on geological time scales, it truly is.
(Ah, the preview is back! Thank you!)
Killiansays
203 nigelj says:
24 May 2021 at 6:36 PM
Killian @191,
Regarding the problems of using biomass for energy. Burning biomass for energy is not wrong in all circumstances. Its fine that traditional indigenous people are allowed to do this for example because the quantities are small. However trying to shift towards burning more biomass for energy at a larger or global scale is very problematic.
LOL… Buy a clue: What “bio-mass” means to a permaculturist and what ot means to an ill-informed, non-professional, anti-solutionist like yourself is very different. But you read a paragraph somewhere, failed to catch you had been tweaked in the post you are responding to, and produce this river of drivel.
Suffice to say, bio-mass on a massive scale could save us all, or it could destroy the planet – and you are clueless as to which is which and when, how and where to use it and not use it.
nigeljsays
Piotr @196 yes fair comment. Although it probably depends on the economics. You have the option of 1)creating carbon neutral electrofuels for conventional cars or hybrids, or 2)alternatively just using spare renewable generation capacity to charge batteries in EV vehicles. But EVs are still expensive to build so its depends on which is the cheapest option. Looks intuitively like it might be EVs. Hard to say without doing a hell of a lot of calculations.
You mention carbon neutral electrofuels or gases as a storage medium for helping with wind and solar intermittency. This is going to be hugely important. When you get above about an 80% wind and solar grid this requires masses of storage or masses of overbuild. This leaves the choices of expensive storage or running gas fired plant with carbon neutral gas and then you have a much more economically attractive solution than huge banks of batteries or pumped hydro.
—————————————–
Engineer-Poet @197
“People don’t appreciate it, but “renewables” are extraordinarily destructive of nature. PV farms and forests are mutually exclusive, to give one example, and trees aren’t typically grown within wind farms either.”
Oh for goodness sake. There is no need for cutting down trees for solar farms. I’ve seen calculations showing you could power all of the USA just with solar panels on less than 1% of the land area. And you wouldn’t try to power the whole country just with solar panels anyway. There should be enough waste land and roofs to do this and other land. You could design the panel arrays so they are quite narrow and spaced apart, and raised above the land and therefore still use the land for grazing sheep and cattle. Thinking aloud here. Always risky.
The kelp thing is interesting. If you can just convince Killian it wont lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Piotrsays
(198) would make really nice PHEV supercars
But would it scale up? (the table is about “coin cell prototype” and says something about “phone batteries”).
Having Al instead of the much scarcer Li in batteries is nice, but I am sure Killian can find what we could “chemically castrate” by removing aluminum. Even if most plants are defending themselves against Al ions by blocking them with their endodermis.
nigeljsays
Regarding the media article posted by Mike on the work of Joseph Tainter:
This is really interesting. Had heard of this mans ideas, but not in detail. Joseph Tainter’s theory appears to be that societies evolve towards complexity and get “locked into” complexity. This can lead to their collapse but unwinding that complexity can also lead to their collapse. So “they are damned if they do and damned if they dont.” He broadly advocates society has to keep adding complexity while trying to avoid the collapse that could bring.
There’s an element of truth in this in my opinion. Its intuitively obvious. Everything becomes very inter dependent. Its hard unwinding things without causing more problems. It does confirm my suspicions that rapid and dramatic simplification could be very difficult and problematic. However it does also appear to be rather fatalistic. Its based on looking at historical trends and assumes we are locked into such patterns. It maybe possible to slowly unwind our society to some extent, with a concerted planned coordinated effort that reduces levels of consumption to some extent in a clever way, without causing havoc, and its hard to see why smaller population wouldn’t still be preferable.
The article goes on to criticise Joseph Tainter’s doomy gloomy ideas and the viability of renewables at scale. The study criticising renewable energy here:
The author of the study is Ted Trainer. He also appears to oppose nuclear power. His background is in education and sociology not energy systems. His study says “These problems of (wind and soalr) variability and integration could be overcome if electricity could be stored in large quantities. This can’t be done and satisfactory solutions are not foreseen. The best option is to use electricity to pump water up into dcams, then generate with this later. This works well, but the capacity is very limited. World hydro generating capacity is about 7 – 10% of electricity demand, so there would often be times when it could not come anywhere near topping up supply. ”
This is nothing more than a list of empty assertions. There are numerous storage options available including various new battery technologies, electrofuels (refer the wikipedia article), and you would build NEW PUMPED HYDRO. Published peer reviewed studies like Jacobson (an engineer) show renewable energy is possible at global scale. I’m not saying this is easy of course. But Trainer hasn’t come up with anything that proves it can’t be done.
Mr. Know It Allsays
183 – James Charles
“This spiral of borrowing on an increasingly thin base of real assets, writ large and in nearly infinite variety, ultimately created a world in which derivatives outstanding earlier this year stood at $485 trillion — or eight times total global gross domestic product of $60 trillion.”
Only $485 Trillion today, eh? Back in 2011, there were $1,200 Trillion in derivatives. Wonder what happened to reduce the total amount? Did a bunch of them crash and burn? New regulations? Here is Danielle Park explaining what derivatives are and citing the $1,200 Trillion ($1.2 Quadrillion) number – she gets into it right from the beginning:
185 – Richard Caldwell
“What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?”
This is great entertainment. Where else can you get such great laughs for free? :)
187 – nigelj
“Yes the main thing that turned the 2008 global financial crash from a typical recession into an almighty crash was the structure of the housing derivatives – a type of CDO instrument. They had bad maths. This is easily enough googled. This bought the financial sector to its knees and caused the credit crunch. But NOBODY could have predicted something like that would happen.”
nigelj,
Mr. Schiff predicted it in great detail in 2006. Listen from 36:55 to 47:45:
…and trees aren’t typically grown within wind farms either.
Not typically, though the Manitoulin Island wind farm is all on forested terrain, to cite just one example I’ve seen. However, wind farms are *very* frequently built on well, agricultural farms, taking up a small fraction of the land and contributing a stable, reliable source of income for the farm.
Richard Caldwellsays
Killian: Nothing has changed.
RC: What was that saying about endless futile attempts and insanity?
Richard Caldwellsays
Killian,
You are smart. No way you actually believe that you will gain traction via the methods you have been, (and I am shedding) employ.
Like you, I got something out of the toxic dance.
All,
Book 3 keeps on rocking. The path I’ve been led down had an awesome twist.
The community I’ve been led to is perfect for this story. And the households I’ve joined led me to what Sara Leah (not a precise or even close spelling by any measure) called the only bar for our sort to go.
Tonight was open mic night. And it has a weed-friendly patio out back.
The whole place is a gem. Welcoming. Almost too much. You see, when I sat down on the patio and looked at the bar’s wall there was a giant mural, a man holding the sun in his outstretched right hand and a woman similarly holding the moon. They are embraced and kissing.
The mural is emotionally, as opposed to photographically driven. But it was like looking in a mirror of the future for me. The man has an obvious (but only when informed by this story) peg leg.
Sara Leah’s comment?
“Welcome home, Richard”
That’s a fun tidbit. But all of the subthreads have to have similar weaves. Otherwise, who’ll read the book? And odds not multiplied degrade to anecdote.
Guess which day Omaha lifted the mask mandates.
Down Under
36th and Leavenworth
Omaha, NE
Richard Caldwellsays
Of course, for something this significant the sky needs to speak. I’ll research the moon thing. It’ll write well.
Richard Caldwellsays
Remember one of the rules:
There can be no physical forcing. Any sort of plan to go out last night so as to coincide with an astronomical event would invalidate the experiment. Nobody respects a scientist who fakes their data.
And of course, the “you can’t prove I cheated” defense makes for crappy ratings. Audiences know that if you give the subconscious an inch it will pollute the whole story.
The Bible sells well. But how many read it from cover to cover for fun?
Peter Backessays
160 Killian says:
20 May 2021 at 7:27 PM
You keep saying that a habitat will be ‘destroyed’ if it is altered? Why? If the current level of biological activity is low and something is introduced (kelp) to increase activity, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and may well be a good thing. Again I will site the example of artificial reefs
Piotrsays
Nigel(206): You have the option of 1)creating carbon neutral electrofuels for conventional cars or hybrids, or 2)alternatively just using spare renewable generation capacity to charge batteries in EV vehicles. But EVs are still expensive to build so its depends on which is the cheapest option. Hard to say without doing a hell of a lot of calculations.
This would apply only if we built EVs ONLY for the storage. But we don’t – the EVs are for driving and have to be charged ANYWAY – so you just choose the time window
when there is surplus electricity available – which means zero _additional_ cost
compared to what you spend to get yourself a car you can drive.
So, $0 marginal rate – pretty much beats the costs of any other storage. So for that “hell of a lot of calculations” won’t be needed.
BTW. In a pinch – you COULD use your EV for the straightforward backup:
“Houston Herald”: “Ford’s electric F-150 pickup can power your home for 3 days. Should Houston oil and gas be worried?” ;-)
Piotrsays
Nigel (206): “ When you get above about an 80% wind and solar grid this requires masses of storage or masses of overbuild.”
Yes, we have been told so over the years. However, it might not be so, as suggests the paper (indirectly mentioned recently on RC):
Jacobson et al., 2019, One Earth 1, 449–463 December 20, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.12.003
In their simulations for 100% renewable electricity generation in 124 countries in 2050, they implicitly use what I have advocated for years – using “virtual” storage capacity of the grid – transferring electricity from locations with surplus to the locations in which demand exceeds local supply. For instance, if at 4pm Florida’s demand exceeds local supply (wind does not blow, or the sun is low over horizon), it might be matched by California if at the time, they have surplus energy (their supply is larger than local demand (their wind blows, or the Sun is still higher above the horizon).
Of course this matching within the national grid won’t be perfect – so you still need some physical storage: according to Jacobson et al. = 9% of their total installed power in 2050.
But it can be decreased by increasing the grids ability for matching – by making them bigger – Jacobson et al tried integrating 124 national grids into 24 regional grids. So now you if California cannot fully help Florida – perhaps Quebec hydro could. The result? The need for physical storage dropped from 9% to 2% of total installed power.
