6 ms·

A Climate Love Story

la64710 4y ago
Bio fuels for air travel is not the answer. We need zero emission technologies for transportation.
- tigerlily 4y ago
  Agree, and I too was lost at that point, but I implore you to read on.
- nradov 4y ago
  What specific technologies are you suggesting? It is possible to manufacture carbon-neutral synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels using renewable sources of heat and electricity. The costs are higher than fossil fuels today but that is a fixable problem.
  - la64710 4y ago
    I don’t know if Mother Nature will care if something has carbon neutral label on it or not but when burnt it emits a bunch of CO2 and other toxic gases into the atmosphere. So we really need to switch to electric engines for transportation and then use fuel cells charged from renewable sources with them.
    - nradov 4y ago
      The point of carbon neutral fuels is that the CO2 used was captured. Electric motors aren't going to be viable for long-haul flights in our lifetimes due to battery weight. Fuel cells aren't "charged", but they do need a supply of hydrogen. I'm skeptical whether that will work out due to safety, storage, and volume issues.
- bombcar 4y ago
  We know how to travel with zero or near zero emissions; we just don't want to. Make the world big again! Stop with traveling faster than 25 miles per hour! It'll blow your face off anyway.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I read through this thinking it was a bit pessimistic, so the twist didn't really hit me in the intended way. Like aren't we already projected to be at level population growth by 2100? But it's the weird fossil fuel cultism that gets me: > Besides the fact that we have never built any alternative energy infrastructure (dams, photovoltaics, turbines, nuclear) without extensive reliance on fossil fuels, it is not clear how non-renewable materials could be coaxed to maintain a renewable energy infrastructure for the long term. What specific thing is it hard to do without fossil fuels? Trucks? Steel? Concrete? Mining? Boats? Give me some details please as I feel you're wrong but you're being very coy about the details so I can't tell you why you are wrong. More importantly, put a figure on it, what percent of the total absolutely requires fossil fuels which are today, right now more expensive than renewable energy. What price would renewables need to get to in order to build those apparently necessary fossil fuels from the air with green electricity? This kind of puts an upper limit on the price of avoiding this doom. edit: he does in fact link to more in depth fossil fuel cultism: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/06/shedding-our-fossil-fuel-suit/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/06/shedding-our-fossil-fuel-... Apparently heating things is the Achilles heel of renewables. Just not possible without fossil fuels. I mean we can literally make fossil fuels with electricity. So that doesn't seem a blocker anyway, but surely someone will figure out how to heat things with electricity? I mean there must be some way to work around the fact that putting too much electricity through metal will melt it? And how are we going to melt metal if the metal things we build to melt the metal also melt when we put electricity through them. It's a conundrum, but surely some genius will solve it. Also, I didn't realise how correct I was to refer to this as cult-like: > That leaves the question: if most of what we praise about ourselves is not so much us but our fossil fuel suit (we do look good in it, don’t we?), then what’s left when our empire loses its cladding? Just how feeble, pathetic, and dull are we, under that thick and powerful shroud? He literally thinks we can't invent new things without fossil fuels. That's a very weird belief.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- suoduandao2 4y ago
  Regarding the question 'what specific thing is it hard to do without fossil fuels', the answer, from what I've seen of that side of the debate, is that the problem isn't technical but economic. To attempt to steelman the argument AIUI: If we replace the EROI of fossil fuels with the EROI of renewables, a much larger portion of the economy will have to be dedicated to generating energy. This will make everything more expensive, and a lot of activity we take for granted today will be too expensive to be maintained, even though it might still be technically feasible. Even the leisure time to invent new and better energy sources will be displaced by people needing more time to chop their own firewood etc[1], and free capital to invest in new inventions will similarly be much harder to come by than when we were all comparatively rich due to the fossil subsidy. There will be knock-on effects in the complexity of society, which is currently able to maintain a high level of complexity and specialization because the high costs of complexity (e.g. longer supply chains) is being subsidized by the low cost of energy. It's not a terrible argument, though it clearly is making a doomer assumption at every turn. Currently, google tells me that the EROI of crude oil and solar PV are ~20 and ~10 respectively - which does represent a significant tightening of the total wealth available if we contemplated switching everything today. The more optimistic counterpoint, is that the current EROI of fossils is diminishing, and will meet the EROI of renewables at some point, where by this logic the maintainable complexity of society would stabilize. Hopefully that still allows us to have a microchip foundry somewhere, though I haven't seen anyone reliably crunch the numbers one way or another. [1]pointing out that Nikola Tesla invented a lot of things while employed digging ditches is not part of a proper steelman.
