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"
Piotrsays
michael Sweet (295) The EIA says that it is more expensive to air cool and large nuclear and coal do not use air cooling. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36773 Piotr’s quotes at 280 from the World Nuclear association say it all.
Moreover, from the horse mouth, the reference promoted, even if unintentionally, by our very own DB Benson, to which he draw attention recently – a paper that “clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative” ! This and more quotable arguments, plus links – in my (270).
Nigel to at least a couple of your points in (249)…
Nigel: why wouldn’t our destiny be something less than current 7 billion people approx?
First, it’s already 7.9bln and expected to being level off around 11bln in 2100.
And our “destiny” may be well below that, but while we wall wwant sustainable future, the question is HOW can we get there without collapsing the civilization and ending up with Mad Max world with a few millions of hunters and gatherers left as result.
Incidentally, the leveling at 11bln assumes the current population structure in which more than a half of the global population is urban. If we go with Killian’s simplification and relocate all? most of the city dwellers to the country, without massive mortality, our population is likely to shoot past 11 bln, because rural populations tend to have much higher fertility rates – since you need the extra hands to tend the fields and livestock, and taking care of youngest kids. And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
So HOW do we get from here to that future, low-population sustainable Earth?
I don’t think there is a single silver bullet, we can’t have: my way or highway, no all or nothing. Even with that we would sti;; need all the luck, energy, technology and time to even have a chance at making this transition without too much violence and society collapse. And yes Nigel, probably we would have to use some non-renewable resources – as without a successful transition – there will be nobody to complain that we used them.
Most important we need to separate the immediate form the long-term
– the CO2 drastic reduction in a few decades from the transition to the future sustainable world, We achieve the first, by building a lot of renewables
+ some sequestration. This would buy us the time to work on
an orderly societal transition.
And when the transition concludes – the cities will be fewer and smaller but not abandoned, because even regenerative agriculture, to feed several bln people, would need some technology. As would medicine. As would many other things we think are important in our life and which are made or done in cities.
Not to go on too long – how does it differ from Killian’s modest proposal – in the next post.
Piotrsays
cont. of my response to Nigel(249)
Compared to mine, Killian’s proposal compresses the transition time by an order of magnitude – since we need to get to zero or negative emissions in a few decades, AND according to Killian – we won’t need any NEW renewables. This means the reduction in our primary energy production to 13.5% of the current value (= % of prim. energ. made from the renewables) within the next few decades would have to be achieved by slashing the energy demand by the effects of Killian simplification – in a few decades from now: so many of us will leave a simple life in country that our power demand will drop by more than 6/7 from the today’s level (more than that – if we account for the still growing population).
So my question is how exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades? How are we going to convince the billions of people from cities to move into the country, when most of them have neither the inclination nor the skills to live a regenerative country lifestyle?
Sure, you we could try the force – see Khmer Rouge and China’s cultural revolution, although their was a timid effort compared to what would be needed to move 6(?) bln from cities to the country. And all the while the previous social structures are collapsing around them.
And what are the chances that people living in the country could absorb extra 6 bln in the span of several decades(?), and feed everybody without mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers, particularly if the some of the agricultural land is taken out by carbon sequestration /rewilding?
And for such a rapid transition to fail all is needed is that the food production drops only enough that only some people will face starvation – if you feed 10.5bln but 0.5bln is hungry – they may destabilize the entire world – if my kids are dying of hunger – I no longer care about laws, property, social rules, ethics or what’s best for the future of the species – I take a gun and get the food from those who still have it – the farmers. And my impact propagates – after I robbed their food – the farmers will no longer keep the livestock, since it can be easily taken at any time, and don’t sow their fields – for why waste edible seeding grain when at the harvest time the people with guns will show up, and take it from you, maybe killing you in the process. Instead, you just hide your seed grain and eat it through it, hoping that the people with guns will die of starvation before I do. And with fields not sown – the number of hungry people increase and spills onto other countries destabilizing them in turn. Somebody remarked that Killian’s world could mean death of half of Earth’s population, a remark to which Killian took such an umbrage – could actually be an … optimistic prediction.
Given all that – compared to Killian’s rapid simplification proposal – the original modest proposal (by Swift) would probably be easier and less controversial…
Killiansays
293 Mike says:
8 Jun 2021 at 12:31 PM
at Killian: I am not talking or thinking about “pristine nature” when I think or talk about rewilding. I am not thinking about restoration to a previous state of wilderness for any particular plot of land. I am thinking about our species stepping back from interfering with a particular plot of land and letting that plot go “wild” with minimal treatment/planning or care from our species.
This is actually a little self-contradictory, but before I go on, your answer suggests you did not read/watch all the materials I provided? If you didn’t, please do. It will definitely be worth your time. If you have, your response doesn’t make sense to me.
Let me know if you have.
Killiansays
286 nigelj says:
7 Jun 2021 at 6:40 PM
In New Zealand we have some conservation estates essentially comprising native forests with their natural populations of native wildlife and some introduced predator species running wild.
…The issue is we have massively depleted areas of native forests so not much is left, and some of their bird species are on the brink of extinction. Allowing people to live in such areas would only risk further depletion of the area of the resource and bird species and general environmental impacts.
Are we talking about “people”? Any Tom, Dick and Jane? Hmmm…? No, we are not. We are talking about people living regeneratively, which means people who would massively speed up the process of enhancing healthy systems and regenerating depleted areas.
You know this, but your post is essentially, “Regenerative systems are bullshit! They destroy, they don’t restore and/or create.” I am really tired of such dishonesty.
KIA 296: President Donald Trump, the most environmentally progressive president in US history
BPL: Are you on crack? Trump said global warming was a Chinese hoax, let coal companies dump waste in rivers, allowed mining in national parks and nature reserves, favored fossil fuels over renewables, appointed fossil fuel execs to the EPA, and in general did everything he could to degrade and ruin the environment. He’s “environmentally progressive” only if you define it to mean “favored progressive damage to the environment.”
Dansays
Can’t wait to see the science deniers (KIA and Victor)do cartwheels trying to defend Louie Gohmert(R-TX)on this incredibly ignorant doozy regarding climate change:
DBBenson at 302:
Right, and my car is a generator also and it is air cooled. My emergency generator for hurricanes is also air cooled. If you read the EIA summary I linked at 295 you would know that small generators are often air cooled but large ones (like nuclear power plants) are always water cooled. A 5% hit on efficiency would render any large plant uneconomic. I realize that you do not care how expensive the plants you support are but the people who invest in them do care about cost.
You are a hopeless fanatic. Fortunately, now I see that most of the readers here have seen through you and Engineer Poet. They often let your posts pass without comment because they know your posts are useless.
nigeljsays
Killian @306, I said that NZ conservation estates still look too fragile to allow anyone to live there permanently, (I don’t care how regenerative or well intended they are) then I went on to say as areas of growth improve and bird species recover to reasonable levels it would make sense to allow some people to live there permanently (the part you left out). Obviously it should be people who will treat the environment well and live sustainably. I wasn’t thinking of McDonalds hamburgers opening a chain of restaurants and houses for their staff.
Its still going to be a political minefield vetting people as suitable. There will be a lot of public scepticism and envy as well. Still the indigenous Maori people would have first rights I think, and would be the least controversial. It might be an interesting experiment. Perhaps its the same with rewilding. In the early stages it just looks best that human contact is very minimal so as to allow things to develop and find their own balance, then introduce some people living there permanently at a later stage provided they are committed to sustainable living etc, etc.
Dansays
296: Wow, so many blatant lies in one comment. Congrats.
Your messiah destroyed environmental protection rules. He coddled fossil fuels. And eliminated many scientists from various rule panels simply to replace them with industry lackeys. (Those are facts, not opinion. It is part of what I do as a profession for over 30 years.) BTW, the tree initiative is bunk. It will do nothing with regards to the net man-made greenhouse emissions. It is in the same boat as those wackos who say a volcano emits more CO2 than mankind (not even remotely close).
Your impeached messiah also left a complete train wreck for President Biden re: Covid vaccine distribution. It was far worse than anyone even realized. Any state health department can verify that statement.
“Creepy Joe”: Still making vile comments about people with speech impediments are you? That speaks volumes about your lack of basic morals. Obviously someone failed to instill them in you when bringing you up when it comes to those and learning science. Quite seriously.
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it ‘groks’ to me, if I may be forgiven the Heinleinism. Just collapse, by whatever name it gets called.
nigeljsays
Piotr @303 @304 on population, simplification, rural living, etc, etc. I agree entirely. I have raised many of the same issues on this website at various times over about the last 4 years. This is why I say simplification looks like a mixture of good and bad ideas and has some unrealistic time frames.
However some things seem reasonably benign in effects. In other words won’t have a risk of horrific unintended consequences. I would argue renewables fit that category, and also the circular economy idea, passive solar buildings, and some elements of this regenerative agriculture idea. But some of the other things. Meh. Not so much. This is all a quick reaction to your comments. I might come back to them.
Richard Caldwellsays
Piotr and Kevin,
Yes. Collapse. But a strange sort of voluntary collapse. If humans don’t suprise the universe’s collective consciousness by squeaking through the huge path from the 1980s to the future (it would have been sooooo easy), then humanity will be presented, every day, with the option:
Care to collapse today, or put it off until tomorrow by taking just one more hit of that dino juice?
Yeah, tomorrow’s collapse will be worse than today’s would be, but today will be filled with sweet Texas crude…
Killiansays
If we go with Killian’s simplification and relocate all? most of the city dwellers to the country, without massive mortality, our population is likely to shoot past 11 bln, because rural populations tend to have much higher fertility rates
Piotr, you have chased me around these boards nipping angrily at my heels too many years to not know what you state above is blatantly false. “Killian’s simplification” would be a *regenerative* simplification which would mean a society that pays exquisitely detailed attention to their environment and take pains to keep the population in check. Regenerative societies DO NOT over-populate. You are intentionally conflating current-paradigm rural populations, and almost certainly disrupted, poor, suppressed indigenous communities, with regenerative societies.
since you need the extra hands to tend the fields and livestock, and taking care of youngest kids.
That 1. only applies to destructive agriculture, 2. that regenerative agriculture would be/should be small-scale such that a family of four could easily manage a smallholding, and 3. ignores that regenerative practices greatly reduces work hours needed. The single best example is the food forest. You work a few days or weeks the first year designing, making physical changes, planting, you work some says the 2nd~4th years adding new species to mimic succession, and spend a couple days a year thereafter pruning – what we call chop and drop. For that, you get a lifetime of fruits, vegetables, nuts, lumber, etc.
If you are unwilling to educate yourself on regenerative practices, then please do not lie to our Dear Readers about them.
Killiansays
I missed this. And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why, since all of you have been reading my comments long enough to be conversant?
Killiansays
311 nigelj says:
9 Jun 2021 at 6:08 PM
Killian @306, I said that NZ conservation estates still look too fragile to allow anyone to live there permanently, (I don’t care how regenerative or well intended they are)
Let me rephrase the bolded, italicized bit: I have to completely ignore the very nature of regenerative societies so my argument seems logical despite being based on a premise I know to be false.
then I went on to say as areas of growth improve and bird species recover to reasonable levels it would make sense to allow some people to live there permanently
And doing it exponentially FASTER is just silly, eh? Good christ…
the part you left out
No, I stopped reading your nonsense and went on to something productive. You see, if the premise is false, there’s no point in reading what follows.
Killiansays
Piotr at 303 and 304 wastes everyone’s time. He offers a Straw Man as his premise and builds a sandcastle atop that. Sadly, none of you will call him on it, right? You all have read my commentary here for TEN YEARS or more, so to still be dishonest about it is unconscionable.