Not exactly the prohibitively high % we expected coming into this discussion, eh?
And these 2% were BEFORE we took into account the ability of the virtual storage of a smart grid through modifying the timing of their demand – smoothing the peaks of the local demand by rewarding customers with lower prices for charging your EV (or other time-insensitive heavy uses of electricity), when there is surplus of electricity.
And in addition to the reduction of the needed physical storage, integration of the grids to the regional level – makes them more secure – by reducing the probability and the cost of the failure that the small isolated grids can experience as a result of extreme weather events (Texas this winter).
S.B. Ripmansays
Mike #202, thanks for tuning us into the philosophical discussion surrounding the Tainter theory. Much food for thought. It could be argued that humanity must have a major do-over — from a predominantly competition/self-aggrandizement/entitlement model to one involving much more cooperation/kindness/justice — before progress can be made towards simplification. Here’s an inspirational video which seems to embody the attitude needed in the future if we humans are to progress and be healthy: https://youtu.be/zSt7k_q_qRU.
Killiansays
214 Richard Caldwell says:
27 May 2021 at 2:14 AM
Killian,
You are smart. No way you actually believe that you will gain traction via the methods you have been, (and I am shedding) employ.
Like you, I got something out of the toxic dance.
Enabling gaslighting does not interest me. Try again, you might get a different response – but not if it is not based on a just reading of the dynamics here.
Killiansays
202 mike says:
24 May 2021 at 3:29 PM
thinking about collapse, resilience, simplicity led me to read a bit from Tainter.
“…Tainter argues that sustainability is about problem solving
Errr…. everything is about problem solving, so…
and that problem solving increases social complexity.
This does not follow. Tainter himself states a million rubber ducks is not complex, but simple – it’s just a repeated, simple pattern. Solving problems absolutely does not “cause” greater social complexity, though it has with modern peoples, but that has nothing to do with the nature of problem-solving. I have postd here before about Cherán where they kicked out the sitting government and cartels and eventually instituted a structure that is minimal, but similar to what I have proposed with Regenerative Governance. It is far simpler than the typical structure of a city government, as my model is simpler at every level of governance.
But he also argues that social complexity requires energy and resources, and this implies that solving problems, including ecological problems, can actually demand increases in energy and resource consumption, not reductions. ”
Yes, if you follow the patterns of the last 10k years – and especially the last few hundred years. But that is not an automatic outcome of problem-solving. It has been this way *because* of the lack of guiding principles embedded in natural systems. I repeat, intact aborigine societies did not make this mistake.
“… Tainter (2006: 93) maintains that sustainability is ‘not a passive consequence of having fewer human beings who consume more limited resources,’
No, sustainability is a threshhold that is chosen, not accidentally bumped into; it is achieved by intentionally bio-mimicking design.
as many argue it is; he even goes as far as to suggest that voluntary simplification by way of foregoing consumption may no longer be an option for industrial civilisation, for reasons that will be explained. Instead, Tainter’s conception of sustainability involves subsiding increased complexity with more energy and resources in order to solve ongoing problems.
This is literally nonsensical.
I will argue that it is by far our best bet, even if the odds do not provide grounds for much optimism.
I’ll go further: With recent findings on rates of change, it is now clearly the only option – though I said that ten years ago because it was already obvious the “new” rates of change were wither already in place or soon would be.
Moreover, should sustainability prove too ambitious a goal for industrial civilisation, I contend that simplification remains the most effective means of building ‘resilience’
This is a bit silly in that it is completely redundant. You can’t have one without the other. They are essentially two words for the same thing, i.e., resilience is a characteristic of regenerative systems. If it’s not resilient, it’s not regenerative, and if it’s not regenerative, it’s not resilient.
the thesis I present below is that there comes a point when complexity itself becomes a problem
This is actually Tainter’s theory of diminishing rturns on complexity. The author is missing what Tainter meant. Tainter meant at this point we have to use tech to get to sustainability. The problem is Tainter doesn’t really undertand sustaianbility.
I hope to show that voluntary simplification presents a viable and desirable option for responding to today’s converging social, economic, and ecological problems.
Already did. Ten years ago.
I am also interested in a thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.
There is nothing said above you have not been being told since 2011, Mike. Literally everything said in what you posted I have stated here on this forum over and over.
How sincere are we to believe you to be when you are pretending you have not heard all of this before, over and over, particularly as you take a pot shot at the one person who has consistently been saying this to you for a full decade? It’s all the more galling in that the only reason you are posting on these issues these days is you were pushed there by my decade+ of activism for simplicity. This has not been your mantra until recently.
When you provoke with an aspersion, you are the problem. But this is old news, and shameful. Of course, it’s all my fault for calling you out for you provocation. So let me fix your post for you, hypocrite:
thinking about collapse, resilience, simplicity led me to read a bit from Tainter.
“…Tainter argues that sustainability is about problem solving and that problem solving increases social complexity. But he also argues that social complexity requires energy and resources, and this implies that solving problems, including ecological problems, can actually demand increases in energy and resource consumption, not reductions. ”
and
“… Tainter (2006: 93) maintains that sustainability is ‘not a passive consequence of having fewer human beings who consume more limited resources,’ as many argue it is; he even goes as far as to suggest that voluntary simplification by way of foregoing consumption may no longer be an option for industrial civilisation, for reasons that will be explained. Instead, Tainter’s conception of sustainability involves subsiding increased complexity with more energy and resources in order to solve ongoing problems.
While Tainter’s theory of social complexity has much to commend it, in this paper (which is part of a larger work-in-progress) I wish to examine and ultimately challenge Tainter’s conclusion that voluntary simplification is not a viable path to sustainability. In fact, I will argue that it is by far our best bet, even if the odds do not provide grounds for much optimism. Moreover, should sustainability prove too ambitious a goal for industrial civilisation, I contend that simplification remains the most effective means of building ‘resilience’ (i.e. the ability of an individual or community to withstand societal or ecological shocks). While I accept that problem solving generally implies an increase in social complexity, the thesis I present below is that there comes a point when complexity itself becomes a problem, at which point voluntary simplification, not further complexity, is the most appropriate response. Not only does industrial civilisation seem to be at such a point today (Homer-Dixon, 2006), or well beyond it (Gilding, 2011), I hope to show that voluntary simplification presents a viable and desirable option for responding to today’s converging social, economic, and ecological problems. This goes directly against Tainter’s conception of sustainability, while accepting much of his background theoretical framework.[2] ”
So, this is interesting to me. I will probably do a bit more reading on Tainter and on this reaction to Tainter. I am also interested in a thoughtful exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.
Cheers
Mike
What’s most sad? You think you can have a useful discussion of these issues with a forum full of people who oppose them while ignoring the person who is most knowledgeable and has spearheaded such conversations for ten years. Your thinking expressed in your post is the very definition of Pyrrhic on two different dimensions.
Yes, I could have ignored your aggression, but you no longer deserve such consideration.
David B. Bensonsays
Richard Caldwell @216 — Completely off topic but my MD youngest son reads the old testament in Hebrew for relaxation.
Mr. Know It Allsays
202 – mike
“I am also interested in a thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.”
M. Scott Peck, on page 1 of “The Road Less Traveled”, one of the most profound pages ever written, says that “With total discipline we can solve all problems.” You can read that single page by clicking above the image of the book where it says “Look Inside” in this link: (scroll down about 5 pages to the Section 1 heading “Problems and Pain”)
Re “The Bible sells well. But how many read it from cover to cover for fun?”–
Two highly significant qualifiers there. I mean, how many read it from cover to cover, period? And how many read it for fun, (as opposed to, say, comfort, guidance, inspiration or even curiosity?)
But then again, would it really be so strange? A bunch of us are apparently reading RC for fun–or something like it, at least.
nigeljsays
Piotr @219, I agree Jacobsons study looks good. I had scanned through Jacobsons research before ( I mentioned it at 208). Yes it does have minimal storage and overbuild and instead interconnects regions. I feel a bit of a twit forgetting that, although in my defense my mind was focused on my own country New Zealand, a smallish island nation. We are currently having a big discussion about storage.
Interconnecting parts of our country wont very well work because anticyclones with light breezes often cover the entire country, or the entire country is quite cloudy ( the indigenous people the Maori call NZ land of the long white cloud) so we need a lot of storage or over build of the resource. With storage costs dropping I’m optimistic we will find a solution. (Look away now Killian I dont want you to get upset) The current plan is a big new pumped hydro scheme:
However it does have a big environmental footprint that must be considered, and it will depend on how other storage options develop. There’s a lot of talk about hydrogen as a storage medium. As natural gas production in Taranaki declines along with west coast coal, hydrogen production is suggested as a replacement industry to create jobs and storage.
nigeljsays
Killian @222 calls Mike aggressive. This is gas lighting. It’s like calling Mother Theresa aggressive. He’s hands down the least aggressive most civil person on this website. I google Mike and an image of peace and tranquility comes up.
BPL: Well, not to boast or anything, but I’ve done so twice. And studied Koine for eight years so I could read the NT in the original. I’m still deficient in Hebrew, though.
Richard Caldwellsays
Looks like we have data.
A little Old School noted by David, and KIA has a plan.
I took an early draft of the super flower blood eclipse chapter, tentatively titled “Hearth and Home”, to the bar.
A few characters appear in the chapter. Perhaps they’re transient. But Josh Moore sure is permanent. The suspected thief. Fired from the 84th and Q Pizza Hut Express and I doubt even his buddies think highly of him.
Anyway, I showed it to a couple people. Got good reactions (but hey, their bar was at the center). I paid attention. Editing and improving to do.
The next chapter, “Derrells Two” uses a killer who got caught because in prison its hard to wipe the intestines off before the guards get there,
to analyze and make proposals about the intestinal contents we call a Justice System. I hear the next court date is the 22nd. (And no, not for the intestinal fiasco)
My deadline is the 7th, when I meet…
Richard Caldwellsays
Not “uses”. The chapter introduces Derrell, who is a major character, to real time readers. Future readers already know Derrell.
