A new bi-monthly open thread for climate solutions discussions. Climate science threads go here.
Reader Interactions
704 Responses to "Forced Responses: July 2021"
michael Sweetsays
EP@ 327
Zebra tells me that most of the posters here realize you are just repeating the same BS over and over. I noticed someone who posted just like you under a different name at Skeptical Science and SkS got tired of your repetition and lack of facts. You got the boot. I guess you will have to stay on unmoderated forums since you have no data to support your wild claims.
Russia is only building 2 new reactors and China is cancelling the ones they haven’t started yet. Not much nuclear renaissance there. The Koreans have not been able to sell even one more reactor after the ones they are years behind schedule on in the UAE. No-one wants reactors where they leave off critical safety functions that are expensive.
It is easy to underestimate the lives lost at Chernobyl since the Russians deliberately did not measure radiation exposure or the immediate deaths.
Your “Radically simplified designs” will not be approved before the renewable energy system is completely built out. You are dreaming.
So you think we should accept the unsupported opinion of an internet educated “engineer” rather than the peer reviewed literature. You stand behind your plan to run two thirds of the economy on waste heat. Keep up the realistic plans.
I only post here because some impressionable people take your lies back to Skeptical Science and mess up the data driven discussions there.
Killiansays
344 Reality Check says:
26 Jul 2021 at 11:57 PM
#335 is boring, wrong, and wasting their time.
Yes. Sadly, common.
#333 Deal.
I had to deal with an outrageous lie before closing down, but I hope that to be my final.
Re IPCC.
Yup. While I the bulk of the research is extremely limited and not at all reflective of the holism of actual Regen Ag, there is more and more out there, but the IPCC report writers know exactly zero about this field and it shows.
Regen Ags holism does not help it get published: Scientists are not much interested in controlling hundreds of variables at one time. But that’s why they need to get simple and not worry about the complexity of the how and look at the simplicity of the results. Note the inputs and whether any are chem, etc., and measure the added carbon, biota, water retention, humus, etc.
We don’t have time for them to understand WHY it works, we just need them to help inform the world THAT it works.
This is why I proposed an Antarctic Energy Colony. If the load is constant and the cold sink is at a constant temperature then those “liberty ship” systems you considered could be built, simple and safe systems with Fred Flintstone quality control systems.
You’re not thinking of things from a systems perspective. Placing the world’s liquid fuels production in Antarctica is a bad idea for a number of reasons. You create extended (and vulnerable) supply lines without need, and you lose the ability to use off-peak power for other purposes.
I know this is sort of ironic as I’m eating a navel orange which was probably shipped here from Florida while I’m ignoring the fruit grown almost literally next door, but it is what it is.
William Jacksonsays
#347 This nonsense is in need of being bore holed, why does Mr. KIA get away with the same nonsense over and over. Is he/she truly that ignorant or paid?
Piotrsays
Killian (337): “The knots you twist yourself into justifying everything you, nigel or anyone else in the Peanut Gallery does are interesting only as a source of entertainment. Nigel did raise the issue. Period. RC posed a “What if…?” which is never taken as a serious proposition”
So are you saying that your pupil, Reality C., deliberately poses …. POINTLESS questions that he know do not represent anybody’s opinion, with the effect being to tie other people in the meaningless exchanges, to drown the discussion of the points on which people genuinely do differ, and to discourage the passer-bys from this website by lowering ratio of the interesting information to the meaningless noise???
I noticed someone who posted just like you under a different name at Skeptical Science and SkS got tired of your repetition and lack of facts. You got the boot.
I made my first-ever post at Skeptical Science today, AAMOF. I am going through the thread you referenced, and I note that you haven’t changed your tune in years.
Russia is only building 2 new reactors and China is cancelling the ones they haven’t started yet.
Richard the Weaver @350 said: “Someone was also talking about using excess renewables to create synfuel. That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
More complete rubbish. This is what I ACTUALLY said @330: “But wind or solar power are far more useful for making synthetic fuels. There are many times when they produce in excess of requirements, more so than nuclear power. ” Cant you read or do you like to deliberately missquote people for fun? You don’t even have the manners to refer to people by name.
nigeljsays
Richard the Weaver @350 said: “Someone was also talking about using excess renewables to create synfuel. “That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
So what? Many factories close down at night.
nigeljsays
Richard the Weaver said: “Someone was also talking about using excess renewables to create synfuel. “That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
So what? Many factories close down at night.
Richard the Weaversays
EP: You create extended (and vulnerable) supply lines without need,
RtW: oil and its infrastructure sure have tortuously long supply lines, so I doubt that transportation is an overriding concern for liquid fuels.
But terrorism and nimby are and will remain ultra-supremely-paramount, so ‘without need’ is kind of an astonishing claim.
And vulnerable? How so? I’m thinking open ocean a long way from habitation would be significantly less vulnerable than the Straits of Hormuz.
But this is all speculation. We’re having fun, not negotiating laws and policy for real.
nigeljsays
The Planet of the Humans movie by Michael Moore criticising solar and wind power is full of misleading claims, inaccuracies, and old, out of date data on solar power. This was possibly deliberately so as documents related to solar power in the movie had the date removed/ blanked out. Some references from the experts:
Michael Moore has a history of this sort of thing. His movie Bowling for Columbine on gun control is written like its a documentary, but its also full of fictions. Apparently somewhere in the promotional materials it says in the fine print its not a true documentary, but who reads that? Refer:
Before this websites hard leftists jump to conclusions, I think mass shootings in America are dreadful, and its far too easy for just about anyone to buy guns there. The point is M Moore is just not a reliable, credible writer and producer.
Mr. Know It Allsays
348 – Richard the Weaver
“RtW: This is why I proposed an Antarctic Energy Colony. If the load is constant and the cold sink is at a constant temperature then those “liberty ship” systems you considered could be built, simple and safe systems with Fred Flintstone quality control systems……
I see little use in attempting to preserve 100% of Antarctica since that is friggin impossible. Pick a tiny place. A dot. And use the chill and the inaccessibility to create all the synfuel our hearts desire.”
Is this a new level of stooopid or what? Why would you want to produce synfuel anywhere – much less in Antarctica? Synfuel combustion spews CO2 just like any fossil fuel does.
EP is correct – as the Michael Moore movie “Planet of the Humans” correctly shows, renewables are just greenwashing because they require huge input from fossil fuels, not to mention the vast land areas they destroy. I see no hope for clean grid electric power from any source except nukes. Pumped hydro? Only in existing reservoirs but that is very limited and must be powered by something. A lot of electric power can be provided by rooftop solar since that does not require huge land destruction, but those systems do require maintenance that costs $$, and they cannot provide adequate power at night or on heavy cloudy days – and no, we will not be making enough batteries to solve that problem. Want to solve the CO2 problem? You’d better become a Nuke Power activist – otherwise you are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The one other potential solution is simplification as Killian says, with likely massive population reduction. Unless we get on board with nukes, that will be the most likely path for us, and it will not be voluntary or pretty.
Ray may be right – I may be getting stooopider and stoooopider the more info I get, but I’ll never get to the level of stooopid in #348! And FYI, there are vibrant life ecosystems under and around those Antarctic glaciers.
:)
Reality Checksays
#345 “RC was tacitly agreeing that regenerative farming might be a panacea.”
Wrong. Dead wrong.
“He can deny this but we all know the truth.”
I deny it.
Stop speaking for others. Speak for yourself only.
Seriously consider giving up making out you’re the supreme resident guru of truth.
Reality Checksays
Several recently published regenerative agriculture related papers, for anyone interested in learning more.
Transformational adaptation on the farm: Processes of change and persistence in transitions to ‘climate-smart’ regenerative agriculture
Hannah Gosnell et al 2019
Abstract “We conclude that transitioning to regenerative agriculture involves more than a suite of ‘climate-smart’ mitigation and adaptation practices supported by technical innovation, policy, education, and outreach. Rather, it involves subjective, non-material factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity, and emotion that operate at individual, household, and community scales and interact with regional, national and global processes. Findings have implications for strategies aimed at facilitating a large-scale transition to climate-smart regenerative agriculture.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378018309117
Aligning science and policy of regenerative agriculture
First published: 10 September 2020
Abstract – Scientific findings since the 1980s indicate conventional agriculture (CONVA) accounts for 8 to 12% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or 23% of the country’s total anthropogenic forcing of climate change. In contrast, according to the United Nations Environmental Programs (UNEP), regenerative agriculture (RA) practices, such as, no-till (NT) has helped reduce emission of 241 Tg of carbon dioxide (CO2) since the 1970s. https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/saj2.20162
Restoring soil quality of woody agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands through regenerative agriculture We conclude that RA has strong potential to restore the physical, chemical and biological quality of soils of woody agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands without compromising their nutritional status, thereby enhancing their resilience to climate change and long term sustainability. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880920303777
Climate Change and Land
An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/
“The hope was that the soil might save us … perhaps plants — nature’s carbon scrubbers — might be able to package up some of that excess carbon and bury it underground for centuries or longer.”
“Such plans depend critically on the existence of large, stable, carbon-rich molecules that can last hundreds or thousands of years underground. ”
“over the past 10 years or so, soil science has undergone a quiet revolution … almost nobody has heard about it — including many who hope soils can rescue the climate. ”
“Soil researchers have concluded that even the largest, most complex molecules can be quickly devoured by soil’s abundant and voracious microbes. ”
“radioactive dating measurements suggest that some amount of carbon can stay in the soil for centuries. But until soil scientists build a new paradigm to replace the old — a process now underway — no one will fully understand why.”
“We don’t see any molecules in soil that are so recalcitrant that they can’t be broken down,”
“An early idea to increase carbon stores — planting crops without tilling the soil — has mostly fallen flat. When farmers skipped the tilling and instead drilled seeds into the ground, carbon stores grew in upper soil layers, but they disappeared from lower layers. ”
“One important and long-overlooked factor appears to be the three-dimensional structure of the soil environment. Scientists describe soil as a world unto itself, with the equivalent of continents, oceans and mountain ranges. This complex microgeography determines where microbes such as bacteria and fungi can go and where they can’t; what food they can gain access to and what is off limits.”
“Now it’s really clear that soil organic matter is just this loose assemblage of plant matter in varying degrees of degradation,”
“Studies of carbon isotopes have shown that a lot of carbon can stick around in soil for centuries or even longer. If humus isn’t doing the stabilizing, perhaps minerals and aggregates are.”
“It is tough to get individuals to make an effort (to cut their carbon footprints) beyond the easy stuff like buying low energy light bulbs and recycling, which all helps but isn’t nearly enough….. I don’t think you’ll get very far telling people they can’t fly abroad on holiday”.
I agree that getting absolute reductions in consumption like stopping flying, turning thermostats down low, walking or cycling everywhere looks very difficult. To me reducing carbon footprints mainly requires a substitution process, for example adopting low carbon products like electric or hybrid cars, low carbon cements, zero carbon electricity, reducing red meat consumption by substituting chicken and vegetable protein.
