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We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

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Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#191

Post by Schroedingersat »

thinking4real wrote: post #141
lumb63 wrote: post #67

Some of what the author says is accurate. Carbon offset credits are bunk. Industrial agriculture is harmful. There are environmental issues to a lot of the “greening” practices. There are issues around how equitably the climate change revolution is going to impact different demographics. Some of what the author says is false. Consumer choices do make a difference. I work in climate tech and the product my company pro…

“Electric vehicles are progress… has the potential to become renewable” How do you contradict yourself so quickly and not see it? Our electric cars aren’t using “renewable energy” (what a shifty term). They’re using oil being converted to electric energy (at a cost of losing some of the efficiency) Maybe someday these cars will use energy purely generated from the sun or wind, but given the volume of cars in the plan…

This is wrong on so many levels. Just adding regenerative braking and using a larger, more efficient steam turbine pays for the extra embodied CO2 in an EV in about 200 charges (out of 5000 or so an LFP battery lasts). After that the EV is producing under half the emissions even running on pure coal burnt in a subcritical plant delivered over an inefficient third world grid.

As of 7 months ago 13% of annual world electricity generation over the preceding year was wind and solar (and this goes up several percent a year), a little under 10% is nuclear and 15% is hydro. Along with minor renewable resources like landfill gas (distinct from wood biomass which should not be included) fossil fuels are under 60%.

Anyone in Brazil or Norway or one of many othernplaces has about two orders of magnitude less marginal emissions.

The amount of sunlight that hits a car over an average december day in Ireland could move it further than 80% of people drive. It's not yet possible to gather most of it, but in 80% of the world >90% of grid powered charging by covering one of the places the car parks on the regular with PV and buffering a day's power in a battery 10% the size of the car's.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#192

Post by jwestbury »

theragra wrote: post #164
version_five wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for a lot of corporate training as well, in particular for compliance stuff. It's all bullshit to check a box. Whoever's paying for it wants to spend as little as possible, nobody cares what the content is or whether its actually learned, it's just about transferring liability. It's these silly regulatory constructs that are too detached from reality (like offsets) that give rise to this brand of bullshi…

Indeed. I found i can pass 99% of these trainings without reading any materials beforehand. I just check reasonably sounding boxes. That's it. I failed such training only one time among hundreds! My colleagues pass these in foreign languages for the lulz

My favourite was a training I took once which, if clicked through fast enough, would just skip right past the tests. There was no final check for how well you did, so my "you passed" certificate at the end proudly displayed that I had passed with a 10% score (because I answered the first few questions before realising the bug).

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#193

Post by ravenstine »

RetpolineDrama wrote: post #76
ravenstine wrote: post #46

The very premise of modern environmentalism necessitates human extinction by logical extension. You can't act or believe as if humans can or should have no impact on the environment without entertaining humanity's gradual demise as part of the process of "saving the earth" when all other known options are exhausted.

>You can't act or believe as if humans can or should have no impact on the environment without entertaining humanity's gradual demise as part of the process of "saving the earth" when all other known options are exhausted. IMO this particular aspect of modern environmentalism is a religious root on a secular tree. Many religions imply that man isn't natural, that there's the nature world and that we are above it/not…

Interesting. Yeah, the separation of many from nature (or perhaps that "nature" is even a comprehensible idea) seems demireligious in the sense that nature was given to man to have dominion over; man can become holy but not animals, depending on one's inherited belief system.

There's other fallacious ideas around nature that may have nothing to do with religion that I think are just common breakdowns in logic. People commonly apply the idea of "balance" to areas where it doesn't apply, or at least doesn't apply in the way that they think it does. Earth is a complicated system of systems, but is it meant to be in balance? If that were so, Earth's climate would not oscillate (excluding changes in solar output) over geological eras. Was Earth out of balance during the ice age?

"Balance" may in part be a proxy for our desire to want systems with which we are accustomed to not change. I've witnessed countless individuals, concerned with preserving nature, who would consider a plant or animal to be "non-native" or "invasive" while failing to recognize that the plants they believe to be "native" were introduced by animals in recent ecological history. They overlook the possibility (really a high likelihood) that the environment that explorers set foot on was significantly different from how it was even a century prior. It'd difficult for concepts of nativeness and invasiveness to be comprehensible if they did. Not that these aren't useful concepts in some domain, but many people interested in ecology or environmentalism believe them to be absolutely accurate or meaningful.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#194

Post by slothtrop »

adrianN wrote: post #187
slothtrop wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides fuel for transportation, the following make up a large use-case: blast furnaces for smelting steel and making coke, cement-making, ammonia synthesis, creating plastics. Electricity by itself accounts for near 25% of fossil fuel use. None of those can be viably replaced right now. With very large transpo, there seems to be a lot of investment in hydrogen but skepticism surrounding it too, including for the env…

If we could replace those things right now we would already have done so. That is no argument against investing into technologies that can replace those uses. And I count furnaces, cement making, and electricity production as fuel , since all you need for the process is heat.

> That is no argument against investing into technologies that can replace those uses.

