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I know that I am in the minority in these parts. But I'm glad to see these banks pull out of these net-zero related efforts. For me, and again I know I'm in th

by eej71 2y ago

I know that I am in the minority in these parts. But I'm glad to see these banks pull out of these net-zero related efforts. For me, and again I know I'm in the minority here, net-zero puts a huge cramp on productivity and building out what we need for civilization. These net-zero aren't progressive - they are regressive. What we need is build. To drill. To create. For that, we need all the energy sources we can pull from. Fossil. Nuclear. And yes, solar and wind too. Hydro. Net-zero is what will pull down everyone. But our worldviews are radically different here.

Mistletoe 2y ago
Why do we need to create and use so much? People aren’t happier now, they are less happy. That’s all that matters. And the world population isn’t growing like we thought. We need to use much less. As a former guy that grew microbes, I remember what happened to flasks where the bacteria just use all the resources they can, the whole flask dies.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lesuorac 2y ago
Well, Drilling like Hydro has very large ecological impacts at scale. Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 but that's too much government overreach or something ...
- cheema33 2y ago
  > Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 Nuclear costs more than many other alternatives.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    Practically, sure. But physically? Debatable. A lot of the cost has to do with the time necessary to build the plant (with permits et al), and the money that gets tied up as a result.
NewJazz 2y ago
Why do we need to do all that? Why do we need unlimited energy? Can you really not foresee problems with that, if everyone could drive/fly/boat as long and as fast as they want because fuel is basically free?
- intended 2y ago
  Thing is, people who foresee problems happen to be the people who have the education to talk about them. The rest of the world is in the dark ages. Imagine being told they will never have a chance to get to a better life? Imagine being told you will lose what you have because people in the west blew it all up. Heck, given how crazy things in general are, I wouldnt be surprised if people start throwing nukes around as "solutions" or as "fuck you"s.
- rangestransform 2y ago
  We don’t need to do anything, we didn’t need to start farming, we didn’t need to start reading and writing, and so forth. The journey of mankind has been to get closer to doing what we want, whenever we want.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    I wasn't asking you. The commenter specifically used the term "need".
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
travisporter 2y ago
Are you describing accelerationism?
Certhas 2y ago
We now live in a 1.5 degree warmer world. We can empirically study how much that level of warming is costing us already. It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation. Ignoring climate change constraints in developing civilization will make us all poorer. Again, the effect of warming on GDP is measured, not postulated.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  > It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation How are you calculating this?
  - Certhas 2y ago
    This is based on regional economic data, e.g.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 and follow up works. The methods are fairly straightforward. Panel regression with temperature effects on top of a per region and per year background. As I understand it, there is some disagreement for how to exactly aggregate the growth effects over time. But to me what was shocking about this is just how clearly you already see the impacts in existing _macroeconomic_ data, once it's sufficiently high spatial resolution. I am in the "who really cares about GDP" camp generally, it's a very crude measure. I was not expecting to see climate impacts to show up in GDP data for quite some time.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      Have you actually read that paper? I ask as it doesn't seem to be open access. It seems clearly absurd, though. They claim that 1 degree of temperature variance reduces GDP by 5pp, which is an insanely huge effect. They're saying that variability (not growth) of a size you can't even feel would eliminate the entirety of US economic growth and push the rest of the world into a large recession. This kind of paper where you regress things against each other with no attempt to understand or explain the underlying causalities, nor have any ability to validate the results, is the sort of thing that yields false positive results all the time, it's textbook replication crisis stuff.
intended 2y ago
I agree! I think we should be just chucking excess heat off of earth with massive mirros or micro waves. There is surely no way we stop producing, even if the world burns to a crisp. Embrace the nihilism is my current stance. People think they need optimism to think and feel ok. Turns out you can feel perfectly fine and productive when you assume the world is coming to an end as well! Its just a matter of perspective, what matters is having a clear plan for what you think will happen, and executing on it. It doesnt matter if the plan may be grim to others. This is just reality, reality doesnt care about someones feelings.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  That attitude will reap you a bitter crop, friend.
  - eej71 2y ago
    I think those comments are intended to be a satirical evaluation of what I said above. Poe's Law strikes again?
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      I hope so! I am rather literal-minded, usually speaking plainly, which means I tend to read others as tho they speak in the same way. Thanks for the heads-up, friend.
weweersdfsd 2y ago
Build and create what? More cheap plastic junk for consumers? Big SUV cars for middle class that could very well drive a Corolla? Cloud services delivering social media that negatively impacts people's mental health, but makes billionaires a lot of money? Most energy out there already goes to causes that do nothing whatsoever to advance humanity's future or to improve people's lives. Burning fossil fuels to produce that waste of energy is absolute madness. If we are to waste energy, it should at least be produced in a manner that doesn't doom future generations.