isaacfrond 4y ago
The EU banned new fossil-fuel cars from 2035. Probably not quite soon enough to make "fossil fuels all but obsolete except in a few backwater places". Although, I'd guess not many people in EU will be enthusiastic to a buy a fuel car in 2030. Second hand value might be low. So the ban might have a front running effect.
Retric 4y ago
What’s interesting and breaks that argument is how many things can effectively be recycled 100%. Rainfall and sunlight are going to be plentiful for the next billion years without issue. Dumps don’t destroy useful elements like lithium they just mix them with less useful junk. So, at what point do dumps become mines of the future? Better technology that can economically extract useful material. Current mines already operate at concentrations that would have been useless even just 50 years ago and that trend is unlikely to change.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The "concentration of useful material" is only part of the calculus; the 'hazards associated with the other stuff' is one also (and current mines of course have this, too!).
tigerlily 4y ago
Keep people educated and hand out contraception. As a side note, a day will come when there will be the most humans ever alive at one time. I wonder what that will be like? I hope I live to see the day and that it falls this side of Halley’s Comet’s next appearance. Keep watching Japan’s economy.
- wiredearp 4y ago
  That's today according to https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I think the tiger is saying the "peak day" will occur, and that will only be known afterwards as the peak drops. In other words, the day that number starts going down.
jacknews 4y ago
Yes, this article gets to the heart of the problem, like a few others, eg https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism/ https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism... Electric cars and other techno-fixes at best reduce the damage caused by what we do, and at worst, hide the damage from us. The actual problem is in what we do, how we live. IMHO there are two sustainable paths. We can live 'in nature', as the article suggests. This probably requires a much lower population, and probable accepting nature's solutions to problems. Famine for over-population, etc. Or we can detach entirely from nature. Live in beautiful self-sustaining cities, our food produced by cell culture, fermentation, indoor farms, etc, energy from solar, deep geothermal, etc. The rest of the world is a nature reserve.
- junofan 4y ago
  Sounds cultish. What makes you think either of those paths are workable? Why wouldn’t what we’re doing now lead to a sustainable future? What does hiding the damage mean?
  - yodsanklai 4y ago
    > Why wouldn’t what we’re doing now lead to a sustainable future? Because what we're doing now is "growth", which isn't sustainable in a finite word. Unless you believe humanity is going to colonise the galaxy very soon. I recommend "limits to growth" which is still very relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    And you think capitalism is not a cult?
- hosh 4y ago
  There are a lot of of solutions from permaculture design in which one can “live with nature”. I think a lot of people would be surprised by what is possible. But it still requires a change in the world view and way of life.
- 4y ago
hosh 4y ago
This articulates why I became disillusioned. The fantasy described in the beginning is what I typically see in solarpunk literature, which is just as unrealistic. I find myself with a lot more optimism about what comes out of permaculture design. Whether permaculture design and regenerative paradigms ultimately can help, still requires us to change our way of life. Now, no one is going to that. I think most people want to cling to the fundamentals of their way of life. Even giving up fossil fuels for “green energy” is giving up something more superficial while still clinging to the fantasy of unlimited, on-demand energy. Nothing fundamental has changed about the way of life or the world view that goes with it. Fortunately, for me at least, I think a found a path that works even if most people don’t want to climb on board.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  > Fortunately, for me at least, I think a found a path that works even if most people don’t want to climb on board. Would love for you to share this with me. I am doing my own thing as well. A friend and I have been talking about how to raise others consciousness about all of this if it is possible and the only conclusion we come to is to push the Overton window so far that it jolts peoples mental system. So we are striving to live a life like Franciscans, Buddhists, and Daoists. What do we really need to be content? How do we cope with our deconditioning from all the material wants? I almost stopped reading that article because of the beginning paragraphs. Glad I did not.
