Google gives up on renewables

[P-hack]

Originally Posted by IamIan

Bold ---- Only if you assume that current global total population is already actually higher than would be sustainable ... if there is still more sustainable capacity .. than a decrease is not yet needed.

Pack the world full of self important idiots who cant even feed themselves, that sounds like a great plan.

[Xist]

IamIan, what do you have against vampires?!

I just have problems with teen vampire movies...

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by P-hack

Pack the world full of self important idiots who cant even feed themselves, that sounds like a great plan.

Evolutionary Survival of the fittest ... even if it's an idiocracy
That's the world.

Not my plan ... I was just pointing out the data actually is not all that much doom and gloom .. the data looks rather good overall... Over population is not the horrible doom waiting for our future.

Don't fear sunshine vampire .. It only hurts for a little bit ...

Originally Posted by Xist

IamIan, what do you have against vampires?!

I just have problems with teen vampire movies...

Nothing exactly against vampires themselves... Blood Suckers can be part of a sustainable ecosystem.

But I do find it interesting how insistent sometimes people can be in trying to see doom and gloom ... and seem to try very very hard to avoid any ray's of proverbial 'sunshine' (good news) .. Almost like a mythic vampire who runs fleeing and hiding from the sun shine.

Are there problems .. certainly .. can things be improved .. certainly ... but none of that makes the world today any less wonderful and fantastic .. The outlook for the future is bright ,sunny... things are (overall) getting better and better.

[P-hack]

Originally Posted by IamIan

Evolutionary Survival of the fittest ... even if it's an idiocracy
That's the world.

Not my plan ... I was just pointing out the data actually is not all that much doom and gloom .. the data looks rather good overall... Over population is not the horrible doom waiting for our future.

Wat?!? You think that when there is zero room for anything else on the planet except humans and their energy/food/waste generation, that looks "quite good overall"?!?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

---- Only if you assume that current global total population is already actually higher than would be sustainable ...

Assumption? No, demonstrated fact.

[IamIan]

Ahh yes ... they attack the sun shine soo hard ... good news is such a horrible thing ...

Originally Posted by P-hack

Wat?!? You think that when there is zero room for anything else on the planet except humans and their energy/food/waste generation, that looks "quite good overall"?!?

No.
That is not what I think .. and not what I wrote... re-read.

As I wrote ...
Even the worst case population growth curve you yourself posted ... still puts the total human global population leveling off long before far under that maximum sustainable capacity point of zero room for anything else.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Assumption? No, demonstrated fact.

Oh really ?? A 'demonstrated' fact is it ??
By all means please list the demonstration you reference... I'm not aware of an actual demonstration.

Especially with all the non-maximum things that are part of the current real world .. all of which would have to be removed to actually reach this 'demonstration' you claim :
#1> no meat eating humans... not even one
#2> no un-utilized space .. not even 1 square mm.
#3> not 1 extra joule per person than the minimum required to survive.
etc ... etc...

There is not such demonstration .. like it or not .. it is an assumption.

- - - - -

And before those doom and gloom lovers mis-read that or try and twist it ... I do not want that either ... nor am I claiming that to reach planetary max possible .. that is NOT what I want in any way shape or form.

[P-hack]

There are no megafauna left, you cannot expect that humans will change their nature willingly in the span of decades, but you have to be really presumptuous to try. Renewables will be important tools in post peak-oil conflicts, and the use of automatons for killing will increase. I'm not trying to sound dramatic, just realistic. When a 300 pound man attacks a cop and gets shot, then a city burns as a result, how do you justify any optimism on the subject? I'm not saying be depressed about it, it isn't doom and gloom as you say, it just is, so just be prepared, and don't act surprised when violence does erupt or think you should have done something differently. I mean you can lay down and die, that would be the gloomiest and most pathetic response IMHO, you will self-eliminate based on feelings, not "fitness", lol.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by P-hack

There are no megafauna left, you cannot expect that humans will change their nature willingly in the span of decades, but you have to be really presumptuous to try. Renewables will be important tools in post peak-oil conflicts, and the use of automatons for killing will increase. I'm not trying to sound dramatic, just realistic. When a 300 pound man attacks a cop and gets shot, then a city burns as a result, how do you justify any optimism on the subject? I'm not saying be depressed about it, it isn't doom and gloom as you say, it just is, so just be prepared, and don't act surprised when violence does erupt or think you should have done something differently. I mean you can lay down and die, that would be the gloomiest and most pathetic response IMHO, you will self-eliminate based on feelings, not "fitness", lol.

