Carbon waste life form
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thank you Marina, and Raul
It is so hard to get news from East Ukraine before it has been run through the media machine.
In my view, the most reliable way of guessing who is behind an international incident is who gains most from it in a tactical way. Most people can’t imagine their side being involved in an atroticy such as cynically shooting down a jet, such is the strength of propaganda the world over. Indeed, practically speaking, it doesn’t matter if your government did perpetrate such a crime this time, it only matters whether it would do so. When you think like that, I think you can rise above the propaganda and look at the available evidence.
Carbon
I can see why you get so hung up about Ukraine (in addition to losing so many countrymen) It is so utterly and incredibly cynical on the part of the West (whoever that is).
It is so hard to get news about it that makes sense, I have long since stopped trusting the MSM on this and other important issues. I use a kind of meta-news. If something is NOT in the news, I assume it is of vital importance. Notice how the unfounded and bellicose sanctions against are no longer in the news, as well as the lack of satellite images and tower and black box data. I also automatically distrust anything coming out of Obama/Kerry or Cameron/Hammond’s mouths. They are most certainly lying to us. People who do not analyse the news carefully have no chance whatsoever over their gut instincts of knowing what is being done in their name.
I guess there will never be justice for this egregious abuse of power. If there is, I would support incarceration and isolation from all levers of influence for the rest of their lives for anyone found facilitating foreign coups anywhere. It would make a marvellous deterrent for future Nuland / Pyatt and Yatsenyuk / Poroshenko types. It really would have to be permanent isolation or they’d be back. How about shutting them in one of their own bunkers and dropping food and water down for them. They’d have each other’s personalities for company. That would be justice!
Carbon
Raleigh
The cynical part of me says that while there is no treatment to save lives, Ebola will be stopped by international efforts fuelled by fear of international contagion. If we get a good treatment which saves lives and prevents contagion, it’ll be reserved for people of the West, and Africa will be left to Ebola misery. Right now, the 1%ers may actually be at similar risk to the rest of us risk from a deadly disease they can’t avoid if it goes um “viral” They are not going to like that!
Carbon
Greenpa,
Thanks for the link. I have been reading lots of your great blog entries and links for an hour or so. Particularly liked the stuff on miscommunication between scientists and journalists. I think like a scientist, and don’t state something unless I’m 95% sure of it in my mind. This leads to me saying less than I think. I know lots of people who think less than they say!
Carbon
(Sorry, I posted this to the previous thread, it belongs here)
The russia sanctions thing seems to have dropped priority on the BBC News website over the last few days. I have noticed a change in tone and where they have previously said approximately that the “west believes that the separatists were responsible”, it now says that the “west says that the separatists were responsible”
Today’s story is not on the top headlines and does not have a caption picture:
Ukraine crisis: Malysian and Dutch PMs discuss MH17 accessWeren’t they going to do a press release about sanctions today? It be interesting to see how much they back down.
I guess the balance of evidence is now strongly implicates Kiev and to shout about sanctions looks ridiculous, The main stream media are trying to throw the whole thing down the memory hole.
Carbon
The russia sanctions thing seems to have dropped priority on the BBC News website over the last few days. I have noticed a change in tone and where they have previously said approximately that the “west believes that the separatists were responsible”, it now says that the “west says that the separatists were responsible”
Today’s story is not on the top headlines and does not have a caption picture:
Ukraine crisis: Malysian and Dutch PMs discuss MH17 accessWeren’t they going to do a press release about sanctions today? It be interesting to see how much they back down.
I guess the balance of evidence is now strongly implicates Kiev and to shout about sanctions looks ridiculous, The main stream media are trying to throw the whole thing down the memory hole.
Carbon
Just reading comments section on a BBC story about Sarah Palin
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27211768
All straightforward, except look at the bbc URL, it contains the word echochambers. is that what they think of comment sections?
