Just 5 years left to stop climate change

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Not even the most lunatic pro-nuclear engineers would assume such a thing. There is always chance for a technical failure, there are chances for environmental disturbances and there are chances for human failure. There are also chances for attacks. there are a few nice exploits that can be used by hacking PLCs for example. Or remember Stuxnet?

Stuxnet damaged a centrifuge's motors; it had nothing to do with reactors. I seriously doubt you know more about Stuxnet than me
Even where SCADA-type systems are in use, they aren't connected anywhere, and they are ALWAYS engineered so they have to actively prevent an emergency shutdown from happening, and if they go too far in either direction, it causes one, by methods that in many cases have been engineered to the point that they would work even if gravity had stopped working.

Fine, then we will be able to first consume all there is on earth and then also the asteroids - that still leaves earth devastated.

that's not what anyone has proposed; you're the first person to there. Most involve actually replacing the use of Earth.

The unpredictable thing would be that Earth can start to heal from being poisoned. Maybe there will eventually be pollinators again in all of China (which cannot be said about now). And food prices are a problem of globalization and so-called freemarkets, not of real scarcity. Half the food in the US is thrown away, but because US people are rich and Africans are poor they can just buy the food away from Africa.

So Africa has no subsistence farmers? hahahahaha.
It's not a problem of free market, since they get money which is worth as much or more. It's a problem of efficiency. Selling food elsewhere brings in money, but if they were capable of using more efficient methods, person A could grow more food and sell some to B and C, who sell their products abroad.

Yeah - use more of what did not work in favour of the ecology of the earth in an attempt to fix it. Makes sense - not.

Actually, the problem is overpopulation. While an engineered population decline would be ideal, it's too unlikely at this stage.

This worked for 200.000 years, for 95% of human history. Humans are really really good at this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presen...rical_analysis

Humans back then would have killed to obtain a food source which means they weren't at risk of starvation if luck didn't go their way.

Unless they regard themselves as separate from the natural community.

Because all indigenous humans are the same, right? That's romanticism of the worst kind; you might as well repeat the old lies that they had no war or internal conflict, also both patently false.

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

What more needs to be said really?

We need better and efficient technology that in order to maintain at least some standard of living while not having to burden the planet needlessly.

Population control is also needed, because in order to have the sort of high tech sustainability, the earths population has to drastically go down. The numbers game where population serves as an advantage is a distant relic from the past and needs to be addressed when thinking about new and better systems of sustainability.

Exactly. Without modern methods, the population that an be supported is too small, and supporting even a relatively small population requires mass resource use that it would not otherwise. With them, it is capable of growing too large if population growth is left unchecked; so the approach is to use the best methods available while preventing population from growing too far (i.e. a two child policy, which would keep it stable in the worst case and a slow decline in a real case).

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Its not about cost but about safety.

A few hundred tons of carbon nanomaterials are more dangerous than tons of rocket fuel strapped to each and every space vehicle? The heaviest part of space elevator is the counterweight; in the event of failure, this falls upwards due to the physics involved.

Not even the most lunatic pro-nuclear engineers would assume such a thing. There is always chance for a technical failure, there are chances for environmental disturbances and there are chances for human failure.

For Chernobyl-type accidents, they might. Of course I didn't mean zero chance of failure at all; however, I am fairly sure that in a modern reactor, there is no possible non-malicious failure scenario that causes a Chernobyl-style explosion.

There are also chances for attacks. there are a few nice exploits that can be used by hacking PLCs for example. Or remember Stuxnet?

Stuxnet is apparently an information-war weapon, to the point that it uses stolen cryptographic keys to make itself hard to find. Sabotage by national government (perhaps even the US) was presumably not written into the specification of the (illegal) Iranian nuclear program.

Incidentally, you have pretty much identical problems with any alternative design, of any reactor or major infrastructure.

I just realized I put way too much effort into these conversations in respect of doing proper calculations and research.

Data from these pages, says you need 7,500. This is a ceiling; the figure of how much power is currently being generated includes older designs that are less efficient.

