6 ms·

> many people convince themselves that "Science" will save us Why won't it? The main issue is where we get our energy from. There are working methods that are

> many people convince themselves that "Science" will save us Why won't it? The main issue is where we get our energy from. There are working methods that are CO2 neutral. I'm firmly in the "only science will save us" camp. > It's like when you move form a basic 40sq meter flat to a fancy 250sq meter house, going back is very hard. I believe this is view harmful to the cause because it will only result in pushback, and rightfully so. Only excess wealth creates the spare capacity to care for the environment.

js8 8y ago
> Why won't it? The problem is that many people (who express that conviction) treat "Science" just like the God in the famous anecdote: http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html It is important to understand the limits of science. It won't save you universally from everything, no matter what you do. Your own action (or inaction, in case of waste) determines what can be done.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  When Hillary said that she believed in science on stage during the 2016 DNC I remember audibly groaning
  - js8 8y ago
    FWIW, I heard Joe Biden considers climate change to be a crisis and wants to tackle it in a moderate way. Go figure.
crispinb 8y ago
The main issue is where we get our energy from. No, that's just the most currently newsworthy of literally hundreds of causes of the global ecological collapse. Ecologists have been mapping many of these causes for decades. The overarching cause of all the component causelets (eg. emissions, habitat destruction, soil & water degradation, etc) has been the expansion of a crude global civilisation based on selective ignorance of science. We pretend to respect science when it produces stuff we like ("technology"), but ignore the inconvenient understandings revealed by science as it relates to the complex living systems that sustain us.
- acqq 8y ago
  “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function” https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populati... “Growth” as the politicians and the lobbyists push it is simply not sustainable. But both “the left” and “the right” have their agendas not to let you discuss or act on that. "Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, the 4 become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at 12:00 noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth: it has a doubling time of one minute, it’s in the finite environment of one bottle. I want to ask you three questions. Number one: at what time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59, one minute before 12:00? Because they double in number every minute. And the second question: if you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realise you were running of space? Well, let’s just look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12:00 noon, it’s full; one minute before, it’s half full; 2 minutes before, it’s a quarter full; then an 1?8th; then a 1?16th. Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12:00, when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there’s a problem?" Note that the before that point in the talk he explains that for any "steady growth" you can find the period in which what you observe doubles, i.e. any "steady growth" has its "doubling time."
Angostura 8y ago
> I'm firmly in the "only science will save us" camp. The problem is that just saying that, allows policy makers and public to sit back and wait for the problem to be saved - without funding the science to do, or take other necessary policy steps. In a sense you can argue that science has saved us - we have solar and wind, nuclear and excellent battery tech. So why aren't we "saved"?
- oceanplexian 8y ago
  Science is primarily driven by private enterprise, that’s why. A business without any demand has no reason to exist. If the sea rises, or weather becomes more catastrophic, or oil becomes scarce, people will naturally devise solutions and mitigations. You can already see this in places like Florida where new construction techniques are being used to build houses that can withstand hurricane force winds.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    And the number one problem is that waiting until the disaster hits is a really, really dumb strategy. It may be efficient on paper, but that's only if one places no value on human life and suffering, and is willing to gamble the disaster won't collapse the economy before it gets fixed.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    You've provided a very good examnple of where private enterprise and the markets fail. If the sea rises and weather becomes more catastophic, people will indeed device solutions and mitgations. Those mitigations won't necessarily include carbon reduction - they'll be increased levee construction, abandonment of low-lying cities and building codes adjusted so that '1 in a century' storms are encountered every couple of years. What we are trying to do at this point, ius avoid such grim consequences, now and the market can't help us unless we promote panic, which isn't a great strategy.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
  This is true - science is just a tool, it needs force and direction. This is the job of governments, so you are right that science is just one part of the solution. In my mind it is a given that you need strong government support to make changes, so this was not the differences I wanted to focus on. The German Energiewende showed that it can be done, we basically bankrolled the creation of a global solar panel industry. I wanted to put this in contrast to the "stop growth and consume less" mindset, which I believe will be massively insufficient in solving climate change. When we switch to alternative means of energy, at least in the beginning they will be more expensive than fossil, and you need to be able to afford this. Asia must be able to afford this! And they will not give up cars and go back to riding bicycles, this is a pipe dream.
lm28469 8y ago
"technology will save us" isn't a performative utterance. It's barely better than saying "god will save us". Tech will certainly play a role, but I'm convinced that without a cultural, political and economical change we're doomed. Saying "tech will save us" make people believe that they have no part to play, no responsibility. We know what to do, the fact is that we're not acting fast enough. "At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capitalism-destroying-earth-human-right-climate-strike-children https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capita...
- convolvatron 8y ago
  there's a broader assumption which seems at least equally as dangerous. the pie will keep getting bigger. more resources. more energy. more people. more goods. more kinds of goods. more movement of goods. thats a direct consequence of your point in that we structurally assume an infinite number of fish, amount of land...and more importantly that the oceans and sky are so vast and unknowable that we throw as much into them as we want without anything ever coming back. maybe we're living out the last aftershock of the end of the age of exploration. and we're so completely unprepared to manage any kind of economic contraction the only response is fear. growth is the seductive poison thats killing us.
adrianN 8y ago
Science had its chance over the last forty or fifty years. Now we're running out of time.
Slimbo 8y ago
Isn't the flaw in just treating this like an energy source problem? It isn't. Switching to Nuclear or renewable doesn't reduce the massive contribution from beef farming for example. Another huge contributor is deforestation due to crops such as palm oil, which demand is fueled largely by palm oil being considered a renewable energy source. It's too complex to boil down to 'wait for the unicorn technology to solve the problem'
- imtringued 8y ago
  It mostly is an energy problem [0]. Energy, transport and industry produce 70% of the emissions. Solutions to reduce them already exist it's just that the politicians refuse to use them. [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/ghg-emissions2018-standapril2019-uba-gross4aprilneu.jpg?itok=SSjSQ_Ku https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
  - jblwps 8y ago
    The source you linked is a per-year breakdown for Germany only. Especially considering that it's a well-developed country that isn't a large commercial producer, I'd be very surprised if those results can be extrapolated onto the rest of the world.
chimprich 8y ago
> Why won't it? The main issue is where we get our energy from. There are working methods that are CO2 neutral. I'm firmly in the "only science will save us" camp. If you mean "science" as in existing science and technology, then, sure, technological approaches are part of the solution. Often, though, in these discussions, "science" is used to mean some sort of magical advancement that is just around the corner that will solve all our problems. That would be nice, but probably isn't the case. We'll probably see incremental advances in things like solar panels but we're up against some hard limits of physics. Reducing consumption and making efficiency savings are significantly easier. > Only excess wealth creates the spare capacity to care for the environment. I think this is view is harmful. First, it looks very clear that mitigating climate change is cheaper than dealing the consequences, so this "excess wealth" is mythical. Second, we shouldn't be treating our environment as a luxury. We need to make sure the planet is liveable first, then see what other toys we can afford.
Scarblac 8y ago
> > many people convince themselves that "Science" will save us > Why won't it? Because science doesn't run the world, politicians do.