De-industrialisation is probably inevitable sooner or later as a natural occurrence as resources become more scarce, but the idea that we should embrace de-industrialisation deliberately and at huge scale and rapidly looks extremely difficult and problematic. And thats assuming billions of very materialistic people could somehow be persuaded to go along with it. The anthropologist Joseph Tainter found simplification is very difficult with only ONE successful historical example. My view has always been first build a new energy grid, and try to make some realistically achievable reductions in consumption, the low hanging fruit, and “changing the world” is more likely to be a slower longer term project for all sorts of practical and psychological reasons. We might have to complexify to an extent, before we simplify if such a thing is actually possible.
However some people may choose not to fly. For other people it would be challenging to limit their flying, and so the most plausible solution is probably carbon offsets or eventually electric aircraft or biofuels. But if you combined all of these things, so some people reducing flying with others using carbon offsets and some use of alternative fuels it might make a substantial difference. I dont think there are simple solutions to the climate problem. Its going to be messy like this. I’ve made some significant reductions to my own carbon footprint, but some ideas I have given up on because they are just a pain in the neck (including some you mention).
“One of the real problems I see, as someone who has tried to cut my carbon footprint, is that our systems (at least in the UK where I live) punish people for making low carbon choices. I use a bicycle instead of a car for local journeys, that comes with a vulnerability cost, since everyone else is still driving cars. If I want solar PV I have to find thousands of pounds for installation….If I want to use the train instead of the car for long journeys, it costs more than double the price of the petrol for theb equivalent car journey, reduces transport freedom….Even purchasing consumer goods which are advertised as being more sustainable or organic or whatever comes with a financial cost. ….Somehow we have to change the system so that the more destructive practices are more expensive to the consumer (i.e internalise the costs)”
Yes. That’s why its so important to have something like a carbon tax or other incentives. Carbon taxes are great because they punish certain behaviours and the funds collected can subsidise desired activities, or with carbon tax and dividend you return the money to the consumer. New Zealand has introduced subsidies for electric cars:
“or move from capitalism to a completely different system (e.g. regenerative governance), but I have yet to see a roadmap as to how that could happen in the limited time we have left…..UK citizens are collectively hell-bent on voting for right wing neo-liberal capitalist political parties to run the country since capitalism and economic growth as a metric for quality of life has been programmed into the population for decades.”
“Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, and you have egalitarian group decision making, and the total elimination of hierarchies. Refer material posted on last months FR pages. The idea appears to be that this worked for hunter gatherer culture and they had low inequality and a light environmental footprint so we should just copy them. To me hunter gatheres used such a system because they had virtually no possessions to own anyway, and groups of people were small relative to our huge nation states, and their activities were simple, so of course group decision making would obviously work. No need for complex hierarchies.
Applying all these ancient principles to modern industrial society, even with scaled back industry, doesn’t make sense. Industrial society is based on private ownership and hierarchies. It functions BECAUSE of those things. They are integral to it. Experiments with socialism have largely been failures, or at least very low efficiency, and I hate admitting this because I’m sympathetic to the intentions. Once you erode the dynamic ownership and organisational forces that drive the production of technology, it will stagnate badly as ultimately happened in the Soviet Union. And how on earth would you persuade Americans to go so far left?
There might be a middle ground. Scandinavia combines capitalism and socialism quite effectively, by combining the best of both. That would be an achievable improvement.
But you KNOW that because it was discussed on this blog a long time ago. Yet you bring up this discredited garbage anyway, because you are an incredibly dishonest person.
KIA: The other mitigation possibility is population reduction and Bill Gates has a plan for that
BPL: And KIA veers off into crackpot conspiracy land. What a SURPRISE!
mikesays
“…the sea wall the Army Corps is proposing – protecting only 6 miles of downtown and the financial district from a storm surge – can’t save Miami and Dade County. Most of the city will be outside the wall, unprotected; the wall will still trap water inside; and the Corps hasn’t closely studied what the construction of a high sea wall would do to water quality…
… there are ways to pair the strength of less obtrusive hardened infrastructure with nature-based “green” solutions. With our colleagues at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the College of Engineering, we have been designing and testing innovative hybrid solutions.”
MKIA posts nonsense. Don’t waste time engaging. We just need to note for lurkers and folks operating at 4th grade level that mkia’s info is utter nonsense every once in a while.
Cheers
Mike
nigeljsays
Mike says “MKIA posts nonsense. Don’t waste time engaging. We just need to note for lurkers and folks operating at 4th grade level that mkia’s info is utter nonsense every once in a while.Cheers”
Yes Mike. Thanks for your sage advice. Just saying somebodies comments are wrong will achieve soooo much. (sarc) I prefer to post a few links as above. Seems BPL does the same. Its no big issue for me. I’m very good at finding information and composing comments incredibly fast. You find some good stuff by M Mann etc.
Richard the Weaversays
RtW: “That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
NigelJ: So what? Many factories close down at night.
RtW: you mean lots of profitable businesses who’s processes can be started and stopped without significant cost…
As my post noted, synfuel is not way profitable.
But yes, another model is to only accept electrons when they’re free.
I don’t know which would be better. Massively overbuild renewables and shovel the excess to synfuel production or make synfuel with far away nukes.
Whatever
Richard the Weaversays
Mr KIA: Synfuel combustion spews CO2 just like any fossil fuel does.
RtW: No. Synfuel uses nuclear or renewable energy and CO2 from the atmosphere (or an exhaust that was headed to the atmosphere) and adds hydrogen, creating, say, methanol, which is stored and then burned, returning the CO2 to the atmosphere. It is true zero carbon (or as much so as any other zero carbon energy source).
In fact, since there is a storage period synfuel can be said to be net carbon negative. The atmosphere’s carbon content will always be reduced from where it would be if another zero carbon source were used.
Reality Checksays
Some might think the following comments are no different, or only a subtle shift in rhetoric from what has been typical in the past. But to me this sounds a very significant and important shift in language, tone, and emphasis (for the better.) Perhaps a more accurate more honest and forthright appraisal of what the reality has been for a very long time?
from The Guardian How many years until we must act on climate?
We asked a panelist of experts on when we need to start changing our economies and ways of consuming and producing. Their answer: now
Peter Kalmus: ‘Zero Years’
We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate.
Jennifer Francis: ‘We cannot wait’
We need to immediately stop subsidizing all aspects of the fossil fuel industry. – All of these impacts are happening now. If we don’t act fast, many communities, cultures and species will cease to exist.
Michael Mann: ‘Strictly speaking, zero’
How many years do we have to act? Strictly speaking, zero – which is to say, that we must act, in earnest, now. We have a decade within which we must halve global carbon emissions.
Holly Jean Buck: ‘We need action now’
We need to ramp up action now in order to transform all of our major systems by 2050: energy, transportation, industry, agriculture, waste management. We’ll need to eat less meat, farm in ways that store more carbon in the soils, reforest degraded or abandoned land and restore wetlands.
Hopefully many more outspoken commentaries like this from scientists and others will be forthcoming in the lead up to COP26. Though I am not expecting much support from the MSM, social media networks, or the broadcasters.
It’s unfortunate outreach like this from climate scientists is, and will continue to be, falling on deaf ears. Including so many who will be presenting or ‘voting’ on action (inaction) at COP26.
Maybe after that fails yet again, things will get really serious?
Some other excerpts: “Scientists began to suggest that we might be able to coax large volumes of atmospheric carbon back into the soil to dampen or even reverse the damage of climate change.In practice, this has proved difficult…… An early idea to increase carbon stores — planting crops without tilling the soil — has mostly fallen flat…..The Salk scientists zeroed in on a complex, cork-like molecule called suberin, which is produced by many plant roots. Studies from the 1990s and 2000s had hinted that suberin and similar molecules could resist decomposition in soil…. (this turned out to be wrong)….Evidence suggests that when cover crop roots break down, some of their carbon stays in the soil — although as with suberin, how long it lasts is an open question.”
“Last summer, a study published in Nature examined how much carbon dioxide was released when researchers artificially warmed the soil in a Panamanian rainforest to mimic the long-term effects of climate change. They found that the warmed soil released 55% more carbon than nearby unwarmed areas — a much larger release than predicted by most climate models. The researchers think that microbes in the soil grow more active at the warmer temperatures, leading to the increase.”
So claims made about regenerative agriculture rapidly sequestering vast quantities of soil carbon look exaggerated, as I’ve been saying all along. But the great wise prophets on this website “knew better.” But they will claim they have the secret sauce. If its all done exactly as the wise Prophets specify, in precise details and order, with their deep knowledge, all will be well as if by magic, because they say so. ROFL.
Reality Checksays
#369 Sure but there’s more than one Mr KIA posting nonsense :-)
November, 2017: Nuclear Power? Are Renewables Enough? Michael Shellenberger and Dr. James Hansen (ex-NASA/GISS) press conference at COP-23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1f4BKsFrCA
“Radiation: The Facts” by Robert Hargraves.
Start with the Radiation 101 side of the page 2. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/NuclearRadiationSafety.2014.pdf
While it’s crystal clear that the modern GenIII+ and GenIV nuclear are far superior and much safer than the past. They even offer the ability to totally destroy and/or use as fuel all current nuclear waste.
Scientific Reticence: a DRAFT Discussion
26 October 2017 by James Hansen
Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms – That paper, together with Young People’s Burden,2 makes the case for a low global warming target and the urgency of phasing out fossil fuel emissions.
We argue that global warming of 2°C, or even 1.5°C, is dangerous, because these levels are far above Holocene temperatures and even warmer than best estimates for the Eemian, when sea level reached 6-9 meters (20-30 feet)
higher than today.
A public affairs person handling media contacts for the Ice Melt paper reported that a leading science reporter decided not to write about the paper, and later declined to write about the Burden paper, because 5 of the 6 experts he contacted advised against reporting on it. If the top people in a field are negative and do not cite a paper, it is license for others to ignore it, perhaps even a warning to younger researchers. [end quote] http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2017/20171026_ScientificReticence.pdf
Now in 2021, Hansen again is shown to be prescient. I still wonder who the 5 of 6 experts were whose opinions were Hansen had “lost the plot”? I have my suspicions but also think they maybe changing their tunes today.
Dr James Hansen is not only smart, he follows very good processes to arrive at the facts he presents.
November 19 2017: Scientific Reticence: A Threat to Humanity and Nature. Jim Hansen/Pam Pearson/Philip Duffy press conference at COP-23 in Bonn, Germany on 10 November. https://youtu.be/S7z61UZoppM
Opinions abound, sure. Draw your own conclusions. Meanwhile, new nuclear power plants are being built and brought online.
Reality Checksays
#366 “Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, …”
I have never heard the term “Regenerative governance” before, so I went and checked what it entails. A few example results of that search are nothing like what’s been stated above.