The unpredictable thing would be that Earth can start to heal from being poisoned.

You're idealizing if you have any confidence that it'll go back to the status quo. Earth will heal - but nothing stops it from taking out any or even all species in the process. The state you are looking for is an equilibrium, and neither of us have a guarantee that if humanity disappeared tomorrow, Earth would return to the equilibrium of yesterday. It might well end up somewhere completely different, and kill most everything off in the transition.

Yeah - use more of what did not work in favour of the ecology of the earth in an attempt to fix it. Makes sense - not.

Beware the Squishy Things. It turns out that they're incredibly dangerous, because when they put their mind to achieve something, 99% of the time, they succeed, and they succeed faster than other almost any process on Earth can keep up with them. Engineering has not worked in favour of the Earth because nobody has even attempted to use it like that.

This worked for 200.000 years, for 95% of human history. Humans are really really good at this.

You know about the mortality rates pre-Middle Ages? They were terrible. Humans were only good at living in balance with nature because they didn't have the resources to have a choice about it. (And they died relatively often because of it.) When we do have a choice, it becomes evident that humans have problems thinking either in the long term or beyond their monkeysphere.

Still it is needed - deeply and gravely needed - that this culture changes, that the vision of people widens, that they accept the nonhumans again as people and that they think of the next generations or lifetimes.
I dont expect to say anything that makes this in a blip. But I know it has to happen - one way or any of many others. But anything that does not work towards this is not really helping. If we need a crisis, a striking realization of the consequences of our actins, then maybe that will be the wake up call. But really, the members of this culture NEED TO WAKE UP to what indigenous cultures knew all along...

In comparison to what we know of ecology, biology, and biochemistry today, they knew little more than a fig. (And hopefully, the same will apply to us in comparison to tomorrow's science. ) We used the squishy thing between our ears, and now we have a lot more tools, each incredibly powerful, to ensure that nature does not fall apart catastrophically under our feet. HNM is right in that an indigenous person not exposed to technology would be astonished at exactly what it can achieve, both for good and for ill.

However, since the major obstacle in this case is other Squishy Things, we do not have the tool we might obviously look for: the ability to convince the other people to follow our way of thinking and be environmentally friendly. This tool is not available, and quite possibly never will be, due to how psychology works when scaled up to deal with millions of individuals, corporations, etc. Any solution based on it is therefore questionable at best, outright doomed at worst.

The remaining tools are more dangerous when used unwisely, but also more effective: engineering. The ecosystems built of dumb biology and even dumber chemicals are positively malleable compared to the "ecosystems" of corporations, international relations, and even individual humans that have been built on this planet. The latter is not going anywhere in the foreseeable future, and cannot be manipulated with significant accuracy; we must therefore adjust the former so that nothing breaks significantly. There aren't any obstacles to this in principle; only the omnipresent issues of time and money with which to do the science so that we can modify Nature accurately.

And look at me still talking when there's science to do...

[Moco Loco]

*applauds in Clarke's direction*

[Tsyal Makto]

It's interesting the change in mindset that is occuring on this forum. A year ago the meme (in a positive meaning) was about changing humanity's ways to bring us in harmony with nature. Now the meme seems to be more anthropocentric, about forcing the ecology to make the change to be in line with civilized humanity's ways. IMO it's more anthropocentric than JC's message likely was in Avatar. I'm torn.

TBH from a philosophical standpoint, if we change nature into our ideal vision, is it really truly nature anymore? And at that point, what's the point on putting value on it? The reason we put value on nature (in part, at least) is from it's existential value. It is something that functions and thrives completely on it's own, laissez faire from civilized humanity. It's part of the reason it's so beautiful. If we make it something of our creation, what gives it more value than what it gives to us economically? What stops us from simply throwing it away like we throw away our other tools?

