Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: An4ximandros on May 18, 2014, 02:16:05 pm
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/climate-change-antarctica-glaciers-melting-global-warming-nasa
"Something Something Ron Paul Meme Image"
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Well, ****.
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Stop the alarmism, Jor-El. Krypton is fine. The real problem is jobs
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That's what Zod said.
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Everything is a problem as of this late. Humanity is doomed, the cause: Selfies.
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il worry when i cant go downtown without getting my feet wet.
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A century should be enough to put up the flood guards/raise the existing ones. A 5m-high ocean-proof wall along the coastal residential areas might not be cheap, but should certainly be doable.
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il just move to higher ground, after looting the lowlands of course.
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I'll enjoy my new ocean-front property, but something tells me Vancouver won't :p
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so we have 100 years to put domes over everything
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A century should be enough to put up the flood guards/raise the existing ones. A 5m-high ocean-proof wall along the coastal residential areas might not be cheap, but should certainly be doable.
Funny how most of the folks who have contributed the least to this problem are going to get boned the hardest with no recourse while the folks who have contributed the most can just throw money at the problem and retreat behind walls :P
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I'll enjoy my new ocean-front property, but something tells me Vancouver won't :p
i already live 3 (small) blocks from the water.
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A century should be enough to put up the flood guards/raise the existing ones. A 5m-high ocean-proof wall along the coastal residential areas might not be cheap, but should certainly be doable.
More jobs for everyone!
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they forgot to add "terrorists" to the URL list of buzzwords.
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They also forgot to share with us the knowledge that these models predict the "total loss" of this basin within some tens of thousands of years, raising the level of the water some centimeters per century...
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/18/sea-level-rise-tipping-points/
But why should facts stop us from doing all the usual panic? It's such fun and we also get our 2 minutes of rage against those evil people who use fossil fu... oh ****.
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"I been to the year three thousand,
nothing has changed but we live underwater...."
Who'd have thought a McBusted song would be so prophetic?
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They also forgot to share with us the knowledge that these models predict the "total loss" of this basin within some tens of thousands of years, raising the level of the water some centimeters per century...
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/18/sea-level-rise-tipping-points/
Science reporting is ****, news at 11.
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Yes, but that is how public discussion is done nowadays. Scientific reports that are complex, have insightful but subtle reasonings, lots of caveats and nuance, are shared with the public with titles such as "Holy ****, Antartica is breaking apart and we can't stop it anymore", then we have all the Bill Mahers of this world discussing this "Why don't we do smth about this for chrissakes, the world is crumbling apart in front of our very own eyes", while the Limbaughs will just "meh stupid scientists and librals there's ZERO in this", and then they wonder why the US is so "polarized" in their viewpoints. Everyone is in their own ideological bubble and make no efforts whatsoever to peek outside of it. The fault isn't with the people, this is systematic, for instance if the news organizations don't abide to reckless reportings like these they will be ignored against the most reckless ones.
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I'll enjoy my new ocean-front property, but something tells me Vancouver won't :p
Vancouver's mostly fine. Richmond's ****ed.
I wonder who owns Antarctica, and who gets to move there once it melts.
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International treaties govern it's status, it's pretty much universally agreed to leave Antarctica alone, except for scientists. That could be an interesting experiment, TBH. Life is resilient, if Antarctica melts, a unique ecosystem will certainly form.
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I think the sea level rise aspect of Antarctic Ice Sheet tipping points is the least relevant to our generation and also the least interesting.
What would it do to the energy balance, or atmospheric and ocean circulation?
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Mostly nothing? If anything, sea ice around Antarctica has been going northward, not southward, which in a way is a regional negative feedback on global warming.
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I was speaking of other effects of the long term deglaciation of Antarctica, not current sea ice trends.
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IANAclimate scientist but it'll reduce Earth's albedo, right? That seems like it could be some nasty positive feedback.
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Yes. and Less albedo in poles will produce patterns in rainfall change.
Climate change will also produce changes in polar jet streams. Polar ice loss leads to less strength in jet stream, and jet stream begins to assume a more sigmoid appearance. Acrtic sea ice loss while not important in terms of SLR, is important in terms of salinity and ocean currents.
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There are many effects here to take into consideration. On one hand, if land becomes ice-free, the Albedo goes down and that's a positive feedback to take into consideration. But on the other hand, a little warming in the Antarctica has so far created more sea ice area than before:
(https://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/images//arc_antarc_1979_2012.png)
And unlike the Artic complete meltdown (and its dangerous positive feedback), the sea around Antarctica is getting its albedo higher and higher, creating a negative feedback. This might also help explain why the southern hemisphere has hardly any detectable warming for the past 30 years, unlike the northern hemisphere.
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IANAclimate scientist but it'll reduce Earth's albedo, right? That seems like it could be some nasty positive feedback.
Precisely. Any exposed landmass and ocean has lower albedo than the ice which was covering it, so the deglaciation of Antarctica would entail a positive albedo feedback. It is not likely that we would see this feedback take hold in our lifetimes, however, even if the OP content is right in claiming that it is now too late to prevent it. We may have passed the tipping point but the ice sheets will still probably remain stable for centuries or even millennia.
So, folks, don't worry about sea level rising tens or hundreds of meters any time soon. The best estimates for sea level rise during this century are ~1 meter, with error bars of course. About a third of that rise comes from thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm, and rest comes from melting land ice.
[IANA climate scientist either -- I just follow current research and have taken some courses in atmo physics, climate dynamics, and a fair deal of astrophysics carries over as well.]
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@Luis:
Antarctic sea ice extent increases at present for a combination of reasons:
-The continent is well isolated (in a thermodynamic sense) from the rest of the planet, by the southern circumpolar current and wind field
-Glacial melt produces a layer of cold fresh water around the ice shelfs, which is much easier to freeze.
It is not known how long this positive trend will continue, though it is expected to reverse eventually as various thresholds are passed.
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Your first reason is incompatible with the assertion that Antarctica is warming. Your second is very near to what I've been told about the subjcet too, although the version that I heard of also included a narrative wherein a warming Antarctica meant a little bit of more evaporation and rain, but in this case, snow, which tends to increase the rate of the formation of ice sheets over the sea.
Nevertheless, the point I was trying to make is that the albedo in the region is increasing in a very large area, and that's at least a bit of a good news.
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Your first reason is incompatible with the assertion that Antarctica is warming.
No, it's really not. Antarctica warming slowly does not preclude it warming at all.
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Yes, that makes sense.
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Your first reason is incompatible with the assertion that Antarctica is warming.
It is warming at a slower rate than its surroundings, which changes the pressure gradient and thus wind field. This wind can help to push sea ice out to greater distances.
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From what I understand, the kicker with Antarctica isn't that the sea ice is expanding, but that the land ice sheets are thinning comparatively quickly, and that isn't good news for anyone.
The one issue I really have with this level of doom-and-gloom is that it operates on the assumption that humanity won't be capable of actively counteracting climate change as the decades progress. I mean at some point, we're going to figure out effective large-scale artificial carbon sinks, or solar reflector systems, or the like. Will they be massive engineering feats that are, for the foreseeable future, prohibitively expensive? Of course. But that doesn't mean they won't happen.
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They are not prohibitely expensive. They are actually very very cheap, in comparison with ending co2 emissions. The big problem is that once we start doing that, we are acknowledging we have the control of the earth's climate. I seriously doubt all the big institutions of this world are prepared for this kind of responsibility. Actually, I'm pretty sure they are not, which is why people are ****ing scared of that level of discussion.
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I refuse to stop smoking excessively because I am scared to death of the idea of acknowledging control over the health of my lungs.
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What's the problem? Ice sheets are an exception in the history of Earth, not a rule.
As long as you don't live in Venice, you're fine. :p
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The one issue I really have with this level of doom-and-gloom is that it operates on the assumption that humanity won't be capable of actively counteracting climate change as the decades progress.
The problem from that statement is that it assumes that we most certainly will have that ability in the future. Currently we are still developing an understanding of how the climate works in the first place.
Also, I bet a lot of people expected us to have developed hydrogen by now. It's not a good idea to plan your work aroudn technology which does not exist yet.
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I refuse to stop smoking excessively because I am scared to death of the idea of acknowledging control over the health of my lungs.
This analogy is as out of the ballpark as an ant is to a titanossaurus. No wait, at least this one is comparing a similar thing like size, whereas what you are referring to isn't. Geoengineering isn't like stop smoking in any conceivable way. A better analogy would be to start to throw some untested aerossols into your lungs until it stops overheating.
But the problems are bigger than this. It implies geopolitics actually coming together to solve this issue, there exists actual trust between countries and institutions even when problems and unforeseen consequences arise, these tools aren't served as weaponry, etc., etc.
Just looking into current geopolitical events, it's ****ing obvious to me we aren't mature enough as a civilization in order to begin a project of controlling such a beast like the climate.
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I'll enjoy my new ocean-front property, but something tells me Vancouver won't :p
Richmond is going to be screwed...
Vancouver's mostly fine. Richmond's ****ed.
I wonder who owns Antarctica, and who gets to move there once it melts.
...Oh you beat me to it
Wait, just how many people live here from HLP
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I refuse to stop smoking excessively because I am scared to death of the idea of acknowledging control over the health of my lungs.
This analogy is as out of the ballpark as an ant is to a titanossaurus. No wait, at least this one is comparing a similar thing like size, whereas what you are referring to isn't. Geoengineering isn't like stop smoking in any conceivable way. A better analogy would be to start to throw some untested aerossols into your lungs until it stops overheating.
But the problems are bigger than this. It implies geopolitics actually coming together to solve this issue, there exists actual trust between countries and institutions even when problems and unforeseen consequences arise, these tools aren't served as weaponry, etc., etc.
Just looking into current geopolitical events, it's ****ing obvious to me we aren't mature enough as a civilization in order to begin a project of controlling such a beast like the climate.
The analogy is to show the absurdity of stating 'control' as the conscientious cessation of an activity which was having the effect in question.
By smoking heavily, one is affecting their lungs. By stopping, he may perhaps be taking controlling over his behavior (if the smoking was an uncontrolled addiction; our use of fossil fuels might also be said to be an addiction), but he is not suddenly starting to control his health. He was doing that already by smoking. By burning fossil fuels and releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere, we are affecting the climate. It is absurd to say that we suddenly control the climate by choosing to adopt mitigation strategies.
Now if you originally meant to say that you are scared of geo-ingineering (the use of measures to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, or even more drastically, the application of negative forcings to try to counteract the GHG forcing), then you are in good company because such choices are indeed terrifying, particularly by the law of unintended consequences. But stating that regulation/reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is scary because this implies acknowledging control of the climate system is really silly.
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Now if you originally meant to say that you are scared of geo-ingineering [sic]
What really annoys me in this passage is that you speak as if the conversation isn't stored up here for everyone to follow. If you take the actual effort of reading what I said and in what context, you'll realise it's ****ing obvious I was referring to Mongoose's geoengineering comment. So please bear in mind that conversations are pretty useless if "reading" isn't taking place?
