Not pointless, it doesn't matter if we aren't here to experience it. All that matters is that all will be well again. At least that's the way I see it.

Haha - "smash it with a hammer" :P (the video) - funny.

As this is NOT another nuclear debate, I will not reply to Niri Te :P - you all know my opinion on that and many will also know my arguments against that.

I think we should not let it "play out", frankly. Certianly, if civilized humans do not manage to get a grip they have the potential to turn this planet into a wasteland before they go extinct - or in a less severe scenario civilization just collapses and we go towards a way of living that reminds more of the beginning of history. Happened to the Mayas and the Anaszasi before. But I think that this is more or less the destiny - and thus I think frankly that we cannot let it play out because the longer this goes on as it does, the less will be left for those that come after us, humans or nonhumans. I am sick of still hearing the same stuff said by decisionmakers, politicians and corporate people as they said 25 years ago when I was a teenager. They keep saying that we all want a sustainable world and many even said back then that we should eventually turn to renewable energies because of climate change and limited fossil fuels and the impact of it all, but of course we need to keep the coal and nuclear plants running now because we dont have a replacement just now, but in a few years surely we can make it. And here we are, 25 years later and the same bull**** is coming along about how we need to keep the coal plants running and we need nuclear as a "bridge technology" on the way to a sustainable future... Nothing is gained, nothing changed. The only way there will be change frankly is if the use of these polluting processes (mining, oil drilling, coal burning,...) is prevented, prohibited and stopped in any way. Only then will people start to really make serious changes. Only if they are not allowed to dig up the tar sands, the bituminous coal, the copper and bauxite below sacred hills, the oil in the Arctic - only then we will see change. Otherwise it is just too cheap and attractive to keep on doing the same crap and keep on polluting and risking many lives.

Well said, no argument please :) - we all know each other's views already.

The main issue with hydroelectric is that is is not a generation source when it comes to rapid response to demand peaks, it's storage via pumped storage. Depending on the design capacity and level of utilisation, it can be depleted in minutes, and can take hours to be reestablished to a useful level, and as such, is typically used for demand surges such as advert breaks in popular TV programmes rather than general daytime demand being greater than nighttime.

The reason the Mayans died out has nothing to do with what they did and everything to do with invasion :P - on the other hand, I agree about keeping obsolete methods running when we have extant technologies to replace them, but equally, some newer ones are ubeconomical and should not be seriously considered as a solution other than in extreme specific cases - they work in sites where conditions are perfect, but not in every random convenient place, even if some companies do place them there simply to gather subsidy funds to the point that numerous wind turbines are run at a loss and their operators profit entirely from subsidies, while the energy fed into the national grid is sold at a loss due to costs involved. Eliminating useless subsidies and placebo methods is just as important as reducing coal/oil dependence.

Correct, though most of the capacities are not pumped storage but regular dams. They buffer spikes in demand. Everything else is covered by slowly changing capacities of the other, more slowly powerplants. Another rapid response technology is natural gas burning. The point I was trying to make was however that Germany has quite a margin of excess production. Even the peaks in demand do not go beyond the present production capacities with the powerplants that are in use. Only under extreme conditions that are hypothetical, there could be power outages (and only if other countries are affected the same way and cannot trade). Overall, Germany has no energy crisis at this time in terms of electricity, but as I said this is independent of oil, which was the main point of this whole text, that electricity, nuclear power plants or wind turbines all have zip to do with the demand for oil in Germany, which is why none of tat has anything to do with Tar Sands.
The demand for cheap oil from tar sands is mainly a matter of peak oil, political instability in the near east and the attempt to diversify sources for oil imports. The oil is needed mostly for transport (cars, trucks, ships, planes) and heating - plus industry (chemicals, plastics,...). That was my point.
So the question can be, where the oil would have to come from if not from tar sands and if one does not want to depend on Iran or Saudia Arabia or on Russia and the answer is of course that there are no ethical and clean and environmentally friendly sources for oil. I am sure that domestic oil here is relatively ok, highly regulated and thus expensive. And limited. Only solution is to use less and less oil.