Let’s see which of you have the ethics and moral fiber to call out his misbehavior.
Killiansays
313 Kevin McKinney says:
9 Jun 2021 at 6:33 PM
#304, piotr–
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it ‘groks’ to me, if I may be forgiven the Heinleinism. Just collapse, by whatever name it gets called.
You know
without mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers, particularly if the some of the agricultural land is taken out by carbon sequestration /rewilding?
in no way reflects my views, but that’s how you “grok” it? Completely false representations of others’ views is how you “grok” discussions?
Do enlighten me as to how that works.
Killiansays
Holy crap! Hell has frozen over! Somebody besides me called nigel out on his dishonest debate methods!
43 Mike says:
9 Jun 2021 at 10:41 AM
I feel like you may be applying a bit of spin to your re-presentation of statements of others or articles. Seems like a bad idea to me in the post truth age.
I am not too concerned about it, I think most folks here recognize that you skew to an inherent centrist spin…
Indeed. I have said this since he arrived at this site. Me? I prefer a pithy, “Don’t lie, nigel,” but well done sir!
I think we should all be cautious to speak accurately, to speak in first person about our thoughts or to quote others accurately to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and overstatement controversies and disagreements.
Ah… an acknowledgement of the chaos created by the constant dishonesty encountered on this site. The true source of all the conflict is multiple members’ dishonesty. See piotr’s latest at 303 and 304 for perfect examples.
This is why I question people’s ethics here. All of you long-time posters would be, gun to your head, able to reasonably approximate my actual analyses, but you persist in attempting to belittle and dismiss them instead. That’s not a debate or discussion, it’s dishonesty and, frankly, given the stakes, stupidly maladaptive.
nigeljsays
Piotr @304
There are more problems with a mass migration from city to country, or even inner city to suburbs, if its done quickly within a decade or two. I have mentioned this before: Firstly it would be a one way migration, so would cause a massive crash in property prices with all the trouble that causes. And secondly sellers would start to run out of buyers. Its rather unlikely people would just abandon their homes, or sell at a massive loss. And they have to find willing sellers in the country and have to build a new home as well! Clearly such a migratory process needs quite a long time to absorb the shocks. I’ve said before its a century long process or more, if we decide its the thing to do.
And like you said how would you persuade people to do these things anyway? It sure beats me. The sorts of problems that threaten the future sustainability of our big cities are probably not present enough to grab peoples attention enough for such a voluntary migration. Clearly maintaining modern cities and roading infrastructure and transport could become frighteningly difficult if we start running out of key materials, but its not a present problem on peoples radar.
I’ve said to K before: The Chinese have spent the last five decades or so migrating from country to city. What do we do? Tell them its all been a huge mistake, pack your bags and go back to your villages? How likely is it they would listen, and do this? Even communist dictators might have a problem getting it done! K did indicate you can “live simply” within existing cities, even apartment towers, however I think you can only do that to a limited extent. It would be hard to do this and reduce energy use by 90%, and still live in a healthy comfortable way. So you need a significant new clean energy grid as a priority, and if we find ways of reducing levels of consumption of energy, ‘then’ you may not need to fully scale up the grid, or eventually parts of the gid could be retired early and recycled for other uses.
I have a horrible suspicion such a mass migration from cities to country, will only happen if its forced, by shortages and high prices in cities. A socio – economic and environmental train wreck might be coming. While we can extract minerals from the oceans water and perhaps the ocean bed it probably wont be cheap. Maintaining cities could get problematic eventually. But there are things we can do to help reduce the harm, like reducing levels of waste etc, improving rail links, reducing dependence on private cars that are realistic. The circular economy could be scaled up quite quickly without too much disruption and problems. It’s one simplification related idea that resonates. These are not a big headline grabbing simplistic solution. But such a thing probably doesnt exist and won’t work. And I’m repeating things you said. Because I reached similar conclusions ages ago. Maybe you write it better.
nigeljsays
It appears there are also gas cooled reactors (some use CO2, ironically). The UK has built several of these. But they are not cheap to construct.
Figure it out. The “decarbonization” we’re seeing in the US and Germany has all been done by the replacement of coal by natural gas. Well, what happens when all the coal is replaced? You’re stuck with natural gas, that’s what. You get stuck with a recalcitrant floor on your decarbonization efforts. France, Ontario and Sweden have gone well below that floor. THEY are the examples to follow, and they have NOT gone all-in on “renewables” as much as some factions wanted to.
They often let your posts pass without comment because they know your posts are useless.
But you’re perfectly free to accurately and fully represent your own. (In fact, you’ve already been implored to expand upon them times too numerous to count.) But fair warning: start with the personal crap and the substance will likely be missed amid the toxic chaff.
Mikesays
at Killian at 305: I just skim here these days and seldom dive deep into the ideas presented unless they are presented in a very succinct manner with links and quotes from the article.
That’s just my personal process that has developed as I have aged out of the internet back and forth.
Not sure where the contradiction is that you see, but I am willing to listen or skim a link if you want. I think we agree on many ideas, are close on many more, but I think our civilization is more likely to embrace collapses with both arms before it embraces our shared ideas on a different, simplified path.
We can nonethless continue to put our ideas forward in numerous ways and some may gain traction over time. I think that is worth the effort, but I don’t spend a lot of time on it these days. I am feeling my age and “spending” my remaining time in the ways that make the most sense to me. That means more time with my grandkids and great grandkids and less time on addressing the “someone is wrong on the internet” problem.
Cheers
Mike
Piotrsays
David B. Benson(299): “Oh dear, oh dear. Several here need to learn the Rankin cycle of a steam turbine. The source of heat is irrelevant.“.
– Thank you, Captain Obvious – no nobody said it is.
DBB: “What is that at the bottom of the cycle the steam must be condensed.”
– Nobody questioned it either, heck – if it didn’t need it – our criticism would be moot.
WHY on Earth would we harass you on the costs of cooling, if we thought that cooling …. was NOT needed??? I mean, other than because of your winning personality?
DBB The condenser is usually water cooled but can be air-cooled.
the question was not “ if it can“, but at what cost/risks it can, since the entire discussions started with your dumping on the wind, for its ….reduced efficiency under some assumptions, and pranced around how your nukes are free of those.
And for some reason you don’t address the opinions of those who, unlike you, know what they are talking about [full quotes and source in Piotr (280)]:
DBB: ” Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
World Nuclear Association:
– “impractical and unreliable (in hot weather) for new nuclear plants”
– “ three to four times more expensive than a recirculating wet cooling system”
“All US new plant licence applications have rejected dry cooling as:
– infeasible
– or unacceptable because of lost electrical generating efficiency and significantly higher capital and operating costs.”
Oh dear, oh dear – someone tries to be the holier than the World Nuclear Association, methinks.
This is completely separate and has nothing to do with the safety features of the NuScale nuclear reactor. That is entirely a different matter.
That’s not what your Mama said:
World Nuclear Association: “For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”.
Mikesays
at Killian at 321:
I don’t think that folks debate dishonestly as often as they simply debate from their first person experience and judgment and that may lead to debate and discussion that lacks self-awareness in many instances.
It’s really hard to know what exists in the personal blindspots that I think we all have. If we try hard, we may occasionally get a glimpse of something within our blindspot and if we reflect on that, we may be more self-aware, more congenial, and maybe sponsor and engage in more productive discussions.
This problem that you identify as dishonesty exists all around us, it’s not just on this site. I think we open the door a crack to more productive discussions if we use choose our words carefully and attempt to limit the use of words/labels that might make others feel attacked in the back and forth.
Of course, there is some frank dishonesty that is the dominant characteristic behind the posts of some folks. KIA and Victor come to mind in that regard, but most folks here are probably operating from something less obnoxious when they engage in or precipitate protracted disagreement. That seems to me to be the matter of blind spots or lack of self-awareness.
I think it is more difficult to sort out these things if we take the back and forth personally and clash as if these intellectual disagreements have become a matter of honor.
Does any part of that make sense to you?
Cheers
Mike
Piotrsays
Killian [multiple posts] “Piotr, you have chased me around these boards nipping angrily at my heels”
Hmm, if your critics can’t reach …. past your heels – either you … wear a really high heels, or your a Giant, or, at least, modestly: “standing on the shoulders of Giants” … ;-) But even so, I wouldn’t underestimate us, the heel biters, for we could inflict quite a damage even onto the Giants. Ask Achilles…
And while you certainly are entitled to score points by proudly ignoring most of my arguments after the Great, ehem, Heel Whooping of 2021 (link at the bottom),
you can’t seriously expect the targets of your ostracism … to keep their mouths shut and stop commenting on your public posts on a discussionforum. If you can’t stand the comments – keep your opinions to your Diary.
K:”without mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers, particularly if some of the agricultural land is taken out by carbon sequestration/rewilding?”
in no way reflects my views, but that’s how you “grok” it?
So, by your small, 4 person family-run (two of them presumably kids), simplified, regenerative, agriculture – you envisioned the agriculture that … like the current industrial one – uses artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization, even if the last one makes sense only on large intensive farms (100s or 1000s of acres) ???
And since the answer must be gonadic “yes!”:
Killian: “ Anyone here got the gonads to explain [that it is “false on every point” to say that Killian does not want] “the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers”
– WHERE the energy needed to produce and to power the tractors and all other machinery (“mechanization”), along with the energy for the energy-expensive fertilizers, WILL COME FROM, given that you said that….. we won’t need any NEW renewables, while the non-renewables will be rapidly closed down?
But all these are mere details in comparison to the central problem – the time-line of the transition to simplification, since your negation of the need for the NEW renewables IMPLIES that it has to be on the same schedule as we turn off the fossil fuels, i.e. in the next FEW decades! Hence my questions:
P(304): “ How exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades?”, and
P(304): “ How are we going to convince the billions of people from cities to move into the country, when most of them have neither the inclination nor the skills to live a regenerative country lifestyle?” and,
How are we going to replace the current economy, monetary systems, legal systems supporting them, and technologies with a completely new system: … decentralized life in farms small enough to be operated by “family of four“,replacing conflict, competition, and consumption – with co-operation and harmony with nature? AND ALL THESE changes – in the next FEW DECADES????
And I indicated how EASILY this massive rapid transition can get out of hand and collapse the previous system without creating the new one:
P(304): “And for such a rapid transition to fail all is needed is that the food production drops only enough that only some people will face starvation – if you feed 10.5bln but 0.5bln is hungry – they may destabilize the entire world – if my kids are dying of hunger – I no longer care about laws, property, social rules, ethics or what’s best for the future of the species [then spilling over on the farmers I would raid looking for food, with slaughtered livestock and unsown fields
magnifying the food shortage and spilling over onto adjacent regions and then cascading throughout the world], collapsing the existing civilization and
giving us a Mad Max world with a few millions(?) of hunters and gatherers left” (P. 303).
Un-grok that!
Piotr
===
^* the reason for Killian no longer talking to me:
– https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-7/#comment-785382 Piotr Jan, FR (319),
where I showed that Killian pre-simplification(?) “solution”, namely:
“ reduction by 90% of consumption by the highest-consuming classes, and, globally, that roughly also equates to the highest-consuming nations”
can’t possibly reach the expected results:
90% cut of TOTAL emissions = 90%cut * X% of global emissions by the rich + 0% of (100-X) of global emissions (cut in the emissions by the poor)
We solve for X=> rich produce X=100% of global emissions; which means the not-rich produce 100%-100%= … 0% of global emissions.