Richard Caldwellsays
Killian,
I’m turning a toxic waste site into the purest form of church: a garden.
I’m wondering if you want to get involved in whatever way?
Mikesays
I found this video by Tainter to be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsT9V3WQiNA
at about 44:30, Tainter talks about the one civilization in his studies that avoided collapse through simplification.
Russellsays
The denialati have progressed from blaming the Texas Big Chill blackout on photovoltaics to blaming the explosion of a coal fired power plant on the sun:
Killian wrote: “What you are talking about is what Joseph Tainter calls diminishing returns on complexity, which he sees as the primary driver of failed societies.”
What I am talking about is replacing coal-fired power plants with solar panels and wind turbines in order to reduce global GHG emissions by at least 50 percent within 10 years, as a first step towards eliminating all GHG emissions within 20 years.
[Killian]Same thing. It’s hacking at leaves and leaving the branches, trunk and roots alone. You can build all the wind and solar energy generators you want, and they will be better than coal, oil and NG, but if you are not making the concomitant socia-political changes, you are ultimately coming back to Tainter’s warning.
If, per chance, you do the only thing that ultimately avoids collapse – reduce consumption to about 10% of total global today – then you don’t need to build but about ten to twenty percent of your eventual goal.
[Steve Fish]“Citing Tainter – “What are we going to do about energy? We need alternatives to fossil fuels and we need to scale up on a massive scale and very quickly.” – This sounds like a call for a rapid buildup of renewables and if not, what does it mean?”
[Killian]Ask yourself, did I *ever* talk about Tainter wrt sustainability or resources? No, I did not. Rhetorical question: Why not? I’ll answer for you: His answers are based on the same limited understanding that you have. He assumes that tech will overcome even if society overall must simplify. He is very much a mainstream thinker in this regard despite his insight into the obvious long-term consequences. I have always thought his statements about these issues were flawed and initially didn’t listen to him because of it. But his insight about diminishing returns applying to complexity are brilliant even if his comments on “renewables” are mundane.
It is important to note this all really is exceedingly simple. Seems counter-intuitive unless you take Diamond (crucial to understanding simplification as a choice) and Tainter (crucial to understanding diminishing returns to complexity, thus the need for simplification to successfully transition from overshoot) seriously, which I do. Their work fits perfectly with what we know of resources and designing sustainable systems.
…A list of things one might read (Not necessarily in order, though if you must choose one, find a way to get educated about the ethics and principles of permaculture even if you don’t study any methodology or techniques):
1. Permaculture: A Designers Manual. (Sustainable Design)
2. Other permaculture books.
3. Everything and anything on soil biology
4. Rodale’s thirty year study on farming methods (regenerative farming comparison w/ “Green Revolution” methods; carbon sequestration. http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/farming-systems-trial/farming-systems-trial-30-year-report/ )
5. Mollison’s Global Gardener series. (Broad perspective on/intro to possibilities for sustainable food production over the four major climate types)
6. Jeff LAwton’s Intro to Permaculture video.
7. Brad Lancaster’s books on water.
8. Edible Forest Gardens, Jacke and Toensmeier
9. Collapse, Catton.
10. Limits to Growth – Update.
11. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Diamond (collapse as choice)
12. The Collapse of Complex Societies, Tainter (diminishing returns on comlexity)
13. Chaos: the Making of a New Science, Gleick (nature of tipping points, cascading failures, unpredictable sequences, resiliency )
14. Non-linear systems theory (tipping points, cascading failures, resiliency)
15. Herman Daly (steady state economics)
16. Steve Keen (steady state economics)
17. C.A.S.S.E. (steady state economics)
18. http://www.theoildrum.com – energy (really important to understand energy issues)
19. Any climate science that interests you.
20. Maunder’s Law of the Minimum
21. Jevons’ Paradox
22. Anything on aboriginal societies WRT being sustainable and (egalitarian) decision-making. (This essay and most of the essays in this series is an excellent CliffsNotes-type shortcut)
23. BBC’s Lost Pyramids of Caral (Evidence original (@4,500 ybp) large-scale/urban civilizations were more likely peaceful than war-like, indicating we can choose large-scale cooperation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMacuGusmeg )
24. Prof. Albert Bartlett on exponential growth. (YouTube)
25. BBC Secrets of our Living Planet (3of4): The Magical Forest (Complexity and fragility of ecosystems)
26. Forms of egalitarian decision-making.
27. Risk assessment methodologies.
28. Shameless self-promotion: PermOccupy. (Rough sketch of pathway to sustainability https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YicmOh9NKXs73jE3hqWYJISNXXDOYQe1p8KPYpBzDZM/edit?pli=1 )
29. Localization of production/consumption (local energy, re-skilling, mass transit, time banks, tool banks, co-ops, local currencies, CSA’s, experiential education)
31. Massively distributed energy production (more self-promotion via old, very, very rough sketch of such: http://aperfectstormcometh.blogspot.com/2008/03/build-out-grid-vs-household-towards.html )
32. Renewable Energy – Without the Hot Air, David MacKay
33. VERY basic thermodynamics, unless a physicist or something.
34. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” R. Buckminster Fuller
35. “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
Whew! Yes, many links long gone via that crash. Sorry.
#470 Thomas said [Re:] AGW/CC long term Solution/s
Following on from the report @466 there’s this really positive activity http://thesolutionsproject.org/impact-report/ and many other regions expanding renewable energy across the globe… I like [the solutions project] very much but it’s only addressing part of the systemic issues needing massive change quite quickly to occur (global and local ‘economics’ included)
[Killian]I’ve spoekn here about this issue of tech saving us from tech to not belabor the point too much here. It’s enough to remind people of Tainter’s premise that problems arising from complexity are not solved by greater complexity, Bucky Fuller’s admonition that to change a thing (system) create a better one rather than fighting the old one, and Einstein’s observation that you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.
These three ideas form a nested rubrik of logic that *should* be at teh forefront of all solution seekers, but is not.
Well-meaning slower suicide from people who can only see one part of the problem.
All the while, you note, Thomas, the urgency of some scientists, which echoes my own of the last ten years.
[Thomas, quoting]People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions, Anderson said …Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation… to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles.
This has do be done, Anderson added, within the next five years.
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,” Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.
[Killian]A quibble first: Receding horizons. If we count the ice from 1953 to now, those percentages are higher. There is already virtually no old ice left, just a little multi-year ice. In terms of volume, we are already past the 80% threshhold that serves as a proxy for “ice-free.” We are, in fact, already at the level of ice-free in that context. Luckily, area is the most important measure for albedo, and that runs higher, proportionally, than volume. But that is not saying much given the context and conditions.
These guys are right. The urgency is real because the risk is existential, something too many on this sight pooh-pooh. Rather than looking at what must be done, they instead lazily fall back to what they, and others, from their perspective, are willing to do, as if because that is all they are willing to do, the planet will wait for them.
There is only viable pathway that reflects the risk assessment accurately: Simplification.
[Thomas]I think it’s noteworthy how James Anderson puts the issue. and Kevin Anderson as well.
[Killian]Indeed. When the risk is existential, the alarmist is the wise man, the sanguine the fool on the hill.
So, yeah, thanks, Mike, for raising the issue of Tainter again. I think this suffices as my response.
Killiansays
217 Peter Backes says:
29 May 2021 at 9:28 AM
160 Killian says:
20 May 2021 at 7:27 PM
You keep saying that a habitat will be ‘destroyed’ if it is altered? Why? If the current level of biological activity is low and something is introduced (kelp) to increase activity, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and may well be a good thing. Again I will site the example of artificial reefs
What was the actual context? You are leavingout the context. Or perhaps you just miss it? What’s missing from your question?
Killiansays
206
nigelj says:
24 May 2021 at 9:50 PM
When you get above about an 80% wind and solar grid this requires masses of storage or masses of overbuild.
Perhaps, if your goal is a future that is nothing more than a #greenwashed present. False, however, if you seek to solve the problem of living regeneratively on this planet and seek to reintegrate human and natural systems via localization, micro-energy/micro-grids that use energy when available with some, but minimal, local emergency storage, as I wrote about in 2008.
But, hey, here we are with people making arguments that were addressed 13 years ago.
I will continue to study up on Tainter. I think of his work on civilization collapse as scholarly, not doomy gloomy. I think he simply presents the facts and history as he has determined those to be.
If a biologist type expert proposed that most living things spring into being through some process, then they develop to maturity, reproduce, and then expire, most of us would simply recognize that this presentation is generally true. It’s descriptive, not prescriptive.
The key idea I took away was that a single civilization had managed to simplify and avoid collapse. That is very interesting. Another key idea I got was that Tainter recognizes that collapse achieves simplification, but not in a manner that fans of the various civilizations appreciate. Be all of that as it may, it does seem to me that simplification is a pretty attractive path forward away from a highly complex and highly consumptive form of civilization that appears to be unsustainable. If a person decides simplification is the answer or end state of civilizations that have grown excessively complex/expensive/consumptive, then it makes sense to study up on the single “soft landing” simplification that shows up in Tainter’s history of civilizations.
did anyone here actually listen to what Tainter presented about the single non-collapse simplification? I thought it was instructive.
Cheers
Mike
Richard Caldwellsays
BPL: twice.
RC: None of the answers surprised me, especially yours.
If you’d like to share, what most affected/affects you from your second reading of the ancient texts?
I’ll share first:
I’ve had one religious experience in my life. Beyond koom-by-ya feelings and whatnot.
I’m pretty sure it was middle school. Anyway, I decided to do a Mr KIA and plan out reading the Bible.
I started where any middle school boy would start:
Revelations. Flipped through the Bible, found a random page in Revelations,
and read the first couple words of a passage about me.
I got an instant Understanding:
I was not to read the ancient texts.
I was not to believe anything.
There was no voice.
There was no time to think.
I glanced down, Knew, and slammed the book shut.
nigeljsays
Killian @147 (UV),
“But why would other minerals be deliberately left in the ground? It just doesn’t make sense, and seems like the precautionary principle taken a bit far.”