Also, the analogy between "smoking addictions" and fossil fuels is absolutely asinine. If you stop smoking, your body doesn't enter in a coma, which is what would happen if you were to cut off any co2 emmissions. Smoking is a practice made for pleasure, while we emit CO2 in every major most important functions of our economy, circulation, energy, food industry, etc. To paint "co2 emmissions" as being something of an "addiction" like "smoking" is severely underestimating the ordeal of cutting "the addiction", while also painting the civilization with a misanthropic obnoxious color (we don't even have the guts to stop our addictions!).
Lowering emissions is almost impossible at this point. While some efficiency may drive lower emissions in the developed world, the developing world is skyrocketing their own emissions, and due to their lower efficiency and higher population numbers, soon their emissions will dwarf anything the developed world emits (let alone "cuts"). To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.
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If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Impoverished... so like if a bunch of industrial jobs dried up... bleh. Maybe they'd be better off with a total economic collapse. You don't need money to get food, water, and shelter1... maybe you need money for decent medical care, but... bleh.
BLEH
1Talking about living off the land, not 4-finger discount
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To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.
Why not cut straight from the fossil fuel burning crap to alternatives which are far less reliant on natural resources? More profit for the whole world in the long run.
Short run too.
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Why not cut straight from the fossil fuel burning crap to alternatives which are far less reliant on natural resources? More profit for the whole world in the long run.
Short run too.
This is a complex issue, but basically, it boils down to "No, not really, and not for the whole world".
See, the thing is, the cleaner, more efficient tech we're used to is only available from western producers. So a developing country can either stick to simple, if unclean, tools and get their economy going, or they can go into debt to first world countries in order to get tech they can't really service. Guess what, taking up credit is not exactly something that these people want to do, and getting told by the first world that no, they aren't allowed to bootstrap themselves to modernity using the tried and tested methods is also not exactly endearing.
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Time to fire up Powolskis Nucular Reactor.
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To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.
Why not cut straight from the fossil fuel burning crap to alternatives which are far less reliant on natural resources? More profit for the whole world in the long run.
Short run too.
There's a slim hope that if solar (+storage) continues its skyrocketing progress then it will be something that can be used by developing countries. Probably the best hope we have, that and nuclear.
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I feel ignored/unappreciated :(
Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?
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I feel ignored/unappreciated :(
Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?
I'm trying to think of a way to answer this that isn't condescending, but I can't.
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Life without the Internets and vidya games isn't even worth living as far as I'm concerned.
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I feel ignored/unappreciated :(
Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?
Believe me, ignored and unappreciated is way better than the alternative. Your comment was not unseen. Fortunately, I can forget it.
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Ok, let me try an example:
If development stagnates, jobs will dry up. Unemployed people will run out of money and not be able to afford things like food, medicine, or shelter.
See? Easy. Not condescending at all. Then I could respond with something like this:
But people had food, medicine, and shelter before those jobs existed, and the population increase that has occurred during the current period of rapid development is not large enough to rule out returning to the means they used beforehand.
But if you start with these "I can't think of a reply that isn't condescending" charades, it doesn't work.
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People actually didn't have food, medicine, and shelter at a modern standard before these jobs existed, so your whole chain of logic breaks down. Famine and pandemic were defining aspects of historical life. The 20th century saw some of the worst famines in history triggered by attempts to forcibly realign economic structures.
You're neglecting the fact that economic improvement isn't simply about more money. It's actually about real increases in productivity. And much of what's produced is vital for sustaining a decent standard of living. This fact is so basic that I can't blame people for being shocked you'd neglect it, and worse yet is the ramification: that you would prefer to see most of the world return to the era of routine mass death in order to maintain modernity in your own piece of the Earth.
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The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
s/white man/capitalism
and worse yet is the ramification: that you would prefer to see most of the world return to the era of routine mass death in order to maintain modernity in your own piece of the Earth.
If your premises have led you to an absurd conclusion, e.g. that Aardwolf is a colossal dick (see quote above), you should probably reëxamine those premises, e.g. stagnation1 must always lead to poverty, famine, etc..
1Stagnation, the cessation of growth. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely.
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If you continue to push an absurd argument that makes you look like a colossal dick, perhaps you should reexamine your argument. Let me quote you directly: you advocated returning to the means they used beforehand.
Most of the economic growth we experienced in the last century was due to increased productivity per unit input. We had to spend fewer units of labor, resources, and land to get a given output. If we rolled that back - let's say fifty years - we would be looking at a massive decrease in productivity per unit input. We would need to use vastly more resources to maintain exactly the output we have now. Or we would need to step our output down: and that includes the very output used to distribute necessary resources, which we are already not doing very well at.
You are advocating for a collapse in productivity per unit input: in other words, a return to the time in which we had to work much harder to feed, heal, and shelter a given number of people. You are advocating for a return to famine, pandemic, and demographic disaster.
Let's say that instead you advocate for a freeze on productivity. Freezing development exactly where it stands - with the developing world lagging in life expectancy, per capita income, available education, happiness, and every other population metric of real interest to assessing human suffering - would maintain a broken status quo (which is cause enough to indict your agenda). In fact, it would exacerbate that unjust status quo, because it would prevent the developing world from creating and reinvesting capital.
Your fundamental mistake seems to be the belief that economic development is a process of increasing resource input. Development is about getting more out of a given volume of resources. Civilization was only able to break out of the Malthusian trap when economic growth was able to boom ahead of population growth. This was the key to demographic transition and to massive quality-of-life improvement.
Let me restate this as succinctly as I can:
By advocating stagnation in the developing world, you are calling for the termination of improvements to public health, food supply, sanitation, and education. Without this kind of capital development, societal equilibriums will be maintained by pure Malthusian limits - in other words, by the population slamming up against the subsistence cap and dying to equilibrium.
And your basic fear of unsustainable infinite expansion is baseless. The world's population will not expand indefinitely. This is the key to sustainability, not shackling ourselves to a Malthusian trap - and the way to a stable population is not backwards, it's forwards.
(all of this without touching on the massive additional problem of what would happen after imposed stagnation - )
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Maybe this is the simplest example that can drive the point home:
A steady-state resource economy, one which extracts resources only as fast as they are replaced, can still experience economic growth. Resources can be used to develop ways to better use resources.
A resource economy that pulls resources less quickly than they are replaced can still experience economic growth.
The key is in increasing factor productivity. And over the past century, increased factor productivity has been responsible for the lion's share of growth, not increased resource use.
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1Stagnation, the cessation of growth. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely.
First, economy can grow also based on increased efficiency, technological progress etc. Even if our CO2 emissions stagnated, economic growth would be slower but it would continue for a long time to come, perhaps even indefinitely. Economic growth is not inherently bad for the Earth. Unsustainable economic growth may be.
People in the past did not have abundant access to food, shelter and medicine like we do. Many people in the present still dont. Maybe you can make an argument that wealthy nations should prioritise sustainability over economic growth (and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant). But many third world people cannot afford this luxury. And it would be very unethical to ask them to do so.
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(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)
I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.
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(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)
I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.
When it comes to developed nations, CO2 emissions are stagnant for decades, ever since 70s. It is not due to economic depression.
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(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)
I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.
Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution, the one which the greens are having aneurisms for. But that's the greens for you, always against anything remotely new that can disturb the status quo.
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(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)
I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.
Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution, the one which the greens are having aneurisms for. But that's the greens for you, always against anything remotely new that can disturb the status quo.
Yes, I'm sure that's the opposition to fracking; the fact that it changes the status quo.
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Anything that remotely changes the status quo becomes a threat to these guys. Nuclear can solve the whole climate change thing, and being at the same time the safest energy technology ever invented? Oh darn that cannot be it, they must be hiding the corpses somewhere, I got these conspiracy papers that tell me at least a million died in Chernobyl, this **** is too dangerous for mankind, this is not the solution!
Alright, so lets build water dam.... WHAT are you talking you ecossystemic threat! Dams are the worst **** ever invented for local ecossystems, they change everything, what about the fishes that try to go up the river, what abo
OK OK, sigh, so what about this wind thing, can we get it to work, like, you always digged win.... HAVEN'T You noticed the skyrocketing numbers of birds being killed in their blades? Are you this ****ing BLIND and IMPERVIOUS to nature's suffering? Clearly you are borderline psych
OOOKK man, jesus, alright, so what about solar? It's getting up and up and eventually it will give us the ent.... PATHETIC. You obviously failed to notice the eggregious amounts of toxic materials these evil corporations are using in these panels, we will kill the environment sooner rather than lat
I GIVE UP, what the HELL do you propose THEN?
Well, I thought it was obvious, I mean even Aardwolf gets it perfectly right: we should simply stop consuming, this capitalist world is just terribad and the caves were just awesome.
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The last time I checked, basically all "greens" like solar and wind power a whole lot and want to see more of it, not less. In what country is the opposite true?
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Aye, in the UK anti-wind power campaigns are mainly the domain of the rural right wing, who are pretty much diametrically opposed to the Greens.
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I'm sorry Luis, but Greens in the U.S. do love wind and solar, despite wind turbines killing migrating birds left and right. Apparently its okay to harm animal species if you're an "approved" power source, but things that doesn't have the official stamp of approval like clean natural gas and clean nuclear get hated at every turn.
For those unaware, the U.S. has immense reserves of shale-locked natural gas we need to frack to get. What makes getting at it so vital to the environmental cause is all that gas would allow us to convert existing coal plants to burn CNG instead of coal, drastically cutting emissions.
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I would guess that there is significant overlap between the group of people that is most adamant about moving us exclusively to renewables and the group of people that is most easily alarmed by the environmental drawbacks of those renewables. I don't know if those concerns have much of an impact on the overall platform of the green party here in the US though.
It is true though that every time a windmill kills an endangered bird an oil tycoon gets a boner.
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The primary backlash against fracking (at least from what I saw; this is not an objective claim) was that it had a tendency to turn water supplies flammable near fracking sites.
Which of course is mostly false, but when did that ever stop anyone?
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If you continue to push an absurd argument that makes you look like a colossal dick, perhaps you should reexamine your argument.
No. You made assumptions about what my argument is, and those assumptions were untrue.
Specifically, it seems you assumed that I was advocating reverting to ye olden food/medicine/shelter technology. Why would I advocate cutting the essentials, when there are things that are wasteful and unnecessary like automobiles and bottled water1 that could be cut? I wouldn't, and I didn't.
In case you didn't understand the rationale for including the Sitting Bull quote: we have the technological and industrial means to leave no person unfed, unclothed, or unsheltered. We also have the means to make a whole lot of unnecessary consumer goods and to burn a whole lot of unnecessary fuel getting people and things from one place to another, and turn this planet into Venus II in the process. We can do one without the other. Take a guess which one I'm advocating.
@SpardaSon21: Yes, natural gas is better than coal, but reduced consumption is better than both, and especially better than natural gas + poisoned water.
@swashmebuckle, Spardason21: I think that birds-hitting-windmills thing is greatly exaggerated. Although IIRC it does cause trouble for bats?
