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So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now

So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. This has more to do with us as narrative-oriented animals than anything else. The other thing is: If one wishes to engineer an Malthusian heck-hole, all one need do is raise apocalyptic narratives to the point to which Something Involving The Use of AK-47s ( or reasonable facsimile thereof ) By 14 Year Old Children Must Be Done.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). Okay, here's where you're wrong: > The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. Well, no. Obviously, population growth has an impact on fossil fuel consumption and CO2 production, but the amount of either per capita has decidedly not been constant over the 1790 to 2016 period, so population change is not the "principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed". > The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. The other good news is that per capita CO2 emissions are also dropping in the developed world. (The bad news is that the developing world is a lot bigger, and per capita CO2 emissions are growing there, because any gains there might be from better energy sources are dwarfed by increased energy usage with economic development.)
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Just to be clear - I think that advances in population are due mainly to the influence of fossil fuels on agriculture and logistics. Because food. The other things are clean water and medical advances, which ... I don't know how you'd show those to be related to fossil fuels so much outside of that the engineering culture has much in common, and they'd be hard to do without readily available power sources. I suspect they're entangled, but that's really just a guess. A really TL;DR guess... As a "people", I owe my existence partially to the fact that there are more of us. And were it not for antibiotics, chances are that I would have died at six months old. That's one of the big reasons there are so many of us. The race between making heck-holes less heckish and CO2 is a profound one. We'll see. I was saddened to see China use American affinity for cars - I'd thought they could do it better.
yongjik 10y ago
> But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. That's a rather odd thing to say for a topic that's been researched by thousands of experts for decades. As if we have to resort to Bayesian priors because no other evidence is available. I mean, if someone yells "Your sofa is on fire!", you wouldn't sit there and muse "Hmm, that sounds pretty dire, but the severity of the claim is inversely proportional to its likelihood..." You would just get up and see if that's the case.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  See, you're doing it, too. My sofa isn't on fire, metaphorically. Science != science journalism. In terms of how narrative works, scary stories sell better, so there's a bias in the story-telling. It just makes filtering through all the rubbish that more difficult. If I have to bet, I bet on AGW but that's like one bit of information. All the other bits are harder to get to. I literally am dependent on the kindness of other people who can do the math for a reading of it. And that ignores the side effects of overreaction.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). Okay, here's where you're wrong: > The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. Well, no. Obviously, population growth has an impact on fossil fuel consumption and CO2 production, but the amount of either per capita has decidedly not been constant over the 1790 to 2016 period, so population change is not the "principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed". > The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. The other good news is that per capita CO2 emissions are also dropping in the developed world. (The bad news is that the developing world is a lot bigger, and per capita CO2 emissions are growing there, because any gains there might be from better energy sources are dwarfed by increased energy usage with economic development.)

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Just to be clear - I think that advances in population are due mainly to the influence of fossil fuels on agriculture and logistics. Because food. The other things are clean water and medical advances, which ... I don't know how you'd show those to be related to fossil fuels so much outside of that the engineering culture has much in common, and they'd be hard to do without readily available power sources. I suspect they're entangled, but that's really just a guess. A really TL;DR guess... As a "people", I owe my existence partially to the fact that there are more of us. And were it not for antibiotics, chances are that I would have died at six months old. That's one of the big reasons there are so many of us. The race between making heck-holes less heckish and CO2 is a profound one. We'll see. I was saddened to see China use American affinity for cars - I'd thought they could do it better.

yongjik 10y ago

> But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. That's a rather odd thing to say for a topic that's been researched by thousands of experts for decades. As if we have to resort to Bayesian priors because no other evidence is available. I mean, if someone yells "Your sofa is on fire!", you wouldn't sit there and muse "Hmm, that sounds pretty dire, but the severity of the claim is inversely proportional to its likelihood..." You would just get up and see if that's the case.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
See, you're doing it, too. My sofa isn't on fire, metaphorically. Science != science journalism. In terms of how narrative works, scary stories sell better, so there's a bias in the story-telling. It just makes filtering through all the rubbish that more difficult. If I have to bet, I bet on AGW but that's like one bit of information. All the other bits are harder to get to. I literally am dependent on the kindness of other people who can do the math for a reading of it. And that ignores the side effects of overreaction.