The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[freebeard]

The principle of Least Work?

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I watch about half the videos linked by freebeard only because there's a limit to what I can consume while juggling other obligations and interests in a day.

As a thought experiment, let's envision humans going back to only what they "need". We're all living in caves, scrounging for food.

I try to limit embedded videos to what is [at least somewhat] on topic. Curiously, while you were posting that I was watching this (thirteen minutes on the Primitve Technology guy and how we take shoes for granted):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOpp-4dHkw

Did the extracted subtitles help?

Right now I'm listening to Lionel Nation, he's going nuts about Michael Cohen in Congress while the President is in *Vietnam* ending a 70-year war. He's really leaning into that black wall in a hole in the ground and the movie Winter Soldier and how we veterans were treated.

At midnight last night I watched Trump standing under a 25ft bust of Ho Chi Min overseeing millions of dollars of contract between Vietnamese airlines and Boeing and Sabra.

[sendler]

The Green Revolution of fossil fuel powered fertilizer, irrigation and land prep and machinery and processing and transport has more than doubled crop yields in previously underdeveloped areas since 1960. Returning to organic-permaculture style land use from the decline of fossil fuel and Phosphate availability either from depletion or "leave it in the ground" climate action, will result in lesser productivity. It is said that the Green revolution spared 1 Billion (1/3 of the world overpopulation) people from famine in 1970. We now have nearly 8 billion to feed.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

[sendler]

New Heinberg essay..."The bind we’re in is this: it is the economy—made up of all those billions of fires—that is causing climate change. Reconfiguring the economy so that it doesn’t cause climate change is currently almost completely a matter of theory, and, even if it is practically possible, represents a job of unprecedented scope and scale that would require nearly unheard-of political solidarity and almost incalculably massive investment and sacrifice (those “affordable energy transition” studies notwithstanding).

Meanwhile, most people are directly dependent on the economy for their survival. Thus, economic contraction or collapse (resulting either from climate change, or from efforts to avert climate change by radically reducing energy use, or from depletion of resources like oil, or even from some entirely foreseeable socioeconomic calamity like a massive debt default or terminal political dysfunction caused by increasing levels of inequality) would itself be traumatic. And for many people (certainly not all!), economic trauma might come sooner and be more direct and devastating than trauma from rising seas, droughts, floods, wildfires, and the other anticipated consequences of global warming."
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2...se-is-on-fire/
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[freebeard]

Excellent.

Also an argument for Viktor Schauberger's implosion technology.

Our goal would be a sustainable and equitable level of consumption for all. But the constituency for doing that is tiny. And doing it without unleashing utter economic bedlam would require rethinking everything about how the economy currently works.

We at Post Carbon Institute have settled on the strategy of helping build community resilience in the face of impending civilizational collapse. ... But if the latter effort doesn’t work, then grassroots community resilience building truly is the last, best fallback strategy. Theoretically, if done well (using permaculture principles), it could aid with reforestation and biodiversity protection. But at this late date there can be no guarantees.

They should get together with the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

Have you seen Engorged? It’s the new streaming channel with 200 billion hours of entertainment—movies, music, sports—that lets you peer through other people’s devices to watch them watching whatever you’re watching. It’s so cool!

There's your problem right there.

[linky-dink? Asking for a friend. ]

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by sendler

The Green Revolution of fossil fuel powered fertilizer, irrigation and land prep and machinery and processing and transport has more than doubled crop yields in previously underdeveloped areas since 1960. Returning to organic-permaculture style land use from the decline of fossil fuel and Phosphate availability either from depletion or "leave it in the ground" climate action, will result in lesser productivity. It is said that the Green revolution spared 1 Billion (1/3 of the world overpopulation) people from famine in 1970. We now have nearly 8 billion to feed.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

Funny, I was reading the Green Revolution link and wondering what it had to do with fossil fuel. Rice crops gaining a factor 6 in productivity through new breeds.

Then I saw the only reference to fossil fuel in the whole page:

Most high intensity agricultural production is highly reliant on non-renewable resources. Agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates all depend on fossil fuels.[71] Moreover, the essential mineral nutrient phosphorus is often a limiting factor in crop cultivation, while phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.[72] The failure to depart from these non-sustainable agricultural production methods could potentially lead to a large scale collapse of the current system of intensive food production within this century.

That raises some questions.
- Why are not ALL high intensity agricultural production highly reliant on non-renewable resources? There is a way not to rely on them, then?
- Agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates could be electrified - if not now then in the near future.
- Phosphorus is a problem but not a fossil fuel.
- The failure to depart from these non-sustainable agricultural production methods could potentially lead to a large scale collapse of the current system of intensive food production within this century... so we must by all means depart from these non-sustainable production methods.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

That raises some questions.
- Why are not ALL high intensity agricultural production highly reliant on non-renewable resources? There is a way not to rely on them, then?

So you want to nitpick between the words "most" and "all" to feel better? It has been very interesting for me to watch how confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance play out in these discussions. My own reactions included.
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Battery electrification of industrial farm equipment and truck transport is quite unlikely to allow the same scale of production that is feeding the world now.
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570 Liters of diesel per day = 5,700 kWh per day. Even if you cut that by2.5 for the extra efficiency of electric motors with round trip losses you get 2,300 kWh per day for a large size farm machine. 12 Tesla grid scale 200kWh powerpacks per day to hot swap in and out. for just one tractor. We are going to need to start making a lot of wire to get all of this power around.

[redpoint5]

As I've said, it's not like we're going to sit around getting dumber in the meantime. Automation will help tremendously. Tractors will be automated in the future, meaning they can work/charge 24/7. Even if they don't go electric, automating them will mean we need fewer of them to perform the same amount of work. There's that sort of resource savings that will take place in most industries.

Automation will bring along easier/quicker resource depletion though. As the cost to produce something approaches zero, the consumption increases.

We'll solve the energy problem one day, probably right about the same time we see massive increases in robotic/autonomous work. The final problem to solve will be expending energy to atomically modify material into whatever we need. I expect the first 2 to occur in my lifetime, but replicator-like manipulation of atomic structure may come after.

[oil pan 4]

The house climate change hearing has ended.
Because no democrats bothered to show up.
Hahahahahahahabbaba!
Yeah they seem like they are really convinced climate change is so dangerous. They say they care but their actions paint a completly different picture.
This is a perfect example of typically of believer behavior.
Remember how I said the climate change movement is falling apart, this is only the beginning.

[freebeard]

The house climate change hearing has ended.
Because no democrats bothered to show up.
Hahahahahahahabbaba!

Senator Feinstein isn't in the house, but she's telling 12-year-olds that didn't vote for her they can pound sand.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

There's that sort of resource savings that will take place in most industries.

Automation will bring along easier/quicker resource depletion though. As the cost to produce something approaches zero, the consumption increases.

We'll solve the energy problem one day, probably right about the same time we see massive increases in robotic/autonomous work.

Three-story vertical farms with Alfalfa sprouts and other greens robotically packaged and dispensed at street level. Bring the production to the point of use.

[redpoint5]

I hope I live to see the day... but then I'll always be wondering what's around the corner.