From an unprofessional blog site saying #RegenerativeGovernance is:
#Commons
#EgalitarianDecisionmaking
#ProblemsolvingByScaleoftheIssue
#PermacultureDesignProcess
#DeepSimplicity
#RegenerativeCommunityIncubators
#RegenerativeAgriculture
#EcosystemRestoration
#SmallCommunities
#BioregionalCommunityNetworks https://permoccupy.wordpress.com/
Moving along to something bigger:
I found several more really good recent studies on RegenAg (some with quantifiable SOC improvements), along with a very extensive in-depth project run in New Zealand that has produced a thorough, very detailed comprehensive NZ Govt facilitated White Paper – Regenerative agriculture in Aotearoa New Zealand – research pathways to build science-based evidence and national narratives. came out in February 2021
The executive Summary says: This white paper is the result of an intensive collaboration and consultation during June to November 2020. More than 70 NZ-based organisations and 200 people participated, collaborators including farmers and growers, researchers, private consultants, industry levy bodies, banks, retailers, not-for-profit organisations, overseas researchers and educators.
I am yet to finish reading it all, but is of very high quality and serious work afaik. Again, I am no expert, so learning as I go, but it is a very active field of endeavor globally by the looks of it to me. Maybe something Scott and K. could be interested in seeing where it goes longer term?
News report – Farming sector (they just keep coming)
Climate crisis cuts Australian farm profits by a quarter over past 20 years
Reports finds profits could fall by up to 50% within three decades if global emissions are not significantly reduced and farmers don’t adapt to changing climate.
NigelJ: And how on earth would you persuade Americans to go so far left?
RtW: With the Perfect Pandemic. GOPpers who still possess a few non-entangled neurons are currently using them to ponder whether voting Republican is sane, let alone a good idea.
Sigh. But that evil axiom, “Capitalism in its simplest and purest form is perfect in every way”, is a bugger to exorcise.
Richard the Weaversays
Oh, and I’ll do my best to follow Mike’s lead with regard to not responding to MrTroll.
Be strong (but not like a troll’s stench).
nigeljsays
Reality Check @378
Reality Check : (quoting myself #366) “Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, …”
Reality Check: “I have never heard the term “Regenerative governance” before, so I went and checked what it entails. A few example results of that search are nothing like what’s been stated above. RC: From an unprofessional blog site saying #RegenerativeGovernance is:
NigelJ: Reality Check is wrong to claim that the results he quotes are nothing like what I stated.
A commons IS BY DEFINITION essentially “communal ownership” or “common ownership”. And Killian, who invented the idea of regenerative governance has stated unequivocally it includes common ownership and elimination of most private property. Go back and read the last couple of months FR pages.
And my full comment that RC check conveniently left out referred to egalitarian decison making as follows: “Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, and you have egalitarian group decision making, and the total elimination of hierarchies.”
Perhaps you made a mistake, perhaps you deliberately left it out. Perhaps you could clarify why you left it out?
At no stage did I claim my comment included EVERY element of regenerative governance. However it should be obvious to anyone that “regenerative governance” and “regenerative agriculture “are actually two different things.
Piotrsays
KIA: “The other mitigation possibility is population reduction and Bill Gates has a plan for that ”
Barton Paul Levenson (367): “And KIA veers off into crackpot conspiracy land. What a SURPRISE!”
I was wondering where they get their ideas from. Maybe they confuse the world with movies: (not books – since the KIAs do not strike me as voracious book-readers)
– “Inferno”(2016) – “billionaire villain who believes that rigorous measures were necessary to reduce the Earth’s growing population, releases biological superweapon” that will change the expression of genes, much like the RNA-vaccines according to anti-vaxers are supposed to do.
– “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” (2014) – “a tech billionaire and disillusioned eco-campaigner who desires to save the earth at any cost, believes the global population has swelled to uncontrollable levels, so it requires culling.
His deadly plan is to produce SIM cards that he will distribute freely around the world [like Gates the microchips in free vaccines] which he will then activate by transmitting “neurological wave” worldwide via satellite network, that will both stimulate aggression and reduce inhibition. The resulting “culling” of most of the human race will avert its extinction via global warming”
Sounds familiar? ;-)
Killiansays
378 Reality Check says:
28 Jul 2021 at 11:20 PM
I have never heard the term “Regenerative governance” before, so I went and checked what it entails.
From an unprofessional blog site saying #RegenerativeGovernance is:
#Commons
#EgalitarianDecisionmaking
#ProblemsolvingByScaleoftheIssue
#PermacultureDesignProcess
#DeepSimplicity
#RegenerativeCommunityIncubators
#RegenerativeAgriculture
#EcosystemRestoration
#SmallCommunities
#BioregionalCommunityNetworks https://permoccupy.wordpress.com/
That’s mine, yes.
to a Regenerative Business Summit
Prima facie nonsense for reasons stated about a million times on these fora.
Not terrible, but notice what the genesis is? The writer draws purely on existing concepts, 60’s era jingoism, etc., to state the obvious: People need to be included. But look at the words! Given opportunity? By wnom? Who’s the gatekeeper? Yuck!
Regen Gov’s system grew out of actual lived experience: How to run the OccupyDetroit General Assembly for a city of 700k? While only some dozens were ever there at any given meeting, sometimes maybe a hundred-ish, in theory you want everyone having a full voice. My Solution? Neighborhood GA’s. Unbelievably, most people hated this idea! They thought it would steal power from the city GA. It just goes to show how embedded in power politics people really are, even when they think they are not.
Later, I learned most pre-contact societies were some form of egalitarian and lived in networks of villages, just as I had designed for Regen Gov. I tell you, it’s pretty damned cool to find the concept you “invented” turns out to be the best form of gov’t ever created: The only form that provides equality, in every sense while best preserving the ecosystem.
Fitting this to the modern world is not nearly as hard as the rejectivists here want it to be so they can preserve the world they can’t imagine not having – just like the Occ. Detroit people who talked of no one having power then balked at sharing it.
The problem in adapting these ideas to modern societies is the First Nations societies were far simpler and didn’t need more than two levels: camping party and band/indigenous group. (I.e. a given tribe within, say, the Apache Nation.) But we need four, possibly five levels and zero hierarchy. Innovation? Decision purely assigned to level by scale, no other criteria. That is my original concept.
How to transition? Been over this many times so will not repeat details, but basically Opt Out (of the old)/Opt in (to the new) by quite simply DOING regenerative where you are. Capitalism dies without customers. it’s crazy to me people whine and cry and tear their garments over Capitalsim when all they have to do is… stop buying shit and it collapses immediately. So, localize. Do for yourselves. No more Capitalism. This transition can, and should be, incredibly fast. As ever, the devil is in the details, but those details are mostly local. Those that aren’t? Well, that’s why you have city/area and bio-regional levels of decision-making.
As I’ve said too many times: What unsustainable systems we maintain should be limited to critical types of infrastructure: Long-distance transport, communications (internet, etc., for sharing training/info/education especially), medical care, R&D…
I promise every human alive today, this in some form or other must be our future for the next several generations or we will have uncontrolled collapse and very possibly extinction.
Only one system exists that harmonizes every issue we face, Regen Gov – my Regen Gov. There’s a website out there using the same name, created long after I created my model, that has a number of flaws.
The other I have never heard of before. Trying to make contact. Sounds a lot like they read my stuff, frankly, but it seems clear they think they can do Capitalism in this framework, which you cannot.
nigeljsays
Richard the Weaver @371
“I don’t know which would be better. Massively overbuild renewables and shovel the excess to synfuel production or make synfuel with far away nukes.”
Really hard to say without a time consuming analysis. But your comment highlights an important issue. For me its really hard to see which is better overall: 1) renewables (solar and wind power for this comment) or 2) nuclear power.
Simplifying hugely they both produce safe zero carbon energy. Even including things like Chernobyl nuclear power kills far fewer people than burning fossil fuels. Costs might not be much different between nuclear and renewables if you factor in storage costs with wind and solar power.
They both have some undesirable resource use issues. Its like they are about evenly matched overall, except that that in places like America nuclear is slow to build and there’s a lot of public scepticism about safety. EP says theres no country fully or largely reliant on solar and wind so we dont really know if its feasible or cost effective at scale. MS waves around research papers saying its feasible.
Its like a never ending debate. There might not be a good answer and it will probably sort itself out depending on local conditions.
siddsays
Gifts that keep on giving:
“nuclear plant cost tops $27B ”
“Two new reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle will cost another billion dollars”
“The company and regulators insist the plant — the first new U.S. reactors in decades — is the best source”
“Customers are already paying for the plant”
“necessity to redo substandard work … leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool”
“We knew building the first new nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years would be challenging. ”
“Every month of delay at Vogtle costs roughly $90 million in capital costs, excluding financing costs.”
The same Sanderson who says this week on Twitter: This report is the 1st in our expanding journey into emerging soil carbon markets. Whatever your philosophical stance on carbon markets, they are here. We want to ensure they work for the climate. It was a pleasure working with @eeoldfield @rachelLrubin @alisoneagle2 & others. https://twitter.com/sandersoil/status/1419722216967753731
Pointing to the scientists who produced a new report:— Agricultural Soil Carbon Credits: Making sense of protocols for carbon sequestration and net greenhouse gas removals — Environmental Defense Fund and the Woodwell Climate Research Center reviewed the 12 published protocols used to generate soil carbon credits through carbon sequestration in croplands.
from https://www.edf.org/soilcarbon as mentioned on their twitter feed that: “…and our recommendations for moving toward credits that can achieve the full mitigation potential of agricultural soils.”
Seems counter-intuitive for Sanderson to be strongly pro-mitigation of “carbon sequestration and net greenhouse gas removals” if he didn’t think soils could sequester Carbon in Soil over time.
Killiansays
Merely FYI for thise of you wasting half or more of this space with this nonsense for the last 2 or 3 years. Talk about opportunity cost!
Still, don’t @ me on this. Address your comments to your fellow time-wasters bc, as I said, posted merely in FYI mode:
Lyman took a close look at the claims developers have been making about the three main non-light-water designs: sodium-cooled fast reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and molten salt–fueled reactors. With little hard evidence, many developers maintain they will be cheaper, safer and more secure than currently operating reactors; will burn uranium fuel more efficiently, produce less radioactive waste, and reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation; and could be commercialized relatively soon. Those claims, however, do not hold up to scrutiny.
claims made about regenerative agriculture rapidly sequestering vast quantities of soil carbon look exaggerated, as I’ve been saying all along.
That’s sad. Hardly surprising (the failure of panaceas to pan out should be taken for granted), but still sad.
Richard the Weaversays
Nigel,
You appeared to take offense with my laziness, thinking that I treated you like “the former guy” or something.
No. I was talking to EP and I remembered something someone said. It was not a significant issue and points could be made on both sides (dedicated nuclear and synfuel located where efficiency is maximized, capital cost is minimized, safety is absolute, and terrorism is essentially impossible, or let the synfuel stuff sit around idle while waiting for free or negative cost excess production).
So no, I didn’t read all the pages I scanned so as to make a pointless attribution. And yes, I can see how that could be misinterpreted as a slight.