“But the point, completely lost on you, was we don’t know future resource needs and I gave one simple “What if…?” example to illustrate that. I in no way declared that must be what is done. YOU CANNOT KNOW THE FUTURE NEEDS OF SOCIETY.”
We cannot know with certainty what the needs of future societies will be but we can certainly anticipate the most likely crises future societies will face, which will include climate problems like ice ages, asteroid impacts, massive vocanic explosions, viruses etc, and its far from clear how stopping all mining right now will be of much use. And whatever we mine and turn into products will mostly still be lying around able to be recycled.
And what about urgent needs in the present? We need resources for all sorts of things from mitigating the climate problem to the alleviation of global poverty to healthcare. Its not tenable to believe we can adequately solve these things by stopping all mining, or even most mining. There are unlikely to be enough old materials lying around to recycle to provide enough new materials. Maybe that day will come eventually. Rapid and huge reductions in resource use could also obviously cause some sort of economic crash. We are in that damned if we do damned if we don’t situation.
I’ve heard you argue the rich world just hand over its resources to the poor world. How is that going to happen? Pleading? At the point of a gun? It’s just not realistic. You have to consider all the social, psychological and political realities of human society. That’s why I come down on the side of mining and a new energy grid and ideally we do the best we can to minimise how much mining we do and recycle waste etc. That much is almost commonsense and is perhaps achievable.
nigeljsays
Killian @159 & 160 (last months UV page) I think there are some fairly obvious problems with your simplification plan (or whatever you want to call it), as I’ve outlined, but you clearly don’t want to hear. Instead you nitpick about how I defined your plan as Killians simplification plan and Killians plan, not able to see that both my statements meant substantially the same things. Seriously man is that the best youve got? Nit picking, deflections, statements quoted out of context, personal put downs? Unbelievable.
nigeljsays
Mike @232 & 237, I listened to the video where it discussed the Byzantine empire simplifying. Broadly speaking it had built a huge expensive army that used so many resources it was problematic, and they simplified by giving each soldier his own plot of land which was much easier to maintain.
It does give hope that some form of simplification might work for our society, but its rather slim hope. Obviously it wont be getting rid of the military because this only uses about 2% of resources. Not that I’m much of a fan of the military. And the Byzantine society was pretty much an autocracy and command economy so they could make people do this. We live in democracies so simplification pretty much has to be something that appeals to the majority of people. This is why I constantly ask is it something that is likely to gain traction with people?
We could focus on things like the circular economy idea, and going back to more traditional forms of farming – to an extent. These things are helpful and look largely benign, if they are phased in carefully. We could simplify and so easily make things worse if we aren’t careful. Many human socio – economic plans have been well intended but have gone badly wrong, both on the left and right of politics. It hurts to say this but its the truth.
Killian,
I’m turning a toxic waste site into the purest form of church: a garden.
I’m wondering if you want to get involved in whatever way?
I am a permaculture designer/teacher/theorist.
Killiansays
237 Mike says:
1 Jun 2021 at 12:12 PM
I will continue to study up on Tainter.
We all think in our ways, but because of the way I think, highly dependent on Pattern Literacy, logic and First Principles thinking, Tainter has little to offer beyond his diminishing returns curve, which is itself a derivative of Laffer’s curve. (Both can be stated as too much of a good thing is still too much.)
I think of his work on civilization collapse as scholarly
Yes, but it is limited. This is clearly exhibited by his dismissiveness/antipathy for Jared Diamond’s work when the two perspectives melded together give you a perfect explanation of collapse. They are complementary, not in opposition, but Tainter cannot see this because, imo, his approach is mechanistic. He sees complexity as machine-like, not as a flow within a system, so to speak.
Diamond, on the other hand, has done extensive fieldwork and has lived among tribal peoples. If for no other reason than having read my posts over the years, not saying you don’t have other sources in mind, you will immediately expect Diamond to have a far more systemic view of things, one informed by the ebbs and flows within Nature itself, and this is what you find in his work.
Therefore, Tainter sees collapse a certain way, Diamond sees it another, but both are correct. There is a mechanistic aspect of system built on top of system built on top of system as ever more complex and fragile systems are created to solve the problems previously created.
Diamond assumes people are not wholey stupid and at some point somebody figures out this process is not going to end well because they see the system as a whole and realize the linkages are breaking down. He then assumes people then have a choice: Simplify (controlled collapse) or uncontrolled collapse.
The key idea I took away was that a single civilization had managed to simplify and avoid collapse.
Where Tainter gets it wrong is in assuming controlled collapse only defines a society retaining its core identifying characteristics so that it essentially is a shrunken version of itself, for the most part, but I consider this a very limited view. Problem-solving is problem-solving, and if you solve your problems of complexity by abandoning those central characteristics to return to a previous state of simplicity, you still solve the problem. The Chaco Canyon civilization devolved into the Pueblo of today. They didn’t disappear. Same with the Maya, etc.
Another key idea I got was that Tainter recognizes that collapse achieves simplification, but not in a manner that fans of the various civilizations appreciate.
“Achieves” here is a bit problematic and perhaps is better replaced with “results in.” Also, we must be careful what we mean by “simplification.” Tainter is not using it as I use it, so clarity and specificity here is important. Tainter means simpler, not simplicity in the sense of living in harmony with Nature. The various collapses of empires/states in what we today call Europe all resulted in simpler societies, not simplification, whereas the Maya and Kogi went from complex to simplicity – they reintegrated with Nature.
This is a distinction I do not recall either Diamond or Tainter making. It is a very important distinction.
Be all of that as it may, it does seem to me that simplification is a pretty attractive path forward away from a highly complex and highly consumptive form of civilization that appears to be unsustainable. If a person decides simplification is the answer or end state of civilizations that have grown excessively complex/expensive/consumptive, then it makes sense to study up on the single “soft landing” simplification that shows up in Tainter’s history of civilizations.
That’s a long way around, isn’t it, and a bit of a waste of your time? I’ve already told you how we can do it, and Tainter’s one example is not an example of becoming a regenerative society, merely a less complex unsustainable one. If you’re going to study collapses, study those that resulted in a return to regenerative systems – unless you are not interested in being truly sustainable.
did anyone here actually listen to what Tainter presented about the single non-collapse simplification? I thought it was instructive.
Quite clearly, yes. Years ago.
Killiansays
We cannot know with certainty what the needs of future societies will be but we can certainly anticipate the most likely crises future societies will face
Because climate change was anticipated by the Romans, or the American colonists, or the US gov’t of 1850, or society at large even as late as 1950 – or even 1980?
Can you not admit when you are wrong without it taking three years of nauseatingly repetitious brow-beating?
Killiansays
Fixed it for you:
240 nigelj says
Killian @159 & 160 (last months UV page) I wish there were some fairly obvious problems with your simplification plan (or whatever you want to call it), as I’ve tried and failed to outline, but I clearly don’t want to hear yet again how I have utterly failed to make any substantive critique or level any useful criticisms of your ideas. I am like a bulldog with a bone, and just will not let go of the fact I have no idea what I am talking about.
Your problem, besides your hubris, is you will not accept the facts facing you and instead choose a narrative you prefer, that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, quite literally, and instead pretend the hard parameters imposed by Nature are just someone’s opinion, easily dismissed.
Until you learn to see what is rather than what you want to see, you will continue to flail. It’s a simple thing: Stop thinking what you wish to think, have been told to think, are willing to think, and Just. See.
This is sincere advice.
Mikesays
at Nigel at 241: I appreciate that you listened to the Tainter video and understood the particulars of the successful simplification example. I don’t think it makes sense to accept that we can’t/won’t do the same thing, that’s a little doomy gloomy for me. I think it’s unlikely that we will do it, but I think it starts with the thought, the proposal.
I also think the possible impacts are larger than 2% if you consider the potential benefits of converting most of the global military budget to addressing climate change instead of engaging in military aggression and defense of the realm.
I suppose it’s pie in the sky, but I think we might want to be bold in our aspirations, if we want the kind of simplification that the Byzantine Empire pulled off way back when: A soft landing, not a crash into simplicity. Or we can muddle along building more costly complexity and see if our civilization figures out a way to avoid collapse where other civilizations are reported to have failed with the complexity approach.
I will continue to mull over Tainter’s ideas and post thoughts about them, if any arise. It’s not the first time that Tainter has been discussed here. Most of us need to hear something several times before we absorb it. I think the if the message is delivered in a polite and inquisitive manner, it might gain a bit of traction.
Cheers
Mike
Richard Caldwellsays
K 234: 20. Maunder’s Law of the Minimum
BPL: Liebig’s.
RC: pondered a tad. Could Killian have tossed in a joke that flew over BPL’s hat?
Not good odds, but I scrolled up to find out…
And up and up and what number?
234. Didn’t read before. Same decision now.
But what was BPL thinking??
Yo, bro! You bored or something?
nigeljsays
Piotr @163 (last months UV page)
“But this next descent has already been already postponed, if not cancelled altogether – given the CO2 levels in the air and ocean, and the amount of already heat stored in the ocean, and so much of the ice albedo missing. So the next chance of geoengineering ourselves out of an ice age is probably 100,000 yrs, at the earliest.”
Yes. I read a compelling article on this a couple of years ago:
“Nigel (143) its likely global population will be much smaller in size, so it could migrate to warmer regions in the southern hemisphere.”
“it’s hard enough to predict the human population 100 years from now. 100,000 yrs from now.”
Yes hard to predict, but the population trajectory does look downwards to me longer term towards a smaller global population. It only has to fall below a fertility rate of about 2.2 children and you will get towards smaller population eventually, in a few centuries, and several countries are below this already and shrinking. China is in a panic because its deliberate one child policy has caused a deficit of young people. China is now trying to persuade people have 3 children – but it just isn’t working. People get a taste for small families.
It depends on how many countries do this but it looks like enough might to cause a shrinking global population. And eventually we will obviously run up against the carrying capacity of the planet. Its not clear to me that a population of for example 7 billion people could last indefinitely. If we do run out of various mineral resources and have to rely on the land its not clear it could sustain those numbers forever, even with some sort of simplified living. So why wouldn’t our destiny be something less than current 7 billion people approx?