  - hosh 4y ago
    I had the same reaction to the first few paragraphs. I’m glad it is written, and hope it wakes more people up to it. I don’t know if the author has looked into stuff like permaculture design principles and permaculture ethical principles. Those in turn were distilled from indigenous communities — point being, we do have something in our collective consciousness on how to do this … it’s just not in modernity. As far as deconditioning from our material wants — I do see some of this pop up from time to time. Minimalism. Marie Kondo. Mindfulness. I’ve also learned that people are walking their paths, and each of us have to discover the truths within ourselves. A society that uses _regenerative_ (not just sustainable) principles and practices, can open up space for people to get in touch within. However, it’s still something that someone has to voluntarily give it a try. Have you looked into the work of Carol Sanford? She has chosen to try to transform business for decades now, and managed to do that for the companies she worked with. There are also things I’m open to discussing further — in relation to Buddhism, Daoism, Consciousness, etc., just not in a public forum here. If you like to discuss those, you can email me at talktohosh at gmail.
gmuslera 4y ago
Solutions without degrowth are not solutions. Even if we somewhat move to renewables for cars and transport in general, if we keep growing our need of cars, plane/leisure trips, industries and so on we will hit another bump pretty soon, or not be able to finish that move at all. You can't just do both. Low hanging fruits like ending (far away, at the very least) tourism, far more remote working and presence to avoid commuting and revamp (electric) public transport should be adopted and soon. It will have a huge economic and social impact, but will be pocket change compared with the cost of doing nothing or not enough. We won't get up to 2050 in a good shape, even if the scenario of stop using fossil fuels. The system already have more circulating carbon, that lead to more concentration of GHG, global warming, and triggering positive feedback loops that will keep worsening things badly, I just don't know what will be the scenario at the end of this decade, much less in 30 years. But I know that things will be far worse if we keep delaying and doing nothing significative about it.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
No mention of how WW2 created a lot of two income, no kid households with extremely high savings rates that helped fuel the post-war boom. No mention of passive solar design and vernacular architecture as a means to improve quality of life while reducing energy consumption instead of looking for bullshit miracle clean energy answers. "Doing the math" won't fix this when the person crunching the numbers has no meaningful solutions.
carapace 4y ago
In terms of technology we already have all the solutions we need to avert environmental catastrophe. We don't have to reduce our standard of living. If anything quality of life will go up, as living in harmony with nature is fun, healthy, and economical. In terms of actually learning (really re-learning) to live in harmony with nature the resolution lies in what Martin Buber called "I-Thou vs. I-it": > Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways: > - The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience. > - The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds. > One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou By treating Nature as an "it" rather than a living constellation of living beings we deny ourselves the meaningfulness of relationship with the rest of life. This in turn naturally leads otherwise-good people to thoughtlessly and needlessly destroy other living beings and the ecosystems which they comprise and which sustain them. Scientific reductionism has lead to incredible insights into the biomolecular machinery of life, which in turn has lead naturally to our dawning understanding of the physical chemical basis of cellular communication ("wood wide web"; Michael Levin's lab; etc.) The task now is to harmonize our technology with the ecological systems around us. - - - - I met a group of people living in Northern California who produce their own food and energy, construct their own buildings from on-site material (wood, stone, earth) and they even have a cow for milk production. They also have Internet and modern technology. I'm not saying we should all live in semi-rural communes. I'm pointing out that it's possible to have the best of the techno-industrial world and the Natural world.