Richard the Weaversays
Reality Check: We need to ramp up action now in order to transform all of our major systems by 2050: en
RtW: yeah, and the real problem is the logarithmic nature of reductions. It may take X effort to drop emissions 10% but the next 10% will take much more effort.
This is exacerbated by the evilly attractive elephant in the room: natural gas counts as a huge reduction even though it contributes nothing at all to the final system. In fact, building bridges to nowhere prevents actual productivity.
The USA-driven rush to natural gas is worse than keeping coal plants open. The coal plants were going to close from old age anyway. This just lets the GOPpers start a new round of wickedly profitable fossil foolishness.
nigeljsays
Richard the Weaver @392 I accept that explanation. And I think I might have misinterpreted what you meant by renewables and got a bit bad tempered, so sorry about that. I get tired of the personal attacks by certain other people, and it sometimes puts me on edge like that. Forget about it.
nigeljsays
Reality Check @388
“#375, maybe that journos article (it’s not a study) doesn’t mean what nigel thinks it means? eg at one point it quotes a soil scientist (?) named Johnathon Sanderson The same Sanderson who says this week on Twitter:This report is the 1st in our expanding journey into emerging soil carbon markets. Whatever your philosophical stance on carbon markets, they are here. We want to ensure they work for the climate. It was a pleasure working with @eeoldfield @rachelLrubin @alisoneagle2 & others….”
Reality check saying “that journo (its not a study)”. This is verging on an ad hominem. And ironically “that journo” is no light weight journo: “Gabriel Popkin is a freelance science and environmental writer based in Mount Rainier, Md., just outside the nation’s capital. He has written for Science, Nature, The New York Times, Johns Hopkins Magazine, APS News and many others.”
I’m not wrong about what the article means. My only comment was that it might invalidate claims that soils can rapidly sequester massive amounts of carbon argued by some on this website over recent months. This is OBVIOSLY a correct deduction, given the article says: “Scientists began to suggest that we might be able to coax large volumes of atmospheric carbon back into the soil to dampen or even reverse the damage of climate change.In practice, this has proved difficult…… An early idea to increase carbon stores — planting crops without tilling the soil — has mostly fallen flat…“Last summer, a study published in Nature examined how much carbon dioxide was released when researchers artificially warmed the soil in a Panamanian rainforest to mimic the long-term effects of climate change. They found that the warmed soil released 55% more carbon than nearby unwarmed areas — a much larger release than predicted by most climate models”.
Reality Check justifies his claims that I’m misinterpreting the article by referring to “Johnathon Sanderson The same Sanderson who says this week on Twitter:This report is the 1st in our expanding journey into emerging soil carbon markets….” But quoting one person out of several mentioned in the article doesn’t prove a single thing about the content of the article. Reality check needs to focus on the CONTENT of the article and prove the claims wrong. Maybe they are wrong but this has not been demonstrated.
And there is other research showing that as soils warm they release CO2. This guardian article discusses the issue:
Engineer-Poet @391, yes sad, but regenerative agriculture still looks like it can usefully sequester at least some carbon, and there just don’t appear to be any downsides to this. I just like accuracy and getting to what can really be achieved.
nigeljsays
Sidd says “Some of us of a certain age might recall a slogan (relating to nuclear power): “Too cheap to meter.”
I remember and as a teenager I thought “too good to be true”. But listen, we have several power sources, wind solar, nuclear, geothermal etc, and lets not forget they are all clean zero carbon power and really the main problem is scaling things up more quickly, and getting people to move on this.
Reality Checksays
#385, thanks killian, that was very interesting to hear.
Found this recently. Not regen gov, coming at things from a traditional academic social govt framework while making some out there non-traditional ‘extreme’ recommendations::
Via Twitter
Jefim Vogel Jun 30 2021
24/ We conclude that governments everywhere should improve and expand public services, increase income equality, strengthen democracy, provide basic infrastructures, and scale back extractive industries – and stop economic growth in affluent or moderately affluent countries.
25/ These changes might enable affluent countries to slash their energy use & emissions without undermining human well-being, and enable less affluent countries to achieve decent living standards without huge growth in energy use that would further exacerbate climate breakdown. https://twitter.com/JefimVogel/status/1410194997589254148
(Full paper)
Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use:
No country sufficiently meets human needs within sustainable levels of energy use.
Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without relying on negative emissions technologies requires not only rapid decarbonisation of global energy systems but also deep reductions in global energy use (Grubler et al., 2018, IPCC, 2018). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021000662
iirc, greed and waste were considered ‘crimes’ in indigenous societies all over the world in the past.
or look at this from France?
Making Peace with the Earth—The Diplomatic Turn by Patrick Degeorges
Partnership with the Earth is the post-environmental paradigm that needs to replace the sustained unsustainability of parasitic and predatory economic growth. The health of people, the health of societies,and the health of ecosystems are indeed inseparable. The urge to preserve this Common Health lies in the future that it makes possible, as much as in the need to reconnect with time-tested traditional ecological wisdom. https://ecocene.kapadokya.edu.tr/index.php/ecocene/article/view/75/48
I think these approaches and attitudes (including RegenAg/Governance) are more common getting more air-play today than a decade ago. Still low key though, not mainstream. And will continue to be outright dismissed by many as the crazy left or marxist rubbish. Which is fine of course. Everyone has their opinions about everything.
But even the conservative ‘greenwasher’ M Mann seems to is veering off the plantation at times these days. Could be another sign of the times?
Reality Checksays
#385 NigelJ: Reality Check is wrong to claim that the results he quotes are nothing like what I stated.
I’m quite content with what I said before. Thanks for sharing your opinion though.
Go back and read the last couple of months FR pages.
No thanks. Not interested.
Perhaps you could clarify why you left it out?
Not going to happen. It’s too entertaining wondering and watching what you’ll do with such ‘mysterious happenings.’
Reality Checksays
About the UCS ‘Advanced’ Nuclear Reactor Designs report, I think it’s a bit of a PR puff piece. As biased as any industry PR report, it misses a lot and seems guided by confirmation bias. Others will find it really compelling. That’s OK too.
But it appears not to be a scientific based Literature Review study, nor peer reviewed. And I can’t understand why Lyman didn’t go visit the IAEA first and get their data, input, and research results of the last several decades and, more importantly, the recent developments state of play. The key questions the UCS report asks are already answered there I believe. The IAEA are not radicals.
Given he appears to think highly of the IAEA with one of his recommendations on pg 117 of the full report (here https://ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/ucs-rpt-AR-3.21-web_Mayrev.pdf ) saying: “The United States should make all new reactors and associated fuel facilities eligible for IAEA safeguards and provide that agency with the necessary resources for carrying out verification activities.” – why ignore IAEA input?
And UCS Lyman only evaluates 3 designs, with too much focus on the USA situation only, eg they ignore the HTR-PM history in China completely.
Consider: “Specifically for the USA, it is important to note that advanced reactor RD&D efforts are not occurring in a vacuum, and that progress in advanced reactor development in other countries should elicit commensurate increases in funding, policy support and programmes that have facilitated significant achievements by the American advanced nuclear industry so far.”
and “A common misconception about advanced nuclear technologies is that they are largely conceptual and will not be commercialised in time to contribute to meeting near-term climate goals, but a comprehensive look at global efforts to develop advanced nuclear reveals rapid progress towards commercialisation and operation, write Clean Air Task Force, ClearPath, Nuclear Innovation Alliance, Pillsbury and Third Way.”
see here https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Viewpoint-Advanced-reactor-development-makes-rapid and the full June 2021 reporthttps://www.advancednuclearenergy.org/product/advanced-reactors-turning-the-corner – The latter being a biased industry PR report.
It is what it is. I don’t know what the whole truth might be. But both ‘opinions’ can’t be correct or equal. Opinions vary with the ‘evidence’ used to underpin those views varying too. Whatever the best way forward is, won’t be decided here. Each to their own, but good to see different ideas and sources being shared.
Every mitigation idea gets push back from someone because someone isn’t going to like it for all kinds of reasons. Might turn out that none of them will be good enough or make any difference GHG mitigation at all.
EP@ 327
Zebra tells me that most of the posters here realize you are just repeating the same BS over and over. I noticed someone who posted just like you under a different name at Skeptical Science and SkS got tired of your repetition and lack of facts. You got the boot. I guess you will have to stay on unmoderated forums since you have no data to support your wild claims.
Russia is only building 2 new reactors and China is cancelling the ones they haven’t started yet. Not much nuclear renaissance there. The Koreans have not been able to sell even one more reactor after the ones they are years behind schedule on in the UAE. No-one wants reactors where they leave off critical safety functions that are expensive.
It is easy to underestimate the lives lost at Chernobyl since the Russians deliberately did not measure radiation exposure or the immediate deaths.
Your “Radically simplified designs” will not be approved before the renewable energy system is completely built out. You are dreaming.
So you think we should accept the unsupported opinion of an internet educated “engineer” rather than the peer reviewed literature. You stand behind your plan to run two thirds of the economy on waste heat. Keep up the realistic plans.
I only post here because some impressionable people take your lies back to Skeptical Science and mess up the data driven discussions there.
344 Reality Check says:
26 Jul 2021 at 11:57 PM
#335 is boring, wrong, and wasting their time.
Yes. Sadly, common.
#333 Deal.
I had to deal with an outrageous lie before closing down, but I hope that to be my final.
Re IPCC.
Yup. While I the bulk of the research is extremely limited and not at all reflective of the holism of actual Regen Ag, there is more and more out there, but the IPCC report writers know exactly zero about this field and it shows.
Regen Ags holism does not help it get published: Scientists are not much interested in controlling hundreds of variables at one time. But that’s why they need to get simple and not worry about the complexity of the how and look at the simplicity of the results. Note the inputs and whether any are chem, etc., and measure the added carbon, biota, water retention, humus, etc.
We don’t have time for them to understand WHY it works, we just need them to help inform the world THAT it works.
@348:
You’re not thinking of things from a systems perspective. Placing the world’s liquid fuels production in Antarctica is a bad idea for a number of reasons. You create extended (and vulnerable) supply lines without need, and you lose the ability to use off-peak power for other purposes.
I know this is sort of ironic as I’m eating a navel orange which was probably shipped here from Florida while I’m ignoring the fruit grown almost literally next door, but it is what it is.
#347 This nonsense is in need of being bore holed, why does Mr. KIA get away with the same nonsense over and over. Is he/she truly that ignorant or paid?
Killian (337): “The knots you twist yourself into justifying everything you, nigel or anyone else in the Peanut Gallery does are interesting only as a source of entertainment. Nigel did raise the issue. Period. RC posed a “What if…?” which is never taken as a serious proposition”
So are you saying that your pupil, Reality C., deliberately poses …. POINTLESS questions that he know do not represent anybody’s opinion, with the effect being to tie other people in the meaningless exchanges, to drown the discussion of the points on which people genuinely do differ, and to discourage the passer-bys from this website by lowering ratio of the interesting information to the meaningless noise???