Also, even if we could modify nature to work within the current corporate socio-political system, would we really want to? There's more problems with the current corporate-political status quo than it's negative impact on nature. What of the wage slavery? The manipulation of governments? The propaganda from corporate media? Hell, if we modify ecology to work for the current system, couldn't that empower the system to work even more against the masses? And "it's too hard" really isn't an excuse to not try to change the system. Occupy Wall Street is proof of this. All it takes is one step in the right direction to start something big.

Just take a look at the home page of Home | AlterNet to see just how much **** the current system is capable of causing. Do we really want to give it more incentives to keep doing what it's doing?

[Aquaplant]

How many times it needs to be said.

Science and technology are not the enemy here, nor the cause of the destruction of our planet. We can be in harmony with nature while also having access to technology.

It's the capitalist monetary system based on greed and profit that makes our society the sick thing it is.

[Tsyal Makto]

Our technology is our own creation, we should keep it to ourselves. We can use it for our everyday lives, and in some cases our interactions with nature, but I can't get behind the idea of overhauling Mama Nature for the sake of our own whims (and really, would this really benefit the 99% of people or mostly the 1% corporate masters?), or forcing technology on people's who may not want it, or who's livelihoods may be harmed by it (check out Survival International's "progress can kill" document).

The real solution to climate change is humanity curbing its excessive footprint on this planet and finding a new socio-economic-political way forward. It may not be the easiest way, but we'll be a better species for it in the long run, both for the planet and ourselves. The system is what's broken, not nature. Hell, even if our system wasn't harming the planet, I'd still fight against it, given how much it harms humans alone.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

The real solution to climate change is humanity curbing its excessive footprint on this planet and finding a new socio-economic-political way forward. It may not be the easiest way, but we'll be a better species for it in the long run, both for the planet and ourselves.

Well that's what I've been saying all along, and unless we all want to go back to the stone age, we need to develop and use efficient and sustainable technologies. But our current system of finance largely prevents just that, because there is no profit in sustainability.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

It's interesting the change in mindset that is occuring on this forum. A year ago the meme (in a positive meaning) was about changing humanity's ways to bring us in harmony with nature. Now the meme seems to be more anthropocentric, about forcing the ecology to make the change to be in line with civilized humanity's ways. IMO it's more anthropocentric than JC's message likely was in Avatar. I'm torn.

No, it was never monolithic over everyone, only you seem to believe that everyone here followed your politics when in fact, most people have always had a more realistic approach that living with others does not need the loss of countless generations' hard-won accomplishment, or of a life that is also comfortable, enjoyable, and not unpredictably short.

TBH from a philosophical standpoint, if we change nature into our ideal vision, is it really truly nature anymore?

That goes for preserving species that might otherwise die out as well. There's no such thing as truly non-interfered nature. Humans have changed it ever since they first hunted, first selectively bred domesticated animals. Even nonsentient animals adapt their surroundings as necessary. Claiming it's unique to humans is placing a belief of their being special which I thought you would not. The only way to not affect anything else is not to exist.

Most people have always been more practical about the real world, and have never supported destruction of everything like you claim, but instead, improvement of processes, change without upheaval for upheaval's sake. I don't understand why you have a problem with that simply because it does not toe your own political line.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

The real solution to climate change is humanity curbing its excessive footprint on this planet and finding a new socio-economic-political way forward. It may not be the easiest way, but we'll be a better species for it in the long run, both for the planet and ourselves. The system is what's broken, not nature. Hell, even if our system wasn't harming the planet, I'd still fight against it, given how much it harms humans alone.

This is far more realistic, but to do so NEEDS progress, because 7 billion regressed people would be orders of magnitude worse than 7 billion advanced people. Small ways to reduce impact have a big effect over that, including things that might not seem so such as communications, reducing the need for travel.

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Well that's what I've been saying all along, and unless we all want to go back to the stone age, we need to develop and use efficient and sustainable technologies.

Exactly. It's when things become stalled that there are problems.

[Fkeu'itan]

And for people who *do* want to go back to the stone age?

[Human No More]

Then that's their choice to individually, but they shouldn't force that on others, and I never said anything else there - when people should live on their own terms, they must accept that others' might not be the same for that reason .

