Fossil fuels - suffer now or suffer more later
Robert Camp
wonderful thing, I'm moving this to a more prominent position.
> What they should be honest about, is why they are doing this.
>
> It's not because they care about scientific truth.
>
> It's because they're worried about the *implications* to society, if
> these theories are right.
>
> At least the Discovery Institute "Wedge Document" told the truth: The
> ToE "controversy" is really about the relationship of religion and
> society.
>
> And I'm worried about the implications of AGW too. I don't see how
> we'll ever be able to travel by air from the United States to Europe (or
> any other great distance) without using fossil fuels. So if AGW is
> right, and we deal with it, then world GDP is going to take a big and
> permanent hit. The world will be slowed down, poorer, less affluent due
> to chronic energy shortages. Just like the 1970s, but worldwide and
> permanent this time.
>
> We should be talking about that, not about this denialism nonsense.
If fossil fuels are that irremovably required, then you have a bigger
problem.
Fossil fuels are finite resources. They _will_ run out. (Economists
are fond of arguing that things will never run out, they'll just get too
expensive to use ... I tend not to find the distinction worth making.)
Your concern, then, imho of course, has nothing to do with climate
change. You have a choice -- how soon do you want to hit the point that
you paint as so disastrous. It happens that taking steps to reduce
reliance on fossil fuels today also means that your kids and grandkids
will be able to take more of those flights later. It also happens that
reducing fossil fuel use today improves the probable climate your kids
and grandkid will experience. But your concern gets addressed at the
same time.
Energy can be had from many sources. If 90% of the oil currently
used for things other than flight gets supplied by something else
(some combination of wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, wave, ... plus
just plain not having to use it in the first place), then you have
oil enough for an impressively vast fleet of aircraft. The _least_
likely route to your grandkids being able to fly is to keep burning
oil in today's electrical generation, in urban car fleets, and so on.
The change will come. If the deniers succeed, the change required
will be too much, too fast for societies and economies to cope (doubly,
as they're also coping with the costs of adapting to the much larger
climate change). If we act before the wolf is inside the house, well,
then it's slower, cheaper, and easier change to make.
--
Robert Grumbine http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/ Science blog
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
Ron O
> Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
> evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
A report that I just saw claims that GM sold more cars in China than
it did in the US for the first time in history last month. 1.3
billion Chinese competing for resources.
Ron Okimoto
Kermit
A transition to electric cars - as much as possible - would help. Then
it doesn't matter (to the car or its user) where the original energy
comes from. Coal can transition to any proportion of nuclear, wind,
tidal, etc. without interrupting the car culture and use. Decouple the
two (cars and energy for fuel), then we can deal with each issue with
less baggage.
Kermit
chris thompson
I personally think nuclear-powered dirigibles are in our future.
Chris
Steven L.
"Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2010040620505016807-robertlcamp@hotmailcom:
But that's a vast difference in time farmes--caused by the advent of
AGW.
If AGW were not a problem,
North America would have sufficient reserves of coal and natural gas to
last for centuries. And as we've been discussing in the Drake Equation
thread, we don't even know if our civilization will exist in the 23rd
century, so there's no point in worrying about running out of coal now.
Even our great-grandchildren will still have plenty of coal. And so we
would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
space-based solar power or fusion power.
Instead, because of AGW,
We are forced to make 80% reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
*thirty years*. Meaning we have to start taking drastic actions almost
immediately. There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 80% in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy
back to the 19th century, no way.
-- Steven L.
Dan Luke
"Steven L." wrote:
> There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%
> in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy back to the 19th
> century, no way.
That's a mighty large assertion. How about showing your work on that,
please?
--
Dan
"How can an idiot be a policeman? Answer me that!"
-Chief Inspector Dreyfus
Robert Camp
Just want to note that it was not my intention to belittle your
concerns by reposting Dr. Grumbine's answer. I think the worries you
expressed are important and need to be addressed, if only from the
standpoint of increasing awareness and modelling the proper way to
think about these issues.
> But that's a vast difference in time farmes--caused by the advent of AGW.
>
> If AGW were not a problem,
> North America would have sufficient reserves of coal and natural gas to
> last for centuries. And as we've been discussing in the Drake Equation
> thread, we don't even know if our civilization will exist in the 23rd
> century, so there's no point in worrying about running out of coal now.
> Even our great-grandchildren will still have plenty of coal. And so
> we would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
> space-based solar power or fusion power.
The issue of sustainability is important regardless of whether cllimate
change or more remediable types of pollution are components of the
problem. The ethic of responsibility to future generations is going to
see significant deliberation in the coming years, I think, and in my
opinion some measure of change (perhaps even in the law) based upon
these considerations is inevitable. It's a moral issue even apart from
AGW.
> Instead, because of AGW,
> We are forced to make 80% reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> *thirty years*. Meaning we have to start taking drastic actions almost
> immediately. There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas
> emissions by 80% in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy
> back to the 19th century, no way.
You may be right, but I'm not sure anybody can know this. In any case,
your point brings to mind something I am beginning to believe will be
the biggest stumbling block to addressing climate change (at least in
the U.S.) - that is the fact that this is much bigger than any couple
of countries. It will take a whole lot of global cooperation (economic,
political, cultural etc.) to successfully address the problem, and
getting past the paranoid jingoists here (and they're not all ignorant
rednecks) who are so terrified of the U.N. and the Trilateral Commision
and a "One World" is going to be slow and painful.
RLC
Robert Grumbine
w.r.t. the new subject line, I'm not even sure 'suffer' needs to
be part of the equation. I expect that it will be, because I expect
that few people or corporations will do anything to adapt. But it
isn't a requirement.
We _could_, without suffering:
a) put sidewalks in neighborhoods, such that it becomes possible to
walk to the 'corner' store without risking your life
b) reconsider zoning so that the 'corner' store is less than 3 miles
away
c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
d) hook solar/wind/... on to the grid for electrical power
e) use more efficient devices rather than less efficient
and so on
One can also examine the US average usage of energy per dollar
per capita of GDP, vs. other 'advanced' countries, and see that
we use 30-50% more energy per dollar GDP than is typical. Before
silly whinging about 'we're a large country', examine just how
many people in the US live in metropolitan areas. And how energy
efficient trains are for long haul transport of goods from central
locations to central locations.
There's also a common complaint that 'standard of living' will
decline if we use less energy. If so, we'd expect that the states
within the US that use the least energy would be the poorest, and
those using the most would be richest. Instead, two of the lowest
energy using states are CA and NY, two of the richest states. WV,
one of the poorest states, is one of the highest energy users.
(Look through the whole list; one thing I think I saw was that
major energy-producing states tend to both be poor, and to be high
per capita energy consumers.)
Robert Grumbine
It'd be a good idea to re-examine your sources for that. And
do so in light of increasing energy demand in the US (if for no
other reason than increasing population). And then do so in light
of increasing world demand for such fuels. Remember in the latter
that the major recipient of North Slope natural gas is Japan, not
the US.
> And as we've been discussing in the Drake Equation
> thread, we don't even know if our civilization will exist in the 23rd
> century, so there's no point in worrying about running out of coal now.
> Even our great-grandchildren will still have plenty of coal. And so we
> would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
> space-based solar power or fusion power.
>
> Instead, because of AGW,
> We are forced to make 80% reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> *thirty years*. Meaning we have to start taking drastic actions almost
> immediately. There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas
> emissions by 80% in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy
> back to the 19th century, no way.
As someone else said, show your work.
Start with the fact that the first 40% of that 80 is 'free' -- involving
merely off the shelf technologies and practices already in place
in other wealthy countries.
Also consider this: 80% in 30 years is 2% per year. Your catastrophic
predictions are saying that we could not possibly drive 300 miles less
next year than this year. (Current US average being 15,000 miles per year.)
Yes, a US in which we averaged 3000 miles per year instead of 15,000 miles
per year would be quite different. So what? The US _today_ is quite
different than the US of 30 years ago (not least, the 15,000 miles -- it
used to be 10,000; were we an impoverished country then?). Change is
going to happen, period. You can make some choices about which changes happen,
and how fast.
Trying to carry out 'business as usual' choice simply means that
we hit the wall sooner, harder, and with much less chance to adjust.
The wealthy will always be able to pay for their plane rides. I'd
as soon that my kids be able to do so on middle-class incomes too.
Robert Camp
Yeah, I changed it several times, but in the end went for drawing in as
many eyes as possible.
I also meant to ask, in reference to your response to Steven L., if you
thought any of the propective technologies for atmospheric carbon
removal show significant promise. I've been reading about them a lot
more lately but always get a distinct feeling of limited scope, maybe
just enough capacity to remove carbon used in air transport (re: Steven
L.'s pont) or something along those lines.
Robert Grumbine
:-)
> I also meant to ask, in reference to your response to Steven L., if you
> thought any of the propective technologies for atmospheric carbon
> removal show significant promise. I've been reading about them a lot
> more lately but always get a distinct feeling of limited scope, maybe
> just enough capacity to remove carbon used in air transport (re: Steven
> L.'s pont) or something along those lines.
I've kept a somewhat casual eye on it since the early 1990s,
when John Martin (a serious scientist who, correctly it turned out,
hypothesized that there were significant areas of the ocean where
tiny traces of iron were the limiting nutrient -- traces tiny
enough to envision ships pitching fertilizer overboard having
major effects on the system) famously said "Give me enough ships
and I'll give you an ice age."
It promptly got re-dubbed 'the geritol solution'. Only problems
being a) you have to continue fertilization forever and b) it wouldn't
remove enough CO2 anyhow (a few tens of ppm, even if it worked perfectly),
and c) the CO2 would resurface in a few decades to centuries.
I haven't been looking closely. But, so far, it seems that all
ideas for carbon burial run in to the problems of either a) the
sink is much too small or b) it would cost a lot of energy to do
the burial. Re-foresting north america is not a bad thing, as a type a
solution but considering that we had de-forested it in the first place,
that's a break even, with a few 10s of ppm atmospheric CO2 involved.
Things like biochar (microwave plants to cinders, bury the cinders) or
mineral burial (react coal plant exhaust with powdered minerals, burial
of the resultant) require a huge energy input.
Irrespective of magnitude or energy requirement, there are the
dollars. I've seen none that offered as good a return, in terms
of kg of carbon not in the atmosphere per $ spent, as not burning
fossil fuels in the first place -- whether by efficiency or by using
other sources.
Digressing, or anticipating: 350.org takes their goal as getting
atmospheric CO2 back below 350 ppm, vs. the current 390 and rising.
They don't spend enough time, imho, discussing how that's going to
come about. The basic mechanism is that many of the sinks are
proportional to the atmospheric level. Given that they were in
balance with an atmosphere at 260-280 ppm (give or take a little),
the sinks are currently soaking up more than the prior balance
values. If we were to quit exceeding their uptake capacity by
far, then they could draw down the 390 towards 350. As it is,
about half our emissions are promptly soaked up by the natural
sinks, and the other half raises the atmospheric levels by the
2 ppm, and rising, per year we see.
A concern, not wholly realized in observations, yet, is that if we
outstrip the sinks by enough, we can turn them in to sources.
One route is to heat the Canadiand and Siberian tundra too much,
in which case they become (are already observed to be) methane
sources. Ditto marine methane deposits. The second, and
much more disconcerting to me, is that our CO2 emissions are
acidifying the ocean. The disconcerting part being that
one of our current carbon sinks is that critters form calcium
carbonate shells, some of which then sink to the sea floor
and stay there. As the ocean gets more acidic, the shells
get harder to make, organisms die, and calcium carbonate fails
to be buried. Plus species go extinct, but who's going to worry
about that?