So UNLESS the assume that vast majority of people of Earth (=those NOT belonging to the “highest-consuming classes“) has ZERO GHG emissions:
WE CAN’T reduce GHG emissions by 90%, by a 90% cut in the consumption by the highest consumers alone.
Piotrsays
nigelj (323) It appears there are also gas cooled reactors (some use CO2, ironically). The UK has built several of these. But they are not cheap to construct
… nor as effective, nor as cheap to operate. That’s why they are the last resort.
See “World Nuclear Association in Piotr(280).
And even that – only for the smaller ones, since the large are also inherently unsafe:
P(280): again: World Nuclear Association: “For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”.
Killiansays
A 2017 report found that a third of the planet’s land is severely degraded and that fertile soil was being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year. The UK’s environment secretary said in 2017 that the country was 30 to 40 years away from “the fundamental eradication of soil fertility” in places.
But let’s listen to know-nothing incrementalists and half-ass the shift to regenerative agriculture.
nigeljsays
Killlian @316
“Regenerative societies DO NOT over-populate.”
If you mean ancient hunter gatherer peoples, they didn’t over populate – but only because of very high infant mortality numbers. However perhaps you mean some modern designed version of regenerative society. Please clarify what you mean, with a definition, and examples of several substantial communities, and provide objective proof they don’t overpopulate, and information on average family size and population trends over time.
I think Killians version of simplification would tend to lead to larger families rather than smaller families. The whole simplification idea tends to replace mechanisation with human labour, to a certain extent, which will push people towards having larger families. Its pretty obvious that industrialisation leads to smaller families so if you reverse this it will tend to lead to larger families. However it might not be hugely larger families. Contraception is a powerful thing.
But if the goal is to get the size of global population to shrink, we need a fertility rate under 2.2 children, ideally 1.5. So I want to see evidence that regenerative societies could do this. Not assertions. Evidence.
“since you need the extra hands to tend the fields and livestock, and taking care of youngest kids.”
“That 1. only applies to destructive agriculture, 2. that regenerative agriculture would be/should be small-scale such that a family of four could easily manage a smallholding, and 3. ignores that regenerative practices greatly reduces work hours needed. The single best example is the food forest. You work a few days or weeks the first year designing, making physical changes, planting, you work some says the 2nd~4th years adding new species to mimic succession, and spend a couple days a year thereafter pruning – what we call chop and drop. For that, you get a lifetime of fruits, vegetables, nuts, lumber, etc.”
Food forests typically contain a mixture of species with vegetables and herbs grown amongst fruit trees and larger trees. You can see right away how labour intensive cultivating the harvest would be compared to industrial agriculture.
And although a lot of biomass is grown per unit area, output would be limited by nutrients available in the soil, and the tendency for the fruit trees to shade the vegetable crops. Its also impractical to grow grain crops that way, and billions of people depend on grain crops for example rice paddies. The claims are that food forests are a great thing, have low working hours, and can feed the world better than industrial agriculture. Show me proof in the published peer reviewed scientific literature.
—————————————–
Killian @317
“And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.”
“False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why, since all of you have been reading my comments long enough to be conversant?”
And yet whenever I have suggested we may have to keep some artificial fertilisers and pesticides, Killian has been extremely critical and dismissive of my comments. He has not said ” we need to keep some pesticides and fertilisers” or anything even remotely like that.
It’s the classic Killian defense he uses all the time: “I didn’t say that”. But the regulars on this website all know he did!
michael Sweetsays
Nigelj at 323:
The gas cooled reactors in the UK have gas (they use carbon dioxide in the UK. Some designs use helium.) in the primary cooling link through the reactor core. This hot gas is used to boil water to generate the electricity. The steam is cooled by water. In the UK they use sea water because the water demand is too high for the rivers in the UK to supply enough water.
As this relates to DBBenson’s wild claims, the final cooling of the reactors is sea water. Air conditioners in houses are air cooled. There is a box with a radiator in it and a big fan that blows air over the radiator to cool it (air cooling). For large power plants the cost of a giant radiator and the power to run the fans is not economic. Apparently gas turbines in combined cycle generators can be air cooled. Water cooling is more efficient than air cooling. Home air conditioners can be water cooled (which is more efficient) but you need a good well and a place to dispose of the waste water.
still batting zero outta 400 odd for currently operating aircooled nuke
sidd
sidd
nigeljsays
Meant to say this about food forests:” You can see right away how labour intensive harvesting the crop would be compared to industrial agriculture.” It would be a slow process harvesting crops, given the mixture of crops all in one place. Not saying food forests are necessarily a bad thing in other ways.
There are more problems with a mass migration from city to country, or even inner city to suburbs, if its done quickly within a decade or two.
And you, the non-expert, have somehow come up with issues I, the expert, and more to the point, author of Regenerative Governance, have never considered, eh?
Firstly it would be a one way migration, so would cause a massive crash in property prices with all the trouble that causes.
nigel, dear, why can you not think your way out of even a wet, shredded paper bag? Or, are you again lying? You know I am saying we cannot get to regenerative via Capitalism (and more and more scholars all the time are getting on board with that), so why do you use property prices as a metric? If property prices are a metric THIS WOULD NOT EVEN BE HAPPENING.
Please, either get some ethic and become honest or just STFU.
Its rather unlikely people would just abandon their homes, or sell at a massive loss.
What loss? What loss is there in a Commons? You KNOW I have said shifting to Commons is necessary condition for a controlled simplification.
WHY MUST YOU LIE?
Clearly such a migratory process needs quite a long time to absorb the shocks.
Why? How long did it take to rebuild Europe? Seems to me it was largely done in a decade or less. By 1947, industrial production was back at pre-war levels in at least the victorious powers and the non-belligerent economies.
And what of the near-instantaneous shift of the US economy for WWII?
there were about 3 million automobiles manufactured in the U.S. in 1941. During the entire war, only 139 additional cars rolled off the assembly lines.
I’ve said before its a century long process or more
Based on WHAT? nigel says so! And nothing more. It takes zero time to NOT produce unneeded shit.
And like you said how would you persuade people to do these things anyway? It sure beats me.
But what doesn’t? You’ve been on these boards for, what?, three years? In that time you have offered exactly zero unique thoughts or legitimate critiques. Zero. Here, you continue to insist a metaphorical tsunami will not motivate people off the beach. You, sir, must have an IQ well below average, or be a propagandist, to continue to claim an existential threat properly communicated with pathways to survive said tsunami would not get people moving. PEOPLE ARE ALREADY MOVING, and more will join in. The shift will be exponential and after a future tipping point, become parabolic BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE MOTIVATED TO SURVIVE.
Every single thing you post belongs in the Bore Hole for utter uselessness, if not outright Do-Nothing propaganda.
Richard Caldwellsays
Piotr: So my question is how exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades?
RC: Killian just spoke of not just anybody but folks who kinda sound well evolved. Ethical, well educated, non-greedy, and don’t believe their grandchildren should own yours (economically).
I don’t think he thinks people will be convinced. More, ‘yes, it could be done but you fools will blow it all to Hell’.
Eh, a sentiment I can’t find too much fault with.
***********
Michael Sweet: small generators are often air cooled but large ones (like nuclear power plants) are always water cooled.
RC: “are always” is ever so backwards-looking. Yep, it used to be that just wasting energy while defouling the environment by heating water was the only way to do it because it was $cheaper$ (or just simpler?) than adding an ammonia bottoming cycle that gets additional electrons with no additional fuel while only heating air…
They happen to pair rather well with my engine’s steam-laden exhaust because an ammonia bottoming cycle will recover the energy lost by the simultaneous combined cycle’s vaporizing of water as well as the water itself.
I read a not too recent paper a year or so ago that discussed how an ammonia bottoming cycle can be added to a power plant. The authors were interested in replacing the steam-based bottoming cycle in $expensive$ combined cycle plants with a cheaper ammonia-based one, eliminating the environmental and water-sourcing issues.
Richard Caldwellsays
Piotr: And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
Killian: False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why,
RC: Simple. Because you yet again didn’t say squat, so he doesn’t know squat.
Next time say what you do say. Really, a single sentence about pesticides. One about mechanization. One about artificial fertilizer. It would help me because I don’t know where you stand on any of these three, either.
Does anyone here know where Killian stands on all three of the above?
Richard Caldwellsays
Killian,
I don’t know where your expertise would best help your heart and the garden. You’re a long ways from Omaha.
I want to fix this bit of land, to protect it from audible and chemical garbage that railroads spew with abandon…
But hey, the pit for my water storage basin was easy to dig. They barely buried a thick layer of strange carbon chips or something. Kinda looks like really rich soil. I’m thinking of getting some tests done.
But mostly, this land is toxic. I’ve got a fantastic view, lots of privacy, plenty of space, and a thin veneer of life on top of whatever the fuck Union Pacific did here.
So, lots of questions. How much water to allow to leech through what I build above the current ‘soil’ level? How deep do various roots go? How concerned should I be about non-food crops bringing toxins up from below? Scott Strough might have input…
Perhaps just interaction. I’ve got ideas. You surely can improve them. I can see far enough already that I’m confident that this bit of the planet can seed a difference.
After all, why do you think I landed in MAGAland?
Piotrsays
Michael Sweet: “small generators are often air cooled but large ones (like nuclear power plants) are always water cooled.”
Richard Caldwell (339) “are always” is ever so backwards-looking. Yep, it used to be that just wasting energy while defouling the environment by heating water was the only way to do it because it was $cheaper$ (or just simpler?)
Richard, but the cost (extra construction costs, extra operating costs, and/or reduced efficiency) is only one consideration. The other may be safety
World Nuclear Association: “ For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.“
Killiansays
337 Barton Paul Levenson says:
11 Jun 2021 at 6:40 AM
K 321: Somebody besides me called nigel out on his dishonest debate methods!
BPL: Compared to you, he is the very model of honesty.
Lie. You can’t cut and paste a single one.
Useless drive-by bullshit. This is par for the course.
——-
340 Richard Caldwell says:
11 Jun 2021 at 12:31 PM
Piotr: And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
Killian: False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why,
RC: Simple. Because you yet again didn’t say squat, so he doesn’t know squat.
You’re not paying attention. You’re right, I didn’t say squat: He initiated with his own comments to which I *responded.* It’s not on me to prove he is right or wrong, it’s on him to prove his claims have merit, which they absolutely do not.
——
336 nigelj says:
11 Jun 2021 at 12:31 AM
Meant to say this about food forests:” You can see right away how labour intensive harvesting the crop would be compared to industrial agriculture.” It would be a slow process harvesting crops, given the mixture of crops all in one place. Not saying food forests are necessarily a bad thing in other ways.
Another bullshit Straw Man built on omission of a number of points repeated here so many times to combat your bullshit that EVERYBODY knows, even if they pretend otherwise:
First of all, WHY are you talking about a kind of system with which you have zero familiarity?
Second, if the world were building out Food Forests, WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY WOULD IT BE? That’s right, you already know, but cannot post an honest rebuttal: A localized, regenerative, Commons-based society where any given food forest would be scaled to be managed by the manpower available. YOU KNOW THIS. Localization, Commons, small, walkable communities… all of this and more has been repeated so many times primarily because of you misrepresenting them every time you open your mouth on these topics.
You are a propagandist for non-systemic change.