Don't you confuse them now with the Aztecs? The Mayan collapse I was referring to happened at about 900 AD. Of course the final blow was by the Spanish. But by then, the height of the Mayan civilazation had long passed.

AFAIK, those subsidies are only paid if they actually put energy in the grid, not during construction or when they are turned off...
But what I really dont understand is why everyone is so hung up on "the economy" as the measure of what should be done and what not. It is an artificial system that was created by humans under a number or false premises and that does not work properly, as we can see all around us these months. I think people are really too much thinking that we can do only things as a society as long as it is "economical" in the sense that it is profitable on the free market. I think this makes no sense at all if you look at the world that exists outside of the economy, e.g. the real real world, the world of rivers, air, fishes and birds. And of human life and health. It is of course economical to have slaves or to dump toxic waste in a river instead of disposing of it at high cost. But it is morally and ecologically wrong and so there have to be instances that guide, guard and excert force on people doing things that are just wrong. So for these instances things like laws, regulations or subsidies exist, that of course "distort" the economy in favour of what we know is the right thing to do. I am not a friend of subsidies as they often end up misused, but I also do not think, that something has to be economical to exist - if it makes sense in another way. I dont think universities, scientific research, schools, kindergartens, hospitals or museums do have to be economically viable - because they serve a purpose that benefits the society as a whole. So it is allright if society as a whole pays for it. And in terms of energy and industry, the scope has to be expanded and one has to look at the nonhuman world as well because we care for that world as a society, so I think that it totally makes sense, that this also does not need to be 100% oriented towards being economical in the market sense. It has to be "economical" in terms of EROEI, because otherwise obviously it makes no sense (e.g. putting more energy into something than getting out, which is true for some forms of biofuels and for windmills that never run or solar panels that dont get enough sunshine) and it has to be appropriate to the area, but I think monetary profits are not the primary goal when it comes to technologies that affect societies, humanity or the natural world that we want and have to live in.

I agree the solution it so use less oil - but then a replacement source needs to be found.
Hydroelectric dams are amazingly environmentally destructive (ever hear about one somewhere called Belo Monte? :P) and they are also only useful for either a small baseload (equivalent to the river's flow) or covering peaks by releasing larger amounts of water and then waiting for the reservoir to top up again (the latter also potentially having dangerous downstream effects).

The subsidies are paid if they feed into the grid, yes, but as I said, the grid input is performed at a loss because they simply can not charge a high enough price to cover their operating cost. The point of economical is that without a subsidy, the operators would not be able to remain in business, not that it would be less profitable. That is entirely different - they do still produce a return on energy used to create them, but operating costs and construction/manufacturing cost eliminate that. If there were no other energy sources but ones that inefficient, then, yes, energy prices would be several orders of magnitude higher and they would run at a profit, but as long as there is any way to undercut them, they are not going to be viable, and even serve as a distraction, as a "here, look, we're doing something" that distracts attention from real, viable and even simultaneously profitable ideas.

Preferrably yes, if there is none, then not. Again and again - what do we regard as having priority - a planet that is alive, healthy, not heating up, not polluted by oil, that can sustain us and our descendants - or the ability to move around at a whim in individual cars, get cheap gadgets from China, peas from Equador and plums from south Africa. If we see the second one as primary, then of course the conclusion is that an alternative has to be found before anything can change. But that is insane because it is quite obvious to many people that what really is primary is the first part because without that, there is no one alive to drive around and there are no peas in Equador.

Agreed. The argument I was making was only directed at the topic of energy "safety" in Germany in respect of the current situation, trying to say that the situation is not yet unstable here. Nothing more. Quite obviously the dilemma is of course that ALL forms of mass energy production are destructive, which is why I dont really think that it should go on. But thats the old topic again, nothing to do with tar sands and oil.