@Scotty: "mostly false"? It's definitely true in some places. And it's not just flammable water, it's also the fact they're putting a slurry of (probably) toxic chemicals down to break up the rock. Chemicals which are kept secret, presumably because it would be very bad publicity if word got out. Secret even from the government, because Dick Cheney made a deal with the fracking companies that the government wouldn't ask what they were putting in the slurry as long as they promised they weren't putting diesel fuel in the slurry... and of course once that deal got made, they could have gone right back to putting diesel fuel in it and nobody would know. And there's also been a substantial increase in the severity and frequency of earthquakes in high-fracking areas.
1I am aware that in some places the availability of potable water is a serious concern. I am not talking about cutting bottled water in those places. Do I really have to explicitly state that the position I'm advocating isn't the absurd one you'd get if you didn't apply common sense exceptions? Don't answer that.
Edited to add replies to more recent posts
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when there are things that are wasteful and unnecessary like automobiles and bottled water that could be cut?
Erm, since when are automobiles "wasteful and unnecessary"? Look, I'm all for people to use public transport and walk short distances instead of using their cars. But, can everyone on the planet get anywhere they need to go, while transporting what they need with them, without using any sort of personal motor vehicle? Unless that's true, automobiles are hardly unnecessary.
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If you continue to push an absurd argument that makes you look like a colossal dick, perhaps you should reexamine your argument.
No. You made assumptions about what my argument is, and those assumptions were untrue.
No assumptions were even necessary. You missed a basic truth of development - the increased efficiency per unit input that technological and capital growth enables. You asked why development couldn't be left to stagnate: ergo you asked why we can't just stop making factor productivity more efficient.
Again, you flat out asked what was bad about stagnation. Now you're asking why we can't be more efficient with what we have. These are opposite requests. Development over the course of the twentieth century was the process of learning how to make more out of less.
1I am aware that in some places the availability of potable water is a serious concern. I am not talking about cutting bottled water in those places. Do I really have to explicitly state that the position I'm advocating isn't the absurd one you'd get if you didn't apply common sense exceptions? Don't answer that.
You will get common sense exceptions when your argument displays common sense.
The end you are arguing for is sane. It's the road map you have for getting there that's utterly disconnected from reality.
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You proposed letting development stagnate in the third world. 'What's so bad about stagnation?' Stagnation is the failure to do more with less (thanks to smarter, healthier, more developed people and systems). That's what is bad about stagnation from a sustainability standpoint: it is the road to the Malthusian trap.
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Here is an absurd argument:
Let their development stagnate, in all fields, including the essentials for survival, i.e. food/water/shelter/clothing/medicine, while at the same time continuing to increase their population and rate of consumption.
Notice how as your remove some of those caveats the argument becomes less absurd. Now let's try looking at my actual argument:
Consume less, and don't reproduce so much. If reduced consumption causes factories to close and people to lose their jobs, there is still enough food/water/shelter/clothing/medicine to hypothetically support everyone, if only it can be distributed sanely.
Note that "consume less" was effectively the first thing I said. Then notice how I considered the fact that people would lose their jobs, and said "bleh" a lot, because if we can't distribute stuff sanely that's going to be a bad time1 for a lot of people. And the thought of that displeases me, hence "bleh".
I then proceeded to ask what's so bad about stagnation. Apparently people can't take a "what's so bad about" question at face value. It would've been nice if somebody would've articulated what the problem is. The best answer I can extract from what you guys have said is "If you do it stupidly, it will be very bad." (which I already knew), and I had to come up with "To do it smartly would require a significantly different economic system" on my own (although I sort of already knew that one too).
When did I ask if we can't be more efficient? When I used the words "wasteful and unnecessary?, I wasn't talking about "make the process of making plastic for bottled water more efficient", I'm saying "drink tapwater".
1Understatement
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Uh, "consume less and don't reproduce as much" is very much not what you actually said.
]Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?
This has been explained to you in detail. It has also been explained to you that development leads directly to consuming less per unit produced.
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I then proceeded to ask what's so bad about stagnation. Apparently people can't take a "what's so bad about" question at face value. It would've been nice if somebody would've articulated what the problem is. The best answer I can extract from what you guys have said is "If you do it stupidly, it will be very bad." (which I already knew), and I had to come up with "To do it smartly would require a significantly different economic system" on my own (although I sort of already knew that one too).
Your question was taken at face value, and you received articulate answers, at great length. All you have managed to do in reply is desperately backpedal from the position you yourself defined:.
1Stagnation, the cessation of growth.
Most economic growth over the past century has been in the form of increased output per unit input: increased efficiency. You asked why it would be a bad idea for that to stop. You were told why it was a bad idea. Now the onus is on you to process what you've learned.
You have pitched several great ideas for sustainable development, all of which will be achieved through - and result in - economic growth. You yourself have made a compelling argument why stagnation is bad.
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Maybe this is the simplest example that can drive the point home:
A steady-state resource economy, one which extracts resources only as fast as they are replaced, can still experience economic growth. Resources can be used to develop ways to better use resources.
A resource economy that pulls resources less quickly than they are replaced can still experience economic growth.
The key is in increasing factor productivity. And over the past century, increased factor productivity has been responsible for the lion's share of growth, not increased resource use.
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Uh, "consume less and don't reproduce as much" is very much not what you actually said.
It's the first think I said,
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
plus a bit of nuance to make explicit the fact that "while at the same time continuing to increase their population" is not part of my argument.
Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?
This has been explained to you in detail.
I only asked once? Twice if you count the time nobody replied to me.
It has also been explained to you that development leads directly to consuming less per unit produced.
No. Wrong kind of "consume". I am not talking about consuming less resources per product manufactured, I am talking about consuming less products.
Your question was taken at face value, and you received articulate answers, at great length.
That was in reference to the first time I asked it, and Scotty was like "I can't think of a way to answer that isn't condescending".
All you have managed to do in reply is desperately backpedal from the position you yourself defined:.
1Stagnation, the cessation of growth.
That's not a position, it's a definition in a footnote. That's why it's formatted as such. If you wanted to tell me "you've got the definition of stagnation wrong" that would've been ok (and would've simplified this discussion considerably), but you didn't. The definition of stagnation is also ancillary to my actual argument Consume less, and don't reproduce so much. If reduced consumption causes factories to close and people to lose their jobs, there is still enough food/water/shelter/clothing/medicine to hypothetically support everyone, if only it can be distributed sanely.
Most economic growth over the past century has been in the form of increased output per unit input: increased efficiency. You asked why it would be a bad idea for that to stop.
I asked why it was a bad idea for development (specifically going on in "developing countries") to "stagnate", with a footnote saying "this is the definition of stagnate that I am using".
stuff
Yes, you can improve efficiency, but that is the domain of specialized engineers. That is what was being discussed before I entered the discussion with an alternative idea which is easier for individuals to participate in: consuming less products. Running out of resources is a concern, but I'm not sure why you're bringing that up, unless you're treating "this planet not turning into Venus II" as a resource?
Summary:
All that "stagnation" business was ancillary; we have the technology and the infrastructure to take care of everyone's survival needs, economics be damned.
When I say "consume less" I mean "you, individual, consume less products", not "some hypothetical engineer who is not even a part of this conversation, devise a way to make more product per resource consumed".
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Yes, you can improve efficiency, but that is the domain of specialized engineers. That is what was being discussed before I entered the discussion with an alternative idea which is easier for individuals to participate in: consuming less products. Running out of resources is a concern, but I'm not sure why you're bringing that up, unless you're treating "this planet not turning into Venus II" as a resource?
Incorrect. You have now missed this fundamental point at least twice. Improving output per unit input is the fundamental driver of development across the entire twentieth century - more than 80% of growth. It is not the domain of 'specialized engineers', it is the focus of nearly all labor in all sectors.
So you are conceding your argument: you would not like to lock development across the world at stagnation levels.
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Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution,
Can I get a citation on that?
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How many times do I have to tell you THAT WAS NEVER MY ARGUMENT TO BEGIN WITH ?
HERE is my argument.
Consume less, and don't reproduce so much. If reduced consumption causes factories to close and people to lose their jobs, there is still enough food/water/shelter/clothing/medicine to hypothetically support everyone, if only it can be distributed sanely.
This is the third time I've explicitly stated what my argument is, and with labels to that effect. None of the other stuff is my argument.
This is the second thread where we've had a problem because you insist on telling me what my position is. INCORRECTLY. Back off.
Apologies to the other people in the thread who have to read the bold caps.
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You can't say something and then deny you said it - the record is right there and we've all addressed it.
Let me walk you through your own argument and help you understand it. It's a shame this is necessary.
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Impoverished... so like if a bunch of industrial jobs dried up... bleh. Maybe they'd be better off with a total economic collapse. You don't need money to get food, water, and shelter1... maybe you need money for decent medical care, but... bleh.
BLEH
1Talking about living off the land, not 4-finger discount
Maybe people would be better off after total economic collapse. Return to subsistence-based Malthusian economy.
I feel ignored/unappreciated :(
Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?
What's so bad about letting development stagnate?
But people had food, medicine, and shelter before those jobs existed, and the population increase that has occurred during the current period of rapid development is not large enough to rule out returning to the means they used beforehand.
Productivity was adequate to provide humane standard of living in the Malthusian subsistence economy. Returning to subsistence economy is a viable option.
The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
s/white man/capitalism
If your premises have led you to an absurd conclusion, e.g. that Aardwolf is a colossal dick (see quote above), you should probably reëxamine those premises, e.g. stagnation1 must always lead to poverty, famine, etc..
1Stagnation, the cessation of growth. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely.
Existing productivity is adequate to supply everyone with a humane standard of living. Development should cease and productivity should be maintained at current levels. Resources should be redistributed. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely (I'll break from summary here to point out that this is wrong in the historical scope, and it betrays your basic error.)
Once you've had a chance to review and absorb your argument, let me know if you need me to walk you through any parts more closely.
Remember: the fact that you do not understand the ramifications or blind spots of an argument does not allow you to disown those ramifications. They're present even if you haven't thought of them. Claiming that something 'is not your argument' because you hadn't realized it was a consequence of your argument to begin with is an attempt to dodge correction.
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I suppose I forgot to make it explicit that you were suggesting that citizens of the developing world would be better off after total economic collapse.
Lowering emissions is almost impossible at this point. While some efficiency may drive lower emissions in the developed world, the developing world is skyrocketing their own emissions, and due to their lower efficiency and higher population numbers, soon their emissions will dwarf anything the developed world emits (let alone "cuts"). To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Impoverished... so like if a bunch of industrial jobs dried up... bleh. Maybe they'd be better off with a total economic collapse. You don't need money to get food, water, and shelter1... maybe you need money for decent medical care, but... bleh.
BLEH
1Talking about living off the land, not 4-finger discount
Please, though, tell us how you were never arguing that the solution to increasing emissions in the developing world was the termination of development in the third world and economic collapse.
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Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution,
Can I get a citation on that?
Everyone reported this, so if you google it you'll find a lot of it, for instance:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/12/07/surprise-side-effect-of-shale-gas-boom-a-plunge-in-u-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
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Would you like to know why I keep repeating what is and is not part of my argument? It's because I came to this thread to talk about one specific thing. The first thing I said, in fact:
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Everything about stagnation, and economics in general, was secondary. And yet you have engaged with it exclusively. I am not trying to "dodge" or "backpedal", I am trying to talk about the idea I came here to talk about. I will make one more attempt to rephrase it, and from now on I will not allow myself to waste any more of my own time addressing these secondary issues.