With a defender like Killian, who needs enemies?
Michael Sweet @351:
I made my first-ever post at Skeptical Science today, AAMOF. I am going through the thread you referenced, and I note that you haven’t changed your tune in years.
O RLY? world-nuclear.org notes that China has a policy of replacing coal-fired generation with nuclear for air quality reasons and is pursuing export markets as well. China is planning to add as much as 300 GW(e) of nuclear generating capacity. China is also developing unpressurized reactors for district heating purposes. That page identifies 17 reactors under construction and a further 38 planned and 90 proposed.
Tired of being wrong yet?
Richard the Weaver @350 said: “Someone was also talking about using excess renewables to create synfuel. That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
More complete rubbish. This is what I ACTUALLY said @330: “But wind or solar power are far more useful for making synthetic fuels. There are many times when they produce in excess of requirements, more so than nuclear power. ” Cant you read or do you like to deliberately missquote people for fun? You don’t even have the manners to refer to people by name.
Richard the Weaver @350 said: “Someone was also talking about using excess renewables to create synfuel. “That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
So what? Many factories close down at night.
Richard the Weaver said: “Someone was also talking about using excess renewables to create synfuel. “That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
So what? Many factories close down at night.
EP: You create extended (and vulnerable) supply lines without need,
RtW: oil and its infrastructure sure have tortuously long supply lines, so I doubt that transportation is an overriding concern for liquid fuels.
But terrorism and nimby are and will remain ultra-supremely-paramount, so ‘without need’ is kind of an astonishing claim.
And vulnerable? How so? I’m thinking open ocean a long way from habitation would be significantly less vulnerable than the Straits of Hormuz.
But this is all speculation. We’re having fun, not negotiating laws and policy for real.
The Planet of the Humans movie by Michael Moore criticising solar and wind power is full of misleading claims, inaccuracies, and old, out of date data on solar power. This was possibly deliberately so as documents related to solar power in the movie had the date removed/ blanked out. Some references from the experts:
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/michael-moores-planet-of-the-humans-documentary-peddles-dangerous-climate-denial/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30042020/inside-clean-energy-michael-moore-planet-of-the-humans-review/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/26/michael-moore-film-planet-of-the-humans-removed-from-youtube
Michael Moore has a history of this sort of thing. His movie Bowling for Columbine on gun control is written like its a documentary, but its also full of fictions. Apparently somewhere in the promotional materials it says in the fine print its not a true documentary, but who reads that? Refer:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2003/04/bowling-truths-dave-kopel/
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/20xv7k/i_think_that_bowling_for_columbine_is_a/
Before this websites hard leftists jump to conclusions, I think mass shootings in America are dreadful, and its far too easy for just about anyone to buy guns there. The point is M Moore is just not a reliable, credible writer and producer.
348 – Richard the Weaver
“RtW: This is why I proposed an Antarctic Energy Colony. If the load is constant and the cold sink is at a constant temperature then those “liberty ship” systems you considered could be built, simple and safe systems with Fred Flintstone quality control systems……
I see little use in attempting to preserve 100% of Antarctica since that is friggin impossible. Pick a tiny place. A dot. And use the chill and the inaccessibility to create all the synfuel our hearts desire.”
Is this a new level of stooopid or what? Why would you want to produce synfuel anywhere – much less in Antarctica? Synfuel combustion spews CO2 just like any fossil fuel does.
EP is correct – as the Michael Moore movie “Planet of the Humans” correctly shows, renewables are just greenwashing because they require huge input from fossil fuels, not to mention the vast land areas they destroy. I see no hope for clean grid electric power from any source except nukes. Pumped hydro? Only in existing reservoirs but that is very limited and must be powered by something. A lot of electric power can be provided by rooftop solar since that does not require huge land destruction, but those systems do require maintenance that costs $$, and they cannot provide adequate power at night or on heavy cloudy days – and no, we will not be making enough batteries to solve that problem. Want to solve the CO2 problem? You’d better become a Nuke Power activist – otherwise you are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The one other potential solution is simplification as Killian says, with likely massive population reduction. Unless we get on board with nukes, that will be the most likely path for us, and it will not be voluntary or pretty.
Ray may be right – I may be getting stooopider and stoooopider the more info I get, but I’ll never get to the level of stooopid in #348! And FYI, there are vibrant life ecosystems under and around those Antarctic glaciers.
:)
#345 “RC was tacitly agreeing that regenerative farming might be a panacea.”
Wrong. Dead wrong.
“He can deny this but we all know the truth.”
I deny it.
Stop speaking for others. Speak for yourself only.
Seriously consider giving up making out you’re the supreme resident guru of truth.
Several recently published regenerative agriculture related papers, for anyone interested in learning more.
Transformational adaptation on the farm: Processes of change and persistence in transitions to ‘climate-smart’ regenerative agriculture
Hannah Gosnell et al 2019
Abstract “We conclude that transitioning to regenerative agriculture involves more than a suite of ‘climate-smart’ mitigation and adaptation practices supported by technical innovation, policy, education, and outreach. Rather, it involves subjective, non-material factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity, and emotion that operate at individual, household, and community scales and interact with regional, national and global processes. Findings have implications for strategies aimed at facilitating a large-scale transition to climate-smart regenerative agriculture.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378018309117
Regenerative agriculture – the soil is the base (A Critical Review article)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912420300584
Regenerative agriculture for food and climate
Rattan Lal
Journal of Soil and Water Conservation September 2020
https://www.jswconline.org/content/75/5/123A
Global spread of Conservation Agriculture 06 Aug 2018
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207233.2018.1494927?journalCode=genv20
Regenerative Agriculture: An agronomic perspective (skeptical review)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0030727021998063
Aligning science and policy of regenerative agriculture
First published: 10 September 2020
Abstract – Scientific findings since the 1980s indicate conventional agriculture (CONVA) accounts for 8 to 12% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or 23% of the country’s total anthropogenic forcing of climate change. In contrast, according to the United Nations Environmental Programs (UNEP), regenerative agriculture (RA) practices, such as, no-till (NT) has helped reduce emission of 241 Tg of carbon dioxide (CO2) since the 1970s.
https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/saj2.20162
Restoring soil quality of woody agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands through regenerative agriculture
We conclude that RA has strong potential to restore the physical, chemical and biological quality of soils of woody agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands without compromising their nutritional status, thereby enhancing their resilience to climate change and long term sustainability.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880920303777
Agriculture and climate change Reducing emissions through improved farming practices
April 2020 McKinsey
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/agriculture/our%20insights/reducing%20agriculture%20emissions%20through%20improved%20farming%20practices/agriculture-and-climate-change.pdf
Climate Change and Land
An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems
https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/
IPCC AR5 WG3 Chapter 11 Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU)
January 2014
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280076738_IPCC_AR5_WG3_Chapter_11_Agriculture_Forestry_and_Other_Land_Use_AFOLU
(repost) The Imperative for Regenerative Agriculture by Christopher J. Rhodes
First Published March 1, 2017 Research Article
Using 130 References inside the article.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165
Accessible PDF doc in full
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165
repost of useful search links
Google Scholar
Authors label:regenerative_agriculture
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:regenerative_agriculture
By Title: regenerative_agriculture since 2017
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2017&q=regenerative_agriculture&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Add in Crop Yields
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2017&q=regenerative_agriculture+crop_yeilds&nfpr=1
“The hope was that the soil might save us … perhaps plants — nature’s carbon scrubbers — might be able to package up some of that excess carbon and bury it underground for centuries or longer.”
“Such plans depend critically on the existence of large, stable, carbon-rich molecules that can last hundreds or thousands of years underground. ”
“over the past 10 years or so, soil science has undergone a quiet revolution … almost nobody has heard about it — including many who hope soils can rescue the climate. ”
“Soil researchers have concluded that even the largest, most complex molecules can be quickly devoured by soil’s abundant and voracious microbes. ”
“radioactive dating measurements suggest that some amount of carbon can stay in the soil for centuries. But until soil scientists build a new paradigm to replace the old — a process now underway — no one will fully understand why.”
“We don’t see any molecules in soil that are so recalcitrant that they can’t be broken down,”
“An early idea to increase carbon stores — planting crops without tilling the soil — has mostly fallen flat. When farmers skipped the tilling and instead drilled seeds into the ground, carbon stores grew in upper soil layers, but they disappeared from lower layers. ”
“One important and long-overlooked factor appears to be the three-dimensional structure of the soil environment. Scientists describe soil as a world unto itself, with the equivalent of continents, oceans and mountain ranges. This complex microgeography determines where microbes such as bacteria and fungi can go and where they can’t; what food they can gain access to and what is off limits.”
“Now it’s really clear that soil organic matter is just this loose assemblage of plant matter in varying degrees of degradation,”
“Studies of carbon isotopes have shown that a lot of carbon can stick around in soil for centuries or even longer. If humus isn’t doing the stabilizing, perhaps minerals and aggregates are.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-soil-science-revolution-upends-plans-to-fight-climate-change-20210727/
sidd
Adam Lea @18 (UV page)
“It is tough to get individuals to make an effort (to cut their carbon footprints) beyond the easy stuff like buying low energy light bulbs and recycling, which all helps but isn’t nearly enough….. I don’t think you’ll get very far telling people they can’t fly abroad on holiday”.
I agree that getting absolute reductions in consumption like stopping flying, turning thermostats down low, walking or cycling everywhere looks very difficult. To me reducing carbon footprints mainly requires a substitution process, for example adopting low carbon products like electric or hybrid cars, low carbon cements, zero carbon electricity, reducing red meat consumption by substituting chicken and vegetable protein.
De-industrialisation is probably inevitable sooner or later as a natural occurrence as resources become more scarce, but the idea that we should embrace de-industrialisation deliberately and at huge scale and rapidly looks extremely difficult and problematic. And thats assuming billions of very materialistic people could somehow be persuaded to go along with it. The anthropologist Joseph Tainter found simplification is very difficult with only ONE successful historical example. My view has always been first build a new energy grid, and try to make some realistically achievable reductions in consumption, the low hanging fruit, and “changing the world” is more likely to be a slower longer term project for all sorts of practical and psychological reasons. We might have to complexify to an extent, before we simplify if such a thing is actually possible.
However some people may choose not to fly. For other people it would be challenging to limit their flying, and so the most plausible solution is probably carbon offsets or eventually electric aircraft or biofuels. But if you combined all of these things, so some people reducing flying with others using carbon offsets and some use of alternative fuels it might make a substantial difference. I dont think there are simple solutions to the climate problem. Its going to be messy like this. I’ve made some significant reductions to my own carbon footprint, but some ideas I have given up on because they are just a pain in the neck (including some you mention).