Third, over and over and over and over I have repeated to you – because you are both directly dishonest and lie by omission – of the concepts of Bridge Technology and Appropriate Technology, two overlapping concepts that, rather than rejecting technology as you and Piotr have knowingly misrepresented, actually embrace the use of “embedded energy” (resources already extracted and made into something) to achieve regenerative results. There is no law in permaculture and no statement EVER by me, that says you cannot use a tractor or a backhoe to dig a pond or make swales or build terraces, etc. If a cherry picker is available and the human labor is not, you use the cherry picker. What you DO NOT do is design a system that requires you to BUY a cherry picker in the first place. You design to need AND to resources on hand. Early parts of design include a needs inventory and a resource inventory. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/04/impacts-of-climate-change-part-2-of-the-new-ipcc-report-has-been-approved/#comment-494958
The principles, posted here before, are
1. use what you’ve got and
2. choose natural (human labor) before mechanical, and mechanical before hi-tech/chemical.
NOWHERE is it said to abandon existing embedded energy. That would be massive waste, and one of the most critical of the principles is
3. Zero waste.
You have read all these things on this forum over and over and over, yet I get abused by The Peanut Gallery for saying you are lying, but your lies are virtually never questioned (Good job, Mike). It’s the very definition of an echo chamber.
“And you, the non-expert, have somehow come up with issues I, the expert, and more to the point, author of Regenerative Governance, have never considered, eh?”
Yes I do that all the time, as do others. It’s extremely unlikely anyone can think of everything on these sorts of issues because they are so wide. By the way what university degree relevant to the environment do you have?
“Firstly it would be a one way migration (city to country) , so would cause a massive crash in property prices with all the trouble that causes….and people would run out of buyers, and are unlikely to sell at a big loss …”
“nigel, dear, why can you not think your way out of even a wet, shredded paper bag? Or, are you again lying? You know I am saying we cannot get to regenerative via Capitalism (and more and more scholars all the time are getting on board with that), so why do you use property prices as a metric? If property prices are a metric THIS WOULD NOT EVEN BE HAPPENING…..”
I use property prices as a metric because I don’t believe significant numbers of people will give up on capitalism and money and private property and I don’t believe such things are good ideas. I don’t intend to waste my time promoting those ideas. And regardless of this, its a one way migration at speed, and looks like it would cause more harm than good. People would have to start again from scratch, living in tents until they could build a home etc. A more orderly and slower process without all the common ownership ideas might have merit but meh. Even that is not convincing to me.
“Clearly such a migratory process needs quite a long time to absorb the shocks.”
“Why? How long did it take to rebuild Europe? Seems to me it was largely done in a decade or less. By 1947, industrial production was back at pre-war levels in at least the victorious powers and the non-belligerent economies.”
This is comparing apples and oranges, in every possible way. Europe also had massive aid from America. I think it was called the Marshall plan.
“Here, you continue to insist a metaphorical tsunami will not motivate people off the beach.”
Well clearly the tsunami isn’t motivating people very much. Despite knowing about the climate problem and other environmental problems for decades, very few people are adopting “simplification” to any significant degree. One reason is because our minds react strongly to immediate problems and more sluggishly to longer term or distant threats like climate change, even if they are serious. I’ve provided links for you to read, yet you just don’t seem to get it:
The things that are actually gaining some traction with people are renewable energy and electric cars etc, etc. And regenerative agriculture is gaining some traction because problems with soil degradation are more immediate, and it has some wide and immediate benefits to people.
“Every single thing you post belongs in the Bore Hole for utter uselessness, if not outright Do-Nothing propaganda.”
Ya de ya de ya. Apparently because I don’t promote all of Killian’s ideas I promote doing nothing. Yawns. Shakes head in despair. Yet again.
nigeljsays
Killian @338 and you butted in on a conversation between me and Piotr, the very thing you criticised me for doing. But what else is new.
Killiansays
325 Kevin McKinney says:
10 Jun 2021 at 9:16 AM
#320, Killian–
…representations of others’ views…
Yes–Piotr’s.
So, lie with cute editing? Impressive…
But you’re perfectly free to accurately and fully represent your own.
Which I have done over and over, as you very well know.
(In fact, you’ve already been implored to expand upon them times too numerous to count.)
Asked and answered. Answered before asked. Ten years+ and counting.
But fair warning: start with the personal crap and the substance will likely be missed amid the toxic chaff.
You have repeatedly engaged in passive-aggressive insults over the last few months with me in the guise of pretending you want peace – without me giving you reason to do so. But, of course, it’s all my fault, not the fault of your own aggression. I suggest you get real about your own aggressiveness and repeated provocations.
David B. Bensonsays
For the fools: 77 MWe is Not Large. Go read about the NuScale Small reactor and the plans to build several on the Idaho National Laboratory site.
nigeljsays
Richard Caldwell @339
“Piotr: So my question is how exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades?”
“RC: Killian just spoke of not just anybody but folks who kinda sound well evolved. Ethical, well educated, non-greedy, and don’t believe their grandchildren should own yours (economically).I don’t think he thinks people will be convinced. More, ‘yes, it could be done but you fools will blow it all to Hell’.Eh, a sentiment I can’t find too much fault with.”
Nigel: A few well educated non greedy folks might do it, but probably not many. I dont think you really know what Killians proposing. The trouble is you skim things and think you can guess the rest. Hopefully you read Piotrs comments @330. Theres also all the stuff about getting rid of almost all private property, having shared ownership, getting rid of hierarchies, etc which sounds very dubious to me even although I’m a progressive, and could be the most troublesome aspect of things. Do you really think this is good and would be likely to catch on? But then I know you prefer to be non commital.
We are supposed to change everything in a decade or two. How? Remember It takes a long time to build physical and socio economic systems and institutions, and here we are changing EVERYTHING. Even if we go to something ‘simpler’ building new systems is challenging. Remember communism was basically done at the point of a gun, was not as sweeping as this, took longer than a decade, tens of millions of people died or starved to death, and was ultimately a disaster.
Coming up with novel ideas is easy enough. Grand plans require grand levels of proof and must be scrutinised. I have little sympathy if it ruffles feathers.
———————————-
Richard Caldwell @340
RC: “Next time say what you do say. Really, a single sentence about pesticides. One about mechanization. One about artificial fertilizer. It would help me because I don’t know where you stand on any of these three, either…..Does anyone here know where Killian stands on all three of the above?”
Nigel: You might wait a long time to get an answer, and if you do get an answer it may be frustrating and will change by next week anyway and also the week after. I dont know for sure where Killian stands on those three things, but Killian has spent the last 4 years or so utterly condemning industrial agriculture and promoted regenerative agriculture (that appears to be opposed to industrial nitrtes and pesticides if you look it up on wikipedia). You must know that much surely. And hes ridiculed my suggestions we might need some limited use of things like industrial nitrates. So it seems reasonable to conclude hes opposed to industrial nitrates and pesticides. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck. Its not dishonest or wrong to draw reasonable inferences especially if questions just go unanswered.
My position is regenerative farming has always been the same. It looks ok in general terms but I cant find any peer reviewed science to say that it would equal the yields of industrial agriculture, so it might be best phased in slowly, (and given normal pace of change it probably will be anyway) and keeping some limited use of use of industrial fertilisers etc, etc. Is there anything there you dont understand, or dispute? If anyone could solve any tricky problems with regenerative farming, I admit you probably could because you think laterally. Although don’t underestimate my problem solving ability.
Piotrsays
David B. Benson (346) For the fools: 77 MWe is Not Large. Go read about the NuScale Small reactor
Aaah, so when you derisively dismissed wind farms with “ Of course nuclear power plants have no such interference” ” you have meant … only small reactors?
And by no such interference you meant that the interference may be bypassed by air cooling, which is …. more EXPENSIVE to build, more EXPENSIVE to operate, and generating LESS electricity precisely at the times when you need it the MOST (heat waves) – meaning that you have to ADD the costs of a larger overbuilding.
And with all those economic costs you dissed the wind power SOLELY on the basis of a … potential, MINOR^* drop in efficiency??? Talk about the cure being worse than the disease.
====
* up to 20% IF the wind blow from a specific direction, ONLY to the farms close downwind from others AND of the period that is not important anyway – wind farms have higher power out put when winds are strong – which is also when the interference is the weakest. And which can be fixed with …slightly wider spacing of windfarms or building them in rows perpendicular to the direction of the dominant winds.
===
And since you relentlessly push for your nukes over renewables – let’s see how many
of your SMALL nukes it would take to decarbonize the economy (i.e. electricity running not only current electricity uses, but also, directly on indirectly, transport, shipping, household and industrial heating and all other energy uses).
Let’s use Jacobsen et al. numbers for a fully decarbonized economy of 40,000GW in 2052.
40,000 GW/0.077GW = 520,000
So we would need more than HALF A MILLION of your “NuScale” 77MWe reactors! And that’s BEFORE the overbuild needed for the backup and peak demand.
And most of these HALF A MILLION of NuScale reactors would have to be built in the developing countries, so not necessarily very politically stable, highly advanced technological countries.
But don’t let it stop you, David, from thinking that it is the OTHERS who are “the fools“.
michael Sweetsays
DBBenson at 346:
I have read that the Nuscale reactor proposed for building in Idaho (not being finished before 2029) is losing most of their customers. Apparently the cost of building the reactor was severely underestimated in the original sales pitches given to the customers. As the price of Nuscale goes up and the price of wind goes down people are pulling out of Nuscale.
It is unlikely Nuscale will build their reactor. Since their plan is to eventually put 10 small reactors in their station, they will require water cooling when the entire station is built (if they actually start it).
Nuclear is not economic. There is not enough uranium, and other rare materials, to build out a significant amount of nuclear power. If they build their pilot plant by 2029 as planned it would be 2035 before the design was proven and 2045 before any commercial units could be delivered. That is too late to help. We have to build out wind and solar now as rapidly as possible.
nigeljsays
Killian @342
“First of all, WHY are you talking about a kind of system (food forest) with which you have zero familiarity?”
Why do you talk about things like economics when you are not an economist? I’m familiar with the basics about food forests. Its easy finding information.
As to your comment that food forests would be “managed by the manpower available” and I’ve been told this so I’m lying, blah blah. This is false. I have never denied that they would be managed that way, its obvious anyway, and that’s nothing to do with what I said. My comment was it looks labour intensive exercise compared to industrial agriculture. You haven’t been able to rebut that.
You post a lot of words and propaganda from the regenerative farming community but still no actual published, peer reviewed science that backs up these claims about food forests. I said @332: “The claims are that food forests are a great thing, have low working hours, and can feed the world better than industrial agriculture. Show me proof in the published peer reviewed scientific literature.” Still havent seen any. If I’ve missed something from the peer reviewed science in your huge streams of text and multiple links can you post it again.
“Third, over and over and over and over I have repeated to you – because you are both directly dishonest and lie by omission – of the concepts of Bridge Technology and Appropriate Technology, two overlapping concepts that, rather than rejecting technology as you and Piotr have knowingly misrepresented, actually embrace the use of “embedded energy” (resources already extracted and made into something) to achieve regenerative results.”
I’ve never lied about this. I’ve accepted for a long time that your plans include some essential modern technology (bridge tech.) and I’ve mentioned this literally about 20 times on this website for example @ 114 (last months UV thread) “Killians plan includes …4)scaling back use of modern technology apart from just a few essentials.” So you are wrong as usual.
And bridge tech. has no direct relationship to food forests and does not invalidate the core argument Piotr was making and which I’ve made before myself (before he arrived on this website) : Massive change in one or two decades looks very problematic, even if we keep some essential technology, and only half abandon cities.
“NOWHERE is it said to abandon existing embedded energy. That would be massive waste, and one of the most critical of the principles is”
I can’t recall your comment on embedded energy. People do sometimes forget things. And yet when myself and Piotr said your plan appears to suggest we at least partly abandon cities and rebuild in the country and this looked very problematic, you responded by criticising us and defending this exact plan (@337) ! So talk about confusing.