End-user consumption drives all of the (mid-)manufacturing processes that result in the emission of greenhouse gases. Reduce end-user consumption to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
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So you are saying that we should forget all the other stuff you've thrown at us, we should now focus on this stuff you cherry picked out of the whole because it suits you better?
Clearly you have some issues with expressing yourself, but fine, let's also deconstruct all this shenanigan too:
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Untrue. In fact the developing world is about to teach you a lesson on this. While per capita consumption (and wealth) is way way lower in China and other developing countries, their impact on emissions and other pollution indices are beggining to match the developed world's.
This means that "consumption" per se is not sufficient to understand emissions. It's a very small part of the story even. What really matters is how the whole economy is organized, what practices are acted on throughout the entire economic chain.
End-user consumption drives all of the (mid-)manufacturing processes that result in the emission of greenhouse gases. Reduce end-user consumption to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
Untrue. And really obnoxious if you consider all the effort Battuta made into trying to make you understand how we are all consuming way way more today not because we retrieve from "mother earth" more, or pollute more, etc., but mainly because we found more efficient means to do so. IOW, with the same raw materials and with even less pollution than before, we are able to produce so much much more than before. And let's not even mention that "wealth" itself, GDP, is not even prima facie about "material goods". It's been mostly about that for the past millenia because without material goods we can't do much of anything, but when you reach a certain point of wealth, then materiality doesn't matter as much as other ****, like cultural goods (IPs), human services, etc., etc. Any actual minimal study of the stats will show you this, but you are so focused on your shenanigan "Argument" that you don't even care to actually read anything factual about the subject matter.
I will try to ignore the rest of the discussion, my spider instincts are shouting to me that this discussion is a really unproductive, inneficient one. And unproductive, inneficient **** is what is driving CO2 emissions, SO.
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Uh... when producing/consuming X of Y causes Z emissions, then producing/consuming <X of Y does cause <Z emissions, regardless of how efficiently or inefficiently one produces/consumes.
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And that resolves what I was discussing with Aardwolf how exactly?
Read the exact sentence he said and reconsider your comment zookeeper. You're attacking a strawman.
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And that resolves what I was discussing with Aardwolf how exactly?
Read the exact sentence he said and reconsider your comment zookeeper. You're attacking a strawman.
I don't see how that's a strawman. This was your exchange:
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Untrue.
End-user consumption drives all of the (mid-)manufacturing processes that result in the emission of greenhouse gases. Reduce end-user consumption to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
Untrue.
He was saying that consuming less would reduce emissions, and you said it's not true. I pointed out that of course it's true. To me it seems I was attacking exactly what you yourself said.
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Very well, you are right.
I'll refrain from commenting here further because I'm just not enjoying it at all. Please continue at your pleasure.
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Everything about stagnation, and economics in general, was secondary. And yet you have engaged with it exclusively. I am not trying to "dodge" or "backpedal", I am trying to talk about the idea I came here to talk about. I will make one more attempt to rephrase it, and from now on I will not allow myself to waste any more of my own time addressing these secondary issues.
You don't get to cherrypick components of your own argument and claim they're important. Intention isn't magic. You opened with the assertion that the developing world would be better off after an economic collapse and a return to Malthusian subsistence. That claim has been engaged with. If you didn't come here to talk about that claim, then you shouldn't have made it.
Remember: you claimed that people were resorting to absurdities to make you look like an asshole. It turned out the 'absurdities' were things you had explicitly said. There wasn't even any interpretation required. Bold-text shouting that you always meant to talk about something else does no good.
Would you like to know why I keep repeating what is and is not part of my argument? It's because I came to this thread to talk about one specific thing. The first thing I said, in fact: If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
If that was what you wanted to talk about, then it's the argument you should have made, not 'maybe the developing world would be better off after Malthusian collapse'! But since I think you've acknowledged that the 'let the developing world suffer' argument is untenable -
Ah, but let's wait. I'm going to prune out the rest of this post and sit on it until you have a chance to read Luis' post and think about it.
Uh... when producing/consuming X of Y causes Z emissions, then producing/consuming <X of Y does cause <Z emissions, regardless of how efficiently or inefficiently one produces/consumes.
This is a great toy model to engage with (I don't mean 'toy' patronizingly, it's a really useful tool). The problem is this:
We decide to produce <X. The supply shock has economic ramifications. We can't build our new hydroelectric dam and fund our new bus system. People keep driving their cars and getting power from a coal plant.
Emissions increase.
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That is kind of the thing that is obvious in my head but it's really hard to get other people thinking hard into it. Efficiencies need economies of scale and actual usage of products and means of production in large large quantities. IOW, there exists a paradox of "more is less!" involved here, wherein large economies go through a process of creating a huge environmental destruction while they are growing their GDP until the ecological destruction starts to flatline and then we actually begin improving things aorund us while GDP continues going up, which goes against any simple and basic intuition in the form of "if we consume less, we pollute less!".
This is a complex phenomena that is overwhelmingly ignored in any usual conversation over ecological matters in public (not so in academia) because it is "complex" and it might give people the "wrong impression" that their consumptions are not that problematic or that ecological issues are not so black and white, we should not really confuse simple people with these "adult" nuances. Better to get rid of problematic people like Bjorn Lomborg et als who dare speak these little trade secrets to normal people.
Ah, I'm so cynical today I even forgot my pledge to not talk about this here... sorry.
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Uh... when producing/consuming X of Y causes Z emissions, then producing/consuming <X of Y does cause <Z emissions, regardless of how efficiently or inefficiently one produces/consumes.
This is a great toy model to engage with (I don't mean 'toy' patronizingly, it's a really useful tool). The problem is this:
We decide to produce <X. The supply shock has economic ramifications. We can't build our new hydroelectric dam and fund our new bus system. People keep driving their cars and getting power from a coal plant.
Emissions increase.
Indeed, something like that would probably happen. However, pretty much anyone who advocates an overall downshifting of consumption/production (hopefully) wouldn't disagree with you if you tell them that our current economic system doesn't deal with that sort of thing very well, and that things like your example can happen if we only decide to produce <X and do nothing else. The need to fix the system to allow for degrowth without disaster is an implied (even if often neglected) part of the suggestion.
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I completely agree - except in cases where the advocate explicitly suggests that the developing world would be better off after economic disaster, which was the case here.
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You don't get to cherrypick components of your own argument and claim they're important. Intention isn't magic. You opened with the assertion that ...
It's called a TOPIC SENTENCE. It usually is the first sentence of a paragraph (or a post).
You have been making inferences about my intentions, and those inferences are WRONG. Furthermore you are telling me my intentions were something other than what I said they were, when I am the only one who can POSSIBLY know what my actual intentions were. In other words, you are accusing me of LYING, which makes you NOT A NICE PERSON.
If you didn't come here to talk about that claim, then you shouldn't have made it.
Evidently not. I wasn't expecting to have to deal with a NOT NICE PERSON.
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Oh, my vile fabrication - the assertion that you said:
If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.
Impoverished... so like if a bunch of industrial jobs dried up... bleh. Maybe they'd be better off with a total economic collapse. You don't need money to get food, water, and shelter1... maybe you need money for decent medical care, but... bleh.
BLEH
1Talking about living off the land, not 4-finger discount
How devious. How evil. It's as if, by quoting exactly what you said, I'm somehow changing what you said into a lie!
You asserted that the developing world might be better off after a total economic collapse. That assertion was engaged with. You can panic about the realization that you made that assertion, and lash out - or you can accept it and move on with the discussion.
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Apparently I'm also an awful person, but come to think of it, it might also be just probably that my english is way way more subpar than I thought it was. So I think I'll take the opportunity to go back to school and learn English all over again because clearly when I read someone saying "X" I'm being a terrible person for trusting my eyes and my backwards knowledge of the language.
I'm so sorry, back at school now kthnksbye
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you have made claims about what my intentions were.
i have told you what my intentions were.
you have claimed my intentions were not what i told you they were.
therefore you are accusing me of lying.
edit: not you luis, you didn't claim to know what my intentions were (afaik?)
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I walked you through your argument already. Now let's walk you through your responses to counterarguments, so you can understand those too.
If your premises have led you to an absurd conclusion, e.g. that Aardwolf is a colossal dick (see quote above), you should probably reëxamine those premises, e.g. stagnation1 must always lead to poverty, famine, etc..
1Stagnation, the cessation of growth. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely.
"If it seems like my argument implied horrible things, you must have misunderstood it. The world doesn't work in a way that would cause my argument to imply something horrible."
If you continue to push an absurd argument that makes you look like a colossal dick, perhaps you should reexamine your argument.
No. You made assumptions about what my argument is, and those assumptions were untrue.
Specifically, it seems you assumed that I was advocating reverting to ye olden food/medicine/shelter technology. Why would I advocate cutting the essentials, when there are things that are wasteful and unnecessary like automobiles and bottled water1 that could be cut? I wouldn't, and I didn't.
In case you didn't understand the rationale for including the Sitting Bull quote: we have the technological and industrial means to leave no person unfed, unclothed, or unsheltered. We also have the means to make a whole lot of unnecessary consumer goods and to burn a whole lot of unnecessary fuel getting people and things from one place to another, and turn this planet into Venus II in the process. We can do one without the other. Take a guess which one I'm advocating.
"You assumed I said the third world would be better off after a total economic collapse! You were wrong. What I really meant was that we should reduce unnecessary consumption of goods not vital to a humane standard of living." (I'll break from summary here to note that this is logically incompatible: you proposed that the third world would be better off after a total economic collapse, and now you are claiming you never advocated 'cutting the essentials', which contravenes 'total economic collapse.')
Your next step is to misremember your own argument:
Here is an absurd argument:
Let their development stagnate, in all fields, including the essentials for survival, i.e. food/water/shelter/clothing/medicine, while at the same time continuing to increase their population and rate of consumption.
Notice how as your remove some of those caveats the argument becomes less absurd.
You frame an 'absurd argument' as a rhetorical device, yet the 'absurd argument' is actually less severe than 'total economic collapse.'
Now let's try looking at my actual argument:
Consume less, and don't reproduce so much. If reduced consumption causes factories to close and people to lose their jobs, there is still enough food/water/shelter/clothing/medicine to hypothetically support everyone, if only it can be distributed sanely.
You frame a new argument and insist it was your original argument. The argument is also factually incorrect, since it ignores the role of capital in distributing resources, but we can set that aside since it's unnecessary to the task here: walking you through how you abandoned your own original position and now insist it never existed.
Note that "consume less" was effectively the first thing I said. Then notice how I considered the fact that people would lose their jobs, and said "bleh" a lot, because if we can't distribute stuff sanely that's going to be a bad time1 for a lot of people. And the thought of that displeases me, hence "bleh".
I then proceeded to ask what's so bad about stagnation. Apparently people can't take a "what's so bad about" question at face value. It would've been nice if somebody would've articulated what the problem is. The best answer I can extract from what you guys have said is "If you do it stupidly, it will be very bad." (which I already knew), and I had to come up with "To do it smartly would require a significantly different economic system" on my own (although I sort of already knew that one too).