The ocean acidification issue renders an entire family
of geoengineering solutions irrelevant. That family says
'if co2 keeping the surface too warm is the problem, then
block the sun by (insert method, there are several)'. Except
that, for instance, putting sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere
won't touch the ocean acidification. Actually will aggravate it
(acid rain as the sulfur falls out of stratosphere to the
troposphere in the few year time scale).
Eric Root
wrote:
Yes, I have always been disappointed those old 1950s Popular Science
covers never came true.
Eric Root
Desertphile
<rober...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Because making some sense of a nuanced issue is such a rare and
> wonderful thing, I'm moving this to a more prominent position.
Robert Grumbine is just a America-hating pinko communist socialist
liberal Jew who loves science more than carbon dioxide--- he is
therefore evil.
They can have my chainsaw when they pry it from my cold dead
fingers!
Well-said (er, written).
--
http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz
"Lotta soon to die punks here." -- igotskillz22
Desertphile
For the average miles USA citizens drive to drop to 3,000 per
year, major changes in society must occur. I would not wish to
live in a world where population density must increase alarmingly
(to decrease transportation distances) and where commuting means
being crammed into boxcars like cattle. Far better to see humanity
exterminated than reduce the average standard of living to that of
a 1950's horror movie. Millions of people would have to live like
Navajos, or like I do--- and they would sooner die first.
For the average USA citizen to drive 3,000 miles or less per year
they would have to live all crammed packed together to live in
poverty with a miserable standard of living. Large areas would
have to be depopulated, and the displaced people sent to live in
slums. Driving vacations would be a thing of the past. Tourism
would suffer, hurting the economy.
(By the way, last year I drove 1,815 miles, consuming 95.5 gallons
of gasoline.)
> Trying to carry out 'business as usual' choice simply means that
> we hit the wall sooner, harder, and with much less chance to adjust.
> The wealthy will always be able to pay for their plane rides. I'd
> as soon that my kids be able to do so on middle-class incomes too.
--
Walter Bushell
Robert Camp <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I changed it several times, but in the end went for drawing in as
> many eyes as possible.
>
> I also meant to ask, in reference to your response to Steven L., if you
> thought any of the propective technologies for atmospheric carbon
> removal show significant promise. I've been reading about them a lot
> more lately but always get a distinct feeling of limited scope, maybe
> just enough capacity to remove carbon used in air transport (re: Steven
> L.'s pont) or something along those lines.
What about large scale peat marshes, they tend to squaster carbon
effectively? Store sewage so it is separated from the biosphere. Let the
flood plains flood and fertilize the soil.
Use long managed browsing of ruminants which at Polyface Farm they are
adding an inch of topsoil a year. I suppose after a couple of years of
this grain could be grown for a few years without fertilizer. Oh, yes
this includes giving the Great Plains back to the buffalo, but hey, we
are growing grain on mined water which is going to run out anyway.
--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
James Beck
wrote:
Buffalo may not like trees very much. I once watched a buffalo
head-butt a tree until it succeeded in knocking the tree down, so
reforesting the plains may imply *not* giving the plains back to the
buffalo, at least not without reintroducing some predators.
Michael Siemon
James Beck <jdbec...@yahoo.com> wrote:
"Reforesting" the Plains is _not_ going to happen without a _hell_
of a lot of climate change. The historical forests are _much_ further
east! I don't think there have been any forests there in Recent
(geological epoch) times. If our current trajectory allowed for any
significant rainfall in the Plains (despite the Rockies' rain shadow)
there might be some chance, but it is not something I have any gut-
feeling is plausible in the way our climate is going.
The bison never had much to do with trees before we shoved them off
into enclaves in barren lands like Wyoming, with a few scrubby pines
here and there (or the random encounter with willow trees in the
Platte River valley... :-))
Walter Bushell
Oh, that would be us. We'd take our rent in meat, hides et cetera.
Jim
wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:06:04 -0500, Robert Grumbine
>
>
>
> > In article <ZsCdnXi_ccIXCCHWnZ2dnUVZ_oWdn...@earthlink.com>, Steven L. wrote:
>
> > > "Robert Camp" <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
I dunno, Desertphile. Seems to me that decentralization would work
better, actually improve the standard of living for most folks, and
create jobs. What if grocery stores (not supercenters) started
popping up in residential areas so most folks now living in the
suburban wasteland could walk to the store to get stuff for supper?
That is a lot of grocery stores, and a lot of jobs. What if instead
of super-malls drawing customers from a 100 mile radius stores started
to show up closer to where folks lived? More stores, more jobs.
What if bedroom communities actually became viable small towns, with
neighborhoods that contained the necessary stores for supplying a
moderate lifestyle? It is impossible, of course - for example, if
this happened Wal-Mart would go bankrupt and the retail component of
Wall Street would disappear, which would be a major blow to the
financial-based economy, though the actual number of folks making a
better living would probably increase significantly. It means
sacrificing the owner's efficiency of scale and centralization for a
distributed efficiency of energy usage by the customer - which means
lower profits, lower stock prices, etc. but higher sustainablity and
actually more money in the hands of most folks. So there is an
alternative scenario to disaster - shareholders just need to be
willing to accept less than the maximum possible profit per quarter.
> (By the way, last year I drove 1,815 miles, consuming 95.5 gallons
> of gasoline.)
>
> > Trying to carry out 'business as usual' choice simply means that
> > we hit the wall sooner, harder, and with much less chance to adjust.
> > The wealthy will always be able to pay for their plane rides. I'd
> > as soon that my kids be able to do so on middle-class incomes too.
>
Steven L.
"Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2010040708211216807-robertlcamp@hotmailcom:
I'm not a paranoid jingoist.
But I am someone who loves his country and wants the best for it, an
idea that seems to be out of favor with the political Left these days
who keep their heads in the clouds over bigger aspirations.
And if the answer to global warming is some kind of world-wide economic
leveling enforced by total elimination of fossil fuels, in which all of
us in the developed West agree to accept a standard of living that's not
much higher than Bangladesh's or Zimbabwe's, then I'm going to say NO.
Instead, I'm going to argue for a mix of greenhouse gas reduction and
*mitigation*: Build dams, dikes, levees; relocate endangered
populations; and accept whatever global warming level we can accept
without totally destroying our civilization.
That, to me, is the tradeoff: Finding a level of greenhouse gas
reduction that isn't going to cause a permanent depression in the
developed world, while at the same time assisting threatened nations to
cope with the effects of the global warming that does occur.
We had better find a solution that does NOT require sending the United
States into a permanent economic depression. As far as I'm concerned,
that's not acceptable.
-- Steven L.
Steven L.
"Robert Grumbine" <bo...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote in message
news:slrnhrpao...@saltmine.radix.net:
Fewer and fewer.
More and more live in suburbs.
> And how energy
> efficient trains are for long haul transport of goods from central
> locations to central locations.
Trains???
I'm waiting for a kidney transplant.
A cadaver organ has to be raced to my hospital within *a few hours* or
it will die. A train traveling at 200 mph would take 18 hours to cross
from California to Virginia. The organ will be dead by then.
The end of air travel will be the end of organ transplants as a
treatment for life-threatening illness.
It will also be the end of all other overnight delivery of vital goods.
And in America, we have far fewer "central locations." Many suburbs
have turned into "edge cities" in their own right. You live in the
suburbs, you work in the suburbs, you shop in the suburbs. I've noticed
that in the suburbs where I live, rush hour traffic isn't
unidirectional. There are cars and trucks going in every damn direction:
North, south, east west, during both morning and evening rush hours.
There's no way to make trains practical because population is so spread
out.
I can't take a train from Massachusetts to Hawaii, or from Massachusetts
to Europe.
The physical transport of goods around the world will take an enormous
hit without air travel.
>
> There's also a common complaint that 'standard of living' will
> decline if we use less energy. If so, we'd expect that the states
> within the US that use the least energy would be the poorest, and
> those using the most would be richest. Instead, two of the lowest
> energy using states are CA and NY, two of the richest states.
That's because the population in those two states is concentrated in
giant cities, where mass transit is feasible. (There are 11 million
people in the NY metropolitan area. That level of concentration makes
subways and commuter rail economically feasible.)
A rural state in which the population is mostly in small towns has got
to use more energy for transportation.
In a state like Wyoming, you drive for miles and miles and miles to get
from one large community to another.
So what you're implying is that we're going to phase out suburbs and
rural towns, and go back to living cheek-by-jowl in huge apartment
blocks in giant cities. Right?
Do you realize how much you sound like a Soviet planner in the former
USSR?
-- Steven L.
Nick Keighley
I have a tree in my yard I can tie mine to
Robert Camp
Just for the sake of clarity, I didn't mean to imply you were.
> But I am someone who loves his country and wants the best for it, an
> idea that seems to be out of favor with the political Left these days
> who keep their heads in the clouds over bigger aspirations.
I'm always impressed when someone can say something like "bigger
aspirations" as if it's a bad thing. Isn't that sort of like sneering
at the "better educated?"
In any case, I have to ask: What is it about loving-one's-country that
is so compelling it is capable of utterly swamping loving-one's-planet?
Seriously, I grew up here, I'm happy here, and there's much to
recommend the U.S., no doubt. But I don't see it as much of a stretch
to imagine that if I'd lived in Japan or new Zealand or France (okay,
maybe not France) that I'd feel pretty much the same way about those
countries.
A little perspective is called for, don't you think? I want the best
for this country too, but if the best for the U.S. is at odds with what
is best for the world (in catastrophic terms), how is it possible that
any sane individual would choose the former?
> And if the answer to global warming is some kind of world-wide economic
> leveling enforced by total elimination of fossil fuels, in which all of
> us in the developed West agree to accept a standard of living that's
> not much higher than Bangladesh's or Zimbabwe's, then I'm going to say
> NO.
Well, I'm guessing you recognize your own strawman there. Of course, no
one want's to accept such a thing. But just for the sake of argument -
What if that was the only option, and your refusal meant that your
children's children would be condemned to a standard of living well
below that of Bangladesh or Zimbabwe? Do you admit any obligation to
generations to come?
> Instead, I'm going to argue for a mix of greenhouse gas reduction and
> *mitigation*: Build dams, dikes, levees; relocate endangered
> populations; and accept whatever global warming level we can accept
> without totally destroying our civilization.
Few are going to quibble about those kinds of actions, we're already
committed to them. And do we really have to go to the "destroying our
civilization" card, as if that's something anybody want's to happen?
> That, to me, is the tradeoff: Finding a level of greenhouse gas
> reduction that isn't going to cause a permanent depression in the
> developed world, while at the same time assisting threatened nations to
> cope with the effects of the global warming that does occur.
That's what we all want. But it gets less likely every year we do nothing.
> We had better find a solution that does NOT require sending the United
> States into a permanent economic depression. As far as I'm concerned,
> that's not acceptable.
Look, this isn't just going to be about taking shorter showers and
driving hybrids. The sooner we all realize there is going to be some
pain (or at least significant change) involved - economic included -
the sooner we can actually start moving forward. In order to be
successful, many old prejudices are going to have to fade away or be
ignored. No one's going to say you can't love your country anymore, but
somewhere along the line all countries, yours and mine included, are
going to *have* to recognize their obligations to the world and the
world's future.