“Then again would they have any science and a civilization to extract the fossil fuels (since all the easy places have been already cleaned out). And would they even know that they have to do geoengineering – that is – would they know that the Winter is coming ?”
Yes fair comments. I have always thought its possible the final end game for human civilisation might be forced right back to a very simple rural subsistence living if we run out of things and otherwise wreck the place. Obviously this is uncertain and many centuries away. Some sort of reverse evolution. Its hard to see them geoengineering the climate. However if population size did shrink dramatically then a modern technological society might remain for millenia, but deliberately geoengineering climate would still be a very challenging job and it would be easier to migrate to southern hemisphere. All just speculation on my part.
But leaving materials in the ground deliberately and right now has some obvious problems for us, and it just seems so incredibly unlikely that we will do that, so I see no sense in wasting time suggesting it. Suggesting we “slow down” the rate we are using resources is a bit more subtle and more likely to find an audience do you think?
Experiments to capture carbon from air to begin in UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/24/trials-to-suck-carbon-dioxide-from-the-air-to-start-across-the-uk
sidd
thinking about collapse, resilience, simplicity led me to read a bit from Tainter.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-07-07/resilience-through-simplification-revisiting-tainters-theory-collapse-part-1/
from that:
“…Tainter argues that sustainability is about problem solving and that problem solving increases social complexity. But he also argues that social complexity requires energy and resources, and this implies that solving problems, including ecological problems, can actually demand increases in energy and resource consumption, not reductions. ”
and
“… Tainter (2006: 93) maintains that sustainability is ‘not a passive consequence of having fewer human beings who consume more limited resources,’ as many argue it is; he even goes as far as to suggest that voluntary simplification by way of foregoing consumption may no longer be an option for industrial civilisation, for reasons that will be explained. Instead, Tainter’s conception of sustainability involves subsiding increased complexity with more energy and resources in order to solve ongoing problems.
While Tainter’s theory of social complexity has much to commend it, in this paper (which is part of a larger work-in-progress) I wish to examine and ultimately challenge Tainter’s conclusion that voluntary simplification is not a viable path to sustainability. In fact, I will argue that it is by far our best bet, even if the odds do not provide grounds for much optimism. Moreover, should sustainability prove too ambitious a goal for industrial civilisation, I contend that simplification remains the most effective means of building ‘resilience’ (i.e. the ability of an individual or community to withstand societal or ecological shocks). While I accept that problem solving generally implies an increase in social complexity, the thesis I present below is that there comes a point when complexity itself becomes a problem, at which point voluntary simplification, not further complexity, is the most appropriate response. Not only does industrial civilisation seem to be at such a point today (Homer-Dixon, 2006), or well beyond it (Gilding, 2011), I hope to show that voluntary simplification presents a viable and desirable option for responding to today’s converging social, economic, and ecological problems. This goes directly against Tainter’s conception of sustainability, while accepting much of his background theoretical framework.[2] ”
So, this is interesting to me. I will probably do a bit more reading on Tainter and on this reaction to Tainter. I am also interested in a thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.
The usual suspects and any others who engage in less than thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas will be ignored. Life is too short to spend time on useless conflict and aggravation.
Cheers
Mike
Killian @191,
Regarding the problems of using biomass for energy. Burning biomass for energy is not wrong in all circumstances. Its fine that traditional indigenous people are allowed to do this for example because the quantities are small. However trying to shift towards burning more biomass for energy at a larger or global scale is very problematic. Even if we only do this a little bit and try to minimise our per capita energy consumption, it will likely devastate more natural habitat and cause air pollution. The maths is intuitively obvious. We are already in a precarious state. This is why we are probably locked into building quite a lot of renewable energy.
Of course in an ideal world we should try to minimise how much renewable energy we build to make the resources spin out as long as possible. You are not wrong there. But that is another separate issue and depends on what choices people make personally, and an understanding of what the implications of running out of resources are. Looks to me like it would force humanity back to a subsistence farming culture. Personally I think we are a fairly long way from that outcome.So we have to weigh up this future dilemma against our own legitimate needs and aspirations in the present and also take into account that recycling the resource will help.
Regarding potential problems with regenerative farming. Yes its attractive and is the way to go with farming, but its not realistic to think it is without ANY problems. As I’ve said before the hard objective evidence I’ve seen suggests it has lower yields than industrial agriculture. Not massively lower, but lower. Therefore that problem has to be navigated. About 30% of food production is lost in waste of various types. If we could reduce this it might help mitigate the yield problem and the transition to new farming methods, but you have to be realistic, because changing this sort of thing is quite hard in reality. No till agriculture is fairly benign on yields but removing nitrates and pesticide use is the problem. You might have to keep some pesticide and nitrate use but at a lower level, at least for a time. Genetic engineering might improve yields enough to make regenerative farming compelling. But I don’t know what’s realistically possible. It does mean we could not switch the world to regenerative farming instantly or quickly, but that won’t happen anyway. Changing modes of behaviour has a history of taking considerable time (The Titanic analogy…).
Regarding the problems of getting rid of private ownership and hierarchies. Refer to my comments @141.
Regarding simplification ideas like the circular recycling economy, passive solar buildings, and aiming for “walkable” communities less reliant on the automobile etc. All good, but it will obviously take quite a long time to build these sorts of things or adapt existing infrastructure. The Titanic analogy, again but hopefully we can avoid the iceberg. But again its why we will probably still need a significant new energy grid.
@203:
That much was obvious to me several decades ago.
No. We need lots of energy with low ecological impact, including zero/negative net GHG emissions and low impact on land use and ecosystems. Those are NOT the same thing, at least not as currently defined.
Oceanic uranium is replenished by rivers at a rate of over 30,000 tons per year. It is not present at anything like total contributions because it has been deposited out just as fast, in formations like phosphate rock. Did you know that the uranium in phosphate rock is “radwaste”? Until it’s converted to yellowcake; then it’s raw nuclear fuel.
Total human energy consumption could be supplied by a fraction of those 30-odd thousand tons per year. Is uranium “renewable energy”? Even on geological time scales, it truly is.
(Ah, the preview is back! Thank you!)
203 nigelj says:
24 May 2021 at 6:36 PM
Killian @191,
Regarding the problems of using biomass for energy. Burning biomass for energy is not wrong in all circumstances. Its fine that traditional indigenous people are allowed to do this for example because the quantities are small. However trying to shift towards burning more biomass for energy at a larger or global scale is very problematic.
LOL… Buy a clue: What “bio-mass” means to a permaculturist and what ot means to an ill-informed, non-professional, anti-solutionist like yourself is very different. But you read a paragraph somewhere, failed to catch you had been tweaked in the post you are responding to, and produce this river of drivel.
Suffice to say, bio-mass on a massive scale could save us all, or it could destroy the planet – and you are clueless as to which is which and when, how and where to use it and not use it.
Piotr @196 yes fair comment. Although it probably depends on the economics. You have the option of 1)creating carbon neutral electrofuels for conventional cars or hybrids, or 2)alternatively just using spare renewable generation capacity to charge batteries in EV vehicles. But EVs are still expensive to build so its depends on which is the cheapest option. Looks intuitively like it might be EVs. Hard to say without doing a hell of a lot of calculations.
You mention carbon neutral electrofuels or gases as a storage medium for helping with wind and solar intermittency. This is going to be hugely important. When you get above about an 80% wind and solar grid this requires masses of storage or masses of overbuild. This leaves the choices of expensive storage or running gas fired plant with carbon neutral gas and then you have a much more economically attractive solution than huge banks of batteries or pumped hydro.
—————————————–
Engineer-Poet @197
“People don’t appreciate it, but “renewables” are extraordinarily destructive of nature. PV farms and forests are mutually exclusive, to give one example, and trees aren’t typically grown within wind farms either.”
Oh for goodness sake. There is no need for cutting down trees for solar farms. I’ve seen calculations showing you could power all of the USA just with solar panels on less than 1% of the land area. And you wouldn’t try to power the whole country just with solar panels anyway. There should be enough waste land and roofs to do this and other land. You could design the panel arrays so they are quite narrow and spaced apart, and raised above the land and therefore still use the land for grazing sheep and cattle. Thinking aloud here. Always risky.
The kelp thing is interesting. If you can just convince Killian it wont lead to the end of the world as we know it.
(198) would make really nice PHEV supercars
But would it scale up? (the table is about “coin cell prototype” and says something about “phone batteries”).
Having Al instead of the much scarcer Li in batteries is nice, but I am sure Killian can find what we could “chemically castrate” by removing aluminum. Even if most plants are defending themselves against Al ions by blocking them with their endodermis.
Regarding the media article posted by Mike on the work of Joseph Tainter:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-07-07/resilience-through-simplification-revisiting-tainters-theory-collapse-part-1/
This is really interesting. Had heard of this mans ideas, but not in detail. Joseph Tainter’s theory appears to be that societies evolve towards complexity and get “locked into” complexity. This can lead to their collapse but unwinding that complexity can also lead to their collapse. So “they are damned if they do and damned if they dont.” He broadly advocates society has to keep adding complexity while trying to avoid the collapse that could bring.
There’s an element of truth in this in my opinion. Its intuitively obvious. Everything becomes very inter dependent. Its hard unwinding things without causing more problems. It does confirm my suspicions that rapid and dramatic simplification could be very difficult and problematic. However it does also appear to be rather fatalistic. Its based on looking at historical trends and assumes we are locked into such patterns. It maybe possible to slowly unwind our society to some extent, with a concerted planned coordinated effort that reduces levels of consumption to some extent in a clever way, without causing havoc, and its hard to see why smaller population wouldn’t still be preferable.