by eej71 2y ago

Mistletoe 2y ago

Why do we need to create and use so much? People aren’t happier now, they are less happy. That’s all that matters. And the world population isn’t growing like we thought. We need to use much less. As a former guy that grew microbes, I remember what happened to flasks where the bacteria just use all the resources they can, the whole flask dies.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lesuorac 2y ago

Well, Drilling like Hydro has very large ecological impacts at scale. Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 but that's too much government overreach or something ...

cheema33 2y ago
> Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 Nuclear costs more than many other alternatives.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  Practically, sure. But physically? Debatable. A lot of the cost has to do with the time necessary to build the plant (with permits et al), and the money that gets tied up as a result.

NewJazz 2y ago

Why do we need to do all that? Why do we need unlimited energy? Can you really not foresee problems with that, if everyone could drive/fly/boat as long and as fast as they want because fuel is basically free?

intended 2y ago
Thing is, people who foresee problems happen to be the people who have the education to talk about them. The rest of the world is in the dark ages. Imagine being told they will never have a chance to get to a better life? Imagine being told you will lose what you have because people in the west blew it all up. Heck, given how crazy things in general are, I wouldnt be surprised if people start throwing nukes around as "solutions" or as "fuck you"s.
rangestransform 2y ago
We don’t need to do anything, we didn’t need to start farming, we didn’t need to start reading and writing, and so forth. The journey of mankind has been to get closer to doing what we want, whenever we want.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  I wasn't asking you. The commenter specifically used the term "need".
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

travisporter 2y ago

Are you describing accelerationism?

Certhas 2y ago

We now live in a 1.5 degree warmer world. We can empirically study how much that level of warming is costing us already. It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation. Ignoring climate change constraints in developing civilization will make us all poorer. Again, the effect of warming on GDP is measured, not postulated.

mike_hearn 2y ago
> It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation How are you calculating this?
- Certhas 2y ago
  This is based on regional economic data, e.g.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 and follow up works. The methods are fairly straightforward. Panel regression with temperature effects on top of a per region and per year background. As I understand it, there is some disagreement for how to exactly aggregate the growth effects over time. But to me what was shocking about this is just how clearly you already see the impacts in existing _macroeconomic_ data, once it's sufficiently high spatial resolution. I am in the "who really cares about GDP" camp generally, it's a very crude measure. I was not expecting to see climate impacts to show up in GDP data for quite some time.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Have you actually read that paper? I ask as it doesn't seem to be open access. It seems clearly absurd, though. They claim that 1 degree of temperature variance reduces GDP by 5pp, which is an insanely huge effect. They're saying that variability (not growth) of a size you can't even feel would eliminate the entirety of US economic growth and push the rest of the world into a large recession. This kind of paper where you regress things against each other with no attempt to understand or explain the underlying causalities, nor have any ability to validate the results, is the sort of thing that yields false positive results all the time, it's textbook replication crisis stuff.

intended 2y ago

I agree! I think we should be just chucking excess heat off of earth with massive mirros or micro waves. There is surely no way we stop producing, even if the world burns to a crisp. Embrace the nihilism is my current stance. People think they need optimism to think and feel ok. Turns out you can feel perfectly fine and productive when you assume the world is coming to an end as well! Its just a matter of perspective, what matters is having a clear plan for what you think will happen, and executing on it. It doesnt matter if the plan may be grim to others. This is just reality, reality doesnt care about someones feelings.

MrMcCall 2y ago
That attitude will reap you a bitter crop, friend.
- eej71 2y ago
  I think those comments are intended to be a satirical evaluation of what I said above. Poe's Law strikes again?
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    I hope so! I am rather literal-minded, usually speaking plainly, which means I tend to read others as tho they speak in the same way. Thanks for the heads-up, friend.

weweersdfsd 2y ago

Build and create what? More cheap plastic junk for consumers? Big SUV cars for middle class that could very well drive a Corolla? Cloud services delivering social media that negatively impacts people's mental health, but makes billionaires a lot of money? Most energy out there already goes to causes that do nothing whatsoever to advance humanity's future or to improve people's lives. Burning fossil fuels to produce that waste of energy is absolute madness. If we are to waste energy, it should at least be produced in a manner that doesn't doom future generations.