RLC
Robert Grumbine
Steven, do you have any idea how little what you said had anything
to do with what I said? Please re-read.
Then start looking at what you said yourself and how closely it
corresponds to reality. Start with your absurdity about mass
transit in CA -- 20 million are in metro Los Angelas, home of
automobile worship and where I was told it was impossible to
have a mass transit system across a metro area that large. At
the time, I was commuting 50 miles across metro Chicago.
You are writing much more like someone with an idee fixe than
your normal self. Yes, you're going to see Soviets everywhere if
you choose to. Quite a few do. Certainly the science deniers
from alt.global-warming do so. Why you're welcoming their blinders,
I don't know. They really aren't very good looking.
Heather L.
Contains nuts.
HL.
hersheyh
> "Robert Camp" <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:2010040708211216807-robertlcamp@hotmailcom:
>
>
>
> > On 2010-04-07 07:24:09 -0700, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> said:
>
> > > "Robert Camp" <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
Actually those on the left would also say that they want what is best
for our country. But they do not agree that letting oil and coal and
utility companies do whatever they want is necessarily what is best
for our country. We just had an example in W. Virginia of what
happens when the people who work the mines are sacrificed for profit.
There is and always has been a strong correlation between places where
money is made off resource stripping and worker exploitation and
political corruption. And that includes those U.S. states where big
oil is the major economic player (not just the Middle East) -- AK, LA,
TX, OK.
> And if the answer to global warming is some kind of world-wide economic
> leveling enforced by total elimination of fossil fuels,
That is neither needed nor required and I don't know anyone proposing
it. A mere replacement of a significant fraction of current CO2-
producing energy sources along with much greater conservation will
suffice. My preference is for CO2 to be taxed with the income going
back to the public, so that those who choose to conserve will use the
market to choose the most cost-effective way to get back more money
than those who chose to be wasteful. That and arranging financing so
that those who choose solutions or retrofits that would be cost-
ineffective over the 5 years most people live in a house because of
high up-front costs but would be cost-effective over the life of the
house (30-50 years) such that the current and future owners will both
pay back the cost each year but will be more than compensated for it
in lower energy payments. Policy changes that encourage distributed
energy production, whereby a homeowner with solar cells can sell
energy back to the system when he/she is producing more than needed.
Policies that disfavor deforestation and favor forestation. Changes
and laws that de-emphasize meat and, in particular, feedlot and
industrial meat (although one could argue that for health reasons
alone). Zoning changes that allow and favor local neighborhood
groceries over megamarts.
Notice that these are changes that favor people making the most cost-
effective choices for their locality.
> in which all of
> us in the developed West agree to accept a standard of living that's not
> much higher than Bangladesh's or Zimbabwe's, then I'm going to say NO.
I don't see anyone proposing plans like that. Well, maybe Rush and
Glenn Beck are saying it, but they will say any lie that gets an
audience.
> Instead, I'm going to argue for a mix of greenhouse gas reduction and
> *mitigation*: Build dams, dikes, levees; relocate endangered
> populations; and accept whatever global warming level we can accept
> without totally destroying our civilization.
I don't think you know how much energy use is being wasted,
particularly in the U.S., because of past policies and sheer economics
that made waste seem reasonable. It *is* possible to build houses,
for example, that use almost no energy to heat or cool -- even in
Germany and Scandinavia. And without them being straw hovels like in
parts of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (actually, the hovels in those
countries are often energy inefficient).
> That, to me, is the tradeoff: Finding a level of greenhouse gas
> reduction that isn't going to cause a permanent depression in the
> developed world, while at the same time assisting threatened nations to
> cope with the effects of the global warming that does occur.
>
> We had better find a solution that does NOT require sending the United
> States into a permanent economic depression. As far as I'm concerned,
> that's not acceptable.
Actually, I think much of the updating of housing stock and changes in
energy sources that I suggest would represent economic activity that
would stay in America and not be sent to oil suppliers overseas (the
U.S. is highly unlikely to ever again be able to be self-sufficient in
oil). Where do you want *your* energy dollar to go? Local wind/solar/
nuclear/tidal sources producing electricity for your Volt or to Iran
for gas for your Hummer? Saving you money over time by being used for
insulation of your house or a retrofit solar/geothermal/whatever
heating system? Or to Hugo Chavez?
> -- Steven L.
Baron Bodissey
<snip>
> But I am someone who loves his country and wants the best for it, an
> idea that seems to be out of favor with the political Left these days
> who keep their heads in the clouds over bigger aspirations.
>
Excuse me, but I feel exactly the same as you do. As I am a proud
member of the political Left, I'd like to know how you came to the
conclusion that liberals can't be as patriotic as conservatives.
Baron Bodissey
When science is on the march, nothing stands in its way.
� Amazon Women on the Moon
Heather L.
> On Apr 8, 2:39 pm, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> <snip>
>> But I am someone who loves his country and wants the best for it, an
>> idea that seems to be out of favor with the political Left these days
>> who keep their heads in the clouds over bigger aspirations.
>>
> <snip>>
>
> Excuse me, but I feel exactly the same as you do. As I am a proud
> member of the political Left, I'd like to know how you came to the
> conclusion that liberals can't be as patriotic as conservatives.
>
You haven't understood things at all! The US is a country which, founded on
genocide and enriched by slavery, has a government 'of the stupid', 'by the
dishonest', 'for the greedy', and treats its interactions with all other
peoples of the world as a zero-sum game in which the most important thing is
that Uncle Sam gets to ass-rape anyone who owns anything useful. You people
on the 'political left' will *ruin all of this*...
HL.
Baron Bodissey
Ah, you were the Left Steven L. was talking about. Your position is
just as simplistically misleading as is the "bang the drum...my
country right or wrong" wingnuttism. Reality is shades of grey.
Baron Bodissey
Never forget that for many folk, it's always easier to believe than to
think.
– A. D. Foster
Free Lunch
wrote in talk.origins:
Boo-hoo. Let me feel sorry for the deluded ones who vote for the GOP
under the mistaken impression that the first Republican president was
Jefferson Davis.
Desertphile
If that would be economically viable, it would improve many
people's standard of living. They would not need much freezer
space or refrigeration at home, since they would leave food at the
store (i.e., buy food the day they need it, like in the South
Pacific).
But you caught me at an embarrassing mind-fuck. By "cities" I
include suburban woth urban areas of human population. Suburban
areas are already densly packed, to a horrifying degree that I
consider to be a miserable and low standard of living, and if the
goal is to decrease automobile use by keeping people where they
already are (i.e., where they live, reducing many reasons for
needing an automobile), then that I find is revolting--- it makes
suburban areas crammed full of people all of the time, instead of
the freeways crammed full of people.
Given the choice, a bloody hell of a lot of people would flee the
suburbs and "live in the country" if they could.
> That is a lot of grocery stores, and a lot of jobs. What if instead
> of super-malls drawing customers from a 100 mile radius stores started
> to show up closer to where folks lived? More stores, more jobs.
Certainly it would make residences more attractive to live for
most people I assume.
> What if bedroom communities actually became viable small towns, with
> neighborhoods that contained the necessary stores for supplying a
> moderate lifestyle? It is impossible, of course - for example, if
> this happened Wal-Mart would go bankrupt and the retail component of
> Wall Street would disappear, which would be a major blow to the
> financial-based economy, though the actual number of folks making a
> better living would probably increase significantly. It means
> sacrificing the owner's efficiency of scale and centralization for a
> distributed efficiency of energy usage by the customer - which means
> lower profits, lower stock prices, etc. but higher sustainablity and
> actually more money in the hands of most folks. So there is an
> alternative scenario to disaster - shareholders just need to be
> willing to accept less than the maximum possible profit per quarter.
The budget of transportation and storage and management would have
to be calculated to determine at what point population density
makes the proposed system cost-effective.
Truth be told, I would much rather humanity stay in its cities and
suburbs and live their (what I consider) squalid city lives.
\
--
Desertphile
"Political left?" The USA has a political left?! *WHERE?*
> And if the answer to global warming is some kind of world-wide economic
> leveling enforced by total elimination of fossil fuels, in which all of
> us in the developed West agree to accept a standard of living that's not
> much higher than Bangladesh's or Zimbabwe's, then I'm going to say NO.
Nobody prposes that. The hope is that CO2 production be limited
globally so that an abnormal temperature increase of 2c is either
maintained or decreased. That would not reduce peoples' standards
of living any more than the rise in sea levels will.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm
> Instead, I'm going to argue for a mix of greenhouse gas reduction and
> *mitigation*: Build dams, dikes, levees; relocate endangered
> populations; and accept whatever global warming level we can accept
> without totally destroying our civilization.
That is what your "political left" (I assume) proposes. Massive
changes in society throughout the world would be required to
return Earth's climate to what it was 100 years ago--- nobody is
making that proposal: it cannot be done. See:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085248.htm
What is being proposed is to allow Earth's temperature to rise
until it is about 2c warmer than normal. That is still disasterous
to the climate, but it also allows for a hell of a lot of CO2 to
continue being injected into the atmosphere.
> That, to me, is the tradeoff: Finding a level of greenhouse gas
> reduction that isn't going to cause a permanent depression in the
> developed world, while at the same time assisting threatened nations to
> cope with the effects of the global warming that does occur.
That is what is being proposed. Your "political left" (which as
far as I can see has not existed since the 1960s) is not proposing
doing back to pre-industrialization.
> We had better find a solution that does NOT require sending the United
> States into a permanent economic depression. As far as I'm concerned,
> that's not acceptable.
Nobody proposes such.
> -- Steven L.
Desertphile
<mct...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Apr 8, 2:39 pm, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> <snip>
> > But I am someone who loves his country and wants the best for it, an
> > idea that seems to be out of favor with the political Left these days
> > who keep their heads in the clouds over bigger aspirations.
> >
> <snip>>
> Excuse me, but I feel exactly the same as you do. As I am a proud
> member of the political Left, I'd like to know how you came to the
> conclusion that liberals can't be as patriotic as conservatives.
Ah, *THERE* you are! The political left! Where the bloody fuck
have you been for the past 40 years?! And why have you remained
utterly silent for so long?
> Baron Bodissey
> When science is on the march, nothing stands in its way.
> – Amazon Women on the Moon
Desertphile
Yesterday I saw an old sign on the road that reads "Elect Hillary
Clinton: She's the Smartest!" I assume the person who made the
sign did not want Ms. Clinton elected--- just about the only thing
worse for a political career than being smart is being an atheist.
John Wilkins
<deser...@invalid-address.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 12:09:54 -0700 (PDT), Baron Bodissey
> <mct...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 8, 2:39 pm, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > <snip>
> > > But I am someone who loves his country and wants the best for it, an
> > > idea that seems to be out of favor with the political Left these days
> > > who keep their heads in the clouds over bigger aspirations.
> > >
> > <snip>>
>
> > Excuse me, but I feel exactly the same as you do. As I am a proud
> > member of the political Left, I'd like to know how you came to the
> > conclusion that liberals can't be as patriotic as conservatives.
>
> Ah, *THERE* you are! The political left! Where the bloody fuck
> have you been for the past 40 years?! And why have you remained
> utterly silent for so long?
I know I'm a furriner and all that, but I have been easily able to find
the political left in the US even from this distance. Noam Chomsky is a
case in point. The objection you seem to have is not that they haven't
been making their point, but rather than nobody has been reporting it,
and you had to go find it. And that seems to be more about who owns the
means of communication.
JTEM
"Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> If AGW were not a problem,
It's not, from an energy stand point.