Carbon
Ah: A quick search reveals China’s public position:
“China defends Russia”
https://thediplomat.com/2014/07/mh17-china-defends-russia-criticizes-the-west/Carbon
Hi Galacticsurfer
Good link. The URL is wrong though, it should be https://www.politicalaffairs.net/ukraine-iraq-and-fascist-dangers
Carbon
Hi Diogenes, Boogaloo
I think most people with or without religion know how to behave well. This is about unsuitable people in positions of power and what they are doing to abuse it, We don’t need to split into factions to condemn it!
I reckon most well connected politicians with access to intelligence services know very well what is going on. the question I want to ask is what will the BRICS do. Are the US and Russia frantically trying to make deals with allies before any more evidence, whether true or fabricated, comes out.
In short, has America gone too far this time? What is China going to do?
Carbon
The government in the UK have suddenly (I believe) announced an inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko BBC: UK Home Secretary announces Litvinenko Inquiry I think the timing is really political and designed to cast Russia in a bad light. Recently our oppostion leader Ed Miliband has been to US for talks with Obama. This may or may not be connected, they did say that they discussed Ukraine (and Gaza). The media water is really muddy and vitriolic, this whole Ukraine thing seems to be unusually significant and polarising internationally. It is being made use of IMO.
I am keeping an open mind as much as possible
Carbon
Hi Diogenes
I know it’s hard to establish what is true from news sources. I use the high probability stuff such as – MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine after being downed on purpose by someone (even if the plane was misidentified by accident). Just about everyone agrees on these facts. They may not be true, they’re the best I have. After that I wonder what someone would have to gain from the incident and work from there. I try not to get emotional about it.
Of course the truth might not be the simplest explanation, I realise that real life is complex, but I am limited in what I can know with high probability, so I don’t think I should add complexity unless I have a good reason.
If I make too many inferences, I can easily be misled by somebody else’s ideas.
Better to only see part of the picture and be right than see the whole and be wrong!Carbon
Diogenes, That doesn’t sound simple enough for me! I always try to apply Occam’s razor (Wikipedia) to reach the simplest conclusion from the strongest evidence available and joining two seperate airline disasters doesn’t seem necessary to explain the facts at all. I guess they both crashed independently.
Carbon
HI Ilargi
Your post makes emotional sense to me, it isn’t respectful to make accusations about who shot down the plane and why until there is credible evidence. I also agree that the bigger actors probably have a very good idea what happened, but it doesn’t mean that we will ever know for sure. Who is responsible and exactly why may never reach the public.
What is likely is that the shooting down of the plane will be used as a pretext for something, whether it is more international sanctions or some sort of change in the parameters of the war on the ground that was not palatable before. Whatever is it, it will not be a good thing!
I have noticed the mood of the media in the UK including the BBC is shifting after the shock of the plane crash. Everybody must keep their own thinking caps on and not be led around.
Carbon
Regarding MH17, I also agree with Gravity, the Russian separatists have nothing to gain and all to lose by shooting down an airliner. If it was an accident by the separatists then it isn’t terrorism, if it were a FF by Kiev or the USA, it would be terrorism. As far as I am concerned, terrorism is about intent to cause terror. I wish news outlets would make this distinction.
I think Ukraine is a proxy war and I feel sorry for all the people who are dragged in on the ground, or in this case, in the air. The instigators of this war are likely far away and comfortable. They are probably psycopaths and will not identify with the victims. It would be nice if people with dangerous personality disorders were excluded from roles of responsibility, it would be a totally different world!Carbon
I haven’t given up on humanity at all, that’s why I am here arguing. I just want to talk about what we are up against. (That all sounds very yang doesn’t it)
Carbon
Hi Alan (post to me)
I think Alt energy has come a very long way in the past few years. I care a lot about it and drove about locally for years in home made electric cars, mainly to make a point that it could be done. (I got to drive Nicole to a talk in one of them)
My electricity provider uses part of the money I give them to fund wind power, which I approve of, even though currently they may need to be backed by fossil fuels. I hope that the same infrastructure may be backed by energy stores or “negawatts” (i.e. energy savings, demand side pricing etc.)Still, I believe that Ilargi found an ariticle recently that said that China had used as much cement in 2 years as the USA has historically. That kind of profligacy, misallocated resources and unwarranted growth dwarfs all Alt. energy efforts by a super wide margin. We are burning more coal than ever. Whether you believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming or not, the pollution and resource destruction is bigger than ever. We are peeing in the wind until the direction of growth changes.
