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The world has probably passed peak pollution

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Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#341

Post by Dylan16807 »

missedthecue wrote: post #324
Dylan16807 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extreme drop rate for the whole globe to have, and a very long time, so I'm not scared by it. The population only went over 2 billion in 1927. Dropping from current numbers is fine, and less competition over space would be nice.

The issue isn't just the total number, it's the demography. The population is getting very old at a breakneck speed. I'm not sure how healthcare and pensions are supposed to be provided for old people when the tax base gets smaller and smaller every year. The end result is pretty terrible elder poverty. Not to mention the changing political dynamics of having a lot of old people outnumber younger people by 2 or 3 tim…

> The population is getting very old at a breakneck speed.

https://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/united...

Looks fine to me. What's your definition of "old" here? Are you specifically worried about Korea like you mentioned in another post?

I'd worry about the implications of a global 1.6 birthrate if they were actually going to happen. I don't think that's very likely, though. I don't know if we're even going to get down to 2.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#342

Post by skissane »

happypumpkin wrote: post #256
doug_durham wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, so conspiracies now. Interesting approach. "They" tricked us with the ever menacing "they".

Their theory also depends on the children of the "conservatives that have the most kids" remaining conservative, which I haven't observed among my own social group. My friends that had the most conservative parents (ex: Jehovah's Witnesses) went the furthest in the opposite direction, becoming progressives who don't want many (or any) kids. Personally, I'd rather have fewer kids and be able to give them more attentio…

Some ultra-conservative groups have >80%, even >90% youth retention – such as Older Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Jehovah's Witnesses youth retention is a lot lower – I've heard claims it is less than 50%, that on average more leave than say.

Plausibly, being much closer to mainstream culture makes it much easier for people brought up JW to leave, whereas people raised in communities where English isn't even their first language, find that much harder.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#343

Post by bamboozled »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #315
bamboozled wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t it take a while to bring a coal station up to energy producing capacity ? Isn’t they why gas is more popular for this ?

China has domestic coal reserves, so they build coal. It's the same reason as West Virginia and just as bad. If you have any amount of energy storage then the time delay doesn't matter. You turn on the alternate generation method when the storage is starting to run down. It doesn't matter if it takes an hour to come up to temperature because you still have two hours of storage left. The actual problem is that "shortf…

This is what makes me think it’s all a lie. It makes no economic sense to use coal as a “backup”?

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#344

Post by dissuade »

NewJazz wrote: post #258
illiac786 wrote: post #120

I find this title highly misleading “peak emission” would be much more accurate. “Peak pollution” sounds like the amount of pollution in the environment will actually _decrease_ going forward. That is simply not true, it will continue to increase, just slightly less fast. Sorry if I don’t feel euphoric right now.

Isn't the concept of pollution highly subjective?

[flagged]

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#345

Post by BurningFrog »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #339
BurningFrog wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're clearly on the other side of this dividing line.

Don't label me so quickly. I'm not saying we need less population at present. I'm just saying that at some point the cost outweighs the benefit. And humanity has been trying pretty hard to go toward that point. Do you really think it will always, always be better to have more people? If you say no to this, then you don't get to say we're on different sides of the line. If you say yes, then you need to explain how tha…

OK, I over-interpreted your position.

Not that there is anything wrong with disagreeing with me on this.

Two point as a taste:

1. One way more people is always better is in invention. Ten billon heads invent more than one.

2. People always worry that with more people there will be food shortage. They are also always empirically wrong. Because food is made by people! Twice as many people means twice as many farmers!

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#346

Post by Dylan16807 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #345
Dylan16807 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't label me so quickly. I'm not saying we need less population at present. I'm just saying that at some point the cost outweighs the benefit. And humanity has been trying pretty hard to go toward that point. Do you really think it will always, always be better to have more people? If you say no to this, then you don't get to say we're on different sides of the line. If you say yes, then you need to explain how tha…

OK, I over-interpreted your position. Not that there is anything wrong with disagreeing with me on this. Two point as a taste: 1. One way more people is always better is in invention. Ten billon heads invent more than one. 2. People always worry that with more people there will be food shortage. They are also always empirically wrong. Because food is made by people! Twice as many people means twice as many farmers!

Inventions are great but they can only do so much to improve land use.

I don't think we even have a way to put one billion people to work on optimized farms. More labor won't lead to more full mouths.

As an example of costs catching up, going from 20% of land to 30% of land needing to be optimized farms used to feed people directly? That's easy enough, and those numbers would support more people than we have today. Going from 80% to 90%, however, is extremely worrying. And we could go from the former to the latter and past it very fast too.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#347

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

faeriechangling wrote: post #254
kaashif wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I would value my life much more than that. I think how the question is phrased really matters. How much do you value your life? Or how much would someone have to pay you to kill yourself? Are these even different questions?

I was recently buying an older car and calculating out how much buying a newer car with more safety features was worse by assigning a value to my life/health and the risk of death and the risk of injury. I see used cars which generation over generation have major safety upgrades which, if you value your life at 10 million would probably save you 10 grand or so over the life of the car, having a gulf in price of a few…

On the other end of the spectrum, I probably give much more inherent value to my life than the average person (probably closer to 20m than 10m, if I were to spreadsheet it out) and it drives a lot of risk-averse action on my part.

Driving was one I decided on early: I didn't get a driver's license until 25, to get well out of the danger zone for auto accidents; and then less than a year after I got it, I moved to Finland (an uncommonly safe country in its own right) and I've been living off of public transit and bike paths that aren't thin painted lines next to motor traffic ever since.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#348

Post by plokiju »

rustcleaner wrote: post #181
skissane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Peak baby - 2013. [2] I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question. To just use the US as an example: mainstream Americans have a declining fertility rate, and we have no reason to think that is going to reverse in the foreseeable future. Immigrants have higher fertility, but they tend to converge to the mainstream after a generation or two. So,…

Just a friendly reminder to modern Progressives that (on average) you will not be in the future described by parent because you were tricked into an anti-natalist posture and will fail to reproduce adequately. It's a problem which kills itself in time so long as the problem doesn't ideologically metastasize into competiting populations.

friendly reminder to you: you won't be in the future either. because all humans have short lifespans. having children won't change that. enjoy the ride, whatever that means to you

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#349

Post by rgmerk »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #166
rgmerk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently part of the issue is that the Chinese grid is very badly managed. They can build physical grid connections much more easily than we can manage (for the usual values of “we”), but they manage interprovincial transmission according to fixed schedules rather than responding to demand.

Which means that they have a relatively easy lever they can pull to significantly lower emissions even further.

Undoing dumb rules that favour existing vested interests is hard everywhere.

I mean, the US doesn't exactly cover itself in glory in its own utility regulations. "cost-of-service" regulation means that monopoly utilities are allowed to charge such that they make a regulated rate of return on the cost of providing the service. So the more they increase their costs, the more money they are permitted to make!

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#350

Post by adrianN »

graeme wrote: post #226
gavindean90 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thinks that’s been predicted but not observed thus far.

We have on a small scale. Methane is escaping as the permafrost thaws. Boreal forests are also burning down as their climate warms. Reduction in polar ice changes the albedo of the earth to reflect less heat. At a certain point sufficient warming could trigger a cascade. So far we haven't done that, but it's incorrect to say there's been no release of stored CO2.

Earthworms are moving north and accelerate the breakdown of organic matter in arctic regions too.
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