Bio fuels for air travel is not the answer. We need zero emission technologies for transportation.

tigerlily 4y ago
Agree, and I too was lost at that point, but I implore you to read on.
nradov 4y ago
What specific technologies are you suggesting? It is possible to manufacture carbon-neutral synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels using renewable sources of heat and electricity. The costs are higher than fossil fuels today but that is a fixable problem.
- la64710 4y ago
  I don’t know if Mother Nature will care if something has carbon neutral label on it or not but when burnt it emits a bunch of CO2 and other toxic gases into the atmosphere. So we really need to switch to electric engines for transportation and then use fuel cells charged from renewable sources with them.
  - nradov 4y ago
    The point of carbon neutral fuels is that the CO2 used was captured. Electric motors aren't going to be viable for long-haul flights in our lifetimes due to battery weight. Fuel cells aren't "charged", but they do need a supply of hydrogen. I'm skeptical whether that will work out due to safety, storage, and volume issues.
bombcar 4y ago
We know how to travel with zero or near zero emissions; we just don't want to. Make the world big again! Stop with traveling faster than 25 miles per hour! It'll blow your face off anyway.

I read through this thinking it was a bit pessimistic, so the twist didn't really hit me in the intended way. Like aren't we already projected to be at level population growth by 2100? But it's the weird fossil fuel cultism that gets me: > Besides the fact that we have never built any alternative energy infrastructure (dams, photovoltaics, turbines, nuclear) without extensive reliance on fossil fuels, it is not clear how non-renewable materials could be coaxed to maintain a renewable energy infrastructure for the long term. What specific thing is it hard to do without fossil fuels? Trucks? Steel? Concrete? Mining? Boats? Give me some details please as I feel you're wrong but you're being very coy about the details so I can't tell you why you are wrong. More importantly, put a figure on it, what percent of the total absolutely requires fossil fuels which are today, right now more expensive than renewable energy. What price would renewables need to get to in order to build those apparently necessary fossil fuels from the air with green electricity? This kind of puts an upper limit on the price of avoiding this doom. edit: he does in fact link to more in depth fossil fuel cultism: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/06/shedding-our-fossil-fuel-suit/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/06/shedding-our-fossil-fuel-... Apparently heating things is the Achilles heel of renewables. Just not possible without fossil fuels. I mean we can literally make fossil fuels with electricity. So that doesn't seem a blocker anyway, but surely someone will figure out how to heat things with electricity? I mean there must be some way to work around the fact that putting too much electricity through metal will melt it? And how are we going to melt metal if the metal things we build to melt the metal also melt when we put electricity through them. It's a conundrum, but surely some genius will solve it. Also, I didn't realise how correct I was to refer to this as cult-like: > That leaves the question: if most of what we praise about ourselves is not so much us but our fossil fuel suit (we do look good in it, don’t we?), then what’s left when our empire loses its cladding? Just how feeble, pathetic, and dull are we, under that thick and powerful shroud? He literally thinks we can't invent new things without fossil fuels. That's a very weird belief.

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
suoduandao2 4y ago
Regarding the question 'what specific thing is it hard to do without fossil fuels', the answer, from what I've seen of that side of the debate, is that the problem isn't technical but economic. To attempt to steelman the argument AIUI: If we replace the EROI of fossil fuels with the EROI of renewables, a much larger portion of the economy will have to be dedicated to generating energy. This will make everything more expensive, and a lot of activity we take for granted today will be too expensive to be maintained, even though it might still be technically feasible. Even the leisure time to invent new and better energy sources will be displaced by people needing more time to chop their own firewood etc[1], and free capital to invest in new inventions will similarly be much harder to come by than when we were all comparatively rich due to the fossil subsidy. There will be knock-on effects in the complexity of society, which is currently able to maintain a high level of complexity and specialization because the high costs of complexity (e.g. longer supply chains) is being subsidized by the low cost of energy. It's not a terrible argument, though it clearly is making a doomer assumption at every turn. Currently, google tells me that the EROI of crude oil and solar PV are ~20 and ~10 respectively - which does represent a significant tightening of the total wealth available if we contemplated switching everything today. The more optimistic counterpoint, is that the current EROI of fossils is diminishing, and will meet the EROI of renewables at some point, where by this logic the maintainable complexity of society would stabilize. Hopefully that still allows us to have a microchip foundry somewhere, though I haven't seen anyone reliably crunch the numbers one way or another. [1]pointing out that Nikola Tesla invented a lot of things while employed digging ditches is not part of a proper steelman.

