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Never mind that billions of people are only alive because of fossil fuels, and it is so far not really proven that they can be kept alive without them. That kin

Never mind that billions of people are only alive because of fossil fuels, and it is so far not really proven that they can be kept alive without them. That kind of calculation seems rather silly.

kovek 5y ago
Interesting! Young adults are comfortable today. There’s infrastructure to support them. Would society survive with suddenly less efficient processes? Everyone needs to pay rent/food/products, but modern transport and manufacturing are suddenly not useable. So, how to source items to do work/survive? I’m sure one solution would be to relocate. Some cities/societies exist with less efficient processes.
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  For starters, modern food production relies on fertilizers produced with fossil fuels. See "the green revolution": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution quote: "associated with chemical fertilizers, agrochemicals, and controlled water-supply (usually involving irrigation) and newer methods of cultivation, including mechanization" Billions of people are only alive today because of that.
jmcqk6 5y ago
You also gotta consider the reality that it is pretty clear that our current use is totally unsustainable, and pollution is just one of the downsides we are seeing. Things aren't entirely good or entirely bad. It can both be true that fossil fuels have created great wealth in a variety of different ways, and is also systematically dooming our future in a variety of different ways. In fact, that is what the truth is.
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  Nevertheless the calculation of the article is complete bullshit. You can not claim "not using fossil fuels would save billions of lives" when you need fossil fuels to keep billions of people alive in the present moment. It just doesn't make sense.
  - jmcqk6 5y ago
    Both of those statements can be true. That was the entire point I was trying to make. It's not bullshit. Both of those statements are true.
ben_w 5y ago
If we can’t survive without fossil fuels, we’d definitely be in trouble very quickly, given how soon they’d run out if we are unable to substitute something else in their place. Fortunately the fact they can be made in the first place means we almost certainly can substitute something else, even if we have to make that something ourselves.
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  What do you mean? It took millions of years to "make" them, and the same initial conditions can not be recreated, either.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Nature wasn’t trying. The pressure, heat, and chemical environment that turns plants into coal, oil, and gas can be tuned to make the process much faster if desired. What’s the functional difference between 1kg of coal and 1kg of charcoal, for example? And we can also extract CO2 from the air, pass it through the Sabatier process to get methane, then do more chemistry to get long chain hydrocarbons. Musk is planning to do this for his rockets.

Never mind that billions of people are only alive because of fossil fuels, and it is so far not really proven that they can be kept alive without them. That kind of calculation seems rather silly.

kovek 5y ago

Interesting! Young adults are comfortable today. There’s infrastructure to support them. Would society survive with suddenly less efficient processes? Everyone needs to pay rent/food/products, but modern transport and manufacturing are suddenly not useable. So, how to source items to do work/survive? I’m sure one solution would be to relocate. Some cities/societies exist with less efficient processes.

notanzaiiswear 5y ago
For starters, modern food production relies on fertilizers produced with fossil fuels. See "the green revolution": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution quote: "associated with chemical fertilizers, agrochemicals, and controlled water-supply (usually involving irrigation) and newer methods of cultivation, including mechanization" Billions of people are only alive today because of that.

jmcqk6 5y ago

You also gotta consider the reality that it is pretty clear that our current use is totally unsustainable, and pollution is just one of the downsides we are seeing. Things aren't entirely good or entirely bad. It can both be true that fossil fuels have created great wealth in a variety of different ways, and is also systematically dooming our future in a variety of different ways. In fact, that is what the truth is.

notanzaiiswear 5y ago
Nevertheless the calculation of the article is complete bullshit. You can not claim "not using fossil fuels would save billions of lives" when you need fossil fuels to keep billions of people alive in the present moment. It just doesn't make sense.
- jmcqk6 5y ago
  Both of those statements can be true. That was the entire point I was trying to make. It's not bullshit. Both of those statements are true.

ben_w 5y ago

If we can’t survive without fossil fuels, we’d definitely be in trouble very quickly, given how soon they’d run out if we are unable to substitute something else in their place. Fortunately the fact they can be made in the first place means we almost certainly can substitute something else, even if we have to make that something ourselves.

notanzaiiswear 5y ago
What do you mean? It took millions of years to "make" them, and the same initial conditions can not be recreated, either.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Nature wasn’t trying. The pressure, heat, and chemical environment that turns plants into coal, oil, and gas can be tuned to make the process much faster if desired. What’s the functional difference between 1kg of coal and 1kg of charcoal, for example? And we can also extract CO2 from the air, pass it through the Sabatier process to get methane, then do more chemistry to get long chain hydrocarbons. Musk is planning to do this for his rockets.