So I am not as sanguine as you or L.B.Crowell are about our prospects.
IMO It’s all down to whether we crash financially, and how we do, not efficiency gains or Alt. energy
Carbon
Alan, first post (to Rapier)
I don’t like the ad-hominems towards Hanson, I think they detract from your argument, but I have said some pretty harsh things on this forum about people who you would call psychopaths because I have gotten angry and exasperated.
The 5% psychopaths: If your most dangerous 5% get in positions where they can force debt based collapse and servitude on others, and bend the resources of society to their own narrow will, then they have a disproportionate effect on the directon of society compared to the rest.
It’s like the Maximum Power Principle operating in monetary terms within a society. They outcompete competitors and make them financially extinct, which could in the future translate to actually dead for some people. So they matter more than 5% in practice.Carbon
Wow, such well thought out replies to my post and others,
I am going to talk to you separately;John: It’s good to see calm analysis which is perhaps more detached from value judgement than mine is.
I’d like to think of myself as a yin type of a man, I value empathy, support and co-operation and I am not afraid of complexity or ambiguity, so thinking like Hanson (Let me spell his name right this time) isn’t my primary mode.
I am just trying to think of mechanisms which might play out another way then sawtooth population growth and all of it’s attached suffering and environmental damage which result from applying the maximum Power Principle to competing groups of humans.
I can see that you are saying that the way things play out in a complex world is hard to predict with incomplete models (all models of the open systems are incomplete of course).
For example, I can’t quite explain why the population growth has slowed to zero in most of the western hemisphere. It’s a sign that I might be unduly pessimistic, but the people in this area could be outcompeted by another growing group and the population competition would return and cause the dieoff.
Maybe the growth stall in multiple groups in the western hemisphere represents a phase change in human thinking which will move to other groups, most people want to live like the Western hemisphere after all. I just can’t see it right now. It’s that MPP as a principle hold across most competing species in nature that makes me disbelieve that we can avoid it ultimately.
Please note that I am not holding up the western hemisphere as a model of correct living in any way, just that it currently isn’t, for whatever reason, a fast growing population
You have me thinking!
Carbon
Hi Alan
What did you learn in the 15 years since reading dioff.com? You don’t make that clear. I really want him to be wrong! I didn’t quite get what I needed from Dr Diablo’s post.
Carbon
Hi Ilargi
What an important topic this is! I think it’s key to whether humankind will go through a population bottleneck due to collapse of resources. That would include a lot of human suffering as well as environmental degradation.
What I take as the most important factor in human group competion and also in resource pressure is population size within groups.
Groups more likely to succeed will be bigger groups who have maximised their reproduction by using resources at an unsustainable rate just as Hansen has suggested above. Lots of ethnic and religious groups encourage birth rates above replacement and I think that that is part of the reason they are successful (i.e. They are groups that are around today).
A theoretical solution to overshoot is to limit population growth to less than replacement levels and to use less energy per capita. This may not be possible to do by persuasion. It has been tried by coersion in order to prevent overshoot (one child policy in China).
The reasons that it might not be possible to persuade populations to multilaterally stop breeding is that groups which would not abide by a central agreement would gain by it. Also, maximum breeding is codified into some religions as something God wants you do, so some people would find such a suggestion at odds with their religious imperative.
If it is important to bring down fertility to replacement levels in general, and I think (as a humanist intersted in minimising suffering) that it is, then some strategies might be:
* Reduce religiousity in society (or at least the parts that affect family size)
* Better living conditions – they tend to bring down family sizes (eventually)
* Decouple finance from growth of population – Don’t encourage pop. growth to solve economic problems
* Reduce ability to move resources – Groups can’t take each other’s resources if they can’t access them – that means reversing globalisation and the reducing the ability to accumulate wealth.