The article goes on to criticise Joseph Tainter’s doomy gloomy ideas and the viability of renewables at scale. The study criticising renewable energy here:
https://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol3/vol3_no1_Trainer_renewable_energy.htm
The author of the study is Ted Trainer. He also appears to oppose nuclear power. His background is in education and sociology not energy systems. His study says “These problems of (wind and soalr) variability and integration could be overcome if electricity could be stored in large quantities. This can’t be done and satisfactory solutions are not foreseen. The best option is to use electricity to pump water up into dcams, then generate with this later. This works well, but the capacity is very limited. World hydro generating capacity is about 7 – 10% of electricity demand, so there would often be times when it could not come anywhere near topping up supply. ”
This is nothing more than a list of empty assertions. There are numerous storage options available including various new battery technologies, electrofuels (refer the wikipedia article), and you would build NEW PUMPED HYDRO. Published peer reviewed studies like Jacobson (an engineer) show renewable energy is possible at global scale. I’m not saying this is easy of course. But Trainer hasn’t come up with anything that proves it can’t be done.
183 – James Charles
“This spiral of borrowing on an increasingly thin base of real assets, writ large and in nearly infinite variety, ultimately created a world in which derivatives outstanding earlier this year stood at $485 trillion — or eight times total global gross domestic product of $60 trillion.”
Only $485 Trillion today, eh? Back in 2011, there were $1,200 Trillion in derivatives. Wonder what happened to reduce the total amount? Did a bunch of them crash and burn? New regulations? Here is Danielle Park explaining what derivatives are and citing the $1,200 Trillion ($1.2 Quadrillion) number – she gets into it right from the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJRa0KRsb_k
On her website Juggling Dynamite, she even has a Climate Change related article on the Ford electric F-150 and home back-up power:
https://jugglingdynamite.com/
https://jugglingdynamite.com/2021/05/21/ford-gets-serious-with-electric-f-150-and-home-back-up-power/
185 – Richard Caldwell
“What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?”
This is great entertainment. Where else can you get such great laughs for free? :)
187 – nigelj
“Yes the main thing that turned the 2008 global financial crash from a typical recession into an almighty crash was the structure of the housing derivatives – a type of CDO instrument. They had bad maths. This is easily enough googled. This bought the financial sector to its knees and caused the credit crunch. But NOBODY could have predicted something like that would happen.”
nigelj,
Mr. Schiff predicted it in great detail in 2006. Listen from 36:55 to 47:45:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k
FYI – He posts new videos regularly on his channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SchiffReport
” But NOBODY could have predicted something like that would happen.”
Who said that somebody predicted what happened?
E-P 197: “renewables” are extraordinarily destructive of nature.
BPL: They are orders of magnitude less so than fossil fuels.
E-P–
True, but PV combines nicely with reservoirs, brownfields, urban spaces of many sorts and yes, agriculture. Semi-random example of the last:
https://www.pv-tech.org/fraunhofer-ise-lands-funding-for-agrophotovoltaics-research-at-german-apple/
Not typically, though the Manitoulin Island wind farm is all on forested terrain, to cite just one example I’ve seen. However, wind farms are *very* frequently built on well, agricultural farms, taking up a small fraction of the land and contributing a stable, reliable source of income for the farm.
Killian: Nothing has changed.
RC: What was that saying about endless futile attempts and insanity?
Killian,
You are smart. No way you actually believe that you will gain traction via the methods you have been, (and I am shedding) employ.
Like you, I got something out of the toxic dance.
All,
Book 3 keeps on rocking. The path I’ve been led down had an awesome twist.
The community I’ve been led to is perfect for this story. And the households I’ve joined led me to what Sara Leah (not a precise or even close spelling by any measure) called the only bar for our sort to go.
Tonight was open mic night. And it has a weed-friendly patio out back.
The whole place is a gem. Welcoming. Almost too much. You see, when I sat down on the patio and looked at the bar’s wall there was a giant mural, a man holding the sun in his outstretched right hand and a woman similarly holding the moon. They are embraced and kissing.
The mural is emotionally, as opposed to photographically driven. But it was like looking in a mirror of the future for me. The man has an obvious (but only when informed by this story) peg leg.
Sara Leah’s comment?
“Welcome home, Richard”
That’s a fun tidbit. But all of the subthreads have to have similar weaves. Otherwise, who’ll read the book? And odds not multiplied degrade to anecdote.
Guess which day Omaha lifted the mask mandates.
Down Under
36th and Leavenworth
Omaha, NE
Of course, for something this significant the sky needs to speak. I’ll research the moon thing. It’ll write well.
Remember one of the rules:
There can be no physical forcing. Any sort of plan to go out last night so as to coincide with an astronomical event would invalidate the experiment. Nobody respects a scientist who fakes their data.
And of course, the “you can’t prove I cheated” defense makes for crappy ratings. Audiences know that if you give the subconscious an inch it will pollute the whole story.
The Bible sells well. But how many read it from cover to cover for fun?
160 Killian says:
20 May 2021 at 7:27 PM
You keep saying that a habitat will be ‘destroyed’ if it is altered? Why? If the current level of biological activity is low and something is introduced (kelp) to increase activity, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and may well be a good thing. Again I will site the example of artificial reefs
Nigel(206): You have the option of 1)creating carbon neutral electrofuels for conventional cars or hybrids, or 2)alternatively just using spare renewable generation capacity to charge batteries in EV vehicles. But EVs are still expensive to build so its depends on which is the cheapest option. Hard to say without doing a hell of a lot of calculations.
This would apply only if we built EVs ONLY for the storage. But we don’t – the EVs are for driving and have to be charged ANYWAY – so you just choose the time window
when there is surplus electricity available – which means zero _additional_ cost
compared to what you spend to get yourself a car you can drive.
So, $0 marginal rate – pretty much beats the costs of any other storage. So for that “hell of a lot of calculations” won’t be needed.
BTW. In a pinch – you COULD use your EV for the straightforward backup:
“Houston Herald”: “Ford’s electric F-150 pickup can power your home for 3 days. Should Houston oil and gas be worried?” ;-)
Nigel (206): “ When you get above about an 80% wind and solar grid this requires masses of storage or masses of overbuild.”
Yes, we have been told so over the years. However, it might not be so, as suggests the paper (indirectly mentioned recently on RC):
Jacobson et al., 2019, One Earth 1, 449–463 December 20, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.12.003
In their simulations for 100% renewable electricity generation in 124 countries in 2050, they implicitly use what I have advocated for years – using “virtual” storage capacity of the grid – transferring electricity from locations with surplus to the locations in which demand exceeds local supply. For instance, if at 4pm Florida’s demand exceeds local supply (wind does not blow, or the sun is low over horizon), it might be matched by California if at the time, they have surplus energy (their supply is larger than local demand (their wind blows, or the Sun is still higher above the horizon).
Of course this matching within the national grid won’t be perfect – so you still need some physical storage: according to Jacobson et al. = 9% of their total installed power in 2050.
But it can be decreased by increasing the grids ability for matching – by making them bigger – Jacobson et al tried integrating 124 national grids into 24 regional grids. So now you if California cannot fully help Florida – perhaps Quebec hydro could. The result? The need for physical storage dropped from 9% to 2% of total installed power.
Not exactly the prohibitively high % we expected coming into this discussion, eh?
And these 2% were BEFORE we took into account the ability of the virtual storage of a smart grid through modifying the timing of their demand – smoothing the peaks of the local demand by rewarding customers with lower prices for charging your EV (or other time-insensitive heavy uses of electricity), when there is surplus of electricity.
And in addition to the reduction of the needed physical storage, integration of the grids to the regional level – makes them more secure – by reducing the probability and the cost of the failure that the small isolated grids can experience as a result of extreme weather events (Texas this winter).
Mike #202, thanks for tuning us into the philosophical discussion surrounding the Tainter theory. Much food for thought. It could be argued that humanity must have a major do-over — from a predominantly competition/self-aggrandizement/entitlement model to one involving much more cooperation/kindness/justice — before progress can be made towards simplification. Here’s an inspirational video which seems to embody the attitude needed in the future if we humans are to progress and be healthy: https://youtu.be/zSt7k_q_qRU.
214 Richard Caldwell says:
27 May 2021 at 2:14 AM
Killian,
You are smart. No way you actually believe that you will gain traction via the methods you have been, (and I am shedding) employ.
Like you, I got something out of the toxic dance.
Enabling gaslighting does not interest me. Try again, you might get a different response – but not if it is not based on a just reading of the dynamics here.
202 mike says:
24 May 2021 at 3:29 PM
thinking about collapse, resilience, simplicity led me to read a bit from Tainter.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-07-07/resilience-through-simplification-revisiting-tainters-theory-collapse-part-1/
from that:
“…Tainter argues that sustainability is about problem solving
Errr…. everything is about problem solving, so…
and that problem solving increases social complexity.
This does not follow. Tainter himself states a million rubber ducks is not complex, but simple – it’s just a repeated, simple pattern. Solving problems absolutely does not “cause” greater social complexity, though it has with modern peoples, but that has nothing to do with the nature of problem-solving. I have postd here before about Cherán where they kicked out the sitting government and cartels and eventually instituted a structure that is minimal, but similar to what I have proposed with Regenerative Governance. It is far simpler than the typical structure of a city government, as my model is simpler at every level of governance.
But he also argues that social complexity requires energy and resources, and this implies that solving problems, including ecological problems, can actually demand increases in energy and resource consumption, not reductions. ”
Yes, if you follow the patterns of the last 10k years – and especially the last few hundred years. But that is not an automatic outcome of problem-solving. It has been this way *because* of the lack of guiding principles embedded in natural systems. I repeat, intact aborigine societies did not make this mistake.
“… Tainter (2006: 93) maintains that sustainability is ‘not a passive consequence of having fewer human beings who consume more limited resources,’
No, sustainability is a threshhold that is chosen, not accidentally bumped into; it is achieved by intentionally bio-mimicking design.
as many argue it is; he even goes as far as to suggest that voluntary simplification by way of foregoing consumption may no longer be an option for industrial civilisation, for reasons that will be explained. Instead, Tainter’s conception of sustainability involves subsiding increased complexity with more energy and resources in order to solve ongoing problems.
This is literally nonsensical.
I will argue that it is by far our best bet, even if the odds do not provide grounds for much optimism.
I’ll go further: With recent findings on rates of change, it is now clearly the only option – though I said that ten years ago because it was already obvious the “new” rates of change were wither already in place or soon would be.