Please dear god answer some simple questions. How would we have these regenerative farms with about four people without a big migration from city to country? And do we stay living in cities, or do we abandon them or half abandon them over the next one or two decades? Or do we just wait for buildings to wear out, which would be many decades from now on average? What’s the effing plan?
I think you need to just explain things much more clearly, simply, and precisely and without all the jargon and contradictions. Right now its OBVIOUS almost nobody can figure out what you are really saying even after years of it. Perhaps read Piotr’s staring at the clouds analogy on the page about rainfall.
michael Sweet (295) The EIA says that it is more expensive to air cool and large nuclear and coal do not use air cooling. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36773 Piotr’s quotes at 280 from the World Nuclear association say it all.
Moreover, from the horse mouth, the reference promoted, even if unintentionally, by our very own DB Benson, to which he draw attention recently – a paper that “clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative” ! This and more quotable arguments, plus links – in my (270).
Air cooled generators:
https://www.ge.com/gas-power/products/generators
Nigel to at least a couple of your points in (249)…
Nigel: why wouldn’t our destiny be something less than current 7 billion people approx?
First, it’s already 7.9bln and expected to being level off around 11bln in 2100.
And our “destiny” may be well below that, but while we wall wwant sustainable future, the question is HOW can we get there without collapsing the civilization and ending up with Mad Max world with a few millions of hunters and gatherers left as result.
Incidentally, the leveling at 11bln assumes the current population structure in which more than a half of the global population is urban. If we go with Killian’s simplification and relocate all? most of the city dwellers to the country, without massive mortality, our population is likely to shoot past 11 bln, because rural populations tend to have much higher fertility rates – since you need the extra hands to tend the fields and livestock, and taking care of youngest kids. And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
So HOW do we get from here to that future, low-population sustainable Earth?
I don’t think there is a single silver bullet, we can’t have: my way or highway, no all or nothing. Even with that we would sti;; need all the luck, energy, technology and time to even have a chance at making this transition without too much violence and society collapse. And yes Nigel, probably we would have to use some non-renewable resources – as without a successful transition – there will be nobody to complain that we used them.
Most important we need to separate the immediate form the long-term
– the CO2 drastic reduction in a few decades from the transition to the future sustainable world, We achieve the first, by building a lot of renewables
+ some sequestration. This would buy us the time to work on
an orderly societal transition.
And when the transition concludes – the cities will be fewer and smaller but not abandoned, because even regenerative agriculture, to feed several bln people, would need some technology. As would medicine. As would many other things we think are important in our life and which are made or done in cities.
Not to go on too long – how does it differ from Killian’s modest proposal – in the next post.
cont. of my response to Nigel(249)
Compared to mine, Killian’s proposal compresses the transition time by an order of magnitude – since we need to get to zero or negative emissions in a few decades, AND according to Killian – we won’t need any NEW renewables. This means the reduction in our primary energy production to 13.5% of the current value (= % of prim. energ. made from the renewables) within the next few decades would have to be achieved by slashing the energy demand by the effects of Killian simplification – in a few decades from now: so many of us will leave a simple life in country that our power demand will drop by more than 6/7 from the today’s level (more than that – if we account for the still growing population).
So my question is how exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades? How are we going to convince the billions of people from cities to move into the country, when most of them have neither the inclination nor the skills to live a regenerative country lifestyle?
Sure, you we could try the force – see Khmer Rouge and China’s cultural revolution, although their was a timid effort compared to what would be needed to move 6(?) bln from cities to the country. And all the while the previous social structures are collapsing around them.
And what are the chances that people living in the country could absorb extra 6 bln in the span of several decades(?), and feed everybody without mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers, particularly if the some of the agricultural land is taken out by carbon sequestration /rewilding?
And for such a rapid transition to fail all is needed is that the food production drops only enough that only some people will face starvation – if you feed 10.5bln but 0.5bln is hungry – they may destabilize the entire world – if my kids are dying of hunger – I no longer care about laws, property, social rules, ethics or what’s best for the future of the species – I take a gun and get the food from those who still have it – the farmers. And my impact propagates – after I robbed their food – the farmers will no longer keep the livestock, since it can be easily taken at any time, and don’t sow their fields – for why waste edible seeding grain when at the harvest time the people with guns will show up, and take it from you, maybe killing you in the process. Instead, you just hide your seed grain and eat it through it, hoping that the people with guns will die of starvation before I do. And with fields not sown – the number of hungry people increase and spills onto other countries destabilizing them in turn. Somebody remarked that Killian’s world could mean death of half of Earth’s population, a remark to which Killian took such an umbrage – could actually be an … optimistic prediction.
Given all that – compared to Killian’s rapid simplification proposal – the original modest proposal (by Swift) would probably be easier and less controversial…
293 Mike says:
8 Jun 2021 at 12:31 PM
286 nigelj says:
7 Jun 2021 at 6:40 PM
Are we talking about “people”? Any Tom, Dick and Jane? Hmmm…? No, we are not. We are talking about people living regeneratively, which means people who would massively speed up the process of enhancing healthy systems and regenerating depleted areas.
You know this, but your post is essentially, “Regenerative systems are bullshit! They destroy, they don’t restore and/or create.” I am really tired of such dishonesty.
KIA 296: save the world from climate change with Nuke Power
BPL: Except that nuclear costs more than any other power source and takes the longest time to deploy. No help there.
KIA 296: President Donald Trump, the most environmentally progressive president in US history
BPL: Are you on crack? Trump said global warming was a Chinese hoax, let coal companies dump waste in rivers, allowed mining in national parks and nature reserves, favored fossil fuels over renewables, appointed fossil fuel execs to the EPA, and in general did everything he could to degrade and ruin the environment. He’s “environmentally progressive” only if you define it to mean “favored progressive damage to the environment.”
Can’t wait to see the science deniers (KIA and Victor)do cartwheels trying to defend Louie Gohmert(R-TX)on this incredibly ignorant doozy regarding climate change:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1402388019420741633
DBBenson at 302:
Right, and my car is a generator also and it is air cooled. My emergency generator for hurricanes is also air cooled. If you read the EIA summary I linked at 295 you would know that small generators are often air cooled but large ones (like nuclear power plants) are always water cooled. A 5% hit on efficiency would render any large plant uneconomic. I realize that you do not care how expensive the plants you support are but the people who invest in them do care about cost.
You are a hopeless fanatic. Fortunately, now I see that most of the readers here have seen through you and Engineer Poet. They often let your posts pass without comment because they know your posts are useless.
Killian @306, I said that NZ conservation estates still look too fragile to allow anyone to live there permanently, (I don’t care how regenerative or well intended they are) then I went on to say as areas of growth improve and bird species recover to reasonable levels it would make sense to allow some people to live there permanently (the part you left out). Obviously it should be people who will treat the environment well and live sustainably. I wasn’t thinking of McDonalds hamburgers opening a chain of restaurants and houses for their staff.
Its still going to be a political minefield vetting people as suitable. There will be a lot of public scepticism and envy as well. Still the indigenous Maori people would have first rights I think, and would be the least controversial. It might be an interesting experiment. Perhaps its the same with rewilding. In the early stages it just looks best that human contact is very minimal so as to allow things to develop and find their own balance, then introduce some people living there permanently at a later stage provided they are committed to sustainable living etc, etc.
296: Wow, so many blatant lies in one comment. Congrats.
Your messiah destroyed environmental protection rules. He coddled fossil fuels. And eliminated many scientists from various rule panels simply to replace them with industry lackeys. (Those are facts, not opinion. It is part of what I do as a profession for over 30 years.) BTW, the tree initiative is bunk. It will do nothing with regards to the net man-made greenhouse emissions. It is in the same boat as those wackos who say a volcano emits more CO2 than mankind (not even remotely close).
Your impeached messiah also left a complete train wreck for President Biden re: Covid vaccine distribution. It was far worse than anyone even realized. Any state health department can verify that statement.
“Creepy Joe”: Still making vile comments about people with speech impediments are you? That speaks volumes about your lack of basic morals. Obviously someone failed to instill them in you when bringing you up when it comes to those and learning science. Quite seriously.
#304, piotr–
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it ‘groks’ to me, if I may be forgiven the Heinleinism. Just collapse, by whatever name it gets called.
Piotr @303 @304 on population, simplification, rural living, etc, etc. I agree entirely. I have raised many of the same issues on this website at various times over about the last 4 years. This is why I say simplification looks like a mixture of good and bad ideas and has some unrealistic time frames.
However some things seem reasonably benign in effects. In other words won’t have a risk of horrific unintended consequences. I would argue renewables fit that category, and also the circular economy idea, passive solar buildings, and some elements of this regenerative agriculture idea. But some of the other things. Meh. Not so much. This is all a quick reaction to your comments. I might come back to them.
Piotr and Kevin,
Yes. Collapse. But a strange sort of voluntary collapse. If humans don’t suprise the universe’s collective consciousness by squeaking through the huge path from the 1980s to the future (it would have been sooooo easy), then humanity will be presented, every day, with the option:
Care to collapse today, or put it off until tomorrow by taking just one more hit of that dino juice?
Yeah, tomorrow’s collapse will be worse than today’s would be, but today will be filled with sweet Texas crude…
Piotr, you have chased me around these boards nipping angrily at my heels too many years to not know what you state above is blatantly false. “Killian’s simplification” would be a *regenerative* simplification which would mean a society that pays exquisitely detailed attention to their environment and take pains to keep the population in check. Regenerative societies DO NOT over-populate. You are intentionally conflating current-paradigm rural populations, and almost certainly disrupted, poor, suppressed indigenous communities, with regenerative societies.
That 1. only applies to destructive agriculture, 2. that regenerative agriculture would be/should be small-scale such that a family of four could easily manage a smallholding, and 3. ignores that regenerative practices greatly reduces work hours needed. The single best example is the food forest. You work a few days or weeks the first year designing, making physical changes, planting, you work some says the 2nd~4th years adding new species to mimic succession, and spend a couple days a year thereafter pruning – what we call chop and drop. For that, you get a lifetime of fruits, vegetables, nuts, lumber, etc.
If you are unwilling to educate yourself on regenerative practices, then please do not lie to our Dear Readers about them.
I missed this.
And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why, since all of you have been reading my comments long enough to be conversant?
311 nigelj says:
9 Jun 2021 at 6:08 PM
Let me rephrase the bolded, italicized bit: I have to completely ignore the very nature of regenerative societies so my argument seems logical despite being based on a premise I know to be false.
then I went on to say as areas of growth improve and bird species recover to reasonable levels it would make sense to allow some people to live there permanently
And doing it exponentially FASTER is just silly, eh? Good christ…
No, I stopped reading your nonsense and went on to something productive. You see, if the premise is false, there’s no point in reading what follows.
Piotr at 303 and 304 wastes everyone’s time. He offers a Straw Man as his premise and builds a sandcastle atop that. Sadly, none of you will call him on it, right? You all have read my commentary here for TEN YEARS or more, so to still be dishonest about it is unconscionable.
Let’s see which of you have the ethics and moral fiber to call out his misbehavior.
313 Kevin McKinney says:
9 Jun 2021 at 6:33 PM
You know
in no way reflects my views, but that’s how you “grok” it? Completely false representations of others’ views is how you “grok” discussions?
Do enlighten me as to how that works.
Holy crap! Hell has frozen over! Somebody besides me called nigel out on his dishonest debate methods!
43 Mike says:
9 Jun 2021 at 10:41 AM
Indeed. I have said this since he arrived at this site. Me? I prefer a pithy, “Don’t lie, nigel,” but well done sir!