Whatever there is to suffer as a result of spewing
gazzilions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere is
going to be suffered, and there is nothing we can
do to stop it.
The HUGE mistake is as in your example, where you
require a "Solution" that reverses centuries of
accumulated damage.
That ain't gonna happen, not within five life times.
If we are to survive and even prosper, we've got
to adapt to the new climate rules that we created,
and NOT waste our resources trying to dial back
the clock.
> North America would have sufficient reserves of coal
> and natural gas to last for centuries.
North America does have abundant coal reserves, and
gas is far cleaner than oil. So let's forget about
the insane "carbon tax" bullshit and start dealing
with reality.
> Instead, because of AGW, We are forced to make 80%
> reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> *thirty years*.
This isn't true at all. We are going to see the
effects of your "AGW." It's inescapable. So, logically,
what our survival depends on is NOT avoiding the
unavoidable, it's adapting to the change.
rmacfarl
"John Wilkins" <jo...@wilkins.id.au> wrote in message
news:090420101220131614%jo...@wilkins.id.au...
And we all know who that ex-Aussie turncoat complete bastard
self-serving prick is, don't we?
Jeffrey Turner
> "Steven L." wrote:
>
>> There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%
>> in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy back to the 19th
>> century, no way.
>
> please?
I've heard more radical numbers than that.
--Jeff
--
Love consists of overestimating
the differences between one woman
and another. --George Bernard Shaw
John Wilkins
<rmac...@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
There's a reason we packed him off to America...
Jeffrey Turner
> c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
life-cycle.
Nick Keighley
> That is what is being proposed. Your "political left" (which as
> far as I can see has not existed since the 1960s) is not proposing
> doing back to pre-industrialization.
you obviously don't have the green parties we have in europe...
--
Nick keighley
rmacfarl
Yeah, but then we let him come home & buy it all back...
Nick Keighley
> On 4/7/2010 11:55 AM, Robert Grumbine wrote:
> > c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
>
> Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
> life-cycle.
"clean"? Are you talking CO2 clean? Because even allowing for whole-
life cycle costs nuclear is low carbon (well lower).
what's your alternative?
Heather L.
Indeed. But the real point is that the effective exclusion of Chomsky & Co
from mainstream discourse means that he doesn't qualify as 'the political
left': there's no 'politics' that even acknowledges him. He's part of what
really ought to be described as the 'extra-political left'...
HL.
Robert Grumbine
> On 4/7/2010 10:38 AM, Dan Luke wrote:
>> "Steven L." wrote:
>>
>>> There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%
>>> in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy back to the 19th
>>> century, no way.
>>
>> That's a mighty large assertion. How about showing your work on that,
>> please?
>
> I've heard more radical numbers than that.
Was it from someone who showed his work?
I've seen many catastrophic scenarios claimed. But none have been supported
by anybody who did any math on it. As I suggested elsewhere, we can get
half way to the 80% by doing things other 21st century wealthy countries are
already doing.
Jeffrey Turner
> In article<OZOdna2rTbTTOyPW...@posted.localnet>, Jeffrey Turner wrote:
>> On 4/7/2010 10:38 AM, Dan Luke wrote:
>>> "Steven L." wrote:
>>>
>>>> There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%
>>>> in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy back to the 19th
>>>> century, no way.
>>>
>>> That's a mighty large assertion. How about showing your work on that,
>>> please?
>>
>> I've heard more radical numbers than that.
>
> Was it from someone who showed his work?
>
> I've seen many catastrophic scenarios claimed. But none have been supported
> by anybody who did any math on it. As I suggested elsewhere, we can get
> half way to the 80% by doing things other 21st century wealthy countries are
> already doing.
There was a study done by a group appointed by the German government:
It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the\
German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory
council known by its German acronym WBGU, is a physicist whose
specialty, fittingly, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only
conference at New Mexico’s Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged
the findings of a study so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela
Merkel about it. The study has now been published. If its conclusions
are correct–and Schellnhuber ranks among the world’s half-dozen most
eminent climate scientists–it has monumental implications for the
pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try
to agree on reversing global warming.
Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the
findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body
whose scientific reports are constrained because the world’s
governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich
industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from
1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding
catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the
United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020--i.e., quit carbon
entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations
must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the
world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big
polluters can delay their day of reckoning by “buying” emissions rights
from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some
countries’ deadlines by a decade or so.
Jeffrey Turner
There is a Green Party in the US, or at least in some states. But it
is quite small.
Jeffrey Turner
Solar, wind and, I believe, tidal are cheaper per kWh. And the cheaper
they are, the faster they can replace fossil fuels so they are cleaner
than nuclear vis-a-vis carbon dioxide. And there's no waste disposal
problem, nor dirty mining.
Cindy Hamilton
wrote:
> For the average USA citizen to drive 3,000 miles or less per year
> they would have to live all crammed packed together to live in
> poverty with a miserable standard of living. Large areas would
> have to be depopulated, and the displaced people sent to live in
> slums. Driving vacations would be a thing of the past. Tourism
> would suffer, hurting the economy.
I do about 7500 miles per year. I could cut that almost in half
by packing a lunch rather than driving home every day. I live on
two acres southeast of Ann Arbor, MI and work on the south side
of town. Not remotely in poverty, crammed together, or anything
like what you described.
Let go of your fear. There are ways to achive much less driving
that are well short of your dystopian nightmare.
Frankly, it wouldn't hurt people to live like our parents did. When
I was young, folks would raise four children in a 1000-square foot
house with three bedrooms and one bathroom. Now it's tantamount
to child abuse if the kids have to share space.
Cindy Hamilton
Robert Grumbine
> On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 06:12:07 -0700 (PDT), Jim
><jimwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 7, 4:39 pm, Desertphile <desertph...@invalid-address.net>
>> wrote:
>> > On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:06:04 -0500, Robert Grumbine
>> > <b...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
[trim]
Personal preferences do vary.
I have, at different times in my life, lived in 'suburbs',
a major city, and in a rural area. One trait of the 'suburbs'
is that the term is worthless. No surprise since it's
mostly an advertising term. Population density is more meaningful,
but the 'suburbs' I've lived in have had densities from maybe 200
per square mile to 10,000. The major city (Chicago, I was in Hyde
Park) density was 15,000 per square mile average, but probably
about 10,000 in my neighborhood (which had at one time been an
independant city). The rural area, I was a couple of miles outside
town, the town being of about 200 (population total, not density).
County probably something like 100 per square mile average.
Perhaps still too many people for desertphile, but possibly a
much greater range than many talking here. All have their
plusses, all have their minuses.
In any case, dropping from 15,000 miles per year to 3,000 miles
per year is only if it's 80% reduction in fossil fuel emissions
and you _insist_ on powering the car with fossil fuels and you
_insist_ on not driving a vehicle that is more efficient than
the present one. Get the energy from a different source and
you can cover that many more miles. Get a car that's more efficient,
and it's more miles again.
There are choices. You can choose to start making decisions
and change now, while we have more time and more money to research
and implement alternatives and preserve what you think is good.
Or you can twiddle your thumbs, let the decision be made for you,
and watch gasoline get expensive enough that you can't afford to drive
those 15,000 miles per year. Still, I think the US wasn't a horrible
place to live in the early 80s, when the average was only 10,000
miles. Anybody think our quality of life has improved 50% by
driving that much more?
[trim]
>> What if bedroom communities actually became viable small towns, with
>> neighborhoods that contained the necessary stores for supplying a
>> moderate lifestyle? It is impossible, of course - for example, if
>> this happened Wal-Mart would go bankrupt and the retail component of
>> Wall Street would disappear, which would be a major blow to the
>> financial-based economy, though the actual number of folks making a
>> better living would probably increase significantly. It means
>> sacrificing the owner's efficiency of scale and centralization for a
>> distributed efficiency of energy usage by the customer - which means
>> lower profits, lower stock prices, etc. but higher sustainablity and
>> actually more money in the hands of most folks. So there is an
>> alternative scenario to disaster - shareholders just need to be
>> willing to accept less than the maximum possible profit per quarter.
Or shareholders realize that they can make money at each one
of the dozen more local store fronts they open up than in the single
big store. I've said for some time that the single big store is
subsidized by customers -- customers valuing their time at zero,
and the drive cost at zero. So they spend a lot of time driving
around to the stores, at their own expense, and kill the entire
day picking up just a few things. Shopping time 1 hr, drive time
3 hrs sort of thing.
Maybe other things could be done with ones' life than to sit in
a car?
Incidentally: Yes, for some years I did average 10-15,000 miles per
year. That included several long distance driving vacations per year.
I now drive markedly less, so I know that it can be done. Some of
the difference is flying to places rather than driving for vacations
(hard to drive to China or Greece from here), so not an entire gain on
the emissions. But, since I do live in a 'suburb' and drive less than
15,000 (less than 10,000 in fact) miles per year, I know it's quite
possible to do, and without the nightmares that Steven L. is visualizing.
Though maybe he'd consider my life nightmarish.
> The budget of transportation and storage and management would have
> to be calculated to determine at what point population density
> makes the proposed system cost-effective.
>
> Truth be told, I would much rather humanity stay in its cities and
> suburbs and live their (what I consider) squalid city lives.
:-) We do still need our desertphiles. Best if they're people
who _like_ living with that few neighbors and so forth.
I do get amused, though, at the people who react in horror when
I say they're living in an urban area, or city. If it's over
5000 per square mile, it's urban as far as I'm concerned. The
people themselves think they're 'suburban', mostly, it seems,
because they think 'urban' is bad. Clue, folks, urban areas,
including Chicago and NYC at the least, do have areas with
single family houses, with yards, and so forth.
Desertphile
The USA has a Green Party, and around 15 other political parties.
They are almost never heard from because the USAA media ignores
them.
Desertphile
wrote:
> "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > If AGW were not a problem,
> It's not, from an energy stand point.
It is, from a human standpoiunt.
> Whatever there is to suffer as a result of spewing
> gazzilions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere is
About 7 billion metric tons (Gton) per year.
> going to be suffered, and there is nothing we can
> do to stop it.
We can stop reproducing like cancer cells. That would make a huge
impact in just a single generation.
> The HUGE mistake is as in your example, where you
> require a "Solution" that reverses centuries of
> accumulated damage.
>
> That ain't gonna happen, not within five life times.
>
> If we are to survive and even prosper, we've got
> to adapt to the new climate rules that we created,
> and NOT waste our resources trying to dial back
> the clock.
>
> > North America would have sufficient reserves of coal
> > and natural gas to last for centuries.
>
> North America does have abundant coal reserves, and
> gas is far cleaner than oil. So let's forget about
> the insane "carbon tax" bullshit and start dealing
> with reality.
>
> > Instead, because of AGW, We are forced to make 80%
> > reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> > *thirty years*.
>
> This isn't true at all. We are going to see the
> effects of your "AGW." It's inescapable. So, logically,
> what our survival depends on is NOT avoiding the
> unavoidable, it's adapting to the change.
Desertphile
Most countries do not have leaders, so dictating policy will be
impossible. The chief polluter countries of CO2 have no leaders.
It is not possible to reverse global warming just by ceasing to
pump CO2 into the atmosphere: it's already too late, and
economically it will never be done.
"Trapping Carbon Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power (is) Not
Enough To Solve (the) Global Warming Problem, Experts Say:"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085248.htm
> Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the
> findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body
> whose scientific reports are constrained because the world’s
> governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich
> industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from
> 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding
> catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the
> United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020--i.e., quit carbon
> entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations
> must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the
> world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big
> polluters can delay their day of reckoning by “buying” emissions rights
> from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some
> countries’ deadlines by a decade or so.