I think you did not really understand what I was saying. I said basically SCREW THE ECONOMY! Seriously - right now everything is measured in if it is profitable, if it makes money, if there are costs and profits involved and the profits have to be bigger or equal to the costs and investment. But that is all artificial, it is all a human invented economy, based on work, lifestyle, wages, privilege, labour cost, cost of what people are willing to pay for something or what people think that others are willing to pay for it. I think while this is at the moment political reality, within this context this system the constrictions of acting sane are vastly limited. Things can only be done if they are economic, meaning making at least marginal profits for those who are investors. This leaves out almost all of the sane options to act because within this context, only solutions that are sane AND profitable for investors can be implemented. But that leaves out all the options that actually require investing more work or money to save the planet. It also leaves out all things that actually benefit the majority of people (which are not the investors). And it definitely leaves out all options that benefit indigenous peoples, poor peoples or nonhumans at the expense of rich "western" humans profits.
Justice cannot be served that way. Imagine being in court and the judge would love to convict a criminal that killed thousands of poor people by neglect but that provided cheap products for millions. Would you want the judge to sent him to jail or to say that it is more profitable to let him go so he can run another company providing these great cheap profitable goods? (Thats Union Carbide, Bhopal, if you want to know what I am referring to - and yes, the decision was to let them off the hook with a warning).
It is insane to set profitability (and thus the requirement that something has to be economical) ahead of what is the right thing to do. Economics has to ethics it has no morale and it does not give a sh|t about the environment, people, nonhumans, the planet unless it somehow costs them money to hurt them or it gives them profit to save them. And this may be a case here and there but it is not at all universal and if it is so, it usually is only so because there are some institutions like governments, mass movements or people resisting that force them into that situation.

Ich red mir hier den Mund fusselig!

But this is it - we can NOT be restricted by what "the economy" wants, or what privileged people happen to desire. Because of course just like the slaveowner wants not to give up his lifestyle no one nowadays wants this (The slaveowner might have said "find me a good alternative to slavery that is as profitable and that allows me to maintain my regularly cleaned victorian home and warm meals twice a day and clean, wellfed horses - then I will consider abolishing slavery)
So I think to ask the question "how can we create a sustainable, fair, equalitarian culture and keep the planet alive while we make profit and improve/maintain our livestyles" is a question that can be asked but that cannot be the limit of action. The real question is "how can we create a sustainable, fair, equalitarian culture and keep the planet alive. And if it is possible also make profit and improve/maintain our livestyles".

A last example is again hospitals. What do you think makes more sense - to have doctors that first treat a severly injured patient and then ask if he may be able to pay for it - or to ask him for a credit card or money first? Ever since the ancient Greeks, the answer was that the primary objective is to help and not to make money. Recently that is changing in tune with the overall market-economics. Consider Earth to be the patient and humans to be the cause of the injury but also the doctor. What shall we do? Help Earth first or first look if there is a profit to be made and if she can pay the bills?

Not everyone has this limit to their thinking, "how can I keep things the way they are and remain rich", and in fact I'd say that more than ever before, most of US would be receptive to change. More of a problem, and a very real problem I believe, is that many (at least in the US) still don't believe there actually is a problem with anything we are currently doing. Just last night, Rick Santorum made what he believed was a valid point: CO2 can't be toxic or hurting anything, because plants breathe it.
Yes, this really came from the mouth of one of the potential leaders of the nation. The actual quote was a bit sillier, and I'll add it if I can find it.
I am really more inclined to believe the problem does not stem from selfishness alone, but is also largely due to ignorance and misinformation.

Edit: Argh bad phone grammar. Anyway, there's all kinds of lolz about that quote I mentioned before. It's not like I make a regular habit of watching CSPAN :P but happened to catch this anyway.

Without an economy, nothing would EVER get done - just look at how every communist nation in human history has collapsed, because there was no reason to do anything and a tendency towards stagnation because there was no reason to improve or compete. I don't think you understand the economics - people will never work for nothing, and that includes operating whatever source is used. They will instead work a means that actually provides for them, which goes to ones that are viable without external support - that external support comes from taxes, so in the end, is taken right back from the people who it is paid out to.