* Empower women in general and birth control in particular. I believe (I need to research it) that if given more equal power, women often choose to limit the number of children they have. Isn’t Bill Gates interested in this one?I think these things might help reduce the effect of the Maximum Power Principle in human civilisation.
If it all sounds a bit high and mighty, prescriptive and centralised, then I don’t know what to say. I don’t like thinking this way, I believe in decentralised systems really, but this is IMO the very biggest problem human civilisation had and we dam well need to discuss it fully. It’s a long emergency.
I don’t mind for being flamed for these forthright prescriptions, we need to discuss it as a species.
Carbon
IMO free marketeers are scared of the unpredictability of the real world. they seek to install a theoretical engine of self-regulation so that they can predict the outcome, they then try to peturb the machine to their advantage, which totally misses the point of self-regulation. Twice.
Carbon
What might have happened if banks were allowed to fail?
I think that bad behaviour on the part of banks is due to the lack of consequences. I am not sure that I subscribe to free market ideals, but it seems to me that even if all the banks failed at once then others with money would have found a way to lend and prevent a long term liquidity crisis. It’s the management of the system by governments and other agencies which prevents the removal of the bad actors and the finding of a new equilibrium without them. I’m sure current banks could be outcompeted on a level field.
All the free market advocates I have heard of are not really for a free market at all, they supports the current status, which is far from free. Rules are partisan and knowledge is kept obscure.
I don’t think I am a free market supporter because I think that free market capitalism will scrape all life off the planet in it’s collective quest for growth. In any case, free markets don’t really exist, and the more you try to support them, the LESS they exist! I suddenly see it!
Carbon
Hi Rapier,
My feeling is that your crackpot idea might be right. Corporations can be multinational after all, and their driving force is pure, I.e profit. Nations cannot be multinational, an even when allied, have conflicting driving forces, this limits their maximum influence compared to corporations. When corporations and governments fully align in their interests, you have fascism as Mussolini defined it.
I like it when you talk about growth per se.
It is the basic problem of mankind and needs to take precedence over -isms such as capitalism and globalism.
I agree with what you have said in this post and what Sanjay says above (I notice you comment on the same subject matter I do). The problem is, and this is what I’d like to ask everyone about, how to have a nucleus, an island of sustainable living e.g. a town or a country, without it being outcompeted by it’s surrounding regions which have adopted short termist growth strategies. I think this hold the key to the only way sustainability can be achieved bottom up (which IMO is the only way it can be achieved)
This question of mine has links to group selection in eveolutionary theory and also something called the Maximum Power Principle (IIRC) which is a heuristic from biology which describes how organisms in nature, all else being equal, have a higher chace of survival if they have a higher power throughput.
How do we get around this stuff in order to have no-growth regions? I am sure there won’t be multi lateral agreement.
Carbon
Ilargi says that “Just lowering the birth rate doesn’t work” (At least not well).
I guess that’s because there would be a lower portion of people at working age doing societies services. Maybe that can be ameliorated over time by encouraging familes (or similar collections of multi generational groups) to live with or close by each other in order that older members free up younger ones by doing more childcare, organising and household support.
In the UK, the boomer generation are relatively rich, live in couples or on their own and feel they have earned their pension and go on holidays. I’m not cross about it, I just think it’s a waste of resource. Why work much too hard for years and then not at all?I agree with Raleigh. I don’t comment more because Nicole and Ilargi get it right IMO and I have little to add!
Carbon
let’s see.
In order not to have growth in a humane fasion, you need a stable or shrinking level of wealth (and corresponding level of money to represent it). You cannot allow the more wealthy in sociey to become richer on average or the poor wil starve in a zero sum game.
This means you need to look at reconfiguring usury or taxation or both to encourage pressure towards average weath for everyone. I’m sure it’s not necessary to get to wealth equality, but you can’t allow the wealth gap to widen further in a zero sum economy.
Now that’s quite simple, and it’s moral, and it’s the only way to prevent terrible poverty in a constrained future. Things may have been different in a growing economy, but they are that way now.