Yes, that will never happen.
> --Jeff
Desertphile
<jtu...@localnet.com> wrote:
> On 4/7/2010 11:55 AM, Robert Grumbine wrote:
> > c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
> Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
> life-cycle.
Eventually it may be necessary regardless of the costs.
Desertphile
"The researchers also point out a flaw in the nuclear energy
argument. Although nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide
emissions in the same way as burning fossil fuels, it does produce
heat emissions equivalent to three times the energy of the
electricity it generates and so contributes to global warming
significantly, Nordell adds." -- Inderscience. "Trapping Carbon
Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Global
Warming Problem, Experts Say." ScienceDaily 13 July 2009. 9 April
2010
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085248.htm>.
> what's your alternative?
He does not require an alternative: he just noted an observation.
Ernest Major
<deser...@invalid-address.net> writes
>On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 00:10:00 -0700 (PDT), Nick Keighley
><nick_keigh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9 Apr, 05:56, Jeffrey Turner <jtur...@localnet.com> wrote:
>> > On 4/7/2010 11:55 AM, Robert Grumbine wrote:
>>
>> > > c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
>> >
>> > Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
>> > life-cycle.
>
>> "clean"? Are you talking CO2 clean? Because even allowing for whole-
>> life cycle costs nuclear is low carbon (well lower).
>
>"The researchers also point out a flaw in the nuclear energy
>argument. Although nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide
>emissions in the same way as burning fossil fuels, it does produce
>heat emissions equivalent to three times the energy of the
>electricity it generates and so contributes to global warming
>significantly, Nordell adds." -- Inderscience. "Trapping Carbon
>Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Global
>Warming Problem, Experts Say." ScienceDaily 13 July 2009. 9 April
>2010
><http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085248.htm>.
The figures I've seen say that the amount of heat generated by power
stations is negligible with respect to the terrestrial energy budget.
>
>> what's your alternative?
>
>He does not require an alternative: he just noted an observation.
>
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Robert Grumbine
Ok, this is indeed a serious person taking a serious look.
But then let us look at what it was his target was.
The IPCC, for instance, has, in the WG III report (the economics and
policy sides) been looking towards keeping warming below 2 K, and thinking
that this means a max CO2 level of something like 450 ppm. At our current
2 ppm/year, that means 30 years, less than that with increasing fossil
fuel use. The 2 K figure being something like a cholesterol number of
200 -- risks rise steeply past this, but aren't zero below.
On a different hand, some now argue, with some science behind them,
that we need to get the atmosphere back below 350 (I forget the
time frame they see this needing). Ok, obviously a rather different
path is needed on emissions for this, rather than the 450.
Schellnhuber, however, is arguing that we need to get back down
to pre-industrial levels (280 ppm) and soon. That does lead to
pretty drastic conclusions about future emissions. Obviously, too,
he's also included some policy choices in deciding that it matters who
emits the carbon -- worst if it's the US, less bad for other
industrial countries, even less bad if it's China, and pretty
ok for other countries.
Steven L.
"Heather L." <Heat...@lit.co.uk> wrote in message
news:SzDvn.817117$Dy7.2...@newsfe26.ams2:
I don't know where you live.
But here in Massachusetts where I live, the name Chomsky is on every
student's lips and every professor's lips. Because he was a professor
here. And for other reasons.
Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I went to college around the time of
the antiwar protests against the Vietnam War. And Chomsky was a hero to
these antiwar protesters, with that essay he wrote.
Here in the Northeast U.S. at least, the Left is well represented. This
is also the home of Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the only self-described
socialist in the U.S. Senate.
Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. I have nothing in common with
these people (when the cops used to use tear gas on the antiwar
protesters, I was cheering the cops).
But talk.origins is evidence-based. And facts are facts.
-- Steven L.
Robert Grumbine
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the first round of serious
interest in what we were doing to the climate system, the SMIC
report was produced. Among other things, it tallied the energy
released by human activity. Averaged over continental scale,
it was more or less negligible. Once you're down to, say, NYC,
however, it's meteorologically noticeable. At least it is if all
the heat is released there.
Pulling out my envelope and thinking out loud as I go:
Ballpark US total energy use per capita is something like
10 kW -- home, industrial, whathaveyou. Total area of the US
is about 10 million square km, with 300 million people. So
about 30 per square km average. Total is energy flux then
averages 300 kW per square km (0.3 MW). Since 1 km^2 is
1 million m^2, this gives us 0.3 W/m^2.
Suburban densities are about 10 times that, so 3 W/m^2.
Urban densities are another factor of 10 up, so 30 W/m^2.
Geothermal heat flux is ballpark 0.05 W/m^2. So even
at sub-continental scale, human energy release in the US
tops that from the earth.
Global mean solar input is about 240 W/m^2. At a population
density of 1 person per 41 m^2, at the 10 kW per person, we equal
the energy input from the sun (to that area). It's
24,000 per square km, about 61,000 per square mile -- a figure
reached by some major cities in India and perhaps elsewhere.
One thing being, not all energy used by a city, or represented
by the residents of a city, is released there. Electrical plants
50 km away greatly reduce the heat flux (in the sense of W/m^2
in the city proper, doesn't change national average).
Anyhow, the 3 W/m^2 represented by suburbs (or urban area averaged
out to include the factories or electrical plants) is starting
to be a magnitude for weather prediction models to consider. The
30 W/m^2 of cities is definitely large enough, but until recently the
models didn't have fine enough resolution to worry about including
it. Now that we're looking at having several grid points inside
major cities, it gets to be a question. I'll have to go yank some
chains :-)
The SMIC report considered things like this, reaching similar
conclusions. They also looked farther into the matter of weather
modification by cities. It's a real question for the meteorology,
but, since nobody really wants to discover that their city planning
(or lack thereof) is making weather bad for people who could sue,
there hasn't been much research on the topic. I do know of one
field experiment, aimed more at clouds and precipitation, done
in the late 70s/early 80s. Urban particulates did have effect on
the precip.
tg
> Because making some sense of a nuanced issue is such a rare and
> wonderful thing, I'm moving this to a more prominent position.
>
>
>
> > What they should be honest about, is why they are doing this.
>
> > It's not because they care about scientific truth.
>
> > It's because they're worried about the *implications* to society, if
> > these theories are right.
>
> > At least the Discovery Institute "Wedge Document" told the truth: The
> > ToE "controversy" is really about the relationship of religion and
> > society.
>
> > And I'm worried about the implications of AGW too. I don't see how
> > we'll ever be able to travel by air from the United States to Europe (or
> > any other great distance) without using fossil fuels. So if AGW is
> > right, and we deal with it, then world GDP is going to take a big and
> > permanent hit. The world will be slowed down, poorer, less affluent due
> > to chronic energy shortages. Just like the 1970s, but worldwide and
> > permanent this time.
>
> > We should be talking about that, not about this denialism nonsense.
>
> If fossil fuels are that irremovably required, then you have a bigger
> problem.
>
> Fossil fuels are finite resources. They _will_ run out. (Economists
> are fond of arguing that things will never run out, they'll just get too
> expensive to use ... I tend not to find the distinction worth making.)
>
> Your concern, then, imho of course, has nothing to do with climate
> change. You have a choice -- how soon do you want to hit the point that
> you paint as so disastrous. It happens that taking steps to reduce
> reliance on fossil fuels today also means that your kids and grandkids
> will be able to take more of those flights later. It also happens that
> reducing fossil fuel use today improves the probable climate your kids
> and grandkid will experience. But your concern gets addressed at the
> same time.
>
> Energy can be had from many sources. If 90% of the oil currently
> used for things other than flight gets supplied by something else
> (some combination of wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, wave, ... plus
> just plain not having to use it in the first place), then you have
> oil enough for an impressively vast fleet of aircraft. The _least_
> likely route to your grandkids being able to fly is to keep burning
> oil in today's electrical generation, in urban car fleets, and so on.
>
> The change will come. If the deniers succeed, the change required
> will be too much, too fast for societies and economies to cope (doubly,
> as they're also coping with the costs of adapting to the much larger
> climate change). If we act before the wolf is inside the house, well,
> then it's slower, cheaper, and easier change to make.
>
> --
> Robert Grumbinehttp://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/Science blog
> Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
> evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
> would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
I read through the entire thread, and I believe I am correct in saying
that not one of the 59 posts so far have mentioned The Unmentionable.
Last projections I saw put world population at 9 billion by mid-
century or so. So we're going to cut consumption, and/or ameliorate
the negative effects of things like coastal flooding, while adding
half again as many humans. Uh huh.
An alternative would be to put---say, half---of the resources that are
going to be expended on this problem into 'bending' the population
curve.
We now return you to your favorite head-burying sandbox.
-tg
Jeffrey Turner
I'm pretty sure Pacific Islanders and other people from low-lying
regions aren't happy with that much warming.
> At our current
> 2 ppm/year, that means 30 years, less than that with increasing fossil
> fuel use. The 2 K figure being something like a cholesterol number of
> 200 -- risks rise steeply past this, but aren't zero below.
>
> On a different hand, some now argue, with some science behind them,
> that we need to get the atmosphere back below 350 (I forget the
> time frame they see this needing). Ok, obviously a rather different
> path is needed on emissions for this, rather than the 450.
>
> Schellnhuber, however, is arguing that we need to get back down
> to pre-industrial levels (280 ppm) and soon. That does lead to
> pretty drastic conclusions about future emissions. Obviously, too,
> he's also included some policy choices in deciding that it matters who
> emits the carbon -- worst if it's the US, less bad for other
> industrial countries, even less bad if it's China, and pretty
> ok for other countries.
He was working from the point of view of fairness. He did state that
long-time users could buy the right to pollute from those nations that
don't pollute as much.
Jeffrey Turner
> On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:56:00 -0400, Jeffrey Turner
> <jtu...@localnet.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/7/2010 11:55 AM, Robert Grumbine wrote:
>
>>> c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
>
>> Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
>> life-cycle.
>
> Eventually it may be necessary regardless of the costs.
That's an odd position. If solar and wind are cheaper and cleaner, not
to mention sustainable, why go nuclear? And I haven't even mentioned
the weaponization problem yet.
Jeffrey Turner
Worse than that number is the one third increase in the number of
Americans.
John Stockwell
> "Robert Camp" <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:2010040620505016807-robertlcamp@hotmailcom:
> AGW.
>
> If AGW were not a problem,
> thread, we don't even know if our civilization will exist in the 23rd
> century, so there's no point in worrying about running out of coal now.
> Even our great-grandchildren will still have plenty of coal. And so we
> would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
> space-based solar power or fusion power.
Actually, the lifetime of resources is not really the issue. The
issue is the peak of production of the resource. Look up
peak oil, peak natural gas, peak coal,
Limited resources follow a curve called the logistic curve.
The amount of the resource produced totally
begins slowly, grows exponentially for a time, and
then levels off as the resource is completely developed. The
production per unit time period follows a bell shaped curve
that peaks when half of the reserve is depleted.
US oil production peaked in about 1970 and is now down back
to where it was in the late 1940s. Peak US coal is projected based
on known reserves to be somewhere around 2025, and we may
already have passed the peak on US natural gas.
The peak for conventional petroleum (not counting tar sands
and oil shales) seems to be about 4 years out by the best estimates.