Here you are worried that people did not take your question 'at face value'. You proceed to become upset that people took your advocacy for total economic collapse in the third world at face value. You ignore the efforts that have been taken to explain factor productivity development to you, and muse that you had to come up with the solution on your own.
When did I ask if we can't be more efficient? When I used the words "wasteful and unnecessary?, I wasn't talking about "make the process of making plastic for bottled water more efficient", I'm saying "drink tapwater".
This is not a vital part of your argument, but I think it is revelatory: you see the problem as a choice between 'bottled water' and 'tapwater', rather than a choice between 'tapwater' and 'filthy groundwater, if water is available at all'.
Your very first assertion was that 'if everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease'. More than a day, and considerable words, have now been spent examining this viewpoint and explaining its nuances to you. What have you learned from this? Do you have a better understanding of why 'reduce demand' may not be a plausible solution to the problem of rising emissions in the developing world? Would you still assert that the third world would be better off after a total economic collapse, and that this is a viable solution in order to reduce emissions?
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you have made claims about what my intentions were.
i have told you what my intentions were.
you have claimed my intentions were not what i told you they were.
therefore you are accusing me of lying.
Just one post ago, you were the one accusing me of lying. Which is it? Is it bad, or not bad, to accuse someone of lying? Is it acceptable to accuse someone of lying when you are the person doing it, but not when others accuse you?
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I only read the first page of this thread (and enough of the last to see things have gotten tense).. I loved the first page. :)
I also love modern reporting.
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I've locked this topic to give everyone a day or so to compose themselves and take it back from the edge of turning ugly. It might get unlocked again, but for right now it's generating an undue number of reports.
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It's been a few hours and I know that there has been discussion on the subject. Re-opened on the condition that discussion of the actual issues resumes. The issues, not who said what and when.
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Awesome. This is a very cool topic!
The Copenhagen Accord reaffirmed that we can tolerate about a 2C increase in average global temperatures before we hit severe, possibly irrecoverable damage. (This number might be a bit, ah, optimistic...) The only thing that matters in determining our climate end state, as far as I'm aware, is the total amount of carbon1 we dump into the atmosphere. Our budget for this century is something like 2000 gigatons, with a range of +/- 500.
Unfortunately, emissions are rising, and that rise is accelerating. We need to peak emissions and start receding before 2020 in order to have even the slimmest chance of hitting our carbon budget for the century. The odds of this happening are...effectively zero. No event in the short recorded history of industrial civilization, planned or otherwise, has managed to knock emissions back that fast. And the carbon budget doesn't account for the possibility of major feedback loops and knock-on effects.
So what the **** do we do about this? Is it completely too late? Can we convert coltan and palladium into solar fast enough to have the slightest effect? (Or is it gonna be all about ~plastic solar cells~?) Will fracking turn out to be, as some data seems to suggest, a worse CO2 emitter than coal plants? I dunno!
Lest it be all doom and gloom Paul Krugman* seems to think major climate change is economically actionable:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce just came out with its preemptive strike against Obama administration regulations on power plants. What the Chamber wanted to do was show that the economic impact of the regulations would be devastating. And I was eager to see how they had fudged the numbers.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the diatribe. The Chamber evidently made a decision that it wanted to preserve credibility, so it outsourced the analysis. And while it tries to spin the results, what it actually found was that dramatic action on greenhouse gases would have surprisingly small economic costs.
The Chamber’s supposed scare headline is that regulations would cost the US economy $50.2 billion per year in constant dollars between now and 2030. That’s for a plan to reduce GHG emissions 40 percent from their 2005 level, so it’s for real action.
So, is $50 billion a lot? Let’s look at the CBO’s long-term projections. These say that average annual US real GDP over the period 2014-2030 will be $21.5 trillion. So the Chamber is telling us that we can achieve major reductions in greenhouse gases at a cost of 0.2 percent of GDP. That’s cheap!
True, the chamber also says that the regulations would cost 224,000 jobs in an average year. That’s bad economics: US employment is determined by the interaction between macroeconomic policy and the underlying tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, and there’s no good reason to think that environmental protection would reduce the number of jobs (as opposed to real wages). But even at face value that’s also a small number in a country with 140 million workers.
So, I was ready to come down hard on the Chamber’s bad economics; but what they’ve actually just shown is that even when they’re paying for the study, the economics of climate protection look quite easy.
*I haven't done any kind of credibility checking on Paul Krugman
And then there's the problem of the developing world. Oh, Indo-China, what are we to do?
Faced with a tradeoff between CO2 mitigation and the rapid deployment of energy infrastructure, policymakers have prioritized the latter (and its associated economic benefits) over the former. Lu Xuedu, Deputy Director General of the Chinese Office of Global Environmental Affairs, was explicit about this when he stated that "You cannot tell people who are struggling to earn enough to eat that they need to reduce their emissions". Likewise, under the premise that an emission reduction target would hinder economic growth, Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh stated that "India will not accept any emission-reduction target - period". Understanding the wickedness of CO2 mitigation in developing countries - and the differences in opinion about what constitutes right or ethical policy - is crucial for moving forward with de-carbonization of energy sectors. As long as carbon-free energy sources remain more expensive, less reliable and riskier than fossil fuel incumbents, fossil fuel energy systems will continue to be more attractive to policymakers. Until clean technologies are able to provide developing countries with inexpensive, reliable and scalable energy, we can expect to see further expansion of fossil fuel energy
(full, quite good article here (http://thebreakthrough.org/generation_archive/energyrelated_co_emissions_in))
So here's my question: what in the name of God do we do to resolve the Third World's quandary between (literal) local and global needs? Can anything effective be done to keep us on our carbon budget, or should we start moving towards a search for a climate-hardened model of civilization? Or is it possible that we'll find scalable low-emission solutions that will actually appeal to the developing world?
This is a classic tragedy of the commons. Individual rational actors may not be able to solve this at all, and attempts at collective solutions so far have been...very ineffective. Short of JC Denton bringing Helios online I'm not sure I see a clear solution. Am I too pessimistic?
1. I am totally neglecting other GHGs here, somebody might need to check my carbon privilege
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Let's kickstart a giant space parasol!
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Krugman is in my hit list.... ok seriously I like the guy but he's a rogue when it comes to matters of climate change. He knows squat about it and nevertheless has no qualms in throwing an entire new site like 538 under the bus because it had the gall to have an climate science expert of extreme weather events write an article that had the tone of "Don't Panic". His reasons? Thinkprogress said the guy was bad, therefore he was bad.
This kind of irrationality always pops into my mind whenever I read Krugman. Just read what you quoted (I had read it before), and it does indeed seem like good news to all of us. Frankly, the cheaper this thing is, the harder right wingers will have to fight back to implement policies of mitigation. My problem with Krugamn here, is that he was "ready" to debunk the paper, until he saw that it actually was a politically useful paper, that said things that pleased him, therefore there's no "debunking" needed. Interest in the "truth"? Zero.
ANYWAYS, regarding third world countries, when you ask what we should do, well the renegades like Bjorn Lomborg or Roger Pielke Jr and so on had the answer ten years ago, but hey what can you do when sensible people get thrown the rocks instead of being listened to? The answer is to get capital from a sort of taxation on CO2 in a level not sufficient to "mitigate it", but otherwise to fund a research program to get alternative energy solutions. There are many althernative energy solutions waiting to be explored (and are being explored, although funding is a problem). Focus on the research and experimentations and get these alternatives (solar, wind, waves, fusion, etc.,etc.) working cheaper than the fossil fuel counterparts.
This is the key point. Once you cross this line, you don't have to do anything else, because by then every politician and capitalist will invest in it. Well, you still have to invest in infrastructure that can function in the new paradigm and stop mad corporations from preventing the future to come about but that's that. And if these alternatives are cheaper, the developing world follows suit like lemmings.
This is not science fiction. Look at solar. It's price looks like a snowball going down a mountain. And coal is the dude who is standing below with a smug smile, who is just now looking back to the snow ball getting larger and larger going straight at him.
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Well, it looks like it'll take some pretty long time before this snowball gets to him, then. In fact, I'm convinced it'll remain a just snowball. Solar power is not feasible on a large scale. Panels are expensive, wear out rather quickly and are inefficient, so you need a lot of surface area. Solar thermal plants are better, but will also hit a wall in form of surface area requirements. And even if you did improve the efficiency a lot, it'd still fall short of being a viable competitor to fossil fuels and nuclear power. Laws of thermodynamics are pretty ruthless, and even if you did use a theoretical perfect Carnot-cycle turbine (which is far from 100% efficient unless you're in space, and even then it's not 100%), you'll have to cope with limited energy density. According to Wiki, there's only about 1kW of solar energy per square meter hitting Earth with the sun at zenith. So no matter what, you're not getting more than that, and in practice, you're getting a lot less. Also, there's night to worry about, and the fact sun will not be at zenith the whole time. Solar power is a very bad deal, thermodynamically speaking.
Nuclear is the one and only long-run solution available to mankind, with fusion being a future option. Other "alternative" options are either, destructive to the landscape (hydroelectric, wind), or incredibly limited in placement (geothermal, solar). None of them are feasible in the long run.
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The Copenhagen Accord reaffirmed that we can tolerate about a 2C increase in average global temperatures before we hit severe, possibly irrecoverable damage. (This number might be a bit, ah, optimistic...
Indeed it is, as ocean acidification (Feedback loop between ocean and athmosphere) is causing severe and possibly irreversible damage right now (Oysters, oceanic reefs, pterapods).
Focus on the research and experimentations and get these alternatives (solar, wind, waves, fusion, etc.,etc.) working cheaper than the fossil fuel counterparts.
I'd say they already are. Consider the damage caused by enviromental disasters, which are often not calculated into cost effeciency decisions (NRC had a nice article on it, in the EU governments spend more money on mitigating pollution and enviromental disasters caused by unclean energy then the combined subsidies of all energy sources).
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Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution,
Can I get a citation on that?
Everyone reported this, so if you google it you'll find a lot of it, for instance:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/12/07/surprise-side-effect-of-shale-gas-boom-a-plunge-in-u-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
Hmm, a forbes/sites article written by someone who works at an unconventional gas company. Allow me to be skeptic:
I don't really like that article as it assumes that the closing down of coal plants is due to shale gas, and not due to various other things going on (such as policy changes on a political level). Although shale gas is indeed a lot cleaner, it's not as good as conventional gas. For a country which uses a lot of conventional gas, such as the Netherlands, going to unconventional will be a step back.
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I'd say they already are. Consider the damage caused by enviromental disasters, which are often not calculated into cost effeciency decisions (NRC had a nice article on it, in the EU governments spend more money on mitigating pollution and enviromental disasters caused by unclean energy then the combined subsidies of all energy sources).
Well "I'll say they already are" doesn't trump actual calculations you know.
Hmm, a forbes/sites article written by someone who works at an unconventional gas company. Allow me to be skeptic:
I don't really like that article as it assumes that the closing down of coal plants is due to shale gas, and not due to various other things going on (such as policy changes on a political level). Although shale gas is indeed a lot cleaner, it's not as good as conventional gas. For a country which uses a lot of conventional gas, such as the Netherlands, going to unconventional will be a step back.