It’s a matter of getting the conversation there and marginalising those who say that increasing wealth and consumption is a right. It’s not morally supportable in a shrinking economy.
For those who think that excessive wealth is their God given right, I have no God and I have to share the world with them, so they need to think harder about it!
Carbon
This post makes me sad.
There’s no lower morality than that of those people who would destabilse a country for money or power.
I am suspicious of all who would do it for ideology, but to do it for money or power, that’s really low!
I’m talking about all the paid mercenaries and agitators out there, no matter who they answer to, and the companies, states and agencies that sent them as well.
There’s nothing those people can do to make up for such crimes, except stop doing it!Carbon
Hi Rapier
If ever I try to explain to anyone that growth has to stop (and ideally go into reverse) and wealth gap acceleration has to stop (and ideally go into reverse) to avoid collapse, they look at me like I’m crazy, yet it all makes sense, clear mathematical sense.
Charming psychopaths like Boris Johnson say otherwise, and the frame of reference, the space for “reasonable” debate moves further away from sustainability.
Look at what this tit says for goodness sake (and don’t nomally use ad hominems, Boris!)
https://newint.org/blog/2013/12/02/boris-johnson-elite/
He’s a prize a-hole isn’t he, like Thatcher was!
What I object to is the idea that the only way that somebody of high IQ can contribute to society is by gaining power and using it to concentrate wealth for themselves. The complete reverse is true. I guess I have a higher IQ than Boris and his friends, or maybe I’m just nicer. Would not be hard!
Carbon
Hi Ilargi
the last article “Ocean Life Captures CO2 And Detains It In Biological Material (IB Times) ”
above contains (also above)Based on the study’s results, the researchers predicted a mean global carbon export flux of 6 petagrams, or Pg, each year. One petagram is equal to 1,015 grams (2.3 pounds). According to scientists, this is a huge amount,
It’s been proofread by a scientific illiterate. What is journalism coming to!
By their reckoning I weigh 80 Pg which is around 14 times the mean global carbon flux!
Carbon
Hi Sanjay
I detect a very strong reality distortion field around the Tories these days. I guess they feel they need to get a lot done in a short time.
The problem is there is a working principle in journalism (and law) that the truth lies somewhere near the middle between two polarised narratives ( I think it’s called balanced journalism ) This benefits the liar as they can draw the frame of reference towards their narrative. You have to have your critical thinking engaged to detect this, and you often have to research the facts. This is really the journalist’s job, but they are not always honest.Most people do not have the time or energy to engage their critical thinking faculty, so to the distorted aguments are accepted.
It would be nice to see public figures reputations in tatters if they are caught wilfully misrepresenting anything, but we are conditioned to accept this practice, indeed it seems to be a part of adversarial law system as well. As long as this endures, people forget who the liars are and they will be easy to manipulate.
A quick but imperfect way to detect lies is remember who you detected lying to you before and distrust them totally.
Carbon
Hi Anonymous
Yes, I remember the 2000 fuel protests and the following breakdown of supply. It’s one of the reasons I got interested in peak oil. I think most people who are interested in financial collapse know about energy peak.
I personally think that resource problems and lower EROEI have been limiting growth for a while and that our financial problems are due to the growth economy diversifying into monetary instruments for their “growth” which is required to prevent financial collapse. Therefore, energy and resource problems may manifest as financial problems with a few years time lag.
If you prefer; the proximal mode of failure of the system may be financial while the fundamental failure is resource based.Is this what other commenters think?
Carbon
Hi Sanjay
The Tories have successfully reframed the debate about public services. If you are poor in this country, you must give up your safety net of public services because austerity is required to reduce the deficit. If you are rich and do not need a safety net, you arent required to give up anything. I think the rationale is that the wealthy drive the economy and must not be disturbed. I don’t believe the wealthy drive the economy, I think they collect the wealth of the country and sequester it in non commons assets like mansions and bling, or in offshore bank accounts. Is that a rude thing to say?
carbon
Hi Professor
I have just read about 2/3 of the Bastiat pamphlet. I consider myself on the political left close to socialism, so Bastiat is twisting my gourd a bit! I can see his point about the unsuitability of law (backed by force, as law is) in any kind of redistribution of wealth because the law always represents the wishes of a subset of society, therefore, the results are likely to be unfair (or legal plunder to use his term).
