COP26

[peds]

53 minutes ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

 

I simply highlighted the absurdity of that part of the post which referred to something between nothing and catastrophe ...

You misunderstand... this isn't a variable that concerns any single individual, as you illustrate with your lottery ticket. It concerns each separate generation, from then until now. 

 

For someone born in 1970, after having 5 or 6 of the most frail and doddery years trimmed off of what would have been their life expectancy if society wasn't going to fall apart, it's not such a problem. 

For someone born in the last few years, who will be enjoying the prime of their life during the very worst stages of the climate wars, mass immigration, weaponised starvation, and genocide, they are likely to live only half as long as their parents' generation. THAT, however you look at it, is a catastrophe. 

 

That's the sort of thing that young Greta is upset about, and the primary cause of an astronomical uptick in depression and suicide among young people.

[Haironyourchest]

57 minutes ago, Stere said:

I do wonder if hi tech modern  and net zero are compatible.

 

Unless there is some leftfield  thing that comes along  like fusion power or AI singularity causes rapid tech advancement) or other extreme changes in the next few decades,...

 

Hairychest have you seen this website might interest you:

 

LOW-TECH MAGAZINE

WWW.LOWTECHMAGAZINE.COM

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Doubts on progress and technology <!-- Begin Cookie Consent plugin by Silktide - http://silktide.com/cookieconsent...

 

Good find! Fascinating stuff. On page 2 it mentions modern sail power, I read a thing about oil tankers experimenting with massive parachute style sails to cut down on fuel costs. Don't know if it caught on. 

[openspaceman]

59 minutes ago, Stere said:

I do wonder if hi tech modern  and net zero are compatible.

Each layer of tech depends on the previous one and it's economic surplus that funds the advancement.

 

So hi tech goes with economic growth

 

We have economic growth because the most successful economic model mimics life yet does not have the limit of a lifespan.

 

Why this system has got so far is that it has out competed other systems at being able to maximise the potential to exploit global resources of raw materials, capital and labour.

 

Prior to 1860 the scale was too small to affect the global sustainability after that the "no limits to growth" philosophy led inexorably to the situation we are in now because it  worked on the survival of the most successful "devil take the hindmost" philosophy. We in Britain benefited from that by being early colonisers and importing wealth as a result, at the cost to less developed society.

 

As there is no over bearing god like authority to prevent the tragedy of the commons of air water, raw material waste etc. there is no means for it to be sustainable.

 

So yes in a way I don't think hi tech is compatible with sustainability.

 

With US inability to accept a loss of luxuries provided by advanced economic development and China and India trying to catch up while we swirl round in an eddy of the post brexit-covid plug hole I don't hold much hope even though I have tried to be cautious with resources. Mind that was driven by fears of sustainability and toxic pollution dating from 1970 thoughts rather than CO2 driven chaotic weather events.

 

One small hope lies in that the low hanging fruits of fossil fuels have been taken, so development of the remainder is centrally controlled by global corporations which governments could control if they wished.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

50 minutes ago, Haironyourchest said:

Good find! Fascinating stuff. On page 2 it mentions modern sail power, I read a thing about oil tankers experimenting with massive parachute style sails to cut down on fuel costs. Don't know if it caught on. 

Bit of a tenuous link but the apparent potential for an Israeli new canal alternative to Suez has been strangely absent from ‘news.’  It was examined in the 60’s (I think) and involved nuclear bombs to blast a new channel. 
 

Post recent Suez blockage it seems to have re-emerged as a contender. Maybe related to Trump’s movement of US embassy to Jerusalem and certain Arab states recognising the state of Israel for the first time - all just coincidental isolated events? I wouldn’t have thought so. 
 

So, for all the hot air at COP26, the big plans may actually be to increase global trade route capacity and versatility. 
 

Can’t see how facilitating consumption ‘fits’ in an apparent desire to reduce CO2. Unless it is all just smoke and mirrors of course....

[sime42]

Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050

[Cuttup]

6 hours ago, peds said:

Look, I know that I'm talking to the wrong people here, I accept that nothing will sway your opinion until Norfolk is underwater and the boats of climate refugees are either dropped straight into the starvation camps or machine gunned on sight. But here's a little thought, and the supporting document in question, from Noam Chomsky.