These are not relevant points at all. The reason why "unconventional" gas is being invested upon is because (obviously) there's not enough "conventional gas" to substitute coal in the global landscape. The idea that coal is being closed down due to shale gas is proven by that graph in the article. If the "real reason" is political and not any other is absolutely irrelevant, what matters is that gas is substituting coal in energy production in the US and that this aligns perfectly with CO2 emissions plunging, both empirically and theoretically. Unconventional gas might not be as good as conventional gas, but that's the reality of things. Shale gas is one or two orders of magnitude more available to us, and the only realistic "stop-gag" between a huge CO2 emission economy and a zero-CO2 emission economy.
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I'd say they already are. Consider the damage caused by enviromental disasters, which are often not calculated into cost effeciency decisions (NRC had a nice article on it, in the EU governments spend more money on mitigating pollution and enviromental disasters caused by unclean energy then the combined subsidies of all energy sources).
Well "I'll say they already are" doesn't trump actual calculations you know.
The EU has made quite a few calculations on external energy costs (http://www.ier.uni-stuttgart.de/forschung/projektwebsites/newext/externen.pdf).
This is some more from the same study (http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/en35-external-costs-of-electricity-production-1).
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Can anything effective be done to keep us on our carbon budget, or should we start moving towards a search for a climate-hardened model of civilization? Or is it possible that we'll find scalable low-emission solutions that will actually appeal to the developing world?
This is a classic tragedy of the commons. Individual rational actors may not be able to solve this at all, and attempts at collective solutions so far have been...very ineffective. Short of JC Denton bringing Helios online I'm not sure I see a clear solution. Am I too pessimistic?
Climate hardened civilisation will be a must no matter what, unless something radically changes. Third world population continues to grow both economically and in numbers, renewables are intermittent and too little, too late, fusion is always 30 years in the future, nuclear is irrationaly hated by the public and Fukushima made this even worse. I dont see any effective solution in foreseeable future.
On the other hand, while GW is no laughing matter, I dont think warming of a few degrees is a threat to modern civilisation in general. I still think it is likely that peak oil will be the defining crisis of 21st century. And I find it strange that while GW is all over the media nowadays, that elephant in the room is pretty much ignored.
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My (recently heightened and much alarmed) understanding is that a number of past global oxygen-breathing extinction events have coincided with climate-induced changes in ocean oxygenation.
More to the point, I think warming of a few degrees actually is a threat to modern civilization in general. To quote some climate guy:
"...a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."
Oh, and by the way: According to the International Energy Agency, we're currently on course for 6 degrees C [10.8 degrees F]. That is, beyond any reasonable doubt, game over.
I'm going to get wasted and start hitting on my friends
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Other "alternative" options are either, destructive to the landscape (hydroelectric, wind), or incredibly limited in placement (geothermal, solar). None of them are feasible in the long run.
Hydro: ok
Wind: "landscape"? I hope you mean birds, not aesthetics. And as I said before, I believe1 the issue with birds running into them is greatly exaggerated. Bats less so.
Geothermal: geothermal can be done anywhere, you just have to dig much deeper in some places. Passively using the ground mass to regulate building temperature, on the other hand, is also a thing, and should be much more commonplace than it is.
Solar: solar can be done anywhere, even if a place has cloud cover a high % of the time.
Industrial-scale power storage is not a novel concept. To name a couple schemes: flywheels2, and compressing air in large underground spaces. Both of which, I believe1, are fairly efficient as far as energy in vs energy out.
Also consider tide power and wave power. Well, probably not wave power.
I'm going to get wasted and start hitting on my friends
Use protection3. Indefinite population growth is not sustainable4, increased population = increased end user consumption, and I suspect we are reaching the limits of "increased (hu)manpower = increased efficiency"... and a baby does not help increase manpower.
1Until someone bothers to prove me wrong
2I once made a thread about this! Unfortunately people poo-pooed on the idea, IIRC because they read somewhere that someone was trying to make a flywheel that they could rapidly get the power out of, and they assumed that was the main purpose for which they are already used, rather than the frontier of development.
3A joke, in response to what I hope was a joke. But it makes for a nice segue.
4"Move to other planets" is not an acceptable option in my book.
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Wind: "landscape"? I hope you mean birds, not aesthetics.
In my province, they actually banned windmills because of the latter.
I mean like.
It makes me want to strangle people.
And I am pretty sure that is a completely justified stance.
solar can be done anywhere, even if a place has cloud cover a high % of the time.
Solar energy works perfectly well with full cloud cover. It just only has trouble working at night.
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I maintain that certain kinds of end user consumption can and should be reduced, because doing so would result in a reduction of resource consumption, and more importantly in the context of this thread, a reduction of GHG emissions, likely without catastrophic consequences for the efficiency of other industries.
Examples:
- bottled water
- gasoline
- airfare
- household electricity
- beef
Solar energy works perfectly well with full cloud cover. It just only has trouble working at night.
Which is where the flywheels and air pressurization come in.
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My (recently heightened and much alarmed) understanding is that a number of past global oxygen-breathing extinction events have coincided with climate-induced changes in ocean oxygenation.
More to the point, I think warming of a few degrees actually is a threat to modern civilization in general. To quote some climate guy:
"...a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."
[/quote]
If it were 4 to 6 degrees colder then it is now, we would be in the next ice age.
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Oh, and by the way: According to the International Energy Agency, we're currently on course for 6 degrees C [10.8 degrees F]. That is, beyond any reasonable doubt, game over.
I'm going to get wasted and start hitting on my friends
Before you do realise that you've just quoted the IEA as an expert on climate change.
There's reason to be concerned, but don't panic. Same goes for peak oil, the alarm is unwarranted. We will overcome it, and we will look back funnily into these days like "we were so clueless and so overly concerned about such naive things".
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I quoted someone quoting them! (and yeah I broadly agree with you, it's been my party line for years, except - I am not sure it is quite as firm as I'd have thought, I think there is some cause for concern)
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There's reason to be concerned, but don't panic. Same goes for peak oil, the alarm is unwarranted. We will overcome it, and we will look back funnily into these days like "we were so clueless and so overly concerned about such naive things".
Whilst history is chock full of people being clueless and overly naive about things that were great cause for concern... I don't quite see why you adopt such a line.
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Well, panicking never helps. And our descendents, if they exist, will probably undervalue the effort it took for us to succeed. But that's the opposite of what you meant, isn't it? :blah:
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I just wish everyone, especially those in developing countries, to be more aggressive with renewable energies, especially Solar Power since we can get it almost anywhere.
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For that to happen renewable sources need to be cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuels. That's the realpolitik of it. (Nuclear is a great option because it can be swapped directly in place of coal plants without much change in infrastructure or handicaps on demand.)
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And our descendents, if they exist, will probably undervalue the effort it took for us to succeed.
ACtually you raise a good point. We are currently at High Noon. Consider the milankovich cycles: In the next 10000 years, we will have experienced far more erratic weather changes then those being currently predicted. The next glacial peroid, to be precise. Our descendants going trough the next ice age will probably not grasp at all what this ruckus of "global warming" is about. Such is the difficulty of grasping nature with human measurements.
Even considering similar geoligical conditions, the earth has been warmer then it is today, during the Eemian stage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian_Stage). A similar situation (albeit taking longer) is predicted be the result of GW and the collapse of the antartic ice sheet, this is referred to as super-interglacials.
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For that to happen renewable sources need to be cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuels.
It doesn't help that the fossil fuels industry still has huge subsidies (and seems to get off scot-free whenever they murder an ecosystem, etc.).
Why do I get the sense that GB is either ignoring me or Ignore-ing me? I could sort of excuse the latter, after the events leading up to the temporary thread lock, but I've made some good posts since it was unlocked!
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Why do I get the sense that GB is either ignoring me or Ignore-ing me? I could sort of excuse the latter, after the events leading up to the temporary thread lock, but I've made some good posts since it was unlocked!
Just FYI, there is no requirement for anyone to read or engage with your posts.
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There's reason to be concerned, but don't panic. Same goes for peak oil, the alarm is unwarranted. We will overcome it, and we will look back funnily into these days like "we were so clueless and so overly concerned about such naive things".
Whilst history is chock full of people being clueless and overly naive about things that were great cause for concern... I don't quite see why you adopt such a line.
Ahah I still remember the good ol days when that site... what was its name.... ah... "Life After The Oil Crash"... I still remember the great lines like "in five years everything you know it will be doomed" and so on. That was 2004. And that Olduvai Gorge theory by Richard Duncan that stated the oil civilization lifespan was exactly 100 years which meant that by 2012 we would start seeing blackouts and general degeneration in services and the whole energy economy.... this wasn't just a marginal phenomena, a whole site that was deemed quite influential "The Oil Drum" was drumming for quite a while with their doom and gloom until... it ended in a whimper. Or what about Matt Simmons the great man who predicted in 2003 we would see a "gas cliff" that would send us to the caves. Yeah. What about Paul Erlich, the famous guy who hasn't still been arrested for destroying so many people's psyches with his "by 2000 50 million north americans will die from famine".
These Cassandras still get credit. I just have no idea why. It's like we live in an opposite era of that which Cassandra lived, wherein no one paid attention to fearmongers and messengers of danger. Now, nobody pays attention to those who are optimist or just reasonable, heresy with them, and all the fame and glory goes to the likes of Paul Erlich despite the fact these morons have been wrong for over 50 years and counting.
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Paul Elrich was right though. Mass starvation had been a problem if nothing had taken place to countermand it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution).
peak oil is already here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Crude_Oil_Production_versus_Hubbert_Curve.png) but because we happen to have alternatives, it is not that big a problem.
And yet, global warming has a lot more backing scientifically then any of the anecdotes you care to mention (indeed, in earth scientist circles, the support for it is fairly massive (http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus)). Yet, politicians seem to be stuck in this phase where they are unwilling to lose votes since changes may affect economic development. Solving mass hunger, on the other hand, is always a vote winner, which is why I am a lot more skeptical about a solution arising. Or, indeed, that solution being implemented.
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The green revolution was happening long before Paul made the predictions, and he ought to know it, hell he was in the business of predicting an entire planet's economy evolution for decades, how the **** did he miss something as obvious and big as the green revolution? He didn't just miss that, he also missed the fact that the population wasn't going to "explode" while any demographic study of the time already hinted that this was probably *not* going to happen.
I could give you lists of fearmongering shenanigans that the world was awashed with the past 50 years now and that nowadays just seem silly, naive and forgotten. There's this really great lauded speech by an american president in 1977:
The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about 6 percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last 5 years. Our Nation's economic and political independence is becoming increasingly vulnerable. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980's the world will be demanding more oil than it can produce.
The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day, and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every 9 months, or a new Saudi Arabia every 3 years. Obviously, this cannot continue.
Except it did and nowadays we drill 90+ million barrels of oil a day. These guys weren't just "mildly wrong" or "somewhat wrong in some numbers but they got the gist right", no, they were absolutely, terribly, pathetically wrong in almost every single prediction they made about the future that informed their policy suggestions, ideologies, outlook of the world.