Another point is that trying to balance a money system by creating distortions in inducements in law is likely to have unforeseen effects or to enable current voters to be able to get future or voters to pay for their lifestyle – hence generational Ponzi schemes in pensions.What is so hard for an idealist like me to figure out, is just how much law is needed. You have to have some in order to prevent the powerful (e.g. mega rich, corporations, connected etc.) from being able to plunder the less powerful. Not doing this will mean regular political upsets as the the poorest have nothing left to lose.
How about we have just the right amount of law so that nobody takes advantage of anyone else! There, world fixed. I knew I could do it!
Carbon
Hi Ted
I estimate we could live on 30% of our current world usage with minimal change in living standard if we had the will to do it. That would be “If You Don’t Need It, DON’T BUY IT” and a reconfiguring of the economy to support that model. We would be working less, commuting less, making smarter choices etc.
The problem is that our future survival currently comes second to somebody’s profit. We could fix that easily by legal, economic and political changes. It’s just that we won’t do it until it’s too late. We do not individully have the requisite information or systems understanding, and there is lots of propaganda preventing us from getting that understanding.
Those that profit from the current growth model either do not understand the limits to growth or they do not care. They are totally unsuitable to lead society, but lead it they do!
Carbon
Hi Ilargi
I try to live by the “If You Don’t Need It, DON’T BUY IT” idea. When I do feel like buying something which isn’t strictly needed, I research it for a while first. Normally the feeling subsides after a while and I don’t buy anything. There is an exception, I have been buying materials to bring our house up to date and into good condition, including lowering energy requirements. IMO it is worth doing this. Eventually there’ll be a return on investment in savings, in the mean time it makes the house more easily saleable if we need to move.
I don’t feel at all disadvantaged by not having the latest gadget or service. If I had a smartphone for example, I know I’d be sucked into Facebook etc. and spend useful hours there followed by feeling less fulfilled and more neurotic. What else is a smartphone for?
The desire and collection of objects which are not very useful actualy clogs up your mind and your living space.
On the subject of ever increasing consumption being required for the economy:
If the economy can’t function without growth then it is not fit for purpose in a finite world. It’ll collapse anyway and the later it collapses, the more resources will have been used and the larger the wealth gap will be, The present economy is not compatible with sustainability.I think those who consume unnecessarily now may help keep the current economy afloat at the expense of much more harm occurring in the long term. They also will probably end up poorer.
Carbon
Hi Roel
I bet Photoshop is the thing which you’d find hardest to replace if you used linux. You would probably have to learn Gimp instead. However, Firefox would work the same in Linux as it does on your mac. What did you do before tab browsing?
Hi Ghung.
I like the sound of your computer setup. My old PC uses loads of power and it would be nice to replace it with a passive cooled system. I am so worried about power consumption that I don’t keep it on for long periods. My router and NAS server used to run from seperate 12V wall warts and I got a measurable saving of power by powering them both from the same one. I guess I could have a low voltage power supply which could be battery based for all of my 12V ish devices. It would keep them all going in a power cut.
A couple more power consumption points;
1 For power cuts, as I can’t afford a whold house battery backup system, I have standby batteries and inverters close to important devices like the central heating and the internet router. Since you should not be wasting precious battery power on standby losses from the house, it seems sensible to just power those devices you need directly. I needed to wire my boiler to a plug and socket rather than directly to the house supply so I can swap it to an inverter quickly.
2. A question: you know Bitcoins? From what I understand, they are ‘mined’ by long calculations which need significant computer resources. Won’t this use lots and lots of power for no tangible wealth increase for the world’s population? I have the feeling that the world’s dwindling resources would best be used on getting us ready for a low energy future.