Now, it is important to remember that these projected peak values
do move out with time. The estimates are only as good as the
known resource size. Furthermore, methods are being employed
to get more oil and gas out of the subsurface.
However, we aren't finding any more
Saudi Arabias out there. So the resources are limited and the
issue of peak energy is looming.
As far as alternate energy sources go, these can help us
stretch our fossil fuels, but there is not a single alternate energy
technology that is not developed using conventional energy sources.
We do not have a "totally alternate energy economy" out there
of any size.
-John
>
> Instead, because of AGW,
> We are forced to make 80% reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> *thirty years*. Meaning we have to start taking drastic actions almost
> immediately. There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas
> emissions by 80% in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy
> back to the 19th century, no way.
>
> -- Steven L.
Geode
From where did you take that information? This is not what I know
about know world reserves of coal. I have seen in the sheet from
Nation Master that our reserves of coal are for 80 years, at maximum.
With our present rate of consumption. But as oil would get scarcer,
we would consume more coal. We have more reserves of coal, about two
times, than of oil. So, I do not see from where did you get your
information. There is plenty of sources.
Geode
> And so we
> would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
> space-based solar power or fusion power.
>
Tim Norfolk
wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:06:04 -0500, Robert Grumbine
>
>
>
>
>
> <b...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
>
> > � It'd be a good idea to re-examine your sources for that. �And
> > do so in light of increasing energy demand in the US (if for no
> > other reason than increasing population). �And then do so in light
> > of increasing world demand for such fuels. �Remember in the latter
> > that the major recipient of North Slope natural gas is Japan, not
> > the US.
>
> > > And as we've been discussing in the Drake Equation
> > > thread, we don't even know if our civilization will exist in the 23rd
> > > century, so there's no point in worrying about running out of coal now. �
> > > would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
> > > space-based solar power or fusion power.
>
> > > Instead, because of AGW,
> > > We are forced to make 80% reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> > > *thirty years*. �Meaning we have to start taking drastic actions almost
> > > immediately. �There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas
> > > emissions by 80% in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy
> > > back to the 19th century, no way.
>
> > � Start with the fact that the first 40% of that 80 is 'free' -- involving
> > merely off the shelf technologies and practices already in place
> > in other wealthy countries. �
>
> > � Also consider this: 80% in 30 years is 2% per year. �Your catastrophic
> > predictions are saying that we could not possibly drive 300 miles less
> > next year than this year. �(Current US average being 15,000 miles per year.)
> > Yes, a US in which we averaged 3000 miles per year instead of 15,000 miles
> > per year would be quite different. �So what? �The US _today_ is quite
> > different than the US of 30 years ago (not least, the 15,000 miles -- it
> > used to be 10,000; were we an impoverished country then?). �Change is
> > going to happen, period. �You can make some choices about which changes happen,
> > and how fast.
>
> For the average miles USA citizens drive to drop to 3,000 per
> year, major changes in society must occur. I would not wish to
> live in a world where population density must increase alarmingly
> (to decrease transportation distances) and where commuting means
> being crammed into boxcars like cattle. Far better to see humanity
> exterminated than reduce the average standard of living to that of
> a 1950's horror movie. Millions of people would have to live like
> Navajos, or like I do--- and they would sooner die first.
>
> For the average USA citizen to drive 3,000 miles or less per year
> they would have to live all crammed packed together to live in
> poverty with a miserable standard of living. Large areas would
> have to be depopulated, and the displaced people sent to live in
> slums. Driving vacations would be a thing of the past. Tourism
> would suffer, hurting the economy.
>
> of gasoline.)
>
> > � Trying to carry out 'business as usual' choice simply means that
> > we hit the wall sooner, harder, and with much less chance to adjust.
> > The wealthy will always be able to pay for their plane rides. �I'd
> > as soon that my kids be able to do so on middle-class incomes too.
>
> --http://desertphile.org
> Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
> "Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz
>
> - Show quoted text -
However, with so many of us now shuffling papers for income, how much
fuel could be saved by telecommuting?
Tim Norfolk
wrote:
<snip>
>
> Given the choice, a bloody hell of a lot of people would flee the
> suburbs and "live in the country" if they could.
With all due respect, I'm not so sure. Most appear to love the
sururban life, including fretting over their lawns, and attending
football games. It's a comfortable fake country life (to give you my
perspective, my wife and I birthed 5 goats last week on our mini-
farm).
I grew up with much less than most Americans are used to - no
telephone until age 18, no car, no central heat until age 14, no
refrigerator until age 18. Those were the norm in Britain until the
early 1970's. In most places I lived, there was a 1/2-mile walk to the
bu stop, abolut 1 mile to stores (I lived on army bases). We ate and
consumed less than most people that I know now, and yet had more free
time and community (bridge games, reading, and the like - TV sucked
big time). The typical American who came to the UK then found our
lives not consumer-driven enough, and were always broke, even though
their incomes were twice the local average. As a recent new American,
I can safely say that the culture, on average, is based on waste and
excess.
As for the levelling that so many fear, I would point out, for the
umpteenth time, that it may come about far faster, for reasons not
stated here. The US has used up its capital in the past 35 years, and
is now living on the good will of China and Japan. Worse, we have
polluted our human capital. All of the changes to ensure our survival
require lots of technical and scientific experts, which we are not
producing in the numbers that we need, thanks in part to the
pseudoscience that we battle here on talk.origins and sci.skeptic
every day.
Desertphile
<jtu...@localnet.com> wrote:
> On 4/9/2010 11:37 AM, Desertphile wrote:
> > On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:56:00 -0400, Jeffrey Turner
> > <jtu...@localnet.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 4/7/2010 11:55 AM, Robert Grumbine wrote:
> >
> >>> c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
> >
> >> Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
> >> life-cycle.
> >
> > Eventually it may be necessary regardless of the costs.
> That's an odd position. If solar and wind are cheaper and cleaner, not
> to mention sustainable, why go nuclear?
Solar and wind may not be cheaper or cleaner than nuclear power
plants: I suspect nuclear power plants are considerably "greener"
than using wind and solar energy. Solar energy requires a very
large surface area, and it works half the time; wind energy only
works when the wind is blowing. Both require storage of energy.
Nuclear power plants produce electricity (and heat) on demand.
> And I haven't even mentioned the weaponization problem yet.
>
> --Jeff
--
Tim Norfolk
Just shoots?
Tim Norfolk
It's dirty to produce solar cells, as I understand.
JTEM
Desertphile <desertph...@invalid-address.net> wrote:
> We can stop reproducing like cancer cells. That
> would make a huge impact in just a single generation.
We already have. Birthrates are quite low in all of
the western nations, and even in places such as
China. The problem isn't so much adding people, it's
stepping people up into a modern, industrialized
lifestyle.
It's inescapable. Things are going to get much worse,
carbon wise, loooooooooooooong before we are capable
of making things better. We need to adapt. Period. If
climate change will result from our spewing of carbon
fuels, the climate IS GOING TO change and there is
nothing we can do to stop it.
We must adapt.
Survival is not a matter of lowering our "carbon
footprint," it a matter of us adapting to the new
climate. Period.
JTEM
John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, the lifetime of resources is not really
> the issue. The issue is the peak of production of
> the resource. Look up peak oil, peak natural gas,
> peak coal,
The rate of extraction -- particularly for oil -- is
not a constant. The last 30% or so takes much longer
to pump out of the ground than that first 30% did.
What this means is that, even if the official "Reserves"
are still quite high, production levels following
"Peak" will be declining rapidly.
You simply can't get as much oil out of the ground in
a day than you could before "peak."
This is why it is often pointed out (by people like
me) that, eventually, it won't even be a matter of
price but one of availability.
Heather L.
>
> I do about 7500 miles per year. I could cut that almost in half
> by packing a lunch rather than driving home every day.
Memo to the future:
"Can you folks see why long-dead people like me thought we were living in a
nightmare of obscene stupidity...? Can you see that we had to cope with the
impact of the moronic, psychotic, eco-pathic conviction that a person could
be a 'normal, functioning adult' in our society and *still* choose to drive
70 miles a week, every week, rather than make sandwiches in the morning...?
Can you see that some of us *really were* as *bowel-looseningly stupid* as
that...? Can you...? You see, some of us -- a few -- were like me, and we
didn't drive anywhere unless we really had to... but the rest -- 300 million
of them -- were just *witless, lazy filth*... and there was nothing we could
do about it. I'm genuinely sorry about what happened to your world, really I
am. But it was the sandwich-phobic arseholes who did it. Not people like me.
Okay...?"
HL.
JTEM
"Heather L." <Heathe...@lit.co.uk> wrote:
> You see, some of us -- a few -- were like me,
> and we didn't drive anywhere unless we really
> had to... but the rest -- 300 million
> of them -- were just *witless, lazy filth*...
Your ego is in size like a mountain and in odor
much like a fresh turd.
William Morse
>> reliance on fossil fuels today also means that your kids and grandkids
>> will be able to take more of those flights later. It also happens that
>> reducing fossil fuel use today improves the probable climate your kids
>> and grandkid will experience. But your concern gets addressed at the
>> same time.
>>
>> Energy can be had from many sources. If 90% of the oil currently
>> used for things other than flight gets supplied by something else
>> (some combination of wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, wave, ... plus
>> just plain not having to use it in the first place), then you have
>> oil enough for an impressively vast fleet of aircraft. The _least_
>> likely route to your grandkids being able to fly is to keep burning
>> oil in today's electrical generation, in urban car fleets, and so on.
>
Those will go over like a lead balloon. Oh wait - they would have to be
a lead balloon :-)
William Morse
>
>
> "Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:2010040620505016807-robertlcamp@hotmailcom:
>
>
> If AGW were not a problem,
> North America would have sufficient reserves of coal and natural gas to
> century, so there's no point in worrying about running out of coal now.
> Even our great-grandchildren will still have plenty of coal. And so we
> would have plenty of time to adjust and find alternatives like
> space-based solar power or fusion power.
>
> Instead, because of AGW,
> We are forced to make 80% reductions in fossil fuel use in the next
> *thirty years*. Meaning we have to start taking drastic actions almost
> immediately. There ain't no way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas
> emissions by 80% in the next 30 years without sending the U.S. economy
> back to the 19th century, no way.
Right now 56% of the energy we use is simply lost - it produces nothing
useful. Changes that reduce this waste for the most part pay for
themselves over fairly short time frames - i.e. they improve the U.S.
economy. Switching to renewable energy sources will take longer term
investments. We may actually have to start taxing high incomes at
reasonable marginal rates, so the money is used to provide long term
sustainability instead of to create a real estate bubble - never mind,
that is just crazy talk.
William Morse
>
>
> "Robert Grumbine" <bo...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote in message
> news:slrnhrpao...@saltmine.radix.net:
>
>> In article <2010040620505016807-robertlcamp@hotmailcom>, Robert Camp
>> > reliance on fossil fuels today also means that your kids and grandkids
>> > will be able to take more of those flights later. It also happens that
>> > reducing fossil fuel use today improves the probable climate your kids
>> > and grandkid will experience. But your concern gets addressed at the
>> > same time.
>> >
>> > Energy can be had from many sources. If 90% of the oil currently
>> > used for things other than flight gets supplied by something else
>> > (some combination of wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, wave, ... plus
>> > just plain not having to use it in the first place), then you have
>> > oil enough for an impressively vast fleet of aircraft. The _least_
>> > likely route to your grandkids being able to fly is to keep burning
>> > oil in today's electrical generation, in urban car fleets, and so on.