Moco Loco, I think that most people are aware of the problem. I am sure that at least here in Europe, you could ask people from the street and they would agree that the world is in a bad shape and that something has to be done. In most cases the thoughts will however then go in different directions (changes in the economy, more regulations, less regulations, more technology, less technology, better management,...). In the US it seems there is a division between people who think the same way and a rather large group of radicals that deny it and rather stick to "god will not let us run out of oil" and "women taking contraceptives are sluts and *****s" to justify whatever privilege they want to keep.

I disagree. That majority of the people do not want the ones they see as rich and privileged to remain rich by keeping things the way they are. But they want to maintain whatever privilege they have left and maybe get back the privilege they had before 2008. I saw it in the occupy protest here. People bickered about being threatened about loosing their savings, their pension plans, their jobs, their houses. And about the "1%" being the ones taking it all. All quite understandable and quite correct - the "crisis" is a way to take even more form the poorer and give it to the rich. But I saw only rarely mentioned privilege from the other side. The one that plays hardly a role in the occupy movements. The fact, that even the "99%" are in fact, globally seen, and specifically if seen in context of all life on Earth, the "real 1%". They desire to have a bigger piece of the pie, to spread the wealth of the nation to all of its citizens. Fair, yes. But they assume that there can be a wealth that is given. But that wealth is based on explotation of others - this is not as much a topic.
There was a relatively recent survey, that I cannot find by google now that asked people in the UK about this. A majority was not willing to give up their lifestyle in a significant way. So changing lightbulbs is not a problem - you have as much light as you had before AND are saving the environment. But to do something that would disable them from having as much light, to get rid of the car and walk/bike instead, to move in a smaller home - nope - no chance. Industry tells us we can have more light by using more efficient bulbs, hybrid cars and better insulated homes and so lifestyle can be the same but efficiency is better, so the environment is saved. That is what people want to think and what their baseline is. And that is all about privilege, because of course most people in the world have no car and most not even a bike.


Re Santorum et al - to me this is just a sign that the US are totally loosing it. Really, they are. They are going cookoo as a nation. I dont even want to deal with that, but sadly they have the largest weapons arsenal in the world int hat loony bin there. People in the US are afraid, angry, paranoid and confused. They dont know what is real anymore - the economy, nature, space travel, the moon landing, aliens, 2012 prophecies, the rapture, the bible, science, religion,... So they just seem to pick what suits their own interests best (or looks like it does in the short run) and decide to believe that one. Frankly, I can imagine that 2012 becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if they go on like that. At least for the US...

That is not really true. Look at Wikipedia. Or many other online things. Or the countless community project, charity projects. Or just look at people caring for their children or parents or firends. Dont you think the "Homo economicus" is a rather limited way to view humans? Humans do what they like to do and what gives them sustanance. They will of course work harder if you either tell them they can have more and more - or, what is more common - deprive them of their basic needs. THIS is what the present economy does. It takes away any way of people to sustain themselves by what is around them and then sells back to them these very things - at the cost of their workforce. Of course that works and people will work more and more and be productive. But is that the goal? More productivity? Is that why humans are here?

But that was not even what I tried to talk about (except I said "screw the economy"). My point was, that the economy as is is set up now is meaning that things get only done when there is some profit in it, when there is a return on investment. But this excludes all solutions that are not making a profit, as much sense as they make. For example if you could somehow create a machine (technological solution) that makes clean energy, sucks up CO2, cleans rivers and eliminates smog - but to operate it is quite expensive and the price you can charge for the electricity is not enough to pay for the operation costs because a lot of people have to work in the company to make it run. But it is for the benefit of the world and all people. It is totally uneconomic but it makes a lot of sense to do it, right? You might say that you could start charging people for the use of the purified air and water and then it becomes economical, but how do you want to do that - send out bills to people to use air and water? Or you raise a water tax, but that then is again the same as subsidies. Basically what happens is that all people pay a share for a healthier environment, for cleaner water,...
So in purist economics, that machine would never be built because it is not making a profit.