Moreover, should sustainability prove too ambitious a goal for industrial civilisation, I contend that simplification remains the most effective means of building ‘resilience’
This is a bit silly in that it is completely redundant. You can’t have one without the other. They are essentially two words for the same thing, i.e., resilience is a characteristic of regenerative systems. If it’s not resilient, it’s not regenerative, and if it’s not regenerative, it’s not resilient.
the thesis I present below is that there comes a point when complexity itself becomes a problem
This is actually Tainter’s theory of diminishing rturns on complexity. The author is missing what Tainter meant. Tainter meant at this point we have to use tech to get to sustainability. The problem is Tainter doesn’t really undertand sustaianbility.
I hope to show that voluntary simplification presents a viable and desirable option for responding to today’s converging social, economic, and ecological problems.
Already did. Ten years ago.
I am also interested in a thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.
There is nothing said above you have not been being told since 2011, Mike. Literally everything said in what you posted I have stated here on this forum over and over.
How sincere are we to believe you to be when you are pretending you have not heard all of this before, over and over, particularly as you take a pot shot at the one person who has consistently been saying this to you for a full decade? It’s all the more galling in that the only reason you are posting on these issues these days is you were pushed there by my decade+ of activism for simplicity. This has not been your mantra until recently.
When you provoke with an aspersion, you are the problem. But this is old news, and shameful. Of course, it’s all my fault for calling you out for you provocation. So let me fix your post for you, hypocrite:
What’s most sad? You think you can have a useful discussion of these issues with a forum full of people who oppose them while ignoring the person who is most knowledgeable and has spearheaded such conversations for ten years. Your thinking expressed in your post is the very definition of Pyrrhic on two different dimensions.
Yes, I could have ignored your aggression, but you no longer deserve such consideration.
Richard Caldwell @216 — Completely off topic but my MD youngest son reads the old testament in Hebrew for relaxation.
202 – mike
“I am also interested in a thoughtful and polite exchange of ideas with anyone here who is interested in the back and forth that arises when you think about the ideas of Tainter and Alexander.”
M. Scott Peck, on page 1 of “The Road Less Traveled”, one of the most profound pages ever written, says that “With total discipline we can solve all problems.” You can read that single page by clicking above the image of the book where it says “Look Inside” in this link: (scroll down about 5 pages to the Section 1 heading “Problems and Pain”)
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Traveled-Psychology-Traditional-ebook/dp/B0078XGEK2
For more discussion on your book by Tainter, may I suggest that you read the book reviews found online. Amazon may be a good place to start:
https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ZJI8UGJIYQGX&dchild=1&keywords=joseph+tainter+the+collapse+of+complex+societies&qid=1622367210&sprefix=joseph+tainter+the+c%2Caps%2C233&sr=8-2#customerReviews
216 – Richard Caldwell
“The Bible sells well. But how many read it from cover to cover for fun?”
I’m working on doing that. Some of it is weird, but a lot of it is quite interesting. It’s only about 800 pages, so not a huge task.
Re “The Bible sells well. But how many read it from cover to cover for fun?”–
Two highly significant qualifiers there. I mean, how many read it from cover to cover, period? And how many read it for fun, (as opposed to, say, comfort, guidance, inspiration or even curiosity?)
But then again, would it really be so strange? A bunch of us are apparently reading RC for fun–or something like it, at least.
Piotr @219, I agree Jacobsons study looks good. I had scanned through Jacobsons research before ( I mentioned it at 208). Yes it does have minimal storage and overbuild and instead interconnects regions. I feel a bit of a twit forgetting that, although in my defense my mind was focused on my own country New Zealand, a smallish island nation. We are currently having a big discussion about storage.
Interconnecting parts of our country wont very well work because anticyclones with light breezes often cover the entire country, or the entire country is quite cloudy ( the indigenous people the Maori call NZ land of the long white cloud) so we need a lot of storage or over build of the resource. With storage costs dropping I’m optimistic we will find a solution. (Look away now Killian I dont want you to get upset) The current plan is a big new pumped hydro scheme:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/122319866/4-billion-lake-onslow-pumped-hydro-scheme-could-tip-electricity-market-on-head
However it does have a big environmental footprint that must be considered, and it will depend on how other storage options develop. There’s a lot of talk about hydrogen as a storage medium. As natural gas production in Taranaki declines along with west coast coal, hydrogen production is suggested as a replacement industry to create jobs and storage.
Killian @222 calls Mike aggressive. This is gas lighting. It’s like calling Mother Theresa aggressive. He’s hands down the least aggressive most civil person on this website. I google Mike and an image of peace and tranquility comes up.
KM: how many read it from cover to cover, period?
BPL: Well, not to boast or anything, but I’ve done so twice. And studied Koine for eight years so I could read the NT in the original. I’m still deficient in Hebrew, though.
Looks like we have data.
A little Old School noted by David, and KIA has a plan.
I took an early draft of the super flower blood eclipse chapter, tentatively titled “Hearth and Home”, to the bar.
A few characters appear in the chapter. Perhaps they’re transient. But Josh Moore sure is permanent. The suspected thief. Fired from the 84th and Q Pizza Hut Express and I doubt even his buddies think highly of him.
Anyway, I showed it to a couple people. Got good reactions (but hey, their bar was at the center). I paid attention. Editing and improving to do.
The next chapter, “Derrells Two” uses a killer who got caught because in prison its hard to wipe the intestines off before the guards get there,
to analyze and make proposals about the intestinal contents we call a Justice System. I hear the next court date is the 22nd. (And no, not for the intestinal fiasco)
My deadline is the 7th, when I meet…
Not “uses”. The chapter introduces Derrell, who is a major character, to real time readers. Future readers already know Derrell.
Killian,
I’m turning a toxic waste site into the purest form of church: a garden.
I’m wondering if you want to get involved in whatever way?
I found this video by Tainter to be of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsT9V3WQiNA
at about 44:30, Tainter talks about the one civilization in his studies that avoided collapse through simplification.
The denialati have progressed from blaming the Texas Big Chill blackout on photovoltaics to blaming the explosion of a coal fired power plant on the sun:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/05/may-30th-2021-did-short-sharp.html
220
S.B. Ripman says:
29 May 2021 at 3:14 PM
Mike #202, thanks for tuning us into the philosophical discussion surrounding the Tainter theory.
Yes, thanks for turning it that direction…
————
And this is a pretty good overall summary of our societal context:
————
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/unforced-variations-feb-2013/comment-page-5/#comment-319759
And…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/05/unforced-variations-may-2013/comment-page-10/#comment-340531
and…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/05/unforced-variations-may-2013/comment-page-10/#comment-340602
and…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/01/unforced-variations-jan-2013/comment-page-6/#comment-315336
———–
And, finally…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/01/forced-responses-jan-2018/comment-page-10/#comment-693090
So, yeah, thanks, Mike, for raising the issue of Tainter again. I think this suffices as my response.
217 Peter Backes says:
29 May 2021 at 9:28 AM
What was the actual context? You are leavingout the context. Or perhaps you just miss it? What’s missing from your question?
206
nigelj says:
24 May 2021 at 9:50 PM
Perhaps, if your goal is a future that is nothing more than a #greenwashed present. False, however, if you seek to solve the problem of living regeneratively on this planet and seek to reintegrate human and natural systems via localization, micro-energy/micro-grids that use energy when available with some, but minimal, local emergency storage, as I wrote about in 2008.
But, hey, here we are with people making arguments that were addressed 13 years ago.
http://aperfectstormcometh.blogspot.com/2008/03/build-out-grid-vs-household-towards.html
I will continue to study up on Tainter. I think of his work on civilization collapse as scholarly, not doomy gloomy. I think he simply presents the facts and history as he has determined those to be.
If a biologist type expert proposed that most living things spring into being through some process, then they develop to maturity, reproduce, and then expire, most of us would simply recognize that this presentation is generally true. It’s descriptive, not prescriptive.
The key idea I took away was that a single civilization had managed to simplify and avoid collapse. That is very interesting. Another key idea I got was that Tainter recognizes that collapse achieves simplification, but not in a manner that fans of the various civilizations appreciate. Be all of that as it may, it does seem to me that simplification is a pretty attractive path forward away from a highly complex and highly consumptive form of civilization that appears to be unsustainable. If a person decides simplification is the answer or end state of civilizations that have grown excessively complex/expensive/consumptive, then it makes sense to study up on the single “soft landing” simplification that shows up in Tainter’s history of civilizations.
did anyone here actually listen to what Tainter presented about the single non-collapse simplification? I thought it was instructive.
Cheers
Mike
BPL: twice.
RC: None of the answers surprised me, especially yours.
If you’d like to share, what most affected/affects you from your second reading of the ancient texts?
I’ll share first:
I’ve had one religious experience in my life. Beyond koom-by-ya feelings and whatnot.
I’m pretty sure it was middle school. Anyway, I decided to do a Mr KIA and plan out reading the Bible.
I started where any middle school boy would start:
Revelations. Flipped through the Bible, found a random page in Revelations,
and read the first couple words of a passage about me.
I got an instant Understanding:
I was not to read the ancient texts.
I was not to believe anything.
There was no voice.
There was no time to think.
I glanced down, Knew, and slammed the book shut.
Killian @147 (UV),
“But why would other minerals be deliberately left in the ground? It just doesn’t make sense, and seems like the precautionary principle taken a bit far.”
“But the point, completely lost on you, was we don’t know future resource needs and I gave one simple “What if…?” example to illustrate that. I in no way declared that must be what is done. YOU CANNOT KNOW THE FUTURE NEEDS OF SOCIETY.”
We cannot know with certainty what the needs of future societies will be but we can certainly anticipate the most likely crises future societies will face, which will include climate problems like ice ages, asteroid impacts, massive vocanic explosions, viruses etc, and its far from clear how stopping all mining right now will be of much use. And whatever we mine and turn into products will mostly still be lying around able to be recycled.