“One of the real problems I see, as someone who has tried to cut my carbon footprint, is that our systems (at least in the UK where I live) punish people for making low carbon choices. I use a bicycle instead of a car for local journeys, that comes with a vulnerability cost, since everyone else is still driving cars. If I want solar PV I have to find thousands of pounds for installation….If I want to use the train instead of the car for long journeys, it costs more than double the price of the petrol for theb equivalent car journey, reduces transport freedom….Even purchasing consumer goods which are advertised as being more sustainable or organic or whatever comes with a financial cost. ….Somehow we have to change the system so that the more destructive practices are more expensive to the consumer (i.e internalise the costs)”
Yes. That’s why its so important to have something like a carbon tax or other incentives. Carbon taxes are great because they punish certain behaviours and the funds collected can subsidise desired activities, or with carbon tax and dividend you return the money to the consumer. New Zealand has introduced subsidies for electric cars:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300331693/government-offers-8625-discount-on-evs-reviving-policy-killed-by-nz-first
“or move from capitalism to a completely different system (e.g. regenerative governance), but I have yet to see a roadmap as to how that could happen in the limited time we have left…..UK citizens are collectively hell-bent on voting for right wing neo-liberal capitalist political parties to run the country since capitalism and economic growth as a metric for quality of life has been programmed into the population for decades.”
“Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, and you have egalitarian group decision making, and the total elimination of hierarchies. Refer material posted on last months FR pages. The idea appears to be that this worked for hunter gatherer culture and they had low inequality and a light environmental footprint so we should just copy them. To me hunter gatheres used such a system because they had virtually no possessions to own anyway, and groups of people were small relative to our huge nation states, and their activities were simple, so of course group decision making would obviously work. No need for complex hierarchies.
Applying all these ancient principles to modern industrial society, even with scaled back industry, doesn’t make sense. Industrial society is based on private ownership and hierarchies. It functions BECAUSE of those things. They are integral to it. Experiments with socialism have largely been failures, or at least very low efficiency, and I hate admitting this because I’m sympathetic to the intentions. Once you erode the dynamic ownership and organisational forces that drive the production of technology, it will stagnate badly as ultimately happened in the Soviet Union. And how on earth would you persuade Americans to go so far left?
There might be a middle ground. Scandinavia combines capitalism and socialism quite effectively, by combining the best of both. That would be an achievable improvement.
KIA 347: Michael Moore’s movie proved it all
BPL: Look again:
https://climatecrocks.com/2020/04/25/planet-of-the-stupid/?fbclid=IwAR1Gl6aV40ZK2wG8_E1uf21PEW48uB-5J0BRnWFiNMkevK8R0QIXJYDoSs0
https://climatefeedback.org/planet-of-the-humans-documentary-misleads-viewers-about-renewable-energy/?fbclid=IwAR0WBhAOHPEV669vmQVmJ9lXUUQW84Fabg7KwQKZQrqPVb__N4fCjkhlVgU
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/what-michael-moore-new-film-gets-wrong-about-renewable-energy
https://www.populationconnection.org/planet-of-the-humans/
But you KNOW that because it was discussed on this blog a long time ago. Yet you bring up this discredited garbage anyway, because you are an incredibly dishonest person.
KIA: The other mitigation possibility is population reduction and Bill Gates has a plan for that
BPL: And KIA veers off into crackpot conspiracy land. What a SURPRISE!
“…the sea wall the Army Corps is proposing – protecting only 6 miles of downtown and the financial district from a storm surge – can’t save Miami and Dade County. Most of the city will be outside the wall, unprotected; the wall will still trap water inside; and the Corps hasn’t closely studied what the construction of a high sea wall would do to water quality…
… there are ways to pair the strength of less obtrusive hardened infrastructure with nature-based “green” solutions. With our colleagues at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the College of Engineering, we have been designing and testing innovative hybrid solutions.”
https://theconversation.com/a-20-foot-sea-wall-wont-save-miami-how-living-structures-can-help-protect-the-coast-and-keep-the-paradise-vibe-165076
MKIA posts nonsense. Don’t waste time engaging. We just need to note for lurkers and folks operating at 4th grade level that mkia’s info is utter nonsense every once in a while.
Cheers
Mike
Mike says “MKIA posts nonsense. Don’t waste time engaging. We just need to note for lurkers and folks operating at 4th grade level that mkia’s info is utter nonsense every once in a while.Cheers”
Yes Mike. Thanks for your sage advice. Just saying somebodies comments are wrong will achieve soooo much. (sarc) I prefer to post a few links as above. Seems BPL does the same. Its no big issue for me. I’m very good at finding information and composing comments incredibly fast. You find some good stuff by M Mann etc.
RtW: “That means that the synfuel making stuff will be sitting around useless half(?) the time.”
NigelJ: So what? Many factories close down at night.
RtW: you mean lots of profitable businesses who’s processes can be started and stopped without significant cost…
As my post noted, synfuel is not way profitable.
But yes, another model is to only accept electrons when they’re free.
I don’t know which would be better. Massively overbuild renewables and shovel the excess to synfuel production or make synfuel with far away nukes.
Whatever
Mr KIA: Synfuel combustion spews CO2 just like any fossil fuel does.
RtW: No. Synfuel uses nuclear or renewable energy and CO2 from the atmosphere (or an exhaust that was headed to the atmosphere) and adds hydrogen, creating, say, methanol, which is stored and then burned, returning the CO2 to the atmosphere. It is true zero carbon (or as much so as any other zero carbon energy source).
In fact, since there is a storage period synfuel can be said to be net carbon negative. The atmosphere’s carbon content will always be reduced from where it would be if another zero carbon source were used.
Some might think the following comments are no different, or only a subtle shift in rhetoric from what has been typical in the past. But to me this sounds a very significant and important shift in language, tone, and emphasis (for the better.) Perhaps a more accurate more honest and forthright appraisal of what the reality has been for a very long time?
from The Guardian How many years until we must act on climate?
We asked a panelist of experts on when we need to start changing our economies and ways of consuming and producing. Their answer: now
Peter Kalmus: ‘Zero Years’
We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate.
Jennifer Francis: ‘We cannot wait’
We need to immediately stop subsidizing all aspects of the fossil fuel industry. – All of these impacts are happening now. If we don’t act fast, many communities, cultures and species will cease to exist.
Michael Mann: ‘Strictly speaking, zero’
How many years do we have to act? Strictly speaking, zero – which is to say, that we must act, in earnest, now. We have a decade within which we must halve global carbon emissions.
Holly Jean Buck: ‘We need action now’
We need to ramp up action now in order to transform all of our major systems by 2050: energy, transportation, industry, agriculture, waste management. We’ll need to eat less meat, farm in ways that store more carbon in the soils, reforest degraded or abandoned land and restore wetlands.
see more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/28/climate-crisis-zero-fossil-fuels-environment
Hopefully many more outspoken commentaries like this from scientists and others will be forthcoming in the lead up to COP26. Though I am not expecting much support from the MSM, social media networks, or the broadcasters.
It’s unfortunate outreach like this from climate scientists is, and will continue to be, falling on deaf ears. Including so many who will be presenting or ‘voting’ on action (inaction) at COP26.
Maybe after that fails yet again, things will get really serious?
Nuclear reactors under construction:
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstructionReactorsByCountry.aspx
China is trying.
Study posted by Sid on soil carbon is rather important:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-soil-science-revolution-upends-plans-to-fight-climate-change-20210727/
Some other excerpts: “Scientists began to suggest that we might be able to coax large volumes of atmospheric carbon back into the soil to dampen or even reverse the damage of climate change.In practice, this has proved difficult…… An early idea to increase carbon stores — planting crops without tilling the soil — has mostly fallen flat…..The Salk scientists zeroed in on a complex, cork-like molecule called suberin, which is produced by many plant roots. Studies from the 1990s and 2000s had hinted that suberin and similar molecules could resist decomposition in soil…. (this turned out to be wrong)….Evidence suggests that when cover crop roots break down, some of their carbon stays in the soil — although as with suberin, how long it lasts is an open question.”
“Last summer, a study published in Nature examined how much carbon dioxide was released when researchers artificially warmed the soil in a Panamanian rainforest to mimic the long-term effects of climate change. They found that the warmed soil released 55% more carbon than nearby unwarmed areas — a much larger release than predicted by most climate models. The researchers think that microbes in the soil grow more active at the warmer temperatures, leading to the increase.”
So claims made about regenerative agriculture rapidly sequestering vast quantities of soil carbon look exaggerated, as I’ve been saying all along. But the great wise prophets on this website “knew better.” But they will claim they have the secret sauce. If its all done exactly as the wise Prophets specify, in precise details and order, with their deep knowledge, all will be well as if by magic, because they say so. ROFL.
#369 Sure but there’s more than one Mr KIA posting nonsense :-)
#351 we all have opinions about things being right/wrong and good or bad; but it’s better to not create our own facts and evidence to support those opinions. A reasonably accurate and reliable source for up-to-date facts is:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/search.aspx?searchtext=CHINA
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/search.aspx?searchtext=RUSSIA
worth bookmarking – https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/New-Nuclear
eg China starts construction of demonstration SMR – 13 July 2021
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/China-starts-construction-of-demonstration-SMR
November, 2017: Nuclear Power? Are Renewables Enough? Michael Shellenberger and Dr. James Hansen (ex-NASA/GISS) press conference at COP-23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1f4BKsFrCA
Feb. 21 2014 – a must read
Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo:
Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions?
James E. Hansen http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140221_DraftOpinion.pdf
“Radiation: The Facts” by Robert Hargraves.
Start with the Radiation 101 side of the page 2.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/NuclearRadiationSafety.2014.pdf
While it’s crystal clear that the modern GenIII+ and GenIV nuclear are far superior and much safer than the past. They even offer the ability to totally destroy and/or use as fuel all current nuclear waste.
Workshop on Advanced Nuclear Energy to Address Climate Change and Air Pollution, December 17-20, 2015
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2015/20151229_Sleepless.pdf
Scientific Reticence: a DRAFT Discussion
26 October 2017 by James Hansen
Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms – That paper, together with Young People’s Burden,2 makes the case for a low global warming target and the urgency of phasing out fossil fuel emissions.
We argue that global warming of 2°C, or even 1.5°C, is dangerous, because these levels are far above Holocene temperatures and even warmer than best estimates for the Eemian, when sea level reached 6-9 meters (20-30 feet)
higher than today.
A public affairs person handling media contacts for the Ice Melt paper reported that a leading science reporter decided not to write about the paper, and later declined to write about the Burden paper, because 5 of the 6 experts he contacted advised against reporting on it. If the top people in a field are negative and do not cite a paper, it is license for others to ignore it, perhaps even a warning to younger researchers. [end quote]
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2017/20171026_ScientificReticence.pdf
Now in 2021, Hansen again is shown to be prescient. I still wonder who the 5 of 6 experts were whose opinions were Hansen had “lost the plot”? I have my suspicions but also think they maybe changing their tunes today.
Dr James Hansen is not only smart, he follows very good processes to arrive at the facts he presents.
November 19 2017: Scientific Reticence: A Threat to Humanity and Nature. Jim Hansen/Pam Pearson/Philip Duffy press conference at COP-23 in Bonn, Germany on 10 November. https://youtu.be/S7z61UZoppM
Each to their own, I suppose.