There comes a moment where the errors are so grand that you should stop a minute and think "there's something inherently wrong in this kind of thinking, where did these guys went wrong? What is it in this kind of thinking that just absolutely fails to capture the world we inhabit?"
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He didn't just miss that, he also missed the fact that the population wasn't going to "explode" while any demographic study of the time already hinted that this was probably *not* going to happen.
This does not seem like a population explosion to you? (http://www.financial-spread-betting.com/community/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/populationgrowthhistory2.jpg)
Except it did and nowadays we drill 90+ million barrels of oil a day. These guys weren't just "mildly wrong" or "somewhat wrong in some numbers but they got the gist right", no, they were absolutely, terribly, pathetically wrong in almost every single prediction they made about the future that informed their policy suggestions, ideologies, outlook of the world.
I disagree. Oil production in the US has steadily decreased (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Crude_Oil_Production_versus_Hubbert_Curve.png). Oil production globally has increased thanks to unconventional oil sources, but as a result it is becoming more and more and more expensive, thus greatly increasing food prices (http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/). It's not naive, silly nor forgotten. You simply have dismissed it as such, but that is much more the result of who you are as a person then the validity of these statements.
There comes a moment where the errors are so grand that you should stop a minute and think "there's something inherently wrong in this kind of thinking, where did these guys went wrong? What is it in this kind of thinking that just absolutely fails to capture the world we inhabit?"
And yet they don't. They are perfectly correct statements when considering the time they were made in. They were simply incorrect in hindsight, due to unpredictable developments in the future. The flaw in your thinking is that, since a Colossus has appeared to deal with a problem (peak oil, food), that there always will be a Colossus for any problem, and that there will be no problems by deploying the Colossus at all (severe enviromental problems or even more juggernauts).
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Except it did and nowadays we drill 90+ million barrels of oil a day. These guys weren't just "mildly wrong" or "somewhat wrong in some numbers but they got the gist right", no, they were absolutely, terribly, pathetically wrong in almost every single prediction they made about the future that informed their policy suggestions, ideologies, outlook of the world.
I disagree. Oil production in the US has steadily decreased (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Crude_Oil_Production_versus_Hubbert_Curve.png). Oil production globally has increased thanks to unconventional oil sources, but as a result it is becoming more and more and more expensive, thus greatly increasing food prices (http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/). It's not naive, silly nor forgotten. You simply have dismissed it as such, but that is much more the result of who you are as a person then the validity of these statements.
Goalpost shifting is meaningless. The argument never was "the US production is going to fall, therefore we will rise it elsewhere or the economy will find alternatives, etc.", the argument was "The US production is going to fall, everything else is going to fall too, it's inevitable, it's physics and we are all ****ed, start buying shotguns and food cans". The irrational non-sequiturs were all there for people to criticize and be ignored while doing so. Yet, some people instead prefer to listen to the Cassandras and keep missing the wider picture.
It's the same ****ing **** with Global Warming. Goalpost shifting is part of this self-hating ideology.
Whenever people are skeptical of the holocaustic sci-fi renderings these artists output in the airwaves (and call them Scientific Projections), they will say "BUT 97% ITS A CONSENSUS", yeah, the consensus is that global warming has been happening and humans had a part in it. I'm PART of that consensus! But then, this "consensus without an object" shifts itself, morphs itself unto this "97% of SCIENTISTS SAY WE ARE DOOMED DOOMED", which they... don't. That's not the 97% consensus. Yet, if you deny the latter, I get all this **** about how I am denying the former ALL THE ****ING TIME.
And yet they don't. They are perfectly correct statements when considering the time they were made in. They were simply incorrect in hindsight, due to unpredictable developments in the future. The flaw in your thinking is that, since a Colossus has appeared to deal with a problem (peak oil, food), that there always will be a Colossus for any problem, and that there will be no problems by deploying the Colossus at all (severe enviromental problems or even more juggernauts).
This is the exact error, you can't even see it it's so embedded in your psyche. You are basically saying "If Earth behaved exactly as my model predicted, then events would have been exactly as I had foretold", it's a ****ing tautology. What you are not understanding is that these models suck in a fundamental manner. That mankind has the knack of adapting itself in multiple scales and solutions, either upstream, downstream, any part of the river you can see. These models instead picture Earth in a "holistic" machine-like "ecossystemic" sense, like an electronic schematic, filled with prejudices, ideologies, simplistic views of every single phenomena, and then whenever reality doesn't conform with their models, people blame reality like you did: "It's not their fault they didn't see the future, if the future had been exactly like the present then they would have predicted it correctly!"
Your mind is polluted. Start cleaning your mind of these false ideologies and prejudices before trying to clean the planet.
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I would like to ask you to dial it back down a notch, Luis. Telling people that "your mind is polluted" doesn't make a good argument.
Also, are you really going to just sit there and keep telling everyone that everything is fine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7sE0agEVNg)?
You claim that the views of the Cassandras are "filled with prejudices, ideologies, simplistic views of every single phenomena", but isn't that true of your position as well?
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Goalpost shifting is meaningless. The argument never was "the US production is going to fall, therefore we will rise it elsewhere or the economy will find alternatives, etc.", the argument was "The US production is going to fall, everything else is going to fall too, it's inevitable, it's physics and we are all ****ed, start buying shotguns and food cans".
This is not apperent from the quote you pulled from that particular US president, though. That particular president simply has staed that "This can not continue". Evidence suggests that he is right.
It's the same ****ing **** with Global Warming. Goalpost shifting is part of this self-hating ideology.
None of what you have posted has pointed towards that conclusion, however. The effects of certain degrees of warming is something that is taught in climate courses in university, not just the wild predictions of some websites in your earlier argument. The effects of certain degrees of warming which sparked this particular track is also simply that: The effect of certain degrees of warming, not the result of "if sociolopolitical situations continue to occur as they do now".
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I would like to ask you to dial it back down a notch, Luis. Telling people that "your mind is polluted" doesn't make a good argument.
Also, are you really going to just sit there and keep telling everyone that everything is fine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7sE0agEVNg)?
You're absolutely right, that was beyond the line. I haven't said "everything is fine" too. Although I usually try to get people to volume down the panic and so on, I never say there's "nothing to worry about". Global warming is an issue that we should worry about, solutions should be discussed, etc., but I also think the whole discussion is overly polluted with downright irrational panic over unknown unknowns being taken almost as "fact", bold exaggerations always cramming the newsscape (and no one ever reads the retractions) and so on.
You claim that the views of the Cassandras are "filled with prejudices, ideologies, simplistic views of every single phenomena", but isn't that true of your position as well?
My position here is a bit pessimistic, borderline "Lovecraftian". I do think we are "out in the open", that there's no guarantee that something like the climate doesn't go bananas tomorrow and so on, but I have a particular distaste for the whole hysteria phenomena, how it feeds itself, how it informs policy and science itself, how the politics of fear have become the norm rather than the exception. Do these prejudices hurt my capacity to see what others might see? Yes, I admit, it probably does. The difference, I think, is that I'm keenly aware of these prejudices and try to be watchful of them, since I was on the "camp alarmist" some years ago and I know exactly how it's so easy to be blinded of one's own prejudices and assumptions.
This is not apperent from the quote you pulled from that particular US president, though. That particular president simply has staed that "This can not continue". Evidence suggests that he is right.
He was exactly wrong and all his policies backfired with the neo-cons winning tremendously in the Reagan years.
None of what you have posted has pointed towards that conclusion, however. The effects of certain degrees of warming is something that is taught in climate courses in university, not just the wild predictions of some websites in your earlier argument. The effects of certain degrees of warming which sparked this particular track is also simply that: The effect of certain degrees of warming, not the result of "if sociolopolitical situations continue to occur as they do now".
Yes, I am aware of these science-fiction papers. I'm not even opposed at their existence or consideration, I think spending time in devising possibilities and so on is very important. The difference is they are being treated as *facts* when they are pure speculation, and we do have enough empirical evidence to support that we really are very bad at predicting this sort of stuff.
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He was exactly wrong and all his policies backfired with the neo-cons winning tremendously in the Reagan years.
With the risk of starting a circle-jerk, I have already stated and cited examples of why I believe that, in that particular instance, he was not wrong at all, as the oil economy has changed significantly in the last decade, and it is affecting other economies on a world wide scale (such as food pricing). Would you suggest that nothing has changed?
. The difference is they are being treated as *facts* when they are pure speculation, and we do have enough empirical evidence to support that we really are very bad at predicting this sort of stuff.
I do not propose treating them as facts, I just think that their considerations should be, well, considered, not just flatly dismissed as is happening now. Climate models are more then just "pure speculation", as they are constructed out of historical data.
I'd also be interested in your emperical evidence that supports that we are awfull at predicting climates.
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With the risk of starting a circle-jerk, I have already stated and cited examples of why I believe that, in that particular instance, he was not wrong at all, as the oil economy has changed significantly in the last decade, and it is affecting other economies on a world wide scale (such as food pricing). Would you suggest that nothing has changed?
I would suggest that many things have changed, and almost all of them in the opposite direction than those that were predicted by the Club of Rome in the late 70s (peak oil and so on). The oil price pretty much collapsed in the 90s in total opposition of the predictions. Subsequently two factors had a big impact on the slow rise of the oil price in the 00s, namely the collapse in investment of oil infrastructures (due to the price collapse) and the unexpected economic surge and oil demand from China.
Peak Oil is as much of a reality as is Global Warming: something that is empirically true but that has nothing of the armaggedonist characteristics that shape our political discussions. That is, the "peak oil" that will happen will be a smooth ride of slowly increasing oil prices, slow substitution for shale gas and eventually nuclear or solar power over the coming decades, increased efficiencies, etc.
The effect on the food industry due to this shenanigan is for everyone to see, and I agree we would be far better off without this "oil" with such a pathetic EROI and such nasty consequences for poor people all over the world. Consider though which groups you can thank this for. What groups of folks clamored for this "solution" as a "green solution"? Yes, that's right, this was an environmentalist solution before it wasn't to the "problem" of peak oil. See? There's a danger too in establishing "dangers" that do not exist.
I do not propose treating them as facts, I just think that their considerations should be, well, considered, not just flatly dismissed as is happening now. Climate models are more then just "pure speculation", as they are constructed out of historical data.
I'd also be interested in your emperical evidence that supports that we are awfull at predicting climates.
Just look at how models are faring right now. They are overshooting every observation so far and in such little time already.
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The oil price pretty much collapsed in the 90s in total opposition of the predictions.
I would not consider this trend a collapse (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Crude_oil_prices_since_1861_%28log%29.png) (carefull: the scale is log), although there is obviously a dip in the nineties, it's only in the peroid of 10 years, which is an extremely short time by any measurement except a political one. Since then, it is has only been rising and rising.
The effect on the food industry due to this shenanigan is for everyone to see, and I agree we would be far better off without this "oil" with such a pathetic EROI and such nasty consequences for poor people all over the world. Consider though which groups you can thank this for. What groups of folks clamored for this "solution" as a "green solution"? Yes, that's right, this was an environmentalist solution before it wasn't to the "problem" of peak oil. See? There's a danger too in establishing "dangers" that do not exist.
I have absolutely no idea what your last few lines are even talking about.