And what about urgent needs in the present? We need resources for all sorts of things from mitigating the climate problem to the alleviation of global poverty to healthcare. Its not tenable to believe we can adequately solve these things by stopping all mining, or even most mining. There are unlikely to be enough old materials lying around to recycle to provide enough new materials. Maybe that day will come eventually. Rapid and huge reductions in resource use could also obviously cause some sort of economic crash. We are in that damned if we do damned if we don’t situation.
I’ve heard you argue the rich world just hand over its resources to the poor world. How is that going to happen? Pleading? At the point of a gun? It’s just not realistic. You have to consider all the social, psychological and political realities of human society. That’s why I come down on the side of mining and a new energy grid and ideally we do the best we can to minimise how much mining we do and recycle waste etc. That much is almost commonsense and is perhaps achievable.
Killian @159 & 160 (last months UV page) I think there are some fairly obvious problems with your simplification plan (or whatever you want to call it), as I’ve outlined, but you clearly don’t want to hear. Instead you nitpick about how I defined your plan as Killians simplification plan and Killians plan, not able to see that both my statements meant substantially the same things. Seriously man is that the best youve got? Nit picking, deflections, statements quoted out of context, personal put downs? Unbelievable.
Mike @232 & 237, I listened to the video where it discussed the Byzantine empire simplifying. Broadly speaking it had built a huge expensive army that used so many resources it was problematic, and they simplified by giving each soldier his own plot of land which was much easier to maintain.
It does give hope that some form of simplification might work for our society, but its rather slim hope. Obviously it wont be getting rid of the military because this only uses about 2% of resources. Not that I’m much of a fan of the military. And the Byzantine society was pretty much an autocracy and command economy so they could make people do this. We live in democracies so simplification pretty much has to be something that appeals to the majority of people. This is why I constantly ask is it something that is likely to gain traction with people?
We could focus on things like the circular economy idea, and going back to more traditional forms of farming – to an extent. These things are helpful and look largely benign, if they are phased in carefully. We could simplify and so easily make things worse if we aren’t careful. Many human socio – economic plans have been well intended but have gone badly wrong, both on the left and right of politics. It hurts to say this but its the truth.
K 234: 20. Maunder’s Law of the Minimum
BPL: Liebig’s.
231
Richard Caldwell says:
31 May 2021 at 9:07 AM
Killian,
I’m turning a toxic waste site into the purest form of church: a garden.
I’m wondering if you want to get involved in whatever way?
I am a permaculture designer/teacher/theorist.
237 Mike says:
1 Jun 2021 at 12:12 PM
I will continue to study up on Tainter.
We all think in our ways, but because of the way I think, highly dependent on Pattern Literacy, logic and First Principles thinking, Tainter has little to offer beyond his diminishing returns curve, which is itself a derivative of Laffer’s curve. (Both can be stated as too much of a good thing is still too much.)
I think of his work on civilization collapse as scholarly
Yes, but it is limited. This is clearly exhibited by his dismissiveness/antipathy for Jared Diamond’s work when the two perspectives melded together give you a perfect explanation of collapse. They are complementary, not in opposition, but Tainter cannot see this because, imo, his approach is mechanistic. He sees complexity as machine-like, not as a flow within a system, so to speak.
Diamond, on the other hand, has done extensive fieldwork and has lived among tribal peoples. If for no other reason than having read my posts over the years, not saying you don’t have other sources in mind, you will immediately expect Diamond to have a far more systemic view of things, one informed by the ebbs and flows within Nature itself, and this is what you find in his work.
Therefore, Tainter sees collapse a certain way, Diamond sees it another, but both are correct. There is a mechanistic aspect of system built on top of system built on top of system as ever more complex and fragile systems are created to solve the problems previously created.
Diamond assumes people are not wholey stupid and at some point somebody figures out this process is not going to end well because they see the system as a whole and realize the linkages are breaking down. He then assumes people then have a choice: Simplify (controlled collapse) or uncontrolled collapse.
The key idea I took away was that a single civilization had managed to simplify and avoid collapse.
Where Tainter gets it wrong is in assuming controlled collapse only defines a society retaining its core identifying characteristics so that it essentially is a shrunken version of itself, for the most part, but I consider this a very limited view. Problem-solving is problem-solving, and if you solve your problems of complexity by abandoning those central characteristics to return to a previous state of simplicity, you still solve the problem. The Chaco Canyon civilization devolved into the Pueblo of today. They didn’t disappear. Same with the Maya, etc.
Another key idea I got was that Tainter recognizes that collapse achieves simplification, but not in a manner that fans of the various civilizations appreciate.
“Achieves” here is a bit problematic and perhaps is better replaced with “results in.” Also, we must be careful what we mean by “simplification.” Tainter is not using it as I use it, so clarity and specificity here is important. Tainter means simpler, not simplicity in the sense of living in harmony with Nature. The various collapses of empires/states in what we today call Europe all resulted in simpler societies, not simplification, whereas the Maya and Kogi went from complex to simplicity – they reintegrated with Nature.
This is a distinction I do not recall either Diamond or Tainter making. It is a very important distinction.
Be all of that as it may, it does seem to me that simplification is a pretty attractive path forward away from a highly complex and highly consumptive form of civilization that appears to be unsustainable. If a person decides simplification is the answer or end state of civilizations that have grown excessively complex/expensive/consumptive, then it makes sense to study up on the single “soft landing” simplification that shows up in Tainter’s history of civilizations.
That’s a long way around, isn’t it, and a bit of a waste of your time? I’ve already told you how we can do it, and Tainter’s one example is not an example of becoming a regenerative society, merely a less complex unsustainable one. If you’re going to study collapses, study those that resulted in a return to regenerative systems – unless you are not interested in being truly sustainable.
did anyone here actually listen to what Tainter presented about the single non-collapse simplification? I thought it was instructive.
Quite clearly, yes. Years ago.
We cannot know with certainty what the needs of future societies will be but we can certainly anticipate the most likely crises future societies will face
Because climate change was anticipated by the Romans, or the American colonists, or the US gov’t of 1850, or society at large even as late as 1950 – or even 1980?
Can you not admit when you are wrong without it taking three years of nauseatingly repetitious brow-beating?
Fixed it for you:
Your problem, besides your hubris, is you will not accept the facts facing you and instead choose a narrative you prefer, that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, quite literally, and instead pretend the hard parameters imposed by Nature are just someone’s opinion, easily dismissed.
Until you learn to see what is rather than what you want to see, you will continue to flail. It’s a simple thing: Stop thinking what you wish to think, have been told to think, are willing to think, and Just. See.
This is sincere advice.
at Nigel at 241: I appreciate that you listened to the Tainter video and understood the particulars of the successful simplification example. I don’t think it makes sense to accept that we can’t/won’t do the same thing, that’s a little doomy gloomy for me. I think it’s unlikely that we will do it, but I think it starts with the thought, the proposal.
I also think the possible impacts are larger than 2% if you consider the potential benefits of converting most of the global military budget to addressing climate change instead of engaging in military aggression and defense of the realm.
I suppose it’s pie in the sky, but I think we might want to be bold in our aspirations, if we want the kind of simplification that the Byzantine Empire pulled off way back when: A soft landing, not a crash into simplicity. Or we can muddle along building more costly complexity and see if our civilization figures out a way to avoid collapse where other civilizations are reported to have failed with the complexity approach.
I will continue to mull over Tainter’s ideas and post thoughts about them, if any arise. It’s not the first time that Tainter has been discussed here. Most of us need to hear something several times before we absorb it. I think the if the message is delivered in a polite and inquisitive manner, it might gain a bit of traction.
Cheers
Mike
K 234: 20. Maunder’s Law of the Minimum
BPL: Liebig’s.
RC: pondered a tad. Could Killian have tossed in a joke that flew over BPL’s hat?
Not good odds, but I scrolled up to find out…
And up and up and what number?
234. Didn’t read before. Same decision now.
But what was BPL thinking??
Yo, bro! You bored or something?
Piotr @163 (last months UV page)
“But this next descent has already been already postponed, if not cancelled altogether – given the CO2 levels in the air and ocean, and the amount of already heat stored in the ocean, and so much of the ice albedo missing. So the next chance of geoengineering ourselves out of an ice age is probably 100,000 yrs, at the earliest.”
Yes. I read a compelling article on this a couple of years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-fuel-burning-postponing-next-ice-age
“Nigel (143) its likely global population will be much smaller in size, so it could migrate to warmer regions in the southern hemisphere.”
“it’s hard enough to predict the human population 100 years from now. 100,000 yrs from now.”
Yes hard to predict, but the population trajectory does look downwards to me longer term towards a smaller global population. It only has to fall below a fertility rate of about 2.2 children and you will get towards smaller population eventually, in a few centuries, and several countries are below this already and shrinking. China is in a panic because its deliberate one child policy has caused a deficit of young people. China is now trying to persuade people have 3 children – but it just isn’t working. People get a taste for small families.
It depends on how many countries do this but it looks like enough might to cause a shrinking global population. And eventually we will obviously run up against the carrying capacity of the planet. Its not clear to me that a population of for example 7 billion people could last indefinitely. If we do run out of various mineral resources and have to rely on the land its not clear it could sustain those numbers forever, even with some sort of simplified living. So why wouldn’t our destiny be something less than current 7 billion people approx?
“Then again would they have any science and a civilization to extract the fossil fuels (since all the easy places have been already cleaned out). And would they even know that they have to do geoengineering – that is – would they know that the Winter is coming ?”
Yes fair comments. I have always thought its possible the final end game for human civilisation might be forced right back to a very simple rural subsistence living if we run out of things and otherwise wreck the place. Obviously this is uncertain and many centuries away. Some sort of reverse evolution. Its hard to see them geoengineering the climate. However if population size did shrink dramatically then a modern technological society might remain for millenia, but deliberately geoengineering climate would still be a very challenging job and it would be easier to migrate to southern hemisphere. All just speculation on my part.
But leaving materials in the ground deliberately and right now has some obvious problems for us, and it just seems so incredibly unlikely that we will do that, so I see no sense in wasting time suggesting it. Suggesting we “slow down” the rate we are using resources is a bit more subtle and more likely to find an audience do you think?
Other aspects of farming:
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/731/more-less-farming-warming-world
Aquaculture may