isaacfrond 4y ago

The EU banned new fossil-fuel cars from 2035. Probably not quite soon enough to make "fossil fuels all but obsolete except in a few backwater places". Although, I'd guess not many people in EU will be enthusiastic to a buy a fuel car in 2030. Second hand value might be low. So the ban might have a front running effect.

Retric 4y ago

What’s interesting and breaks that argument is how many things can effectively be recycled 100%. Rainfall and sunlight are going to be plentiful for the next billion years without issue. Dumps don’t destroy useful elements like lithium they just mix them with less useful junk. So, at what point do dumps become mines of the future? Better technology that can economically extract useful material. Current mines already operate at concentrations that would have been useless even just 50 years ago and that trend is unlikely to change.

bombcar 4y ago
The "concentration of useful material" is only part of the calculus; the 'hazards associated with the other stuff' is one also (and current mines of course have this, too!).

tigerlily 4y ago

Keep people educated and hand out contraception. As a side note, a day will come when there will be the most humans ever alive at one time. I wonder what that will be like? I hope I live to see the day and that it falls this side of Halley’s Comet’s next appearance. Keep watching Japan’s economy.

wiredearp 4y ago
That's today according to https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
- bombcar 4y ago
  I think the tiger is saying the "peak day" will occur, and that will only be known afterwards as the peak drops. In other words, the day that number starts going down.

jacknews 4y ago

Yes, this article gets to the heart of the problem, like a few others, eg https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism/ https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism... Electric cars and other techno-fixes at best reduce the damage caused by what we do, and at worst, hide the damage from us. The actual problem is in what we do, how we live. IMHO there are two sustainable paths. We can live 'in nature', as the article suggests. This probably requires a much lower population, and probable accepting nature's solutions to problems. Famine for over-population, etc. Or we can detach entirely from nature. Live in beautiful self-sustaining cities, our food produced by cell culture, fermentation, indoor farms, etc, energy from solar, deep geothermal, etc. The rest of the world is a nature reserve.

junofan 4y ago
Sounds cultish. What makes you think either of those paths are workable? Why wouldn’t what we’re doing now lead to a sustainable future? What does hiding the damage mean?
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  > Why wouldn’t what we’re doing now lead to a sustainable future? Because what we're doing now is "growth", which isn't sustainable in a finite word. Unless you believe humanity is going to colonise the galaxy very soon. I recommend "limits to growth" which is still very relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  And you think capitalism is not a cult?
hosh 4y ago
There are a lot of of solutions from permaculture design in which one can “live with nature”. I think a lot of people would be surprised by what is possible. But it still requires a change in the world view and way of life.
4y ago