It never was. It's a suggestion that near-term abatability e.g. 27 years is untenable. Policy and projection qua climate can't hinge on the promise of hypotheticals. It's possible to leverage nuclear more for an accelerated timeline, but the greens keep trying to block progress. Can't have your cake and eat it too is the way I see it.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#195

Post by cultofmetatron »

thinking4real wrote: post #141
lumb63 wrote: post #67

Some of what the author says is accurate. Carbon offset credits are bunk. Industrial agriculture is harmful. There are environmental issues to a lot of the “greening” practices. There are issues around how equitably the climate change revolution is going to impact different demographics. Some of what the author says is false. Consumer choices do make a difference. I work in climate tech and the product my company pro…

“Electric vehicles are progress… has the potential to become renewable” How do you contradict yourself so quickly and not see it? Our electric cars aren’t using “renewable energy” (what a shifty term). They’re using oil being converted to electric energy (at a cost of losing some of the efficiency) Maybe someday these cars will use energy purely generated from the sun or wind, but given the volume of cars in the plan…

> How do you contradict yourself so quickly and not see it?

where is the contradiction? yes, switching to an electric car when its oil converted to electricity isn't much better but it still represents progress because it creates incentive for an electrical supply chain that can take inputs from things other than oil. The idea is that it creates an opening for renewables to take a foothold where ice presented a blockade.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#196

Post by starkd »

unethical_ban wrote: post #185
starkd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the environmental movement went seriously awry by aligning itself with socialist political goals. Socialism is nothing more than a way to monopolize corporate power for tremendous profits. Climate ideals of limiting carbon also diverted attention from real-world pollution concerns - like harm from large-scale mining operations.

Oh man, attacking "socialism" by invoking profits. Saying carbon limiting efforts do not align with concerns about mining. Implying limiting carbon isn't an important goal. Woof.

So, you take peoples' stated intention at face value? Can people not be greedy just by becoming avowed socialists?

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

The Castro Brothers, Hugo Chavez, and many others were some of the richest people in the world. These are not exceptions; they are generally the rule!

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#197

Post by kkfx »

A small note: the Green New Deal is not much about ecology. It's a, needed, industrial revolution. Why? For the same reasons why we switch from mechanical cash registers to electronic ones: because making electronics is expensive in factories terms, but it's needed and can spit out gazillion of very cheap ICs needing not much raw material, while the previous mechanical version demand much more raw material, energy and labor per single unit. Similarly moving electricity is not that simple nor cheap, but still needed and far cheaper than moving gas, gasoline, diesel etc.

Ecology? Ah, ok, there is SOME at the end, meaning much less need of raw materials ONCE the transition would be made.

That's the point almost nobody want to state because in that case instead of getting a polarized cohort of fanatics on both side we would get a significant cohort of people stating "ok, let's do it BUT if we pay for product factories sustain the costs OR we participate to the costs and to the earning".

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#198

Post by unethical_ban »

starkd wrote: post #196
unethical_ban wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, attacking "socialism" by invoking profits. Saying carbon limiting efforts do not align with concerns about mining. Implying limiting carbon isn't an important goal. Woof.

So, you take peoples' stated intention at face value? Can people not be greedy just by becoming avowed socialists? Hahahahahahahahahaha! The Castro Brothers, Hugo Chavez, and many others were some of the richest people in the world. These are not exceptions; they are generally the rule!

Telling that you invoke those leaders rather than the countries of northern Europe. In any case, I can't tell how your original comment aligned with the discussion about carbon offset credits, or more off-topic, how you think limiting carbon output is somehow not a worthy goal of reducing climate change.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#199

Post by carapace »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #136
carapace wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Dr. Gwynne Dyer: "Geopolitics in a Hotter World" (Sept. 2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY Transcription: https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo... At one point he talks about the possibility of unilateral geoengineering, and he mentions the head of the Bangladesh Institute of Strategic Studies... - - - - FWIW I figure that a technological "magic bullet" might save o…

Sure seems tough to convince people to voluntarily consume less. Relying on that as a strategy seems… fraught.

Yeah, I agree with that. Unfortunately, it seems to me that we're going to overshoot on climate and it's going to be bad: mass migrations, mass starvation, war...

I feel like there's a narrow window here to choose our future, but that's likely an illusion or conceit.

For myself, I'm leaning toward becoming some sort of prepper, not politically nor ideologically, but as a kind of Pascal's Wager with the possibility of future chaos.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#200

Post by theragra »

jwestbury wrote: post #192
theragra wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I found i can pass 99% of these trainings without reading any materials beforehand. I just check reasonably sounding boxes. That's it. I failed such training only one time among hundreds! My colleagues pass these in foreign languages for the lulz

My favourite was a training I took once which, if clicked through fast enough, would just skip right past the tests. There was no final check for how well you did, so my "you passed" certificate at the end proudly displayed that I had passed with a 10% score (because I answered the first few questions before realising the bug).

Nice ;) I certainly hope these things do not store answers forever. Because if they do, in ten years some scary social credit system will punish a lot of people
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