 

Quote (discussing erstwhile President Trump's climate policies)

 

"And notice that the wrecking ball in the White House just doesn’t give a damn. He’s having fun. He’s serving his rich constituency. So what the hell, let’s destroy the world. And it’s not that they don’t know it. Some months ago, maybe a year ago by now, one of the Trump bureaucracies the National Transportation Administration came out with what I think is the most astonishing document in the entire history of the human species. It got almost no attention. It was a long 500-page environmental assessment in which they tried to determine what the environment would be like at the end of the century. And they concluded, by the end of the century, temperatures will have risen seven degrees Fahrenheit, that’s about twice the level that scientists regard as feasible for organized human life. The World Bank describes it as cataclysmic. So what’s their conclusion? Conclusion is we should have no more constraints on automotive emissions. The reasoning is very solid. We’re going off the cliff anyway. So why not have fun? Has anything like that ever appeared in human history? There’s nothing like it."

 

PDF document from the NTA:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/ld_cafe_my2021-26_deis_0.pdf

 

So we've even got climate scientists on your side of the line saying that things are f*cked up,  the situation is beyond all hope, so why even bother trying? Let's just make a few more dollars whole we can!

 

If you'd like, I can keep dropping the occasional report or study or TED talk or whatever in here to give you something to think about?

 

But no... it'd be a waste of everyone's time. 

 

Its not a waste of your time, and you're not talking to the wrong people.

 

Tricky problems to solve. We can only do our best via the lives we try and lead and the pressures we try and apply to business and politicians.

 

It's pretty hard not to be a hypocrite if you live in the west, so maybe there isn't a huge amount of value in judging each other all of the time.

 

Talk may be cheap, but its also vital. Keep posting.

 

 

[Haironyourchest]

The problem, if we accept the "consensus" view as correct, is this: All economic activity, generates CO2. Even so called green jobs, generate C02. People plant trees, let's say, and are paid. They spent their wages, and the goods and services they buy generate CO2. Every time a coin changes hands, CO2 is released. This is because our population runs on fossil fuel. Our other commodities - plastic, metal, timber, food, water and so on, are also dependant on fossil fuels. The only way to stop the release of CO2 is to completely swap out fossil fuel for electric at the ground level. But the building of an all electric infrastructure requires fossil fuel, and will do for many years. If we want to maintain our "standard of living" this is.

 

The other option, is to reduce our standard of living. What this really means, is moving to an essentials only economy, where commodities are rationed, rather than competed for. It means the relinquishment of choice for the masses. 

 

The third option is let the fate of humanity play out. Maybe use up all the fossil fuels and starve. Maybe heat up the climate and starve. Maybe the climate heats up and we don't starve and we reduce our consumption by necessity because the supply is no longer there. Unknowns. But people are afraid of the unknown because they have children. Understandably.

 

The problem with the second road is we are talking about communism. Children will grow up in a totalitarian system that artificially limits their potential. Is this a future worth having? 

 

In other parts of the world, people will continue to use fossil fuels, climate change or no. They will economically advance and emit more and more CO2. Our changing social model will not prevent this.

 

And the elephant in the room is this: is the hypothesis of the predicted climate Armageddon actually true? And, if so, are we actually causing it? What if the climate is changing naturally, as it did in the past? This debate was quashed by the establishment, in the same way the debate about covid was quashed. It smacks of forceful manipulation and leads many to doubt...

 

[peds]

12 minutes ago, Haironyourchest said:

 

And the elephant in the room is this: is the hypothesis of the predicted climate Armageddon actually true? And, if so, are we actually causing it? What if the climate is changing naturally, as it did in the past? This debate was quashed by the establishment, in the same way the debate about covid was quashed. It smacks of forceful manipulation and leads many to doubt...

 

The debate is slowly, thankfully, finally, being quashed because it's only being perpetuated by the likes of knuckle-dragging simpletons without even the most basic grasp of what is, at the heart of it, incredibly well-understood science. This level of "the debate" should have been knocked on the head back in the late '80s, when we started getting concrete proof of the presence of anthropogenic climate change, when we still had a genuinely decent chance of averting the crisis. That it is even labelled "a debate" in this day and age, at this late stage of the game, is nothing but a source of bewilderment to 99.5% of the scientific community, and should cause great embarrassment to anyone still stuck on that page, and yet, it seems to worn as a badge of honour by an incredibly-small but unbelievably-noisy number of people.

Edited November 6, 2021 by peds

[peds]

1 hour ago, Cuttup said:

Its not a waste of your time, and you're not talking to the wrong people.

 

Tricky problems to solve. We can only do our best via the lives we try and lead and the pressures we try and apply to business and politicians.

 

It's pretty hard not to be a hypocrite if you live in the west, so maybe there isn't a huge amount of value in judging each other all of the time.

 

Talk may be cheap, but its also vital. Keep posting.

 

 

Nice one dude!

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, sime42 said:

Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050

Love it