>> >
>> > will be too much, too fast for societies and economies to cope (doubly,
>> > as they're also coping with the costs of adapting to the much larger
>> > climate change). If we act before the wolf is inside the house, well,
>> > then it's slower, cheaper, and easier change to make.
>>
>>
>> be part of the equation. I expect that it will be, because I expect
>> that few people or corporations will do anything to adapt. But it
>> isn't a requirement.
>>
>> We _could_, without suffering:
>> a) put sidewalks in neighborhoods, such that it becomes possible to
>> walk to the 'corner' store without risking your life
>> b) reconsider zoning so that the 'corner' store is less than 3 miles
>> away
>> c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
>> e) use more efficient devices rather than less efficient
>> and so on
>>
>> One can also examine the US average usage of energy per dollar
>> per capita of GDP, vs. other 'advanced' countries, and see that
>> we use 30-50% more energy per dollar GDP than is typical. Before
>> silly whinging about 'we're a large country', examine just how
>> many people in the US live in metropolitan areas.
>
> Fewer and fewer.
>
> More and more live in suburbs.
>
>
>
>> And how energy
>> efficient trains are for long haul transport of goods from central
>> locations to central locations.
>
> Trains???
>
> I'm waiting for a kidney transplant.
>
> A cadaver organ has to be raced to my hospital within *a few hours* or
> it will die. A train traveling at 200 mph would take 18 hours to cross
> from California to Virginia. The organ will be dead by then.
>
> The end of air travel will be the end of organ transplants as a
> treatment for life-threatening illness.
>
> It will also be the end of all other overnight delivery of vital goods.
>
> And in America, we have far fewer "central locations." Many suburbs
> have turned into "edge cities" in their own right. You live in the
> suburbs, you work in the suburbs, you shop in the suburbs. I've noticed
> that in the suburbs where I live, rush hour traffic isn't
> unidirectional. There are cars and trucks going in every damn direction:
> North, south, east west, during both morning and evening rush hours.
> There's no way to make trains practical because population is so spread
> out.
>
> I can't take a train from Massachusetts to Hawaii, or from Massachusetts
> to Europe.
>
> The physical transport of goods around the world will take an enormous
> hit without air travel.
>
>
>>
>> There's also a common complaint that 'standard of living' will
>> decline if we use less energy. If so, we'd expect that the states
>> within the US that use the least energy would be the poorest, and
>> those using the most would be richest. Instead, two of the lowest
>> energy using states are CA and NY, two of the richest states.
>
> That's because the population in those two states is concentrated in
> giant cities, where mass transit is feasible. (There are 11 million
> people in the NY metropolitan area. That level of concentration makes
> subways and commuter rail economically feasible.)
>
> A rural state in which the population is mostly in small towns has got
> to use more energy for transportation.
>
> In a state like Wyoming, you drive for miles and miles and miles to get
> from one large community to another.
>
> So what you're implying is that we're going to phase out suburbs and
> rural towns, and go back to living cheek-by-jowl in huge apartment
> blocks in giant cities. Right?
>
> Do you realize how much you sound like a Soviet planner in the former USSR?
Excuse me? There is _absolutely nothing_ in Dr. Grumbine's reply that
said anything about enforced standards. Your statement about a Soviet
planner is simply a lie. If you do not want to be considered a liar, I
suggest you apologize.
Those who live in rural ares with lots of room have clear opportunities
for geothermal heating, wind, and solar (multiple caveats on solar). My
cousin (who lives in a rural area) recently went with a geothermal
system, and sees a fairly short payback.
Ernest Major
<deser...@invalid-address.net> writes
>On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:50:21 -0400, Jeffrey Turner
><jtu...@localnet.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/9/2010 11:37 AM, Desertphile wrote:
>> > On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:56:00 -0400, Jeffrey Turner
>> > <jtu...@localnet.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On 4/7/2010 11:55 AM, Robert Grumbine wrote:
>> >
>> >>> c) build nuclear plants to provide electrical power
>> >
>> >> Not cheap. Not distributed. Water hogs. Not clean over the whole
>> >> life-cycle.
>> >
>> > Eventually it may be necessary regardless of the costs.
>
>> That's an odd position. If solar and wind are cheaper and cleaner, not
>> to mention sustainable, why go nuclear?
>
>Solar and wind may not be cheaper or cleaner than nuclear power
>plants: I suspect nuclear power plants are considerably "greener"
>than using wind and solar energy. Solar energy requires a very
>large surface area, and it works half the time; wind energy only
>works when the wind is blowing. Both require storage of energy.
>Nuclear power plants produce electricity (and heat) on demand.
Nuclear power plants also require storage of energy. Nuclear power
plants are good for base load, but not for variable load, as they can't
be switched on or off quickly - IIRC, it's gas and hydro that is good
for variable load.
>
>> And I haven't even mentioned the weaponization problem yet.
>>
>> --Jeff
>
>
--
Alias Ernest Major
Robert Grumbine
--
Robert Grumbine http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/ Science blog
tg
> Desertphile <desertph...@invalid-address.net> wrote:
> > We can stop reproducing like cancer cells. That
> > would make a huge impact in just a single generation.
>
> We already have. Birthrates are quite low in all of
> the western nations, and even in places such as
> China. The problem isn't so much adding people, it's
> stepping people up into a modern, industrialized
> lifestyle.
No, it isn't. The problem is that the topic of population makes people
so uncomfortable that they don't bother to do the math.
Why is a low-population, high-resource world such a frightening
prospect to both left and right?
-tg
Ron O
More likely dirigibles equiped with nuclear weapons.
Ron Okimoto
James Beck
wrote:
[snip]
>No, it isn't. The problem is that the topic of population makes people
>so uncomfortable that they don't bother to do the math.
>
>Why is a low-population, high-resource world such a frightening
>prospect to both left and right?
Try thinking in less monolithic terms. Maybe begin with something
like: almost everyone thinks that they, and their descendants should
have a place in a low-population, high-resource world. Then redo the
math from the bottom up.
[snip]
Paul J Gans
>"Heather L." <Heathe...@lit.co.uk> wrote:
Why? She's right. 70 miles is almost three gallons a week of
unneeded carbon footprint and oil wastage. Oil is too important
a raw material to be burned.
--
--- Paul J. Gans
Paul J Gans
I remember when the highest tax bracket was 70%. Folks still got
rich. Imagine rich folks today having to get along on a 6 million
dollar bonus instead of 20 million. How they'd suffer.
tg
> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:28:55 -0700 (PDT), tg <tgdenn...@earthlink.net>
Very often, people are made so uncomfortable by the topic that they
blurt out nonsensical statements to cover their anxiety.
The math says that if people have fewer descendants, then eventually
their descendants will live in a low-population world. Is that
characterized as 'monolithic thinking'?
-tg
Mike Lyle
She's right, of course. But that doesn't mitigate the ego problem.
--
Mike.
James Beck
wrote:
>On Apr 10, 10:53�am, James Beck <jdbeck11...@yahoo.com> wrote:
"People" is another monolithic concept. I have suggested that you
begin with something closer to "person" and build up from there. You
seem to have a problem coping with the implications of individual
choice particularly if those choices vary from your ideal.
JTEM
James Beck <jdbeck11...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Try thinking in less monolithic terms. Maybe
> begin with something like: almost everyone
> thinks that they, and their descendants should
> have a place in a low-population, high-resource
> world. Then redo the math from the bottom up.
Next, try to explain to everyone why they should
work towards a future utopia to benefit none but
the children of today's elite.
JTEM
tg <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> No, it isn't. The problem is that the topic
> of population makes people so uncomfortable
> that they don't bother to do the math.
Fine. Do the math. Show us which western nations
are experiencing large population growth.
> Why is a low-population, high-resource world
> such a frightening prospect to both left and
> right?
Do the math. We can't get from 6 billion to half
a billion unless either a great many people die,
or at least they never have descendants.
So, why the fuck should we work for a paradise
earth socially engineered to be populated by the
descentants of the present days elite?
Again, do the math.
JTEM
Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >"Heather L." <Heathe...@lit.co.uk> wrote:
> >> You see, some of us -- a few -- were like me,
> >> and we didn't drive anywhere unless we really
> >> had to... but the rest -- 300 million
> >> of them -- were just *witless, lazy filth*...
> >Your ego is in size like a mountain and in odor
> >much like a fresh turd.
>
> Why? She's right.
You have no basis for making a determination.
> 70 miles is almost three gallons a week of
> unneeded carbon footprint and oil wastage.
Were you thinking that people enjoy it? They go
looking for long commutes? They pass up great
jobs offering good money for an opportunity to
commute 70 miles?
tg
> tg <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
***
> > No, it isn't. The problem is that the topic
> > of population makes people so uncomfortable
> > that they don't bother to do the math.
>
> Fine. Do the math. Show us which western nations
> are experiencing large population growth.
>
> > Why is a low-population, high-resource world
> > such a frightening prospect to both left and
> > right?
>
> Do the math. We can't get from 6 billion to half
> a billion unless either a great many people die,
> or at least they never have descendants.
>
That makes no sense. If every woman (who wanted to) had one child, how
would she not have descendants? Methinks you do have a problem with
the math.
> So, why the fuck should we work for a paradise
> earth socially engineered to be populated by the
> descentants of the present days elite?
>
This also makes no sense, for two reasons:
1. You have already stipulated that the present day elites choose to
have fewer children. I agree; there is clear evidence that poorer
people have more children. So we can expect that to average one child
per woman, there will be more descendants of poor people than of
elites.
2. In any event, why TF should we care from whom a child is descended?
I would like them to be happy, no matter who their parents are.
-tg
> Again, do the math.
tg
> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:25:15 -0700 (PDT), tg <tgdenn...@earthlink.net>
I am only providing an answer to what people have posed as a problem.
And I am basing that answer on what I can observe about the choices
that individuals make when they are unconstrained by economics or
social/political control.
As JTEM has observed, individuals in wealthier, free nations tend to
have fewer children. They also tend to consume more. So I suggest the
answer that is consistent with what appears to be a human preference.
Do you disagree with what the evidence indicates?
-tg
John Wilkins
<bo...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
> In article <hpoo3...@news5.newsguy.com>, William Morse wrote:
> > chris thompson wrote:
...
> >> I personally think nuclear-powered dirigibles are in our future.
> >
> > Those will go over like a lead balloon. Oh wait - they would have to be
> > a lead balloon :-)
>
> Nah, a bunch of led zeppelins.
You black dog, you.
William Morse
> In article <2ausr5dkkuk2n527c...@4ax.com>, Desertphile wrote:
>> On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 06:12:07 -0700 (PDT), Jim
>> <jimwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 7, 4:39 pm, Desertphile <desertph...@invalid-address.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:06:04 -0500, Robert Grumbine
>>>> <b...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
>
> [trim]
>
>>>>> Also consider this: 80% in 30 years is 2% per year. Your catastrophic
>>>>> predictions are saying that we could not possibly drive 300 miles less
>>>>> next year than this year. (Current US average being 15,000 miles per year.)
>>>>> Yes, a US in which we averaged 3000 miles per year instead of 15,000 miles
>>>>> per year would be quite different. So what? The US _today_ is quite
>>>>> different than the US of 30 years ago (not least, the 15,000 miles -- it
>>>>> used to be 10,000; were we an impoverished country then?). Change is
>>>>> going to happen, period. You can make some choices about which changes happen,
>>>>> and how fast.