Ah… an acknowledgement of the chaos created by the constant dishonesty encountered on this site. The true source of all the conflict is multiple members’ dishonesty. See piotr’s latest at 303 and 304 for perfect examples.
This is why I question people’s ethics here. All of you long-time posters would be, gun to your head, able to reasonably approximate my actual analyses, but you persist in attempting to belittle and dismiss them instead. That’s not a debate or discussion, it’s dishonesty and, frankly, given the stakes, stupidly maladaptive.
Piotr @304
There are more problems with a mass migration from city to country, or even inner city to suburbs, if its done quickly within a decade or two. I have mentioned this before: Firstly it would be a one way migration, so would cause a massive crash in property prices with all the trouble that causes. And secondly sellers would start to run out of buyers. Its rather unlikely people would just abandon their homes, or sell at a massive loss. And they have to find willing sellers in the country and have to build a new home as well! Clearly such a migratory process needs quite a long time to absorb the shocks. I’ve said before its a century long process or more, if we decide its the thing to do.
And like you said how would you persuade people to do these things anyway? It sure beats me. The sorts of problems that threaten the future sustainability of our big cities are probably not present enough to grab peoples attention enough for such a voluntary migration. Clearly maintaining modern cities and roading infrastructure and transport could become frighteningly difficult if we start running out of key materials, but its not a present problem on peoples radar.
I’ve said to K before: The Chinese have spent the last five decades or so migrating from country to city. What do we do? Tell them its all been a huge mistake, pack your bags and go back to your villages? How likely is it they would listen, and do this? Even communist dictators might have a problem getting it done! K did indicate you can “live simply” within existing cities, even apartment towers, however I think you can only do that to a limited extent. It would be hard to do this and reduce energy use by 90%, and still live in a healthy comfortable way. So you need a significant new clean energy grid as a priority, and if we find ways of reducing levels of consumption of energy, ‘then’ you may not need to fully scale up the grid, or eventually parts of the gid could be retired early and recycled for other uses.
I have a horrible suspicion such a mass migration from cities to country, will only happen if its forced, by shortages and high prices in cities. A socio – economic and environmental train wreck might be coming. While we can extract minerals from the oceans water and perhaps the ocean bed it probably wont be cheap. Maintaining cities could get problematic eventually. But there are things we can do to help reduce the harm, like reducing levels of waste etc, improving rail links, reducing dependence on private cars that are realistic. The circular economy could be scaled up quite quickly without too much disruption and problems. It’s one simplification related idea that resonates. These are not a big headline grabbing simplistic solution. But such a thing probably doesnt exist and won’t work. And I’m repeating things you said. Because I reached similar conclusions ages ago. Maybe you write it better.
It appears there are also gas cooled reactors (some use CO2, ironically). The UK has built several of these. But they are not cheap to construct.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/gas-cooled-reactors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gas-cooled_Reactor
@310:
Says the clown who puts ideology above evidence.
If you can “see through” the fact that the decarbonization success stories have ALL relied on the same things that Dr. James Hansen testified about in 2014, you are either lying or deluded yourself.
Figure it out. The “decarbonization” we’re seeing in the US and Germany has all been done by the replacement of coal by natural gas. Well, what happens when all the coal is replaced? You’re stuck with natural gas, that’s what. You get stuck with a recalcitrant floor on your decarbonization efforts. France, Ontario and Sweden have gone well below that floor. THEY are the examples to follow, and they have NOT gone all-in on “renewables” as much as some factions wanted to.
Ironic.
#320, Killian–
Yes–Piotr’s.
But you’re perfectly free to accurately and fully represent your own. (In fact, you’ve already been implored to expand upon them times too numerous to count.) But fair warning: start with the personal crap and the substance will likely be missed amid the toxic chaff.
at Killian at 305: I just skim here these days and seldom dive deep into the ideas presented unless they are presented in a very succinct manner with links and quotes from the article.
That’s just my personal process that has developed as I have aged out of the internet back and forth.
Not sure where the contradiction is that you see, but I am willing to listen or skim a link if you want. I think we agree on many ideas, are close on many more, but I think our civilization is more likely to embrace collapses with both arms before it embraces our shared ideas on a different, simplified path.
We can nonethless continue to put our ideas forward in numerous ways and some may gain traction over time. I think that is worth the effort, but I don’t spend a lot of time on it these days. I am feeling my age and “spending” my remaining time in the ways that make the most sense to me. That means more time with my grandkids and great grandkids and less time on addressing the “someone is wrong on the internet” problem.
Cheers
Mike
David B. Benson(299): “Oh dear, oh dear. Several here need to learn the Rankin cycle of a steam turbine. The source of heat is irrelevant.“.
– Thank you, Captain Obvious – no nobody said it is.
DBB: “What is that at the bottom of the cycle the steam must be condensed.”
– Nobody questioned it either, heck – if it didn’t need it – our criticism would be moot.
WHY on Earth would we harass you on the costs of cooling, if we thought that cooling …. was NOT needed??? I mean, other than because of your winning personality?
DBB The condenser is usually water cooled but can be air-cooled.
the question was not “ if it can“, but at what cost/risks it can, since the entire discussions started with your dumping on the wind, for its ….reduced efficiency under some assumptions, and pranced around how your nukes are free of those.
And for some reason you don’t address the opinions of those who, unlike you, know what they are talking about [full quotes and source in Piotr (280)]:
DBB: ” Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
World Nuclear Association:
– “impractical and unreliable (in hot weather) for new nuclear plants”
– “ three to four times more expensive than a recirculating wet cooling system”
“All US new plant licence applications have rejected dry cooling as:
– infeasible
– or unacceptable because of lost electrical generating efficiency and significantly higher capital and operating costs.”
Oh dear, oh dear – someone tries to be the holier than the World Nuclear Association, methinks.
This is completely separate and has nothing to do with the safety features of the NuScale nuclear reactor. That is entirely a different matter.
That’s not what your Mama said:
World Nuclear Association: “For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”.
at Killian at 321:
I don’t think that folks debate dishonestly as often as they simply debate from their first person experience and judgment and that may lead to debate and discussion that lacks self-awareness in many instances.
It’s really hard to know what exists in the personal blindspots that I think we all have. If we try hard, we may occasionally get a glimpse of something within our blindspot and if we reflect on that, we may be more self-aware, more congenial, and maybe sponsor and engage in more productive discussions.
This problem that you identify as dishonesty exists all around us, it’s not just on this site. I think we open the door a crack to more productive discussions if we use choose our words carefully and attempt to limit the use of words/labels that might make others feel attacked in the back and forth.
Of course, there is some frank dishonesty that is the dominant characteristic behind the posts of some folks. KIA and Victor come to mind in that regard, but most folks here are probably operating from something less obnoxious when they engage in or precipitate protracted disagreement. That seems to me to be the matter of blind spots or lack of self-awareness.
I think it is more difficult to sort out these things if we take the back and forth personally and clash as if these intellectual disagreements have become a matter of honor.
Does any part of that make sense to you?
Cheers
Mike
Killian [multiple posts] “Piotr, you have chased me around these boards nipping angrily at my heels”
Hmm, if your critics can’t reach …. past your heels – either you … wear a really high heels, or your a Giant, or, at least, modestly: “standing on the shoulders of Giants” … ;-) But even so, I wouldn’t underestimate us, the heel biters, for we could inflict quite a damage even onto the Giants. Ask Achilles…
And while you certainly are entitled to score points by proudly ignoring most of my arguments after the Great, ehem, Heel Whooping of 2021 (link at the bottom),
you can’t seriously expect the targets of your ostracism … to keep their mouths shut and stop commenting on your public posts on a discussionforum. If you can’t stand the comments – keep your opinions to your Diary.
K:”without mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers, particularly if some of the agricultural land is taken out by carbon sequestration/rewilding?”
in no way reflects my views, but that’s how you “grok” it?
So, by your small, 4 person family-run (two of them presumably kids), simplified, regenerative, agriculture – you envisioned the agriculture that … like the current industrial one – uses artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization, even if the last one makes sense only on large intensive farms (100s or 1000s of acres) ???
And since the answer must be gonadic “yes!”:
Killian: “ Anyone here got the gonads to explain [that it is “false on every point” to say that Killian does not want] “the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers”
– WHERE the energy needed to produce and to power the tractors and all other machinery (“mechanization”), along with the energy for the energy-expensive fertilizers, WILL COME FROM, given that you said that….. we won’t need any NEW renewables, while the non-renewables will be rapidly closed down?
But all these are mere details in comparison to the central problem – the time-line of the transition to simplification, since your negation of the need for the NEW renewables IMPLIES that it has to be on the same schedule as we turn off the fossil fuels, i.e. in the next FEW decades! Hence my questions:
P(304): “ How exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades?”, and
P(304): “ How are we going to convince the billions of people from cities to move into the country, when most of them have neither the inclination nor the skills to live a regenerative country lifestyle?” and,
How are we going to replace the current economy, monetary systems, legal systems supporting them, and technologies with a completely new system: … decentralized life in farms small enough to be operated by “family of four“,replacing conflict, competition, and consumption – with co-operation and harmony with nature? AND ALL THESE changes – in the next FEW DECADES????
And I indicated how EASILY this massive rapid transition can get out of hand and collapse the previous system without creating the new one:
P(304): “And for such a rapid transition to fail all is needed is that the food production drops only enough that only some people will face starvation – if you feed 10.5bln but 0.5bln is hungry – they may destabilize the entire world – if my kids are dying of hunger – I no longer care about laws, property, social rules, ethics or what’s best for the future of the species [then spilling over on the farmers I would raid looking for food, with slaughtered livestock and unsown fields
magnifying the food shortage and spilling over onto adjacent regions and then cascading throughout the world], collapsing the existing civilization and
giving us a Mad Max world with a few millions(?) of hunters and gatherers left” (P. 303).
Un-grok that!
Piotr
===
^* the reason for Killian no longer talking to me:
– https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-7/#comment-785382 Piotr Jan, FR (319),
where I showed that Killian pre-simplification(?) “solution”, namely:
“ reduction by 90% of consumption by the highest-consuming classes, and, globally, that roughly also equates to the highest-consuming nations”
can’t possibly reach the expected results:
90% cut of TOTAL emissions = 90%cut * X% of global emissions by the rich + 0% of (100-X) of global emissions (cut in the emissions by the poor)
We solve for X=> rich produce X=100% of global emissions; which means the not-rich produce 100%-100%= … 0% of global emissions.
So UNLESS the assume that vast majority of people of Earth (=those NOT belonging to the “highest-consuming classes“) has ZERO GHG emissions:
WE CAN’T reduce GHG emissions by 90%, by a 90% cut in the consumption by the highest consumers alone.
nigelj (323) It appears there are also gas cooled reactors (some use CO2, ironically). The UK has built several of these. But they are not cheap to construct
… nor as effective, nor as cheap to operate. That’s why they are the last resort.
See “World Nuclear Association in Piotr(280).
And even that – only for the smaller ones, since the large are also inherently unsafe:
P(280): again: World Nuclear Association: “For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”.
A 2017 report found that a third of the planet’s land is severely degraded and that fertile soil was being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year. The UK’s environment secretary said in 2017 that the country was 30 to 40 years away from “the fundamental eradication of soil fertility” in places.
But let’s listen to know-nothing incrementalists and half-ass the shift to regenerative agriculture.
Killlian @316
“Regenerative societies DO NOT over-populate.”