Another example - you probably like space travel and the plans to build a moon base and go to Mars. Is there profit in it? Or is that to a large degree funded by public money, aka taxes aka the money of all people living in a country? Why should I pay for some guy to take a walk on Mars and not pay for ways to reduce fossil fuel usage? Why should I pay for tanks and fighter jets and submarines and not for solar panels on rooftops or people changing to more efficient use of energy? Can you imagine someone scrapping the military, space program and science research because it is uneconomical? Or dont you think there is something that is beyond "the economy" that cannot be denoted in $ and € but that is worth keeping?

I agree that often subsidies are misused - they are given for the wrong things or people find tricks to get them without providing what they were given for. That is corruption, that always happens. But I think the general idea of all people in a country chipping in to keep something going that is not economical but that makes sense for these people is not flawed.

Man Aurora, you write so much. I'm not trying to disprove you or anything, that was only my opinion. Okay, I guess that's a valid reaction, that those people in the US are just a bunch of radicals, and maybe a big bunch, but I know that a very significant portion of Americans are at least not sure, which alone is kind of unacceptable.

I think the desire of many people to not give up the standard of living society has achieved is perfectly reasonable, to be honest. After all the progress civilization has made, who really wants to take a step back? The best solutions would, in theory, sustain both the nice things we have now and the environment. Of course, the ringer for this type of solution is a significant population decrease with other changes to follow. I myself would rather not give up my nice things, and like everyone else (or the greedy majority, anyway) would prefer to trade them in for something even better. In the event this is not possible, I think it's the government's place to do something about it (restrictions, regulations, etc). I'm not trying to stand up for anybody (at all), but I think that ignorance is the major player here. In short, if people really /knew/ how bad things are, I believe they'd give many things up willingly, but I still hold to the impression that almost no one realizes exactly what's going on in the world. But who knows, really; I live in one of the most luxuriously ignorant regions of the world.

Also, when I make blanket generalizations such as these, I'm really referring to America unless I say otherwise, since I've never been out of the country in a significant way.

Hehe, I apologize.I guess I have too much to say :P

I am sorry for calling the US all a bunch of madmen. That was a generalization that is of course unfair.

But the nation as a whole certainly acts that way, sadly. But others are not all that much saner.

Yes of course it is reasonable to want to keep the standard of living. I personally love warm baths, cooking with a gas stove in a kitchen, having a laptop, doing science, travelling, skiing and would love to learn scuba. I like music and movies just like almost all of us here. But that is not the point - the point is about priorities. And I honestly dont know what it is that keeps people from getting these straight. If it is a lack of knowledge really, that they just dont know how bad things are looking for the natural world - or if it is willfull ignorance or simply self delusion - or if it is even because they are lied to by a bunch of clever optimists that look for a business opportunity to sell solar, wind or thorium energy and electric cars. I think that at least the theory of lack of knowledge is not likely. Because scientists have done education on these issues for the past 50 years or so. They got their knowledge out to politicians and the public. The result we see now - politicians that claim that there cannot be global warming because God promised to not create another flood and a public that has severe doubts on all the main issues from climate change to resource depletion. They all know about these issues and that they exist, but they deliberately choose not to accept them as a reality or as something important. Either because they just cannot imagine that it can really be that bad because the onlyconclusion would be that lifestyle would have to change - or because they are just told by others that they dont need to worry...

Everything you said about the US is totally okay by me :P And, any of those other possibilities could be true too, but I don't think that people are that incapable of sympathy towards their environment. Simple thinkers look out the window and see a blue sky and green plants, and think, What could possibly be so wrong with what I'm doing? We've done it for the last hundred or so years (depending on what it is). Though they may have been presented with the general facts, they haven't personally seen the proof, and I think this is what it may take for many. Even then, I'm sure there would be some to not care at all either way, but they wouldn't be the majority.

Well....
“Get real!” – Living in a virtual world
;)