js8 8y ago

> Why won't it? The problem is that many people (who express that conviction) treat "Science" just like the God in the famous anecdote: http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html It is important to understand the limits of science. It won't save you universally from everything, no matter what you do. Your own action (or inaction, in case of waste) determines what can be done.

selimthegrim 8y ago
When Hillary said that she believed in science on stage during the 2016 DNC I remember audibly groaning
- js8 8y ago
  FWIW, I heard Joe Biden considers climate change to be a crisis and wants to tackle it in a moderate way. Go figure.

crispinb 8y ago

The main issue is where we get our energy from. No, that's just the most currently newsworthy of literally hundreds of causes of the global ecological collapse. Ecologists have been mapping many of these causes for decades. The overarching cause of all the component causelets (eg. emissions, habitat destruction, soil & water degradation, etc) has been the expansion of a crude global civilisation based on selective ignorance of science. We pretend to respect science when it produces stuff we like ("technology"), but ignore the inconvenient understandings revealed by science as it relates to the complex living systems that sustain us.

acqq 8y ago
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function” https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populati... “Growth” as the politicians and the lobbyists push it is simply not sustainable. But both “the left” and “the right” have their agendas not to let you discuss or act on that. "Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, the 4 become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at 12:00 noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth: it has a doubling time of one minute, it’s in the finite environment of one bottle. I want to ask you three questions. Number one: at what time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59, one minute before 12:00? Because they double in number every minute. And the second question: if you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realise you were running of space? Well, let’s just look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12:00 noon, it’s full; one minute before, it’s half full; 2 minutes before, it’s a quarter full; then an 1?8th; then a 1?16th. Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12:00, when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there’s a problem?" Note that the before that point in the talk he explains that for any "steady growth" you can find the period in which what you observe doubles, i.e. any "steady growth" has its "doubling time."