A common misconception about me that I encounter frequently .. is that people see me as being 'optimistic' .. I'm not .. I'm a true pessimist who is unbiased enough to look at the actual data for what it is .. and I am constantly (pleasantly) seeing the actual real world data turn out far better than the worst case pessimistic possibility would have had.

I find it is ultimately more useful to be a true pessimist who is constantly (pleasantly) seeing the data for what it is , as things turn out better ... good news all the time .. instead of the optimist who no mater how good things are ... no matter how much progress and good news there is .. all they can only see where things fell short of their ideal fantasy 100% perfect world.

- - - - - -

One can look at the actual factual accurate real world data about the total human global population growth rate decreasing ... and one can see it one of two ways.

#1> Optimist
It isn't the 100% ideal perfect that one wanted = it's still bad news.

#2> Pessimist
Wow , that isn't a increasing growth rate at all ... What pleasantly good news ... It isn't even holding a stead % of yearly growth rate .. it's decreasing ... what's fantastically good news.

- - - - - - -

I don't want to get to the absolute maximum sustainable population of humans on this planet .. but an honest and accurate look at what that would be is important to do if we want to make an educate decision about how many total humans we think is a 'good' total to have... ie at what point to say there are too many based on actual data , not hunches and such.

I think a good place to start that look at the data for actual sustainable global human capacity ... is in the 'luxury' items of very low efficiency that we could convert to higher efficiency if we needed to... and one of the easiest to look at for that is meat consumption.

It varies of course ... but for example the average 1 beef calorie of meat took about 35 plant calories feed input for that 1 calorie output .. because the animal's digestive system only utilizes ~30% or so of the energy content of the food they eat ... and the vast majority of that ~30% they do get they spend breathing , walking , etc... of course it varies .. but the point is that for the same input ... of resources ... land and energy ... you can feed a significantly greater output of plant calories as food to the human ... without the 35:1 loss ratio converting to meat.

In 2008 we humans globally consumed about ~380 million tons of animal products with this horrible through-put efficiency ... 66 million tons of Beef alone ... that beef which contains roughly ~2.9 calories per gram .. or beef alone we consumed roughly ~174 Trillion Beef Calories alone ... at the 34:1 ratio ... that beef alone consumed roughly ~6 Zillion plant calories input ... at roughly 2,000 calories per human per day ... 365 days per year ... just the plant calories we feed as input ... just into the beef ... could have instead feed roughly ~8 Billion people ... just from the beef input plant calories ... completely forgetting all the other 314 Million Tons of other Meat/animal products we consumed ... etc.

We actually could have the same number of humans we have today ... and significantly reduce our total footprint on the planet ... if we wanted to ... because it doesn't actually require as much space as we use to sustainably have ~7 Billion humans.

Or we have not utilized the vast majority of the planet ... I don't think we should ... but if we are to be honest with ourselves ... the capacity is there.

[niky]

Originally Posted by Xist

Aren't you a bright ray of sunshine?

That's my incredibly large hoard of spam y'er standing next to, sonny... better git afore I shoots ya.

Originally Posted by IamIan

But ... good news for you ... some countries have begun to experience a net negative birth rate .. some are only growing through immigration now... Link.

Yup. Because they still have excess income... and energy... to support more. Which means immigration from countries that don't.

Originally Posted by IamIan

See attached graph of the decreasing average % of income spent on food... We on average spend about 25% less of our income on food today than we did in 1970s .. while at the same time we have about 75% more total mouths to feed... food has become cheaper at a faster rate than population has increased.

Thank you petrochemicals and electricity!

Originally Posted by IamIan

And it gets even better ... we've achieved that %$ decrease on less than 46% of the available land ... ie there is room to grow if we had to .. see attached ... switching to a low meat consumption society would more than double the amount of mouths we could feed (sustainably) on the same amount of land ... All current estimates .. even the worst case ones in P-hack's graph above .. put us leveling off (total global population) well bellow these max sustainable levels.

Land that isn't damaged. And that doesn't need to stay forested to supply our O2... and... of course... not counting the arable land that people, selfishly, want to live on.

Our hospital center used to be surrounded my square miles of rice fields. It isn't, anymore.