>>>> For the average miles USA citizens drive to drop to 3,000 per
>>>> year, major changes in society must occur. I would not wish to
>>>> live in a world where population density must increase alarmingly
>>>> (to decrease transportation distances) and where commuting means
>>>> being crammed into boxcars like cattle. Far better to see humanity
>>>> exterminated than reduce the average standard of living to that of
>>>> a 1950's horror movie. Millions of people would have to live like
>>>> Navajos, or like I do--- and they would sooner die first.
>>>>
>>>> For the average USA citizen to drive 3,000 miles or less per year
>>>> they would have to live all crammed packed together to live in
>>>> poverty with a miserable standard of living. Large areas would
>>>> have to be depopulated, and the displaced people sent to live in
>>>> slums. Driving vacations would be a thing of the past. Tourism
>>>> would suffer, hurting the economy.
>>
>>> I dunno, Desertphile. Seems to me that decentralization would work
>>> better, actually improve the standard of living for most folks, and
>>> create jobs. What if grocery stores (not supercenters) started
>>> popping up in residential areas so most folks now living in the
>>> suburban wasteland could walk to the store to get stuff for supper?
>> If that would be economically viable, it would improve many
>> people's standard of living. They would not need much freezer
>> space or refrigeration at home, since they would leave food at the
>> store (i.e., buy food the day they need it, like in the South
>> Pacific).
>>
>> But you caught me at an embarrassing mind-fuck. By "cities" I
>> include suburban woth urban areas of human population. Suburban
>> areas are already densly packed, to a horrifying degree that I
>> consider to be a miserable and low standard of living, and if the
>> goal is to decrease automobile use by keeping people where they
>> already are (i.e., where they live, reducing many reasons for
>> needing an automobile), then that I find is revolting--- it makes
>> suburban areas crammed full of people all of the time, instead of
>> the freeways crammed full of people.
>>
>> Given the choice, a bloody hell of a lot of people would flee the
>> suburbs and "live in the country" if they could.
>
> Personal preferences do vary.
>
> I have, at different times in my life, lived in 'suburbs',
> a major city, and in a rural area. One trait of the 'suburbs'
> is that the term is worthless. No surprise since it's
> mostly an advertising term. Population density is more meaningful,
> but the 'suburbs' I've lived in have had densities from maybe 200
> per square mile to 10,000. The major city (Chicago, I was in Hyde
> Park) density was 15,000 per square mile average, but probably
> about 10,000 in my neighborhood (which had at one time been an
> independant city). The rural area, I was a couple of miles outside
> town, the town being of about 200 (population total, not density).
> County probably something like 100 per square mile average.
>
> Perhaps still too many people for desertphile, but possibly a
> much greater range than many talking here. All have their
> plusses, all have their minuses.
>
> In any case, dropping from 15,000 miles per year to 3,000 miles
> per year is only if it's 80% reduction in fossil fuel emissions
> and you _insist_ on powering the car with fossil fuels and you
> _insist_ on not driving a vehicle that is more efficient than
> the present one. Get the energy from a different source and
> you can cover that many more miles. Get a car that's more efficient,
> and it's more miles again.
>
> There are choices. You can choose to start making decisions
> and change now, while we have more time and more money to research
> and implement alternatives and preserve what you think is good.
> Or you can twiddle your thumbs, let the decision be made for you,
> and watch gasoline get expensive enough that you can't afford to drive
> those 15,000 miles per year. Still, I think the US wasn't a horrible
> place to live in the early 80s, when the average was only 10,000
> miles. Anybody think our quality of life has improved 50% by
> driving that much more?
>
> [trim]
>
>>> What if bedroom communities actually became viable small towns, with
>>> neighborhoods that contained the necessary stores for supplying a
>>> moderate lifestyle? It is impossible, of course - for example, if
>>> this happened Wal-Mart would go bankrupt and the retail component of
>>> Wall Street would disappear, which would be a major blow to the
>>> financial-based economy, though the actual number of folks making a
>>> better living would probably increase significantly. It means
>>> sacrificing the owner's efficiency of scale and centralization for a
>>> distributed efficiency of energy usage by the customer - which means
>>> lower profits, lower stock prices, etc. but higher sustainablity and
>>> actually more money in the hands of most folks. So there is an
>>> alternative scenario to disaster - shareholders just need to be
>>> willing to accept less than the maximum possible profit per quarter.
>
> Or shareholders realize that they can make money at each one
> of the dozen more local store fronts they open up than in the single
> big store. I've said for some time that the single big store is
> subsidized by customers -- customers valuing their time at zero,
> and the drive cost at zero. So they spend a lot of time driving
> around to the stores, at their own expense, and kill the entire
> day picking up just a few things. Shopping time 1 hr, drive time
> 3 hrs sort of thing.
>
> Maybe other things could be done with ones' life than to sit in
> a car?
>
> Incidentally: Yes, for some years I did average 10-15,000 miles per
> year. That included several long distance driving vacations per year.
> I now drive markedly less, so I know that it can be done. Some of
> the difference is flying to places rather than driving for vacations
> (hard to drive to China or Greece from here), so not an entire gain on
> the emissions. But, since I do live in a 'suburb' and drive less than
> 15,000 (less than 10,000 in fact) miles per year, I know it's quite
> possible to do, and without the nightmares that Steven L. is visualizing.
> Though maybe he'd consider my life nightmarish.
Average automobile trip length in 2002 was 4 miles, according to FHWA.
Replace those average trips with bicycle trips. What do you get? Maybe
five minutes longer time, $2.00 less in cost, benefits of exercise,
reduced costs for building and maintaining parking lots and roads, etc.
Did your standard of living go down or go up? My wife rides her bike
most places. I am much lazier. But when gasoline goes to replacement
cost, my behavior will more closely mimic hers. She is healthier,
slimmer, and better looking than me. The last is probably not an
expected benefit of reducing car mileage, but arguably the former two are.
William Morse
Your comments are well put. The basic problem is that the current cost
of gasoline does not reflect either the external diseconomies caused by
its use nor the actual replacement cost when we run out of oil.
The external diseconomies are global warming and ocean acidification,
plus the smog effects from automobile exhaust, etc. Every time I burn
gasoline I am imposing a cost on you, in terms of your beachfront being
lost, your oyster beds becoming less productive, your child incurring
lung problems, to name a few.
The replacement cost problem is simple to envision. Suppose there is $50
worth of quarters buried in my back yard. I pay my neighbor's kid $5 to
dig them up, and sell them to another neighbor for $25. Did I just make
$20, or lose $20?
If we priced gasoline to reflect its true cost, the "moral" arguments
would go away. Nobody would drive anywhere unless they really had to,
i.e. unless the benefits justified the costs.
James Beck
wrote:
>On Apr 10, 4:18 pm, James Beck <jdbeck11...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Peculiar response. So far, you haven't really *answered* anything. You
were pressed on your assertion that the real problem isn't "stepping
people up into a modern, industrialized lifestyle" and is really just
a problem of squeamishness about the topic of population control and
an unwillingness to do the math.
The existing empirical evidence suggests that once human populations
have experienced a sustained period of high economic growth and have
become wealthier then their birthrate tends to fall. In other words,
the existing empirical evidence supports the position that you
objected to. On the other hand, recent high birthrates in wealthy,
industrialized countries suggest that if there is such a mechanism, it
is poorly understood.
Since your underlying objection seems to be that "people" should "do
the math" I suggested that you actually do some. One of the obvious
starting points might be your notion of what you believe that you have
observed about "the choices that individuals make when they are
unconstrained by economics or social/political control." That world
does not exist now. Perhaps it never did; our direct records only go
back to the beginning of civilization and even those are spotty.
Reasonably good records are a modern phenomenon and they unfortunately
don't support the usual politico-economic jingoism.
In fact, if you 'do the math' you'll find that the evidence from the
economic side of the house supports very few conclusions, particularly
where that initial period of sustained economic growth comes from. One
thing that you can probably say reliably is that at some point in the
past, when ecological constraints were considerably less binding, the
choices of human populations did not develop into a system of low
population/high resources.
>Do you disagree with what the evidence indicates?
Since you haven't actually provided any evidence or much of a position
and since the available economic evidence is contradictory,
disagreement is rational, but lengthy disputes are a waste of time. If
you believe that you have found a plausible path from the current
state to a utopian world of low population and high resources, by all
means post it.
D9000
This thread is leaving me dazd and confused. I'll thank you to stop it.
I will give no quarter to those perpetrate such vile puns, even if (as I
suspect) some of them are no more than communication breakdown. The
whole thread is a clear example of what is and what should never be ...
but enough, before I ramble on too much. I've got a whole lotta old
blues numbers to rip off uncredited (you can change the words around a
bit, but the song remains the same).
tg
> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:07:22 -0700 (PDT), tg
...
***
> and since the available economic evidence is contradictory,
> disagreement is rational, but lengthy disputes are a waste of time. If
> you believe that you have found a plausible path from the current
> state to a utopian world of low population and high resources, by all
> means post it.
I did, earlier in the thread. I suggested that half of all resources
devoted to ameliorating climate change be dedicated to reversing
population growth.
As to evidence, there is still as far as I know a consensus on the
effect of empowering women economically, socially, and politically---
that effect being a reduction in birth rate. That data is current and
non-controversial. You may be confused by anomalous cases because you
aren't aware of countervailing pressures in the social/political
arena, in which I include religion.
-tg
Nick Keighley
many wouldn't. On balance I'd rather live in a populated area. I have
relatives that live in a remote area. One shop within walking
distance. A ferry trip then 10 miles to a pub. An hours drive to the
nearest town. Americans probably regard this as urban.
> Personal preferences do vary.
>
> I have, at different times in my life, lived in 'suburbs',
> a major city, and in a rural area. One trait of the 'suburbs'
> is that the term is worthless. No surprise since it's
> mostly an advertising term. Population density is more meaningful,
> but the 'suburbs' I've lived in have had densities from maybe 200
> per square mile to 10,000. The major city (Chicago, I was in Hyde
> Park) density was 15,000 per square mile average, but probably
> about 10,000 in my neighborhood (which had at one time been an
> independant city). The rural area, I was a couple of miles outside
> town, the town being of about 200 (population total, not density).
> County probably something like 100 per square mile average.
the "county" I live in has a density of over 1000/mile2
<snip>
> Or shareholders realize that they can make money at each one
> of the dozen more local store fronts they open up than in the single
> big store. I've said for some time that the single big store is
> subsidized by customers -- customers valuing their time at zero,
> and the drive cost at zero. So they spend a lot of time driving
> around to the stores, at their own expense, and kill the entire
> day picking up just a few things. Shopping time 1 hr, drive time
> 3 hrs sort of thing.
3hrs! I can get half way across my country in that time!
> Maybe other things could be done with ones' life than to sit in
> a car?
>
> Incidentally: Yes, for some years I did average 10-15,000 miles per
> year. That included several long distance driving vacations per year.
> I now drive markedly less, so I know that it can be done. Some of
> the difference is flying to places rather than driving for vacations
> (hard to drive to China or Greece from here), so not an entire gain on
> the emissions.
last figures I saw, long distance flight was about 30% of a typical
westerner's emmissions (obviously varies a lot)
> But, since I do live in a 'suburb' and drive less than
> 15,000 (less than 10,000 in fact) miles per year, I know it's quite
> possible to do, and without the nightmares that Steven L. is visualizing.
> Though maybe he'd consider my life nightmarish.
<snip>
Nick Keighley
nukes. build more nukes