Angostura 8y ago

> I'm firmly in the "only science will save us" camp. The problem is that just saying that, allows policy makers and public to sit back and wait for the problem to be saved - without funding the science to do, or take other necessary policy steps. In a sense you can argue that science has saved us - we have solar and wind, nuclear and excellent battery tech. So why aren't we "saved"?

oceanplexian 8y ago
Science is primarily driven by private enterprise, that’s why. A business without any demand has no reason to exist. If the sea rises, or weather becomes more catastrophic, or oil becomes scarce, people will naturally devise solutions and mitigations. You can already see this in places like Florida where new construction techniques are being used to build houses that can withstand hurricane force winds.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  And the number one problem is that waiting until the disaster hits is a really, really dumb strategy. It may be efficient on paper, but that's only if one places no value on human life and suffering, and is willing to gamble the disaster won't collapse the economy before it gets fixed.
- Angostura 8y ago
  You've provided a very good examnple of where private enterprise and the markets fail. If the sea rises and weather becomes more catastophic, people will indeed device solutions and mitgations. Those mitigations won't necessarily include carbon reduction - they'll be increased levee construction, abandonment of low-lying cities and building codes adjusted so that '1 in a century' storms are encountered every couple of years. What we are trying to do at this point, ius avoid such grim consequences, now and the market can't help us unless we promote panic, which isn't a great strategy.
MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
This is true - science is just a tool, it needs force and direction. This is the job of governments, so you are right that science is just one part of the solution. In my mind it is a given that you need strong government support to make changes, so this was not the differences I wanted to focus on. The German Energiewende showed that it can be done, we basically bankrolled the creation of a global solar panel industry. I wanted to put this in contrast to the "stop growth and consume less" mindset, which I believe will be massively insufficient in solving climate change. When we switch to alternative means of energy, at least in the beginning they will be more expensive than fossil, and you need to be able to afford this. Asia must be able to afford this! And they will not give up cars and go back to riding bicycles, this is a pipe dream.

lm28469 8y ago

"technology will save us" isn't a performative utterance. It's barely better than saying "god will save us". Tech will certainly play a role, but I'm convinced that without a cultural, political and economical change we're doomed. Saying "tech will save us" make people believe that they have no part to play, no responsibility. We know what to do, the fact is that we're not acting fast enough. "At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capitalism-destroying-earth-human-right-climate-strike-children https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capita...

convolvatron 8y ago
there's a broader assumption which seems at least equally as dangerous. the pie will keep getting bigger. more resources. more energy. more people. more goods. more kinds of goods. more movement of goods. thats a direct consequence of your point in that we structurally assume an infinite number of fish, amount of land...and more importantly that the oceans and sky are so vast and unknowable that we throw as much into them as we want without anything ever coming back. maybe we're living out the last aftershock of the end of the age of exploration. and we're so completely unprepared to manage any kind of economic contraction the only response is fear. growth is the seductive poison thats killing us.

adrianN 8y ago

Science had its chance over the last forty or fifty years. Now we're running out of time.

Slimbo 8y ago

Isn't the flaw in just treating this like an energy source problem? It isn't. Switching to Nuclear or renewable doesn't reduce the massive contribution from beef farming for example. Another huge contributor is deforestation due to crops such as palm oil, which demand is fueled largely by palm oil being considered a renewable energy source. It's too complex to boil down to 'wait for the unicorn technology to solve the problem'

imtringued 8y ago
It mostly is an energy problem [0]. Energy, transport and industry produce 70% of the emissions. Solutions to reduce them already exist it's just that the politicians refuse to use them. [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/ghg-emissions2018-standapril2019-uba-gross4aprilneu.jpg?itok=SSjSQ_Ku https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
- jblwps 8y ago
  The source you linked is a per-year breakdown for Germany only. Especially considering that it's a well-developed country that isn't a large commercial producer, I'd be very surprised if those results can be extrapolated onto the rest of the world.

chimprich 8y ago

> Why won't it? The main issue is where we get our energy from. There are working methods that are CO2 neutral. I'm firmly in the "only science will save us" camp. If you mean "science" as in existing science and technology, then, sure, technological approaches are part of the solution. Often, though, in these discussions, "science" is used to mean some sort of magical advancement that is just around the corner that will solve all our problems. That would be nice, but probably isn't the case. We'll probably see incremental advances in things like solar panels but we're up against some hard limits of physics. Reducing consumption and making efficiency savings are significantly easier. > Only excess wealth creates the spare capacity to care for the environment. I think this is view is harmful. First, it looks very clear that mitigating climate change is cheaper than dealing the consequences, so this "excess wealth" is mythical. Second, we shouldn't be treating our environment as a luxury. We need to make sure the planet is liveable first, then see what other toys we can afford.

Scarblac 8y ago

> > many people convince themselves that "Science" will save us > Why won't it? Because science doesn't run the world, politicians do.