Evidence Meltdown
The Guardian 5 April 2011
The green movement has misled the world about the dangers of radiation.
By George Monbiot
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/Monbiot.EvidenceMeltdown.Guardian.5April2011.pdf
Opinions abound, sure. Draw your own conclusions. Meanwhile, new nuclear power plants are being built and brought online.
#366 “Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, …”
I have never heard the term “Regenerative governance” before, so I went and checked what it entails. A few example results of that search are nothing like what’s been stated above.
From an unprofessional blog site saying #RegenerativeGovernance is:
#Commons
#EgalitarianDecisionmaking
#ProblemsolvingByScaleoftheIssue
#PermacultureDesignProcess
#DeepSimplicity
#RegenerativeCommunityIncubators
#RegenerativeAgriculture
#EcosystemRestoration
#SmallCommunities
#BioregionalCommunityNetworks
https://permoccupy.wordpress.com/
to a Regenerative Business Summit https://carolsanfordinstitute.com/summit2020/ and then
https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2021/06/10/building-the-foundation-community-self-governance/
and
https://www.earthlaws.org.au/our-programs/greenprints/
Who to believe?
Moving along to something bigger:
I found several more really good recent studies on RegenAg (some with quantifiable SOC improvements), along with a very extensive in-depth project run in New Zealand that has produced a thorough, very detailed comprehensive NZ Govt facilitated White Paper – Regenerative agriculture in Aotearoa New Zealand – research pathways to build science-based evidence and national narratives. came out in February 2021
The executive Summary says:
This white paper is the result of an intensive collaboration and consultation during June to November 2020. More than 70 NZ-based organisations and 200 people participated, collaborators including farmers and growers, researchers, private consultants, industry levy bodies, banks, retailers, not-for-profit organisations, overseas researchers and educators.
The research underpinning this paper aimed to:
(1) better understand what RA means for NZ and
(2) develop a scientific framework for guiding RA research in NZ. It involved qualitative and quantitative online surveys, focus groups and literature / website searches, and focused primarily on what happens within the farmgate.
https://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10182/13899/Grelet_Lang_Feb-2021_Regen_Ag_NZ_White_ePaper.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
I am yet to finish reading it all, but is of very high quality and serious work afaik. Again, I am no expert, so learning as I go, but it is a very active field of endeavor globally by the looks of it to me. Maybe something Scott and K. could be interested in seeing where it goes longer term?
Scroll down to page 45 for detailed 5 Recommendations for RA research
https://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10182/13899/Grelet_Lang_Feb-2021_Regen_Ag_NZ_White_ePaper.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Enjoy.
News report – Farming sector (they just keep coming)
Climate crisis cuts Australian farm profits by a quarter over past 20 years
Reports finds profits could fall by up to 50% within three decades if global emissions are not significantly reduced and farmers don’t adapt to changing climate.
The bureau’s executive director, Dr Jared Greenville, said the report – based on projections by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO – showed seasonal conditions over the past two decades had been “pretty rough for Australian farmers”.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/29/climate-crisis-cuts-australian-farm-profits-by-a-quarter-over-past-20-years
New report by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (Govt Dept)
https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/products/insights/climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation
NigelJ: And how on earth would you persuade Americans to go so far left?
RtW: With the Perfect Pandemic. GOPpers who still possess a few non-entangled neurons are currently using them to ponder whether voting Republican is sane, let alone a good idea.
Sigh. But that evil axiom, “Capitalism in its simplest and purest form is perfect in every way”, is a bugger to exorcise.
Oh, and I’ll do my best to follow Mike’s lead with regard to not responding to MrTroll.
Be strong (but not like a troll’s stench).
Reality Check @378
Reality Check : (quoting myself #366) “Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, …”
Reality Check: “I have never heard the term “Regenerative governance” before, so I went and checked what it entails. A few example results of that search are nothing like what’s been stated above. RC: From an unprofessional blog site saying #RegenerativeGovernance is:
#Commons
#EgalitarianDecisionmaking
#ProblemsolvingByScaleoftheIssue
#PermacultureDesignProcess
#DeepSimplicity
#RegenerativeCommunityIncubators
#RegenerativeAgriculture
#EcosystemRestoration
#SmallCommunities
#BioregionalCommunityNetworks
https://permoccupy.wordpress.com/
NigelJ: Reality Check is wrong to claim that the results he quotes are nothing like what I stated.
A commons IS BY DEFINITION essentially “communal ownership” or “common ownership”. And Killian, who invented the idea of regenerative governance has stated unequivocally it includes common ownership and elimination of most private property. Go back and read the last couple of months FR pages.
And my full comment that RC check conveniently left out referred to egalitarian decison making as follows: “Regenerative governance” appears to be a system with some form of socialised or communal ownership of everything, where private ownership is abolished except for personal possessions like clothes, and you have egalitarian group decision making, and the total elimination of hierarchies.”
Perhaps you made a mistake, perhaps you deliberately left it out. Perhaps you could clarify why you left it out?
At no stage did I claim my comment included EVERY element of regenerative governance. However it should be obvious to anyone that “regenerative governance” and “regenerative agriculture “are actually two different things.
KIA: “The other mitigation possibility is population reduction and Bill Gates has a plan for that ”
Barton Paul Levenson (367): “And KIA veers off into crackpot conspiracy land. What a SURPRISE!”
I was wondering where they get their ideas from. Maybe they confuse the world with movies: (not books – since the KIAs do not strike me as voracious book-readers)
– “Inferno”(2016) – “billionaire villain who believes that rigorous measures were necessary to reduce the Earth’s growing population, releases biological superweapon” that will change the expression of genes, much like the RNA-vaccines according to anti-vaxers are supposed to do.
– “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” (2014) – “a tech billionaire and disillusioned eco-campaigner who desires to save the earth at any cost, believes the global population has swelled to uncontrollable levels, so it requires culling.
His deadly plan is to produce SIM cards that he will distribute freely around the world [like Gates the microchips in free vaccines] which he will then activate by transmitting “neurological wave” worldwide via satellite network, that will both stimulate aggression and reduce inhibition. The resulting “culling” of most of the human race will avert its extinction via global warming”
Sounds familiar? ;-)
378 Reality Check says:
28 Jul 2021 at 11:20 PM
I have never heard the term “Regenerative governance” before, so I went and checked what it entails.
From an unprofessional blog site saying #RegenerativeGovernance is:
#Commons
#EgalitarianDecisionmaking
#ProblemsolvingByScaleoftheIssue
#PermacultureDesignProcess
#DeepSimplicity
#RegenerativeCommunityIncubators
#RegenerativeAgriculture
#EcosystemRestoration
#SmallCommunities
#BioregionalCommunityNetworks
https://permoccupy.wordpress.com/
That’s mine, yes.
to a Regenerative Business Summit
Prima facie nonsense for reasons stated about a million times on these fora.
https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2021/06/10/building-the-foundation-community-self-governance/
Not terrible, but notice what the genesis is? The writer draws purely on existing concepts, 60’s era jingoism, etc., to state the obvious: People need to be included. But look at the words! Given opportunity? By wnom? Who’s the gatekeeper? Yuck!
Regen Gov’s system grew out of actual lived experience: How to run the OccupyDetroit General Assembly for a city of 700k? While only some dozens were ever there at any given meeting, sometimes maybe a hundred-ish, in theory you want everyone having a full voice. My Solution? Neighborhood GA’s. Unbelievably, most people hated this idea! They thought it would steal power from the city GA. It just goes to show how embedded in power politics people really are, even when they think they are not.
Later, I learned most pre-contact societies were some form of egalitarian and lived in networks of villages, just as I had designed for Regen Gov. I tell you, it’s pretty damned cool to find the concept you “invented” turns out to be the best form of gov’t ever created: The only form that provides equality, in every sense while best preserving the ecosystem.
Fitting this to the modern world is not nearly as hard as the rejectivists here want it to be so they can preserve the world they can’t imagine not having – just like the Occ. Detroit people who talked of no one having power then balked at sharing it.
The problem in adapting these ideas to modern societies is the First Nations societies were far simpler and didn’t need more than two levels: camping party and band/indigenous group. (I.e. a given tribe within, say, the Apache Nation.) But we need four, possibly five levels and zero hierarchy. Innovation? Decision purely assigned to level by scale, no other criteria. That is my original concept.
How to transition? Been over this many times so will not repeat details, but basically Opt Out (of the old)/Opt in (to the new) by quite simply DOING regenerative where you are. Capitalism dies without customers. it’s crazy to me people whine and cry and tear their garments over Capitalsim when all they have to do is… stop buying shit and it collapses immediately. So, localize. Do for yourselves. No more Capitalism. This transition can, and should be, incredibly fast. As ever, the devil is in the details, but those details are mostly local. Those that aren’t? Well, that’s why you have city/area and bio-regional levels of decision-making.
As I’ve said too many times: What unsustainable systems we maintain should be limited to critical types of infrastructure: Long-distance transport, communications (internet, etc., for sharing training/info/education especially), medical care, R&D…
I promise every human alive today, this in some form or other must be our future for the next several generations or we will have uncontrolled collapse and very possibly extinction.
Anywho…
https://www.earthlaws.org.au/our-programs/greenprints/
Who to believe?
Only one system exists that harmonizes every issue we face, Regen Gov – my Regen Gov. There’s a website out there using the same name, created long after I created my model, that has a number of flaws.
The other I have never heard of before. Trying to make contact. Sounds a lot like they read my stuff, frankly, but it seems clear they think they can do Capitalism in this framework, which you cannot.
Richard the Weaver @371
“I don’t know which would be better. Massively overbuild renewables and shovel the excess to synfuel production or make synfuel with far away nukes.”
Really hard to say without a time consuming analysis. But your comment highlights an important issue. For me its really hard to see which is better overall: 1) renewables (solar and wind power for this comment) or 2) nuclear power.
Simplifying hugely they both produce safe zero carbon energy. Even including things like Chernobyl nuclear power kills far fewer people than burning fossil fuels. Costs might not be much different between nuclear and renewables if you factor in storage costs with wind and solar power.
They both have some undesirable resource use issues. Its like they are about evenly matched overall, except that that in places like America nuclear is slow to build and there’s a lot of public scepticism about safety. EP says theres no country fully or largely reliant on solar and wind so we dont really know if its feasible or cost effective at scale. MS waves around research papers saying its feasible.
Its like a never ending debate. There might not be a good answer and it will probably sort itself out depending on local conditions.