Just look at how models are faring right now. They are overshooting every observation so far and in such little time already.
Hmm, I'd beg to differ (http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm).
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No civilization-ending doomsday prediction has turned out correct, but I'm not sure that's sound logical ground in and of itself to dismiss civilizational or existential threats from climate change. On the far extreme, we do know that (to pick one scenario) anoxic ocean events have occurred multiple times in the past. An extreme anthropogenic warming scenario could put us at the low end of the necessary temperature range.
I broadly agree that most Pollyanna scenarios aren't worth panicking about, but that's because they tend to disregard the global system's ability to seek new local optimae. Finding new ways to supply energy is a natural, profitable endeavor, so our system is very good at it. Reducing emissions...I'm not so sure that's the same class of problem.
And there are definitely Pollyanna cries that are worth heeding, like asteroid defense. I don't think we can categorically deny them all.
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The oil price pretty much collapsed in the 90s in total opposition of the predictions.
I would not consider this trend a collapse (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Crude_oil_prices_since_1861_%28log%29.png) (carefull: the scale is log), although there is obviously a dip in the nineties, it's only in the peroid of 10 years, which is an extremely short time by any measurement except a political one. Since then, it is has only been rising and rising.
It's not just the log scale that misleads in your picture, it's also the distinct lack of inflation adjustment. Yeah, nowadays inflation isn't much to ponder about, but the 70s and 80s had lots of it. This is the actual correct picture:
(http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2007/b/images/chartoil-LG.gif)
So yeah it was a collapse.
Hmm, I'd beg to differ (http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm).
Skepticalscience roflmao. I must say, when they lie outright in defense of Hansen's model it's a really glorious moment of propagandaspeech. I have the utmost disgust in all the people involved in the building of that site. In reality, CO2 grew faster than his "business than usual" model A, and empirical observations didn't even reach the speed of global warming in his model C, where he posited a severe cut of CO2 emissions, with them going to zero in 2000.
No civilization-ending doomsday prediction has turned out correct, but I'm not sure that's sound logical ground in and of itself to dismiss civilizational or existential threats from climate change. On the far extreme, we do know that (to pick one scenario) anoxic ocean events have occurred multiple times in the past. An extreme anthropogenic warming scenario could put us at the low end of the necessary temperature range.
I broadly agree that most Pollyanna scenarios aren't worth panicking about, but that's because they tend to disregard the global system's ability to seek new local optimae. Finding new ways to supply energy is a natural, profitable endeavor, so our system is very good at it. Reducing emissions...I'm not so sure that's the same class of problem.
And there are definitely Pollyanna cries that are worth heeding, like asteroid defense. I don't think we can categorically deny them all.
I think you got the Polyanna word backwards. Nevertheless, when the "community" stops throwing people like Bjorn Lomborg, Pielke Jr or Lennart Bengtsson under the bus is the moment where I'll "sound" less "irresponsible" or whatever. (As if not being an alarmed misanthropic catasthrophist is being irresponsible...)
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I think the point Battuta was trying to make there, Luis, is that you're rejecting one extreme of the spectrum by taking shelter in the opposite extreme, and further stating that you will remain on that extreme until the other extreme has fallen out of favor. It would amuse me how political your position is if the matters weren't so serious.
As with most things, a more reasonable position probably lies somewhere toward the middle.
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This is what makes me furious. Because I dare not to be in that warmist "side", I am called an extreme. I even called on this behavior before you did it yourself. Yet, can you point out one single extreme thing I have said so far?
One?
Just one for ****s sake. Come on can't be that hard, since I'm that ****ing hardcore.
Bonus points: tell me where my "political" leanings side since you know oh so much of me. Come on I dare you.
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Yeah, I'm an idiot, I flipped my Chicken Littles and my Polyannas.
I'm not sure we should count on some kind of unforeseen negative feedback mechanism kicking in to stabilize our climate. It's a definite possibility, and it'll lead to decades if not centuries of conspiracy theories and wrong-headed condemnation of scientists, but we can't assume it exists.
(I don't think the truth is always in the middle)
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On the contrary, the truth is always in one extreme... often the spectrum itself just doesn't make much sense.
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I'm not sure we should count on some kind of unforeseen negative feedback mechanism kicking in to stabilize our climate. It's a definite possibility, and it'll lead to decades if not centuries of conspiracy theories and wrong-headed condemnation of scientists, but we can't assume it exists.
This bears repeating.
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I agree with it. The inverse is also true, notwithstanding how much prominent those fears creep up in the blogosphere, the newssites or even scientific circles, namely the catastrophic positive feedback loops that will threaten to get us beyond some hidden "thresholds" that will spiral all the equations in a non-linear fashion into other kinds of attractor nightmare scenarios.
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I don't think there's perfect symmetry there, though. If we assume there is no negative feedback loop, the payoff of being wrong is marginal. If we assume there's no positive feedback loop, well, the payoff of being wrong...
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I agree with it. The inverse is also true, notwithstanding how much prominent those fears creep up in the blogosphere, the newssites or even scientific circles, namely the catastrophic positive feedback loops that will threaten to get us beyond some hidden "thresholds" that will spiral all the equations in a non-linear fashion into other kinds of attractor nightmare scenarios.
You keep talking about your beef against these, yet these never seem to be brought up into the discussion. You keep talking about your beefs about the green movement, yet no one here represents any form of that green movement you are raging against. You often bring hyperboles into the discussion and explain why you distinctly hate those hyperboles, whilst I have absolutuly have no idea that these hyperboles even have existed in the first place or where considered in policy discussions. You mentoin something about enviromentalists having something to do with oil being so importnat in energy production and thus being closely tied to food problems, yet do not explain why this is, you just seem to rage. I can expect a venus style greenhouse theory to be mentoined in scientific circles as a "Final scenario", but it is only ever mentoined just because it's science, and it is interesting to know that sort of stuff, yet you shout it about like it's a commonly used thing and therefore topics such as these are worth all your rage.
As such, some of your arguments appear utterly alien to me.
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[projection]
...
Okay guys, when someone raises a challenge like this, failing to address it will just leave him thinking a) you don't have anything to back up your earlier claims, b) he's right, and c) you're a bunch of assholes. I know this, because we just did this back on page 3 when I asked "what's so bad about stagnation". Well no, I didn't seriously think "there is nothing wrong with stagnation", but that's not the point.
[/projection]
Idunno, Luis, I don't think "extremism" works that way. In a discussion of matters of fact, either something is true or it isn't. You can disagree with a lot of separate statements, and no single point of contention is what puts you over the line into "extreme". Extremism isn't necessarily having the most extreme possible opinion (e.g. "the snowball effect will cause earth to turn into Pluto II, and there is nothing we can do to stop it"), it's really a matter of being near one of the two extremes of common public discourse.
That said, it's not just opinions that can get someone labeled an "extremist". It's also things like rhetoric (e.g. that bit about "propagandaspeech"). And also... I don't know what to call it, but... the more you hear of "man causes global warming causes badness" the more you say "no"... and I wonder if you also convince yourself further every time you do this. (This is not an accusation, merely a call for introspection.)
So maybe that's what they were talking about.
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I don't think there's perfect symmetry there, though. If we assume there is no negative feedback loop, the payoff of being wrong is marginal. If we assume there's no positive feedback loop, well, the payoff of being wrong...
Yes, I think the assymetry works against us, and that's why dealing with global warming in a risk assessment objective manner is essential and urgent. But there's a difference between acknowledging the assymetry and working in solutions to edge the risks and engage in Pascal's Wager - like arguments that could basically justify anything (like, say, justify a preemptive strike against Iraq on the "unknown unknown" dangers). I think the media is too focused on treating extreme speculation as fact, focused in trying to scare people into accepting this problem as being "the big one" we have right now, and I don't like too much of what I see.
It's not just that science can become a target of hatred or scorn if projections don't come into fruition, it's more that science itself has become a medium of transmitting a particular ideology to the populace instead of being objective and impartial. I don't mind all the shenanigans I have seen for the past years in this field, it's only human after all, but I'm afraid people just take it for granted when they shouldn't.
You keep talking about your beef against these, yet these never seem to be brought up into the discussion. You keep talking about your beefs about the green movement, yet no one here represents any form of that green movement you are raging against. You often bring hyperboles into the discussion and explain why you distinctly hate those hyperboles, whilst I have absolutuly have no idea that these hyperboles even have existed in the first place or where considered in policy discussions.
You have brought yourself many points that do come from emotional sources, more concerned in scaring you into belief rather than actually inform you in an objective sense. So much so that I think I've refuted most of what you said in empirical terms up there. These exagerations (and yes, that oil price graph you shared is a misleading one, let's not dwell about the intentions of who did it...) do misinform any subsequent discussion we can have on the subject, turning everything into a binary "Pascal Wager" thing where either you do everything to save the planet or the planet dies in hellfire due to all the excesses of mankind.
You mentoin something about enviromentalists having something to do with oil being so importnat in energy production and thus being closely tied to food problems, yet do not explain why this is, you just seem to rage.
I am sorry, it is true. I didn't want to develop this point further. Corn ethanol was labeled as a green solution and had huge subsidies for it when I resarched it some years ago. I don't know what is going on now in 2014 but I would guess things are pretty much the same. Again, environmentalists forgot to measure side effects of their solutions, and once the industry caught on the practice and made it profitable and scaled, we did end up seeing the ghastly effects on food prices, especially on the brink of the big recession event in 2009.
I can expect a venus style greenhouse theory to be mentoined in scientific circles as a "Final scenario", but it is only ever mentoined just because it's science, and it is interesting to know that sort of stuff, yet you shout it about like it's a commonly used thing and therefore topics such as these are worth all your rage.
As such, some of your arguments appear utterly alien to me.
I admit I'm a bore at this and I apologize.
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Hey guys, while I appreciate that discussion has this far remained civil I notice an increase in paragraphs that feature the phrase "you said", "you mention", and the like. Please remember to debate or discuss the points, not the people.
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Hey guys, while I appreciate that discussion has this far remained civil I notice an increase in paragraphs that feature the phrase "you said", "you mention", and the like. Please remember to debate or discuss the points, not the people.
Just to note that you did precisely this above, and when challenged to produce evidence you didn't. I would also have preferred to convey this to you in private but for some reason you chose to block me so there.
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Heh. That ignore had been on for...years? I just click through it every time and honestly forgot that it blocks pms as well. Should be fixed as soon as I remember where to change that particular option.
The reason I didn't pursue the tangent was because I also realized this. If I could delete posts I would have for that one (editing doesn't quite work). Plus, I could already feel the quote chain, and rethought what *would* have turned the entire thread on its head again continuing.
Attempting to be consistent sucks. :p
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You have brought yourself many points that do come from emotional sources, more concerned in scaring you into belief rather than actually inform you in an objective sense. So much so that I think I've refuted most of what you said in empirical terms up there.
I think I've seen you make a lot of assertions without actually providing any evidence for any of your points. Even that graph you seemed to think was so important lacked any citation whatsoever, making it awfully hard for anyone to double-check...
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an interesting side tangent in this whole discussion is perhaps the Amero Tragedy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armero_tragedy), the results of a government not taking heeds of various warnings made by scientists.