hosh 4y ago

This articulates why I became disillusioned. The fantasy described in the beginning is what I typically see in solarpunk literature, which is just as unrealistic. I find myself with a lot more optimism about what comes out of permaculture design. Whether permaculture design and regenerative paradigms ultimately can help, still requires us to change our way of life. Now, no one is going to that. I think most people want to cling to the fundamentals of their way of life. Even giving up fossil fuels for “green energy” is giving up something more superficial while still clinging to the fantasy of unlimited, on-demand energy. Nothing fundamental has changed about the way of life or the world view that goes with it. Fortunately, for me at least, I think a found a path that works even if most people don’t want to climb on board.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago
> Fortunately, for me at least, I think a found a path that works even if most people don’t want to climb on board. Would love for you to share this with me. I am doing my own thing as well. A friend and I have been talking about how to raise others consciousness about all of this if it is possible and the only conclusion we come to is to push the Overton window so far that it jolts peoples mental system. So we are striving to live a life like Franciscans, Buddhists, and Daoists. What do we really need to be content? How do we cope with our deconditioning from all the material wants? I almost stopped reading that article because of the beginning paragraphs. Glad I did not.
- hosh 4y ago
  I had the same reaction to the first few paragraphs. I’m glad it is written, and hope it wakes more people up to it. I don’t know if the author has looked into stuff like permaculture design principles and permaculture ethical principles. Those in turn were distilled from indigenous communities — point being, we do have something in our collective consciousness on how to do this … it’s just not in modernity. As far as deconditioning from our material wants — I do see some of this pop up from time to time. Minimalism. Marie Kondo. Mindfulness. I’ve also learned that people are walking their paths, and each of us have to discover the truths within ourselves. A society that uses _regenerative_ (not just sustainable) principles and practices, can open up space for people to get in touch within. However, it’s still something that someone has to voluntarily give it a try. Have you looked into the work of Carol Sanford? She has chosen to try to transform business for decades now, and managed to do that for the companies she worked with. There are also things I’m open to discussing further — in relation to Buddhism, Daoism, Consciousness, etc., just not in a public forum here. If you like to discuss those, you can email me at talktohosh at gmail.

gmuslera 4y ago

Solutions without degrowth are not solutions. Even if we somewhat move to renewables for cars and transport in general, if we keep growing our need of cars, plane/leisure trips, industries and so on we will hit another bump pretty soon, or not be able to finish that move at all. You can't just do both. Low hanging fruits like ending (far away, at the very least) tourism, far more remote working and presence to avoid commuting and revamp (electric) public transport should be adopted and soon. It will have a huge economic and social impact, but will be pocket change compared with the cost of doing nothing or not enough. We won't get up to 2050 in a good shape, even if the scenario of stop using fossil fuels. The system already have more circulating carbon, that lead to more concentration of GHG, global warming, and triggering positive feedback loops that will keep worsening things badly, I just don't know what will be the scenario at the end of this decade, much less in 30 years. But I know that things will be far worse if we keep delaying and doing nothing significative about it.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

No mention of how WW2 created a lot of two income, no kid households with extremely high savings rates that helped fuel the post-war boom. No mention of passive solar design and vernacular architecture as a means to improve quality of life while reducing energy consumption instead of looking for bullshit miracle clean energy answers. "Doing the math" won't fix this when the person crunching the numbers has no meaningful solutions.

carapace 4y ago

In terms of technology we already have all the solutions we need to avert environmental catastrophe. We don't have to reduce our standard of living. If anything quality of life will go up, as living in harmony with nature is fun, healthy, and economical. In terms of actually learning (really re-learning) to live in harmony with nature the resolution lies in what Martin Buber called "I-Thou vs. I-it": > Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways: > - The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience. > - The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds. > One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou By treating Nature as an "it" rather than a living constellation of living beings we deny ourselves the meaningfulness of relationship with the rest of life. This in turn naturally leads otherwise-good people to thoughtlessly and needlessly destroy other living beings and the ecosystems which they comprise and which sustain them. Scientific reductionism has lead to incredible insights into the biomolecular machinery of life, which in turn has lead naturally to our dawning understanding of the physical chemical basis of cellular communication ("wood wide web"; Michael Levin's lab; etc.) The task now is to harmonize our technology with the ecological systems around us. - - - - I met a group of people living in Northern California who produce their own food and energy, construct their own buildings from on-site material (wood, stone, earth) and they even have a cow for milk production. They also have Internet and modern technology. I'm not saying we should all live in semi-rural communes. I'm pointing out that it's possible to have the best of the techno-industrial world and the Natural world.