[Niri Te]

Aquaplant,
Communism DIDN'T work in the USSR, it didn't work in Eastern Europe where people were braving Machine Gun Towers, walls, and Minefields to get out, in Cuba or North Korea, where people are starving, and China, while still being a totalitarian State, has gone to a free market economy.
Capatalism may not be perfect, but it is a Hell of a lot better than anything else out there.

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

How many times it needs to be said.

Science and technology are not the enemy here, nor the cause of the destruction of our planet. We can be in harmony with nature while also having access to technology.

It's the capitalist monetary system based on greed and profit that makes our society the sick thing it is.

[Isard]

Actually, Cuba's not doing as bad as all that.


I think that's because they're tiny and agrarian though.

[Clarke]

Also, Stalin's Five Year Plans managed to make Russia competitive against the fully militarized Third Reich. That worked economically, even if the fascist component decreased the quality of life. (Fascism and communism are not the same, and not even directly connected. It just happens that all communism attempts so far have also been fascist.)

[Niri Te]

You may very well be correct about the agrarian part, and the reason that they can (barely) feed their people, while North Korea, another small, agrarian country can't is probably because of Cuba's sub tropical climate that North Korea does not share.

The fact still remains, however, that people are trying to sneak OUT of Cuba, and INTO this "bad capitalist" country. As a matter of fact, I think that is one of a very few, if not the only "end destination" Countries that people try to sneak INTO for a shot at a better life.

I have lived in several countries as a private citizen, not a soldier, and no where else, could I live the way that I live now, on my military pension. While I like some of Germany's social programs, The Country was far too crowded for me to even have my own house on a small piece of land. Even if it was possible geographically, it was illegal for me to own land in Germany, even though I had "Umbefristet" stamped on my U.S. Passport, I was still an "Auslander" and by law could not own land.
Under the American Capitilist system, my love and I, on only 3.500 dollars a month, own our self build hangerhome on 80 acres, with our own private 4,700 foot runway and the full ownership of two aircraft. Without the technologies that we made use of, or the freedoms of a capitalist system there is no way that we could have achieved the station in life that we did.

Originally Posted by Isard

Actually, Cuba's not doing as bad as all that.
I think that's because they're tiny and agrarian though.

[Tsyal Makto]

HNM, you have no idea about who I am or what I believe, do you? What exactly do you think I'm trying to "destroy?" I'm guessing you thought the same thing about people like Ghandi or MLK Jr, who fought against the evils of the systems they lived under? I'm fighting corruption and greed. The current system is broken, for people and the planet, it needs to change. I've found something worth fighting for, but apparently you just see me as some sort of saber rattler? Am I hitting anywhere near the mark here? Again, if you seem to think the current system is fine, go see Alternet. There's plenty of independent journalists who would kindly disagree.

Yes, humans have always had an impact on nature, as all species do, but it was never some sort of full-scale technological overhaul of it that some seem to advocate. Again, I have no problem with technology, but humanity should keep its impact on the natural world to a minimum, not try to overhaul the entire biosphere with it, and definitely not attempt to push it on aboriginal people's. There's a line of acceptability of impact, and that would cross it.

Oh, and advanced or not, 7 billion people is unsustainable. We gotta bring that number down. Period. Either way, I agree.

I guess a TL;DR is that it is humanity that should make the move and progress, not nature, nature is just fine as it is. Humanity must make the change, and find environmentally friendly technologies that work in better harmony with nature (along with good old fashioned conservation less consumption) as she is. That, IMO, was JC's message, not the other way around. Anthropocentrism is what got us here in the first place, we need to broaden our horizons and think about our effect on nature with our actions. Ideally we could find a way to bring a greener civilization closer to the land, both spiritually and in practice, but the task is on us, not mama nature, to make the change.

HNM, I have no idea where you got this anti-tech opinion of me from, but you are way. ****ing. off. Change it, bud. And I don't know why it's bad that I'm fighting the corporate oligarchy?