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Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

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Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#181
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would law of physics kick in ? If it takes thousands of years to produce oil/gas/coal, and months to extract and consume it... then what political solution do have ? My concern is that we might hit an energy crisis (Russia/Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg). We need oil/gas/coal for everything around us (clothes, transportation, heat, cement, iron, energy). For energy we could use nuclear for baseline, and some…

Electricity can be turned into gas. People do not need to live like US suburbanites. As fossil fuels deplete, this will happen automatically, through the price mechanism. That said, fossil fuels are nowhere near to depletion and may well last for centuries.

> That said, fossil fuels are nowhere near to depletion and may well last for centuries.

They ARE getting more expensive (see U.S shale oil in the last decade) because the best spots are always mined first. Once gone you have to dig deeper and harder and use increasingly more complex and expensive methods to extract it. At some point you will get negative return on energy - so even if it is there it will be wasteful to extract.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#182
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideal for plants is bad for us.

Um.. no? I don't know what you might mean here. Higher CO2 levels will result in vastly more arable land, mostly from the reduction of deserts and the warming of permafrost. Higher CO2 levels make agricultural crops grow faster and bigger. Higher CO2 levels (within the range I was talking about) has no effect on human respiration. Ideal for plants is good for us too.

"For most crops the saturation point will be reached at about 1,000–1,300 ppm under ideal circumstances"

- http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm

"They found that if the outdoor CO2 concentrations do rise to 930 ppm, that would nudge the indoor concentrations to a harmful 1,400 ppm.

In fact, at 1,400 ppm, CO2 concentrations may decrease basic decision-making ability by 25%, and complex strategic thinking by around 50%, the authors found."

- https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/continued-CO2-emissions-wil...

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#183
post #97

Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. Obviously at some point limits will kick in (unless we can expand to other planets) but what to do about that is more of a political question than a scientific one. I personally think it is more appealing to attempt expanding the limits, as we've done in the past, than to pre-emptively ad…

Would law of physics kick in ? If it takes thousands of years to produce oil/gas/coal, and months to extract and consume it... then what political solution do have ? My concern is that we might hit an energy crisis (Russia/Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg). We need oil/gas/coal for everything around us (clothes, transportation, heat, cement, iron, energy). For energy we could use nuclear for baseline, and some…

We can all try consuming less. I'm hoping the market will have to correct us all out of sheer shortage. E.g gas for the car, meat and flight will get too expensive for many people. At some point it will probably happen I'm just hoping we'll get there while we can still correct our future.

Is meat, a car and cheap holidays worth destroying the planet and ravaging through the precious resources we have left? Very doubtful. We can use trains, eat more beans/soy and go to nearest beach/mountain where we live.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#184
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is covered in the supplement, 4. Economics, f) Free market... I would agree that competition in some form is essential, but we must also be mindful of issues with competition such as market failures.

That says nothing about power or about academia itself. The whole supplement is a "list of superficial assertions we hold to be true even though we have no idea if they are", that are typical political anti-capitalist rhetoric

They are "working hypothesis" to be studied, and thus implicitly they are being considered skeptically. I agree they should consider power, I would imagine that would come under cultural aspects. As to Academia, they explicitly criticize Academic silos; the whole network is a way to address problems with reductionism.

I'm not sure what makes you think they are anti-capitalist. I suspect you didn't read the whole thing because they say "To be clear, the authors are not making blanket statements about the pros and cons of markets, capitalism, socialism, or communism. (These are tasks for the scholarly network whose creation we urge.)"

Edit: on a side note, I'm genuinely interested in how you would envision a 'world without power'?

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#185
post #45
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sort of a selfish viewpoint to take, is it not? I mean I don't necessarily disagree with you, just... the reasoning seems strange to me.

It’s ultimately a humanist set of values that lead to that conclusion. If we value human happiness we should try to make as much of that as possible.

Is that a reasonable conclusion? Is it better to have a population of 8 billion or a population of 8 trillion where on average everyone is 1/1000 as happy? Is happiness even something where it makes more sense to measure a total rather than an average? If we value high speed in the 100m sprint, should we add more runners to ensure a higher total speed?

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#186
I would love to hear what the authors of this paper think about permaculture; not the woo-woo hippie stereotype of permaculture that is so prevalent ("herb spirals", cob ovens, etc), but rather the specific principles and methods outlined in Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (Mollison, 1988). After reading their article , especially the points on creating actionable solutions, I would think they would readily embrace the framework created by permaculture.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#187
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole paper is lazy, panic-ridden grift. Why lazy? Because it's core thesis is that fossil fuels are a natural constraint... The word "nuclear" does not appear a single time in the entire paper! We have more than enough carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen on this earth to do incredible things given an energy source. It's time to stop dooming and start exploring. Also, fuck Mars. Why not try to make the desert…

Nuclear energy is expensive, tricky to get right and constrained by Uranium. We have about 230 years at today's consumption rate left. Sounds like a lot but today's consumption isn't much...many countries barely use nuclear. So imagine what happens if we need to increase nuclear by 10x ...oops now we have 20 years worth of Uranium left. Also while not an expert on mining I do know that the best spots are mined first,…

It looks like you stopped reading.

> Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time

It also looks like you've forgotten about thorium, and geothermal, and solar...

My point is that the article is tremendously lazy.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#188
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole paper is lazy, panic-ridden grift. Why lazy? Because it's core thesis is that fossil fuels are a natural constraint... The word "nuclear" does not appear a single time in the entire paper! We have more than enough carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen on this earth to do incredible things given an energy source. It's time to stop dooming and start exploring. Also, fuck Mars. Why not try to make the desert…

Energy source constraints are not the only ones that exist. We also extract many other things from the planet and transform them into other things that we use. These extractions/transformations are also very problematic, and subject to strong constraints. Examples: * The clearing of forests for farmland for the ever increasing population and increased (unneeded) calorie consumption per person destroys ecosystems, and…

What if we didn't have to use inorganic materials...

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we'll continue to pollute at a rate far too great for the planet to handle, and we're going to have to get very good at remediation to continue living here. The planet will do fine, but even stating such a thing is still commit anthropomorphism. The planet will continue to exist for a long time, no matter what the fate of mankind will be. Even life is most likely to continue prospering in a way or in an othe…

You're absolutely right, the planet is in no danger. It's us humans that are in danger. We are polluting at a rate far too great for us humans to handle, and if we want to survive as a species we must do something about that.

Even that is gross hyperbole. Humans as species could survive even the most disastrous predictions, rendering entire continents uninhabited.

The top level post is correct. It is a matter of minimizing suffering.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#190

I would love to hear what the authors of this paper think about permaculture; not the woo-woo hippie stereotype of permaculture that is so prevalent ("herb spirals", cob ovens, etc), but rather the specific principles and methods outlined in Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (Mollison, 1988). After reading their article , especially the points on creating actionable solutions, I would think they would readily embrace…

I don't know about Tom Murphy's (from the paper) opinion but I do see permaculture being taken seriously by people in the field - Post Carbon Institute for example (https://www.postcarbon.org/).
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