If you mean ancient hunter gatherer peoples, they didn’t over populate – but only because of very high infant mortality numbers. However perhaps you mean some modern designed version of regenerative society. Please clarify what you mean, with a definition, and examples of several substantial communities, and provide objective proof they don’t overpopulate, and information on average family size and population trends over time.
I think Killians version of simplification would tend to lead to larger families rather than smaller families. The whole simplification idea tends to replace mechanisation with human labour, to a certain extent, which will push people towards having larger families. Its pretty obvious that industrialisation leads to smaller families so if you reverse this it will tend to lead to larger families. However it might not be hugely larger families. Contraception is a powerful thing.
But if the goal is to get the size of global population to shrink, we need a fertility rate under 2.2 children, ideally 1.5. So I want to see evidence that regenerative societies could do this. Not assertions. Evidence.
“since you need the extra hands to tend the fields and livestock, and taking care of youngest kids.”
“That 1. only applies to destructive agriculture, 2. that regenerative agriculture would be/should be small-scale such that a family of four could easily manage a smallholding, and 3. ignores that regenerative practices greatly reduces work hours needed. The single best example is the food forest. You work a few days or weeks the first year designing, making physical changes, planting, you work some says the 2nd~4th years adding new species to mimic succession, and spend a couple days a year thereafter pruning – what we call chop and drop. For that, you get a lifetime of fruits, vegetables, nuts, lumber, etc.”
Food forests typically contain a mixture of species with vegetables and herbs grown amongst fruit trees and larger trees. You can see right away how labour intensive cultivating the harvest would be compared to industrial agriculture.
And although a lot of biomass is grown per unit area, output would be limited by nutrients available in the soil, and the tendency for the fruit trees to shade the vegetable crops. Its also impractical to grow grain crops that way, and billions of people depend on grain crops for example rice paddies. The claims are that food forests are a great thing, have low working hours, and can feed the world better than industrial agriculture. Show me proof in the published peer reviewed scientific literature.
—————————————–
Killian @317
“And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.”
“False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why, since all of you have been reading my comments long enough to be conversant?”
And yet whenever I have suggested we may have to keep some artificial fertilisers and pesticides, Killian has been extremely critical and dismissive of my comments. He has not said ” we need to keep some pesticides and fertilisers” or anything even remotely like that.
It’s the classic Killian defense he uses all the time: “I didn’t say that”. But the regulars on this website all know he did!
Nigelj at 323:
The gas cooled reactors in the UK have gas (they use carbon dioxide in the UK. Some designs use helium.) in the primary cooling link through the reactor core. This hot gas is used to boil water to generate the electricity. The steam is cooled by water. In the UK they use sea water because the water demand is too high for the rivers in the UK to supply enough water.
As this relates to DBBenson’s wild claims, the final cooling of the reactors is sea water. Air conditioners in houses are air cooled. There is a box with a radiator in it and a big fan that blows air over the radiator to cool it (air cooling). For large power plants the cost of a giant radiator and the power to run the fans is not economic. Apparently gas turbines in combined cycle generators can be air cooled. Water cooling is more efficient than air cooling. Home air conditioners can be water cooled (which is more efficient) but you need a good well and a place to dispose of the waste water.
Re: advanced gas cooled reactors
Seawater cooling.
Pg 16, 46, 75 from:
large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/barry2/docs/nks-rak2-96-tr-c2.pdf
or for a less technical description, pg 3 from:
https://archive.uea.ac.uk/~e680/energy/energy_links/nuclear/How_an_AGR_power_station_works.pdf
still batting zero outta 400 odd for currently operating aircooled nuke
sidd
sidd
Meant to say this about food forests:” You can see right away how labour intensive harvesting the crop would be compared to industrial agriculture.” It would be a slow process harvesting crops, given the mixture of crops all in one place. Not saying food forests are necessarily a bad thing in other ways.
K 321: Somebody besides me called nigel out on his dishonest debate methods!
BPL: Compared to you, he is the very model of honesty.
Dear Readers,
Before you lower yourself into the cesspool of disinformation that spews continually from nigel, please read the following:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-food-forests
https://adventure.com/ancient-food-forests/
——–
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/pre-colonial-australia-natural-wilderness-or-gentleman-s-park
———-
https://biochar-international.org/burn-using-fire-to-cool-the-earth/
——-
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/pre-columbian-amazon-not-so-virgin-after-all-009810
—–
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/forest-gardens-show-how-native-land-stewardship-can-outdo-nature
——-
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-15/the-biggest-ideas-in-farming-today-are-also-the-oldest
322 nigelj says:
10 Jun 2021 at 2:03 AM
And you, the non-expert, have somehow come up with issues I, the expert, and more to the point, author of Regenerative Governance, have never considered, eh?
nigel, dear, why can you not think your way out of even a wet, shredded paper bag? Or, are you again lying? You know I am saying we cannot get to regenerative via Capitalism (and more and more scholars all the time are getting on board with that), so why do you use property prices as a metric? If property prices are a metric THIS WOULD NOT EVEN BE HAPPENING.
Please, either get some ethic and become honest or just STFU.
What loss? What loss is there in a Commons? You KNOW I have said shifting to Commons is necessary condition for a controlled simplification.
WHY MUST YOU LIE?
Why? How long did it take to rebuild Europe? Seems to me it was largely done in a decade or less.
By 1947, industrial production was back at pre-war levels in at least the victorious powers and the non-belligerent economies.
And what of the near-instantaneous shift of the US economy for WWII?
there were about 3 million automobiles manufactured in the U.S. in 1941. During the entire war, only 139 additional cars rolled off the assembly lines.
Based on WHAT? nigel says so! And nothing more. It takes zero time to NOT produce unneeded shit.
But what doesn’t? You’ve been on these boards for, what?, three years? In that time you have offered exactly zero unique thoughts or legitimate critiques. Zero. Here, you continue to insist a metaphorical tsunami will not motivate people off the beach. You, sir, must have an IQ well below average, or be a propagandist, to continue to claim an existential threat properly communicated with pathways to survive said tsunami would not get people moving. PEOPLE ARE ALREADY MOVING, and more will join in. The shift will be exponential and after a future tipping point, become parabolic BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE MOTIVATED TO SURVIVE.
Every single thing you post belongs in the Bore Hole for utter uselessness, if not outright Do-Nothing propaganda.
Piotr: So my question is how exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades?
RC: Killian just spoke of not just anybody but folks who kinda sound well evolved. Ethical, well educated, non-greedy, and don’t believe their grandchildren should own yours (economically).
I don’t think he thinks people will be convinced. More, ‘yes, it could be done but you fools will blow it all to Hell’.
Eh, a sentiment I can’t find too much fault with.
***********
Michael Sweet: small generators are often air cooled but large ones (like nuclear power plants) are always water cooled.
RC: “are always” is ever so backwards-looking. Yep, it used to be that just wasting energy while defouling the environment by heating water was the only way to do it because it was $cheaper$ (or just simpler?) than adding an ammonia bottoming cycle that gets additional electrons with no additional fuel while only heating air…
They happen to pair rather well with my engine’s steam-laden exhaust because an ammonia bottoming cycle will recover the energy lost by the simultaneous combined cycle’s vaporizing of water as well as the water itself.
I read a not too recent paper a year or so ago that discussed how an ammonia bottoming cycle can be added to a power plant. The authors were interested in replacing the steam-based bottoming cycle in $expensive$ combined cycle plants with a cheaper ammonia-based one, eliminating the environmental and water-sourcing issues.
Piotr: And even more so if following Killian we swear off the mechanization, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
Killian: False on every point. Anyone here got the gonads to explain why,
RC: Simple. Because you yet again didn’t say squat, so he doesn’t know squat.
Next time say what you do say. Really, a single sentence about pesticides. One about mechanization. One about artificial fertilizer. It would help me because I don’t know where you stand on any of these three, either.
Does anyone here know where Killian stands on all three of the above?
Killian,
I don’t know where your expertise would best help your heart and the garden. You’re a long ways from Omaha.
I want to fix this bit of land, to protect it from audible and chemical garbage that railroads spew with abandon…
But hey, the pit for my water storage basin was easy to dig. They barely buried a thick layer of strange carbon chips or something. Kinda looks like really rich soil. I’m thinking of getting some tests done.
But mostly, this land is toxic. I’ve got a fantastic view, lots of privacy, plenty of space, and a thin veneer of life on top of whatever the fuck Union Pacific did here.
So, lots of questions. How much water to allow to leech through what I build above the current ‘soil’ level? How deep do various roots go? How concerned should I be about non-food crops bringing toxins up from below? Scott Strough might have input…
Perhaps just interaction. I’ve got ideas. You surely can improve them. I can see far enough already that I’m confident that this bit of the planet can seed a difference.
After all, why do you think I landed in MAGAland?
Michael Sweet: “small generators are often air cooled but large ones (like nuclear power plants) are always water cooled.”
Richard Caldwell (339) “are always” is ever so backwards-looking. Yep, it used to be that just wasting energy while defouling the environment by heating water was the only way to do it because it was $cheaper$ (or just simpler?)
Richard, but the cost (extra construction costs, extra operating costs, and/or reduced efficiency) is only one consideration. The other may be safety
World Nuclear Association: “ For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.“
Lie. You can’t cut and paste a single one.
Useless drive-by bullshit. This is par for the course.
——-
You’re not paying attention. You’re right, I didn’t say squat: He initiated with his own comments to which I *responded.* It’s not on me to prove he is right or wrong, it’s on him to prove his claims have merit, which they absolutely do not.
——
Another bullshit Straw Man built on omission of a number of points repeated here so many times to combat your bullshit that EVERYBODY knows, even if they pretend otherwise:
First of all, WHY are you talking about a kind of system with which you have zero familiarity?
Second, if the world were building out Food Forests, WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY WOULD IT BE? That’s right, you already know, but cannot post an honest rebuttal: A localized, regenerative, Commons-based society where any given food forest would be scaled to be managed by the manpower available. YOU KNOW THIS. Localization, Commons, small, walkable communities… all of this and more has been repeated so many times primarily because of you misrepresenting them every time you open your mouth on these topics.
You are a propagandist for non-systemic change.
Third, over and over and over and over I have repeated to you – because you are both directly dishonest and lie by omission – of the concepts of Bridge Technology and Appropriate Technology, two overlapping concepts that, rather than rejecting technology as you and Piotr have knowingly misrepresented, actually embrace the use of “embedded energy” (resources already extracted and made into something) to achieve regenerative results. There is no law in permaculture and no statement EVER by me, that says you cannot use a tractor or a backhoe to dig a pond or make swales or build terraces, etc. If a cherry picker is available and the human labor is not, you use the cherry picker. What you DO NOT do is design a system that requires you to BUY a cherry picker in the first place. You design to need AND to resources on hand. Early parts of design include a needs inventory and a resource inventory.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/04/impacts-of-climate-change-part-2-of-the-new-ipcc-report-has-been-approved/#comment-494958
The principles, posted here before, are
1. use what you’ve got and
2. choose natural (human labor) before mechanical, and mechanical before hi-tech/chemical.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/03/forced-responses-mar-2021/#comment-787987
NOWHERE is it said to abandon existing embedded energy. That would be massive waste, and one of the most critical of the principles is
3. Zero waste.
You have read all these things on this forum over and over and over, yet I get abused by The Peanut Gallery for saying you are lying, but your lies are virtually never questioned (Good job, Mike). It’s the very definition of an echo chamber.