Gifts that keep on giving:
“nuclear plant cost tops $27B ”
“Two new reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle will cost another billion dollars”
“The company and regulators insist the plant — the first new U.S. reactors in decades — is the best source”
“Customers are already paying for the plant”
“necessity to redo substandard work … leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool”
“We knew building the first new nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years would be challenging. ”
“Every month of delay at Vogtle costs roughly $90 million in capital costs, excluding financing costs.”
https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-georgia-90bbe5cc8e3a1a6077b9e4318e2bbf7e
Some of us of a certain age might recall a slogan: “Too cheap to meter.”
sidd
#375, maybe that journos article (it’s not a study) doesn’t mean what nigel thinks it means?
eg at one point it quotes a soil scientist (?) named Johnathon Sanderson https://twitter.com/sandersoil/status/1367452010916806659
The same Sanderson who says this week on Twitter:
This report is the 1st in our expanding journey into emerging soil carbon markets. Whatever your philosophical stance on carbon markets, they are here. We want to ensure they work for the climate. It was a pleasure working with @eeoldfield @rachelLrubin @alisoneagle2 & others.
https://twitter.com/sandersoil/status/1419722216967753731
Pointing to the scientists who produced a new report:— Agricultural Soil Carbon Credits: Making sense of protocols for carbon sequestration and net greenhouse gas removals — Environmental Defense Fund and the Woodwell Climate Research Center reviewed the 12 published protocols used to generate soil carbon credits through carbon sequestration in croplands.
from https://www.edf.org/soilcarbon as mentioned on their twitter feed that: “…and our recommendations for moving toward credits that can achieve the full mitigation potential of agricultural soils.”
Seems counter-intuitive for Sanderson to be strongly pro-mitigation of “carbon sequestration and net greenhouse gas removals” if he didn’t think soils could sequester Carbon in Soil over time.
Merely FYI for thise of you wasting half or more of this space with this nonsense for the last 2 or 3 years. Talk about opportunity cost!
Still, don’t @ me on this. Address your comments to your fellow time-wasters bc, as I said, posted merely in FYI mode:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lsquo-advanced-rsquo-nuclear-reactors-don-rsquo-t-hold-your-breath/
Neo-classical must go. (Or maybe we do.)
https://profstevekeen.medium.com/economic-failures-of-the-ipcc-process-e1fd6060092e
nigelj @375:
That’s sad. Hardly surprising (the failure of panaceas to pan out should be taken for granted), but still sad.
Nigel,
You appeared to take offense with my laziness, thinking that I treated you like “the former guy” or something.
No. I was talking to EP and I remembered something someone said. It was not a significant issue and points could be made on both sides (dedicated nuclear and synfuel located where efficiency is maximized, capital cost is minimized, safety is absolute, and terrorism is essentially impossible, or let the synfuel stuff sit around idle while waiting for free or negative cost excess production).
So no, I didn’t read all the pages I scanned so as to make a pointless attribution. And yes, I can see how that could be misinterpreted as a slight.
Reality Check: We need to ramp up action now in order to transform all of our major systems by 2050: en
RtW: yeah, and the real problem is the logarithmic nature of reductions. It may take X effort to drop emissions 10% but the next 10% will take much more effort.
This is exacerbated by the evilly attractive elephant in the room: natural gas counts as a huge reduction even though it contributes nothing at all to the final system. In fact, building bridges to nowhere prevents actual productivity.
The USA-driven rush to natural gas is worse than keeping coal plants open. The coal plants were going to close from old age anyway. This just lets the GOPpers start a new round of wickedly profitable fossil foolishness.
Richard the Weaver @392 I accept that explanation. And I think I might have misinterpreted what you meant by renewables and got a bit bad tempered, so sorry about that. I get tired of the personal attacks by certain other people, and it sometimes puts me on edge like that. Forget about it.
Reality Check @388
“#375, maybe that journos article (it’s not a study) doesn’t mean what nigel thinks it means? eg at one point it quotes a soil scientist (?) named Johnathon Sanderson The same Sanderson who says this week on Twitter:This report is the 1st in our expanding journey into emerging soil carbon markets. Whatever your philosophical stance on carbon markets, they are here. We want to ensure they work for the climate. It was a pleasure working with @eeoldfield @rachelLrubin @alisoneagle2 & others….”
This is the journos article:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-soil-science-revolution-upends-plans-to-fight-climate-change-20210727/
Reality check saying “that journo (its not a study)”. This is verging on an ad hominem. And ironically “that journo” is no light weight journo: “Gabriel Popkin is a freelance science and environmental writer based in Mount Rainier, Md., just outside the nation’s capital. He has written for Science, Nature, The New York Times, Johns Hopkins Magazine, APS News and many others.”
I’m not wrong about what the article means. My only comment was that it might invalidate claims that soils can rapidly sequester massive amounts of carbon argued by some on this website over recent months. This is OBVIOSLY a correct deduction, given the article says: “Scientists began to suggest that we might be able to coax large volumes of atmospheric carbon back into the soil to dampen or even reverse the damage of climate change.In practice, this has proved difficult…… An early idea to increase carbon stores — planting crops without tilling the soil — has mostly fallen flat…“Last summer, a study published in Nature examined how much carbon dioxide was released when researchers artificially warmed the soil in a Panamanian rainforest to mimic the long-term effects of climate change. They found that the warmed soil released 55% more carbon than nearby unwarmed areas — a much larger release than predicted by most climate models”.
Reality Check justifies his claims that I’m misinterpreting the article by referring to “Johnathon Sanderson The same Sanderson who says this week on Twitter:This report is the 1st in our expanding journey into emerging soil carbon markets….” But quoting one person out of several mentioned in the article doesn’t prove a single thing about the content of the article. Reality check needs to focus on the CONTENT of the article and prove the claims wrong. Maybe they are wrong but this has not been demonstrated.
And there is other research showing that as soils warm they release CO2. This guardian article discusses the issue:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/05/carbon-emissions-warming-soils-higher-than-estimated-signalling-tipping-points
Here’s the related peer reviewed, published study:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6359/101
Engineer-Poet @391, yes sad, but regenerative agriculture still looks like it can usefully sequester at least some carbon, and there just don’t appear to be any downsides to this. I just like accuracy and getting to what can really be achieved.
Sidd says “Some of us of a certain age might recall a slogan (relating to nuclear power): “Too cheap to meter.”
I remember and as a teenager I thought “too good to be true”. But listen, we have several power sources, wind solar, nuclear, geothermal etc, and lets not forget they are all clean zero carbon power and really the main problem is scaling things up more quickly, and getting people to move on this.
#385, thanks killian, that was very interesting to hear.
Found this recently. Not regen gov, coming at things from a traditional academic social govt framework while making some out there non-traditional ‘extreme’ recommendations::
Via Twitter
Jefim Vogel Jun 30 2021
24/ We conclude that governments everywhere should improve and expand public services, increase income equality, strengthen democracy, provide basic infrastructures, and scale back extractive industries – and stop economic growth in affluent or moderately affluent countries.
25/ These changes might enable affluent countries to slash their energy use & emissions without undermining human well-being, and enable less affluent countries to achieve decent living standards without huge growth in energy use that would further exacerbate climate breakdown.
https://twitter.com/JefimVogel/status/1410194997589254148
OR https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1410189745309749249.html
(Full paper)
Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use:
No country sufficiently meets human needs within sustainable levels of energy use.
Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without relying on negative emissions technologies requires not only rapid decarbonisation of global energy systems but also deep reductions in global energy use (Grubler et al., 2018, IPCC, 2018).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021000662
iirc, greed and waste were considered ‘crimes’ in indigenous societies all over the world in the past.
or look at this from France?
Making Peace with the Earth—The Diplomatic Turn by Patrick Degeorges
Partnership with the Earth is the post-environmental paradigm that needs to replace the sustained unsustainability of parasitic and predatory economic growth. The health of people, the health of societies,and the health of ecosystems are indeed inseparable. The urge to preserve this Common Health lies in the future that it makes possible, as much as in the need to reconnect with time-tested traditional ecological wisdom.
https://ecocene.kapadokya.edu.tr/index.php/ecocene/article/view/75/48
I think these approaches and attitudes (including RegenAg/Governance) are more common getting more air-play today than a decade ago. Still low key though, not mainstream. And will continue to be outright dismissed by many as the crazy left or marxist rubbish. Which is fine of course. Everyone has their opinions about everything.
But even the conservative ‘greenwasher’ M Mann seems to is veering off the plantation at times these days. Could be another sign of the times?
#385
NigelJ: Reality Check is wrong to claim that the results he quotes are nothing like what I stated.
I’m quite content with what I said before. Thanks for sharing your opinion though.
Go back and read the last couple of months FR pages.
No thanks. Not interested.
Perhaps you could clarify why you left it out?
Not going to happen. It’s too entertaining wondering and watching what you’ll do with such ‘mysterious happenings.’
About the UCS ‘Advanced’ Nuclear Reactor Designs report, I think it’s a bit of a PR puff piece. As biased as any industry PR report, it misses a lot and seems guided by confirmation bias. Others will find it really compelling. That’s OK too.
But it appears not to be a scientific based Literature Review study, nor peer reviewed. And I can’t understand why Lyman didn’t go visit the IAEA first and get their data, input, and research results of the last several decades and, more importantly, the recent developments state of play. The key questions the UCS report asks are already answered there I believe. The IAEA are not radicals.
Given he appears to think highly of the IAEA with one of his recommendations on pg 117 of the full report (here https://ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/ucs-rpt-AR-3.21-web_Mayrev.pdf ) saying: “The United States should make all new reactors and associated fuel facilities eligible for IAEA safeguards and provide that agency with the necessary resources for carrying out verification activities.” – why ignore IAEA input?
And UCS Lyman only evaluates 3 designs, with too much focus on the USA situation only, eg they ignore the HTR-PM history in China completely.
There are six NLWR designs covered by the IAEA and GIF. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-GIF-call-for-faster-deployment-of-next-genera 2020 and https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-and-gif-to-cooperate-on-integrated-energy-systems-nuclear-heat-applications-and-advanced-manufacturing 2021.
Consider: “Specifically for the USA, it is important to note that advanced reactor RD&D efforts are not occurring in a vacuum, and that progress in advanced reactor development in other countries should elicit commensurate increases in funding, policy support and programmes that have facilitated significant achievements by the American advanced nuclear industry so far.”
and “A common misconception about advanced nuclear technologies is that they are largely conceptual and will not be commercialised in time to contribute to meeting near-term climate goals, but a comprehensive look at global efforts to develop advanced nuclear reveals rapid progress towards commercialisation and operation, write Clean Air Task Force, ClearPath, Nuclear Innovation Alliance, Pillsbury and Third Way.”
see here https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Viewpoint-Advanced-reactor-development-makes-rapid and the full June 2021 report https://www.advancednuclearenergy.org/product/advanced-reactors-turning-the-corner – The latter being a biased industry PR report.
It is what it is. I don’t know what the whole truth might be. But both ‘opinions’ can’t be correct or equal. Opinions vary with the ‘evidence’ used to underpin those views varying too. Whatever the best way forward is, won’t be decided here. Each to their own, but good to see different ideas and sources being shared.
Every mitigation idea gets push back from someone because someone isn’t going to like it for all kinds of reasons. Might turn out that none of them will be good enough or make any difference GHG mitigation at all.
So it’s all going to be moot? :-)