Also, croplands don't become cropland overnight. And there is, as well, the problem of climactic unpredictability that ruins crops in many countries.

I do agree that switching to a low meat diet will radically increase the amount of food we can put on the tables, giving us a buffer. And possibly improving conditions in Africa will help too. Possibly.

The problem, at this point, is making gains in sustainable farming with reasonable energy inputs that can feed people at a low cost. Disruptions in supply, market-distorting first-world subsidies and a host of other issues mean that while we could farm a lot more, we can't assure that the farmers will make enough money to survive. Not an insurmountable problem everywhere, but a real one, especially in the regions where the population is still growing.

Originally Posted by IamIan

Nope .. not even close to the energy limits of our civilization .. Good news there too ... run vampires run

See attached ... Our total energy consumption per person has not been increasing with our increased modern world .. ie more computers .. more TVs .. more cell phones .. Air Conditioning .. etc .. despite our increasing usage of these things ... we peaked in our per person energy usage back in the 1970s.

And we haven't tapped even a tiny fraction yet of the available energy... we have plenty of available energy room to grow if we need to.

More energy efficient appliances. More energy efficient cars. Ever stop to think as to how it'll all work out when all those billions of former third world people get the same things?

Originally Posted by IamIan

Sorry to break it to you .. the days of armed revolution in 1st world countries has past... Any such effort today would fail (be put down) miserably.

If we want to change the system today or in the future ... of any 1st world country today ... it now has to be done within the system itself.

Which is a good thing ... run vampires sun from the sunshine

Who's talking about the first world? We're talking bushfire warfare in hotspots in different regions. Of course... this is partially joking, as it will mostly happen in the Middle East as the oil runs thin and the power base of the leaders there crumbles.

Thankfully... it seems the ability of the extremists to export their war of terror is diminishing... as their barbarism is encouraging homegrown counter-terrorism measures. But it's still a powderkeg, and any large flare-up there will greatly destabilize the global oil supply, which ultimately affects the economic security of the planet.

-

I suppose we could be chewing this over fifty years from now (those of us who are still ticking, that is), in a world that's not radically different from today's. Mankind has shown remarkable resilience in weathering dramatic change, like two trillion dollar economic collapses.

At the same time, it might be radically different. We might live in a world without cattle, or in which cattle raising has reached the level of inordinate expense once reserved for Alligator farming. We might live in a world without cars... or in which they've become a plaything for the rich (like horses) and for third world farmers who don't give a damn about pollution and have easy access to methane and used oil.

A world with less air travel? More ships? A post-stock market world? Post-banks? Where monasteries run by lobotomized eunuchs are the last safe place to put your money? I don't know. Nobody does.

-

I do agree that we can weather the change by adjusting lifestyles. Hell... look at the excesses in first world countries and middle class lifestyles... and we could cut a lot out of that to make adjustments.

It just isn't going to be much fun for those who've gotten used to nice things.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

Oh really ?? A 'demonstrated' fact is it ??
By all means please list the demonstration you reference... I'm not aware of an actual demonstration.

Sure. It's proof by contradiction (Proof by contradiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ): if the current population level was sustainable, there would be no ongoing degradation of ecosystems. But ecosystems are degrading. For just a few instances (an exhaustive list is beyond my capabilities):

• Deforestation/desertification
• Extinction of large fauna (and many smaller)
• Topsoil loss
• Shrinking fresh water supplies
• Agricultural productivity propped up by petroleum-derived chemicals

Especially with all the non-maximum things that are part of the current real world .. all of which would have to be removed to actually reach this 'demonstration' you claim :
#1> no meat eating humans... not even one
#2> no un-utilized space .. not even 1 square mm.
#3> not 1 extra joule per person than the minimum required to survive.

Perhaps we have different definitions of 'sustainable'. I suggest that your #1 and #3 are simply not sustainable, whatever the population level might be.

As for #2, there basically is no unutilized space on the surface of the planet (with a few small exceptions, such as fresh lava flows). When humans occupy some space, much of what lived there before is evicted. But we know that quite a bit of other life is necessary to keep the planet in a state that's survivable for humans, even if we don't know exactly what & how much. So the only way to prove your sort of 'sustainabilty' is to increase population levels until failure, a method that has the obvious flaw that you likely aren't going to recognize said failure until some time after it happens.