Here’s YOU discussing embedded energy! https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/10/forced-responses-oct-2020/comment-page-2/#comment-778479
Bridge tech, appropriate tech, embedded energy (and more examples of YOU discussing):
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/04/forced-variations-apr-2020/comment-page-9/#comment-765105
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/08/forced-responses-aug-2020/#comment-772502
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/10/forced-responses-oct-2020/comment-page-2/#comment-778542
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/10/forced-responses-oct-2020/#comment-778429
This is great. You directly responding, quoted!, to me talking about Bridge Appropriate, Embedded…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/06/forced-responses-jun-2020/comment-page-7/#comment-771977
You do not belong on this site.
Killian @338,
“And you, the non-expert, have somehow come up with issues I, the expert, and more to the point, author of Regenerative Governance, have never considered, eh?”
Yes I do that all the time, as do others. It’s extremely unlikely anyone can think of everything on these sorts of issues because they are so wide. By the way what university degree relevant to the environment do you have?
“Firstly it would be a one way migration (city to country) , so would cause a massive crash in property prices with all the trouble that causes….and people would run out of buyers, and are unlikely to sell at a big loss …”
“nigel, dear, why can you not think your way out of even a wet, shredded paper bag? Or, are you again lying? You know I am saying we cannot get to regenerative via Capitalism (and more and more scholars all the time are getting on board with that), so why do you use property prices as a metric? If property prices are a metric THIS WOULD NOT EVEN BE HAPPENING…..”
I use property prices as a metric because I don’t believe significant numbers of people will give up on capitalism and money and private property and I don’t believe such things are good ideas. I don’t intend to waste my time promoting those ideas. And regardless of this, its a one way migration at speed, and looks like it would cause more harm than good. People would have to start again from scratch, living in tents until they could build a home etc. A more orderly and slower process without all the common ownership ideas might have merit but meh. Even that is not convincing to me.
“Clearly such a migratory process needs quite a long time to absorb the shocks.”
“Why? How long did it take to rebuild Europe? Seems to me it was largely done in a decade or less. By 1947, industrial production was back at pre-war levels in at least the victorious powers and the non-belligerent economies.”
This is comparing apples and oranges, in every possible way. Europe also had massive aid from America. I think it was called the Marshall plan.
“Here, you continue to insist a metaphorical tsunami will not motivate people off the beach.”
Well clearly the tsunami isn’t motivating people very much. Despite knowing about the climate problem and other environmental problems for decades, very few people are adopting “simplification” to any significant degree. One reason is because our minds react strongly to immediate problems and more sluggishly to longer term or distant threats like climate change, even if they are serious. I’ve provided links for you to read, yet you just don’t seem to get it:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483
The things that are actually gaining some traction with people are renewable energy and electric cars etc, etc. And regenerative agriculture is gaining some traction because problems with soil degradation are more immediate, and it has some wide and immediate benefits to people.
“Every single thing you post belongs in the Bore Hole for utter uselessness, if not outright Do-Nothing propaganda.”
Ya de ya de ya. Apparently because I don’t promote all of Killian’s ideas I promote doing nothing. Yawns. Shakes head in despair. Yet again.
Killian @338 and you butted in on a conversation between me and Piotr, the very thing you criticised me for doing. But what else is new.
325 Kevin McKinney says:
10 Jun 2021 at 9:16 AM
#320, Killian–
…representations of others’ views…
Yes–Piotr’s.
So, lie with cute editing? Impressive…
But you’re perfectly free to accurately and fully represent your own.
Which I have done over and over, as you very well know.
(In fact, you’ve already been implored to expand upon them times too numerous to count.)
Asked and answered. Answered before asked. Ten years+ and counting.
But fair warning: start with the personal crap and the substance will likely be missed amid the toxic chaff.
You have repeatedly engaged in passive-aggressive insults over the last few months with me in the guise of pretending you want peace – without me giving you reason to do so. But, of course, it’s all my fault, not the fault of your own aggression. I suggest you get real about your own aggressiveness and repeated provocations.
For the fools: 77 MWe is Not Large. Go read about the NuScale Small reactor and the plans to build several on the Idaho National Laboratory site.
Richard Caldwell @339
“Piotr: So my question is how exactly will we accomplish such a massive change in human society in mere few decades?”
“RC: Killian just spoke of not just anybody but folks who kinda sound well evolved. Ethical, well educated, non-greedy, and don’t believe their grandchildren should own yours (economically).I don’t think he thinks people will be convinced. More, ‘yes, it could be done but you fools will blow it all to Hell’.Eh, a sentiment I can’t find too much fault with.”
Nigel: A few well educated non greedy folks might do it, but probably not many. I dont think you really know what Killians proposing. The trouble is you skim things and think you can guess the rest. Hopefully you read Piotrs comments @330. Theres also all the stuff about getting rid of almost all private property, having shared ownership, getting rid of hierarchies, etc which sounds very dubious to me even although I’m a progressive, and could be the most troublesome aspect of things. Do you really think this is good and would be likely to catch on? But then I know you prefer to be non commital.
We are supposed to change everything in a decade or two. How? Remember It takes a long time to build physical and socio economic systems and institutions, and here we are changing EVERYTHING. Even if we go to something ‘simpler’ building new systems is challenging. Remember communism was basically done at the point of a gun, was not as sweeping as this, took longer than a decade, tens of millions of people died or starved to death, and was ultimately a disaster.
Coming up with novel ideas is easy enough. Grand plans require grand levels of proof and must be scrutinised. I have little sympathy if it ruffles feathers.
———————————-
Richard Caldwell @340
RC: “Next time say what you do say. Really, a single sentence about pesticides. One about mechanization. One about artificial fertilizer. It would help me because I don’t know where you stand on any of these three, either…..Does anyone here know where Killian stands on all three of the above?”
Nigel: You might wait a long time to get an answer, and if you do get an answer it may be frustrating and will change by next week anyway and also the week after. I dont know for sure where Killian stands on those three things, but Killian has spent the last 4 years or so utterly condemning industrial agriculture and promoted regenerative agriculture (that appears to be opposed to industrial nitrtes and pesticides if you look it up on wikipedia). You must know that much surely. And hes ridiculed my suggestions we might need some limited use of things like industrial nitrates. So it seems reasonable to conclude hes opposed to industrial nitrates and pesticides. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck. Its not dishonest or wrong to draw reasonable inferences especially if questions just go unanswered.
My position is regenerative farming has always been the same. It looks ok in general terms but I cant find any peer reviewed science to say that it would equal the yields of industrial agriculture, so it might be best phased in slowly, (and given normal pace of change it probably will be anyway) and keeping some limited use of use of industrial fertilisers etc, etc. Is there anything there you dont understand, or dispute? If anyone could solve any tricky problems with regenerative farming, I admit you probably could because you think laterally. Although don’t underestimate my problem solving ability.
David B. Benson (346) For the fools: 77 MWe is Not Large. Go read about the NuScale Small reactor
Aaah, so when you derisively dismissed wind farms with “ Of course nuclear power plants have no such interference” ” you have meant … only small reactors?
And by no such interference you meant that the interference may be bypassed by air cooling, which is …. more EXPENSIVE to build, more EXPENSIVE to operate, and generating LESS electricity precisely at the times when you need it the MOST (heat waves) – meaning that you have to ADD the costs of a larger overbuilding.
And with all those economic costs you dissed the wind power SOLELY on the basis of a … potential, MINOR^* drop in efficiency??? Talk about the cure being worse than the disease.
====
* up to 20% IF the wind blow from a specific direction, ONLY to the farms close downwind from others AND of the period that is not important anyway – wind farms have higher power out put when winds are strong – which is also when the interference is the weakest. And which can be fixed with …slightly wider spacing of windfarms or building them in rows perpendicular to the direction of the dominant winds.
===
And since you relentlessly push for your nukes over renewables – let’s see how many
of your SMALL nukes it would take to decarbonize the economy (i.e. electricity running not only current electricity uses, but also, directly on indirectly, transport, shipping, household and industrial heating and all other energy uses).
Let’s use Jacobsen et al. numbers for a fully decarbonized economy of 40,000GW in 2052.
40,000 GW/0.077GW = 520,000
So we would need more than HALF A MILLION of your “NuScale” 77MWe reactors! And that’s BEFORE the overbuild needed for the backup and peak demand.
And most of these HALF A MILLION of NuScale reactors would have to be built in the developing countries, so not necessarily very politically stable, highly advanced technological countries.
But don’t let it stop you, David, from thinking that it is the OTHERS who are “the fools“.
DBBenson at 346:
I have read that the Nuscale reactor proposed for building in Idaho (not being finished before 2029) is losing most of their customers. Apparently the cost of building the reactor was severely underestimated in the original sales pitches given to the customers. As the price of Nuscale goes up and the price of wind goes down people are pulling out of Nuscale.
It is unlikely Nuscale will build their reactor. Since their plan is to eventually put 10 small reactors in their station, they will require water cooling when the entire station is built (if they actually start it).
Nuclear is not economic. There is not enough uranium, and other rare materials, to build out a significant amount of nuclear power. If they build their pilot plant by 2029 as planned it would be 2035 before the design was proven and 2045 before any commercial units could be delivered. That is too late to help. We have to build out wind and solar now as rapidly as possible.
Killian @342
“First of all, WHY are you talking about a kind of system (food forest) with which you have zero familiarity?”
Why do you talk about things like economics when you are not an economist? I’m familiar with the basics about food forests. Its easy finding information.
As to your comment that food forests would be “managed by the manpower available” and I’ve been told this so I’m lying, blah blah. This is false. I have never denied that they would be managed that way, its obvious anyway, and that’s nothing to do with what I said. My comment was it looks labour intensive exercise compared to industrial agriculture. You haven’t been able to rebut that.
You post a lot of words and propaganda from the regenerative farming community but still no actual published, peer reviewed science that backs up these claims about food forests. I said @332: “The claims are that food forests are a great thing, have low working hours, and can feed the world better than industrial agriculture. Show me proof in the published peer reviewed scientific literature.” Still havent seen any. If I’ve missed something from the peer reviewed science in your huge streams of text and multiple links can you post it again.
“Third, over and over and over and over I have repeated to you – because you are both directly dishonest and lie by omission – of the concepts of Bridge Technology and Appropriate Technology, two overlapping concepts that, rather than rejecting technology as you and Piotr have knowingly misrepresented, actually embrace the use of “embedded energy” (resources already extracted and made into something) to achieve regenerative results.”
I’ve never lied about this. I’ve accepted for a long time that your plans include some essential modern technology (bridge tech.) and I’ve mentioned this literally about 20 times on this website for example @ 114 (last months UV thread) “Killians plan includes …4)scaling back use of modern technology apart from just a few essentials.” So you are wrong as usual.
And bridge tech. has no direct relationship to food forests and does not invalidate the core argument Piotr was making and which I’ve made before myself (before he arrived on this website) : Massive change in one or two decades looks very problematic, even if we keep some essential technology, and only half abandon cities.
“NOWHERE is it said to abandon existing embedded energy. That would be massive waste, and one of the most critical of the principles is”
I can’t recall your comment on embedded energy. People do sometimes forget things. And yet when myself and Piotr said your plan appears to suggest we at least partly abandon cities and rebuild in the country and this looked very problematic, you responded by criticising us and defending this exact plan (@337) ! So talk about confusing.
Please dear god answer some simple questions. How would we have these regenerative farms with about four people without a big migration from city to country? And do we stay living in cities, or do we abandon them or half abandon them over the next one or two decades? Or do we just wait for buildings to wear out, which would be many decades from now on average? What’s the effing plan?
I think you need to just explain things much more clearly, simply, and precisely and without all the jargon and contradictions. Right now its OBVIOUS almost nobody can figure out what you are really saying even after years of it. Perhaps read Piotr’s staring at the clouds analogy on the page about rainfall.